Forget Covid, Fukushima is what you should be really worried about

[RaymondR]

"Concerning the economics of nuclear power -- if these costs are so huge, then why do those countries with the most nuclear power, have the cheapest electrical power rates? France gets 70% of its power from nuclear, and the French pay €0.19/kWH. Finland gets almost 40% of its power from nuclear, and the Finns pay €0.18. In Denmark and Germany, by contrast, with no nuclear, electrical power costs €0.29."

Whilst the "renewables" sector of the power industry is hopeless at providing reliable power 24/7 one of the things it is really good at is voodoo economics.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Why? Nuclear is a fantastic power source, as safe as wind power, and complementary to wind and solar, which needs an alternative source of base load to deal with fluctuations of output. Nuclear and wind go together like cookies and cream.

If you've got sufficient nuclear, why would you bother with wind and all of its inherent problems and disadvantages?

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Jamme

Did you also search who owns this “source” you are citing?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Free_Press

Shoot the messenger?

[billgewater]

In Aus. there is talk of seriously really massive solar collectors in the NT. We have no shortage of space or sun or wind. It's intellect we seem to be very short of. The system would (I understand) produce hydrogen and store it for use in either green steel production and/or for driving electric turbines and sell the power domestically or to Asia.
In reality we can and should, run without coal for both power and steel production. Plus we don't need nuclear. Nuclear and coal are currently still plagued by unresolved environmental concerns and more importantly, priced out of the basic market by solar and wind. It's a matter of getting the firm testicular grip off our politicians exercised by the fossil and nuclear industries.
Variations on this model? Sure. But we really have to get rid our reliance on existential industries.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by StuM

If you've got sufficient nuclear, why would you bother with wind and all of its inherent problems and disadvantages?

Wind has some advantages over nuclear. It's shaping up to be possibly cheaper. Less waste. Also wind can be highly distributed which helps to unload distribution grids.



Drawbacks we know of course. Mainly -- blight on the landscape. Some wind generators use rare earth magnets, the production of which are hugely polluting.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by billgewater

. . . Nuclear and coal are currently still plagued by unresolved environmental concerns and more importantly, priced out of the basic market by solar and wind. . . .

Don't lump coal and nuclear together. Chalk and cheese.

Coal isn't an environmental "concern" -- it's an environmental catastrophe. It is an immensely destructive power source. There is just no question about this.

Nuclear is the opposite -- clean and safe. There are practically no environmental "concerns". All the nuclear accidents of the last 50 years have produced less damage than a few days of coal burning. And there will probably never be a nuclear accident with a 3G reactor.

And renewable energy is not free of environmental "concerns" either -- we still don't have an efficient process for the manufacture of photovoltaic cells, which is not very dirty. Some day surely we will, but we don't yet.

As to cost -- do your sums. Wind is getting cheaper and cheaper, and will no doubt be cheaper than nuclear if it's not already (depends on location). But the wind doesn't blow every day and sun doesn't shine 24/7. So if you don't have base load capacity on your grid (like a big nuclear plant), then you have to store energy produced by wind and/or solar. Battery storage is expensive, more than doubling the cost of power production. Pumped water storage is the cheapest, but if you add that to your grid then your renewable energy is no longer cheap.

That's why you need base load capacity in your grid, and that's why nuclear goes so well with renewable energy. For base load capacity the choice boils down to coal, gas, or nuclear. Possibly hydro if you have the geography for it. Of all of those choices, nuclear is by far the most reliable, by far the safest, and by far cleanest. "We can do without nuclear". Actually no we can't. Not unless we're willing to continue murdering the planet with coal.

Politicians need to gather their gonads to fight not this industry or that, but rather the irrational, superstitious, anti-scientific, kind of infantile fear of nuclear power, which has its origins in Godzilla movies, I guess.

[Chotu]

One more wind drawback to add:

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020...p-in-landfill/

[RaymondR]

Hydrogen, nasty stuff, look at the Hindenburg which killed way more people than Three Mile Island, thousands of percent more, one might say infinitely more.

Three Mile Island, Chernoble and Fukashima were all caused by a lack of cooling water. Water is very convenient since it is cheap, will act as both moderator and as a heat exchange fluid. The problem with it is that at atmospheric pressure it boils at a low temperature and consequently must be kept at a couple of thousand pounds per square inch of pressure.

The use of solid fuel reactors also creates problems in that whilst inserting control rods robs the chain reaction of neutrons and will cause the reactor to shut down it is not an instantaneous process and cooling must continue as the reactivity slowly decreases. No cooling water leads to melt down as in the three most significant reactor failures to date.

There may be a very convenient solution to these problems.

