Agree to that, but unfortunately, I can't see how we can get rid of coal without switching to nuclear, at least for a long, long time. Time is exactly what we don't have.
Thank you so much for the kind words, and for joining the discussion
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Nuclear power
- Thread starter eledille
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Agree to that, but unfortunately, I can't see how we can get rid of coal without switching to nuclear, at least for a long, long time. Time is exactly what we don't have.
Thank you so much for the kind words, and for joining the discussion
XKCD puts lots of things into great perspective. No NG on the comic, but I imagine it is around coal somewhere.
xkcd: Log Scale
I am wondering if you could get a battery density somewhere past the sugar level in the future!
xkcd: Log Scale
I am wondering if you could get a battery density somewhere past the sugar level in the future!
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
Maybe a downscale of Toshiba's "Nuclear battery"? Ok yes I know, the current "battery" is hughe (10x20x15 meters or so) but who knows what will be available in 8 years when the Model S battery warranty is up? And then we won't have to worry about the battery getting cold in the winter either
Yes, but I just have to point out that current nuclear technology only extracts a tiny fraction of the available energy from uranium. (Okay yeah it's still a lot.)
Our current technology only extracts a fraction (granted much bigger than nuclear) of the available energy from the source.
With the exception of burning fuel for heat. In those circumstances, and with proper equipment, our current technology can extract a large fraction.
I want to say my dad's nuclear submarine (he was the reactor operator) was 100% powered (not when at port) by a very small amount (weight could be handled by a single person, apparently this isn't public knowledge and classified) of very highly enriched Uranium. And it powered itself for decades! Went around the world. And provided oxygen, via electrolysis, for 100+ people the whole time.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
As has been discussed in this thread earlier there are currently available technologies (proven an tested in research reactors for decades) that do extract if not 100% then close to, as compared to the first- and second generation reactors that are in commercial use as of today (most of them designed in the 1950's and 1960's and built before the 1990's). And as has also been discussed the other enormous upside if we were to switch to the modern reactor types is that the ammount of nuclear waste would be diminished by the same 100th fold (all directly related to the fact that you would be extracting near 100% of the available nuclear energy). It's kind of frustrating to think about this, wonder who could be stopping such a revolutionizing technology??? Huh, did anyone say Big Oil/Gas/Coal?
I'd suggest it's mostly Hollywood and the news media with all their scare movies and stories. They've basically duped the general public into thinking nuclear is harmful, rather than the cheapest and cleanest continuous power source available.
And yes, that's a great illustration.
Fear sells all too well, I too think that is the main reason for the anti-nuke hysteria. However, there seems to be something strange going on in the White House specifically against fast fission, the rumours say that some senior advisors there are blocking any progress on the IFR, and any other variant of fast fission for that matter. Why they are doing that is anyone's guess.
Johan: The IFR may be slightly more expensive than BWR and PWR because of the triple coolant loop arrangement. In an environment where uranium is plentiful, the government pays for spent fuel, reprocessing is illegal and no large scale spent fuel pyroprocessing facility has been built, there are few economic arguments in favor of building an IFR (i.e. a PRISM). Thus, the antis can continue to say that uranium will run out, SNF is an intractable problem, reprocessing is a proliferation hazard, etc etc.
I really, really hope the UK will build those PRISMs at Sellafield. Using them to get rid of weapons grade plutonium and spent nuclear fuel might be the easiest way to get started.
Here is another article explaining fuel density. What they neglect to say is that you wouldn't be able to lift that satchel without a forklift, as it's weighing 200 kg. But still. If we replace that once-through light water reactor with a PRISM and pyroprocessing, we would need less than 2 kg uranium per day. That's a 5 cm diameter cylinder 6.5 cm high. You could put it in your pocket and transport it from mine to power plant on a bicycle.
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The US is down two nukes.
Kewaunee as victim to natural gas markets.
