Nuclear power

[mspohr]

Nuclear fusion again and still 15 years away
Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists
Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

 

[Brando]

Nuclear fusion again and still 15 years away
Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

Just stupid. solar/wind are FREE FUELS (so is falling water=hydro and geothermal)
And decentralized has so many advantages over centralized systems. Again, really stupid idea.

Too expensive to matter. Only the tax payers will ever pay for such systems. IF some company does it without tax payer money I will eat a hat.

Climate change? too late to matter, to expensive to matter, to slow to scale up to matter.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Climate change? too late to matter, to expensive to matter, to slow to scale up to matter.

This maybe?

Teenagers Defeat Trump’s Move to Kill Climate Change Lawsuit

I caught it on some minor news feed, can't see (in Google) that it has been caught by major news feeds, but maybe I Googled badly and/or its headline news in USA, albeit not here?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

France supposedly moving forward with new nuclear in India. Seems a strange time and place for new nuke capacity.

 

[S'toon]

The “ice wall” that Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) put in place a few years ago, with the intent of stopping water seepage into the basements of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, isn’t functioning as advertised (so to speak).

Going on an analysis performed by Reuters (using Tepco data), since the ice wall became “operational” — towards the end of August 2017 — an “average of 141 metric tonnes a day of water has seeped into the reactor and turbine areas.”

What that means is that after the ice wall was deemed to be fully operational that the flow of groundwater into the areas in question actually increased — as the previous 9 months (before August 2017) had seen an average of 132 metric tonnes a day of groundwater seepage.

Considering how expensive the ice wall was to put into place, and Tepco’s assurances to skeptics that the approach would be effective, this is very notable, to say the least.

As a result of this failure, large quantities of groundwater are continuing to flow into the basements of the Fukushima nuclear power plants, and there mingle with the extremely radioactive material present there.

<snip>

Full article at:
Fukushima Ice Wall Failing, Water Seepage Into Nuclear Reactors Still A Problem | CleanTechnica

 

[mspohr]

Why is the UK government so infatuated with nuclear power?
Why is the UK government so infatuated with nuclear power?

UK is full steam ahead on nuclear power in spite of the reality of high cost, slow progress and persistent issues (waste, etc)
Article posits that motivation is to develop military nuclear.

 

[nwdiver]

UK is full steam ahead on nuclear power in spite of the reality of high cost, slow progress and persistent issues (waste, etc)
Article posits that motivation is to develop military nuclear.

Madness. Madness and stupidity.

Meanwhile; Back in 'Merca... 4 more GW have announced plans to retire over the next 3 years. NY and IL are subsidizing their nuclear fleets at a cost of ~$10B over 10 years. Nuclear is already the biggest corporate welfare queen and it's only getting worse...

 

[WannabeOwner]

Article posits that motivation is to develop military nuclea

That would be my view too, except that chums in the military tell me that the military doesn't need, or even want, starter-material from domestic use. But maybe they would say that ...

... or maybe there is some merit to "stopping the skill dying out" in order to have an education pool for the military.

My biggest problem with it is that (along with many other projects and funding requirements in the UK) the government is not paying for it, which in the old days probably involved just "printing more money", and instead, in order to pretend that they aren't spending tax payers money on anything ... they are getting Industry to pay, and lease it back / whatever. We are now littered with such arrangements, all of them presumably with stupendous penalty clauses for early termination, or accumulating interest that future tax payers will have the burden of, inflating the original cost at an exponential rate in the meantime (which is the case with our recent change from the government / tax payer just paying for University education, to students now being given loans instead but then capping the repayments such that many will never have to repay the total thus leaving it for tomorrows' tax payer to cover the Balloon payment). Inevitably we will exercise some termination clauses (also on Hospitals, Schools,and all the other "private funded projects") because demographics will change ... IMHO much better the government owned these projects from the outset and could then take a considered decision as to what to do with them when requirements change - expand / mothball / dispose.

 

[nwdiver]

That would be my view too, except that chums in the military tell me that the military doesn't need, or even want, starter-material from domestic use. But maybe they would say that ...

There is no longer any real military benefit to a civilian nuclear industry. Weapons use transuranics like plutonium which we already have an ample supply of. Naval Reactors use a higher enriched blend of U235 than civilian reactors typically ~20% vs LEU of ~5%. When the end finally comes for commercial nuclear I suspect we'll have plenty of ~5% U235 lying around to be enriched to ~20% for the military.

 

[S'toon]

On the 6'o clock radio news up here there was a "news" report touting micro-reactors for remote communities. Touted them as a cost-effective solution. Total propaganda. EVERYBODY knows nuclear is the most expensive source of electricity. I wish reporters would do some fact checking before going to air.