Dominion To Close, Decommission Kewaunee Power Station - Oct 22, 2012
Crystal River sustained containment concrete issues to be converted to natural gas plant.
Crystal River Nuclear Plant to be retired; company evaluating sites for potential new gas-fueled generation - Duke Energy
Kewaunee as victim to natural gas markets.
Dominion To Close, Decommission Kewaunee Power Station - Oct 22, 2012
Crystal River sustained containment concrete issues to be converted to natural gas plant.
Crystal River Nuclear Plant to be retired; company evaluating sites for potential new gas-fueled generation - Duke Energy
This is a pity considering the knee jerk reaction to fossil fuels. I want to state clearly that for all my positions on the risk of nuclear, I think next-gen reactors hold promise; and think they would not only solve a carbon issue, but also help force a modernization of the infrastructure of current radioactive waste management. I live relatively close to Hanford to see the sort of politicking that goes about it and its issues. Nothing like making a cost center into a profit center for it to get some attention (which in this case is direly needed imho).
I can understand that the damaged Crystal River plant gets decommisioned, the damage turned out to be worse than expected and the repair cost was unknown. But that a fully functional, operating nuke with another 20 years of life remaining is decommisioned is awful, economies of scale notwithstanding. Even more depressing, this shows that natural gas is way too cheap, and that Dominion does not expect a carbon tax for many years to come.
That's hardly a knee jerk reaction. Fossil fuels are the only other option. This is a strong indication that variable energy sources will not replace reliable ones.
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Right now, it has to do with economics. In most places in the US, the all-in cost (capital + O&M + fuel) of renewables is higher--often far higher--than that of a gas-fired combined-cycle unit. So, absent strong government policies or individual consumers' demand for renewable power, natural gas will get the nod.
The lower cost of gas-fired generation today is further underscored by the issue that most new renewable power sources are not dispatchable (wind, solar, tides, waves, run-of-river). As the penetration rate of these intermittent renewables increases, there has to be additional investment in some other parts of the power system--backup generation, storage, transmission, on-demand DR, etc. For example, a study showed that Denmark could use 100% wind by overbuilding the wind turbines by a factor of 2, effectively doubling the cost of wind compared to fossil fuels. Obviously, no system can just use solar; at a minimum, you would need massive storage capacity, which is an additional cost.
In some states, the regulated power companies are required to choose the least-cost reliable option, so once the utility has met the RPS standard, it cannot legally buy more renewables (except to meet demand from customers opting for renewable supply, but I'm unaware of any utility where consumer demand has gotten ahead of supply).
Back OT, Kewaunee faced a lot of challenges. It wasn't just low gas prices that sank it; MISO also has a lot of wind, which contributes to low prices. Unlike all the other eastern grid operators, MISO doesn't have a system of "capacity payments" that ensures sufficient revenues to keep needed plants around. Finally, there's a lot of uncertainty about the costs of the upgrades that will be mandated by the NRC to respond to the learnings from Fukushima Daiichi.
I suppose I should have written "the only other option available outside of Greenpeace's fantasy world".
Of course it's physically possible to store wind energy for use when the wind isn't blowing. The problem is that it would cost at the very least twice as much as the windmills alone. That's if you can build the required pumped hydro storage capacity. Please try the calculations for any other sort of storage and see what happens, I've done one example of that earlier in this thread, with storage based on electrolytically produced hydrogen converted to methane. Before thinking about batteries you should know that there isn't enough lead in the entire world to store a couple of weeks of US demand using lead-acid batteries. Please also try to do a realistic calculation of what kind of hydro reservoirs would be required to supply 90 % the US electricity demand for two weeks, which is the absolute minimum of what would be required, then start thinking about getting permission to start building the dams.
Norway and Iceland are the only countries in the world to have almost 100 % renewable electricity supply. Norway's water reservoirs are so enormous as to be able to deal with three consecutive dry years - and yet we still get in trouble from time to time! Then we have to rely on imported fossil and nuclear energy and high electricity prices to make supply match demand. And our problems are simple compared to those of wind, because our storage capacity makes a steady trickle of imported energy help a lot, but wind can vanish entirely and all of a sudden throughout a whole continent.
Replacing nukes and fossil at the same time using wind and solar without either at least 90 % nuclear or fossil backup or truly massive storage systems is actually physically impossible, unless you're prepared to accept blackouts lasting many days to weeks on a regular basis. Politically that would be totally impossible. People die when power is gone for more than a few days.
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Of course. I was hoping a next gen reactor of some sort palatable to the US political climate to replace the old ones.
(I don't like some aspects about nuclear energy, but I still think next gen reactors are an essential transitional building block to reduce climate risk in the short term.)
what do you think are the factors limiting the speed to develop and deploy these?
X1188. Sorry if this is terse, sent from my phone.
I certainly hope they run every operating reactor until its end of life before replacing, as long as there are any fossil power plants left. When the last fossil power plant has been shut down, older nukes without fully passive safety mechanisms should be replaced (obviously, plants that develop problems affecting safety must be repaired or shut down).
It depends which version of "next gen" you're aiming for. My opinion is that e.g. AP1000 and ESBWR are more than safe enough. Compared to the fossil alternatives, even gen II reactors like those that blew up at Fukushima are safer.
AP1000 and ESBWR are both capable of cooling themselves completely without any off-site power for three days, even if the turbines have stopped and all backup power is lost. After three days, all you have to do is bring a firehose to the external unpressurized water reservoir and dump a few tons of ordinary drinking water in there. This works by depressurizing the pressure vessel to the primary containment. Steam will then condense against the inside of the primary containment and flow back onto the core. The outside of the containment is kept wet by letting ordinary water run down on the outside, and upwards air flow along the wet outside cools it. Primary coolant is continually flowing without pumps due to conversion to steam, condensation and gravity. This completely solves all remaining safety issues.
They're already building AP1000 reactors, and ESBWR is as far as I know in the final stages of approval.
I only consider fast reactors to be true "next gen" fission reactors, because they solve the waste and uranium supply problems too. There are many proposals and some prototypes of fast reactors, but the most comprehensive and elegant solution, and also one of the most extensively and successfully tested ones, is the IFR developed at Argonne. Such a reactor is ready for building, but the reactor alone does not constitute a complete solution to those two problems. The recycling facility is also needed, and this has never been tested beyond the prototype stage. Nothing indicates that it would not work, the processes functioned as expected in the prototype facility, but a full scale demonstration plant should be built before one can say that the problem is solved. This has been estimated to take up to ten years. Technically, nothing prevents us from starting to build the reactors right away, they are both safer and more fuel efficient than AP1000 and ESBWR by themselves, but the White House doesn't want to hear about fast fission at all.
The problem with switching to fast reactors is that they require a much larger inventory of fissile material. Much of this can be taken from spent nuclear fuel, but then you need the reprocessing plant (one of these can serve many reactors). Otherwise you have to get the plutonium or U-235 from somewhere, either by breeding in fast reactors, which also requires reprocessing, or by enrichment. So we should get started breeding and recycling before we've used up all the U-235 for thermal reactors.
But provided we get started building the demo recycling facility soon, there should be no problems. A switch from fossil to nuclear power has been done several times already, France is the prime example, but other good examples are Sweden and Switzerland. A complete switch has historically taken about 20 years, with significant improvement after only 10 years. France designed and built their own reactors and reprocessing plants from scratch in this time frame. In contrast, Germany has spent incredible amounts of money building windmills and solar for 20 years or so, and they're nowhere near a complete switch. Denmark is in the same situation.
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Interesting post on Bravenewclimate, letter sent to the Select Committee on the Port Augusta Power Stations, which is considering what to do about two Australian coal power plants. It's long, but does a good job of explaining (in no uncertain terms) why nuclear power is needed.
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