I've noticed that reporters tend to be really bad at science. As in, didn't even take it past what was compulsory in high school, and probably only got 50% at that.

 

[nwdiver]

On the 6'o clock radio news up here there was a "news" report touting micro-reactors for remote communities. Touted them as a cost-effective solution. Total propaganda. EVERYBODY knows nuclear is the most expensive source of electricity. I wish reporters would do some fact checking before going to air.

I've notice that reporters tend to be really bad at science. As in, didn't even take it past what was compulsory in high school, and probably only got 50% at that.

GTM wrote an article a couple weeks ago on SMRs. It's a catch-22 of sorts. They need volume to get economies of scale to make it cost effective but it needs to be cost effective to get volume.

Nuclear has become either a cult or a scam... hard to tell... not sure there's really much of a difference at the end of the day. It's sad to think of the engineering talent being wasted at NuScale. Flour should be investing in a commercial Sabatier reactor instead of a scaled down fission reactor.

 

[S'toon]

Ah, here's the story. In the story about the NRU reactor shutting down they started touted the benefits of micro-reactors.
Canada's NRU reactor in Chalk River is being turned off for good tomorrow | CBC News

No mention of the fact that wind would be better suited and cheaper for the same locations.

 

[nwdiver]

Here at the Nuclear Energy Institute we advocate for the importance of nuclear power in generating clean energy in the United States. That's why no one has noticed that the stock footage on our homepage shows an EV connector that doesn't exist here. Because honestly there are ~5 people in the entire industry that drive EVs and none of them work here. (We really don't care... we just care that you think we care)

 

[nwdiver]

Interesting discussion on 'The Energy Gang' in regards to the First Energy Solutions bankruptcy and our declining nuclear fleet.

Jigar Shah founder of Sun Edison makes the point that leaders in the Nuclear Industry generally have no interest in making progress tackling climate change. This reflects my own observations while I worked at URENCO and the primary reason I resigned. It would be interesting to see a survey but I'm fairly certain you'll find just as many climate deniers at a nuclear power plant as at a coal plant and the decisions made by the leadership reflect this. As I posted previously the legal team at URENCO attempted to kill a 1GW wind farm over the small possibly of a rate increase of $0.0025/kWh. Yes... ~0.25 CENTS/kWh! And that's WORST CASE. The most likely outcome is a rate decrease. Nuclear hates wind. Nuclear hates solar. Why? I dunno. I oppose nuclear because it's cost prohibitive.

We need to stop looking to the Nuclear Industry as a savior in addressing climate change. Their only interest is in sustaining the fleet not reducing emissions.

 

[mspohr]

More delay and cost for Flamanville and Hinckley
EDF warns of delays at Flamanville nuclear power station in France
EDF warns of delays at Flamanville nuclear power station in France

 

[mspohr]

Lockheed is not revealing a commercial prototype nuclear fusion reactor in the next few years | NextBigFuture.com
This article has lots of details on the Lockheed design but concludes that it is still far from production.

 

[nwdiver]

Lockheed is not revealing a commercial prototype nuclear fusion reactor in the next few years | NextBigFuture.com
This article has lots of details on the Lockheed design but concludes that it is still far from production.

I wish we would focus more on power to gas. That's really the key. We at least know CO2 + 2H2O => CH4 + 2O2.... it occurs naturally all the time on earth. Fusion? not so much. We're not even sure it's possible to be sufficiently net energy positive (other than in a bomb) let alone commercially viable.

Fun Fact: The human body radiates ~60k times more energy per pound than the sun.

 

[miimura]

I wish we would focus more on power to gas. That's really the key. We at least know CO2 + 2H2O => CH4 + 2O2.... it occurs naturally all the time on earth. Fusion? not so much. We're not even sure it's possible to be sufficiently net energy positive (other than in a bomb) let alone commercially viable.

I agree. For the amount of money that is being invested in nuclear, you could build a whole lot of renewable generation and Power to Gas or even, god forbid, hydrogen production, to soak up the excess. If you're making CH4 from atmospheric CO2 you can put it into the existing natural gas distribution system and reduce its carbon intensity.

 

[RubberToe]

Fusion? We're not even sure it's possible to be sufficiently net energy positive (other than in a bomb).

About once a year I head over to see how ITER is doing. First ignition coming in 2025...

ITER - the way to new energy

The Tokamak Complex is getting pretty large these days:

The Tokamak Complex

 

[RubberToe]

More delay and cost for Flamanville and Hinckley
EDF warns of delays at Flamanville nuclear power station in France
EDF warns of delays at Flamanville nuclear power station in France

Also discussed in WNN here:

Quality issue detected with Flamanville EPR welds