In the late fiftees an experiment was carried out in the US using both fissile and fertile fuels dispersed in a fluoride salt. This style of reactor has some very significant advantages among which are: The reactor runs at atmospheric pressure and consequently containing the fuel/salt mixture is much simpler and more reliable than the PWR reactors. The fuel can be treated for the removal of substances which might poison the reaction and consequently removal for reprocessing is not required. Since it is in liquid form the fuel/salt mix can be drained from the reactor vessel into tanks which change the geometry so that fission no longer occurs. There is far less spent fissile waste materials to store because the fuel burn up is much higher with the fission poisons removed continuously. And a number of others related to nuclear activity persistence in waste and weapons proliferation.

Sufficient was learned during the molten salt experiment to allow the building of a demonstrator however this did not occur because the program was shut down.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Hydrogen, nasty stuff, look at the Hindenburg which killed way more people than Three Mile Island, thousands of percent more, one might say infinitely more.

Three Mile Island, Chernoble and Fukashima were all caused by a lack of cooling water. Water is very convenient since it is cheap, will act as both moderator and as a heat exchange fluid. The problem with it is that at atmospheric pressure it boils at a low temperature and consequently must be kept at a couple of thousand pounds per square inch of pressure.

The use of solid fuel reactors also creates problems in that whilst inserting control rods robs the chain reaction of neutrons and will cause the reactor to shut down it is not an instantaneous process and cooling must continue as the reactivity slowly decreases. No cooling water leads to melt down as in the three most significant reactor failures to date.

There may be a very convenient solution to these problems.

In the late fiftees an experiment was carried out in the US using both fissile and fertile fuels dispersed in a fluoride salt. This style of reactor has some very significant advantages among which are: The reactor runs at atmospheric pressure and consequently containing the fuel/salt mixture is much simpler and more reliable than the PWR reactors. The fuel can be treated for the removal of substances which might poison the reaction and consequently removal for reprocessing is not required. Since it is in liquid form the fuel/salt mix can be drained from the reactor vessel into tanks which change the geometry so that fission no longer occurs. There is far less spent fissile waste materials to store because the fuel burn up is much higher with the fission poisons removed continuously. And a number of others related to nuclear activity persistence in waste and weapons proliferation.

Sufficient was learned during the molten salt experiment to allow the building of a demonstrator however this did not occur because the program was shut down.

Crikey Ray, I wouldn't use the number of deaths to decide a fuel source.

Hindenburg - 36 dead
Coal Mining - at least that number every year. https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/osar0012.htm
Coal power - easy half a million every year https://endcoal.org/health/
Oil/gas - too many to count
Nuclear - 80,000 one day and 3 days later another 70,000 (depends on who you ask).

I know you are only taking the mickey though!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Hydrogen, nasty stuff, look at the Hindenburg which killed way more people than Three Mile Island, thousands of percent more, one might say infinitely more.

Three Mile Island, Chernoble and Fukashima were all caused by a lack of cooling water. Water is very convenient since it is cheap, will act as both moderator and as a heat exchange fluid. The problem with it is that at atmospheric pressure it boils at a low temperature and consequently must be kept at a couple of thousand pounds per square inch of pressure.

The use of solid fuel reactors also creates problems in that whilst inserting control rods robs the chain reaction of neutrons and will cause the reactor to shut down it is not an instantaneous process and cooling must continue as the reactivity slowly decreases. No cooling water leads to melt down as in the three most significant reactor failures to date.

There may be a very convenient solution to these problems.

In the late fiftees an experiment was carried out in the US using both fissile and fertile fuels dispersed in a fluoride salt. This style of reactor has some very significant advantages among which are: The reactor runs at atmospheric pressure and consequently containing the fuel/salt mixture is much simpler and more reliable than the PWR reactors. The fuel can be treated for the removal of substances which might poison the reaction and consequently removal for reprocessing is not required. Since it is in liquid form the fuel/salt mix can be drained from the reactor vessel into tanks which change the geometry so that fission no longer occurs. There is far less spent fissile waste materials to store because the fuel burn up is much higher with the fission poisons removed continuously. And a number of others related to nuclear activity persistence in waste and weapons proliferation.

Sufficient was learned during the molten salt experiment to allow the building of a demonstrator however this did not occur because the program was shut down.

Molten salt reactors have been running since the 1950's. My god-father was involved in the development of these at Oak Ridge and considered it a tragedy that politics killed investment into the technology. There are many promising variants of these under development, including ones using low-enriched uranium or thorium (both much safer from proliferation point of view than enriched uranium). Some of them have closed fuel cycles, or nearly closed -- which means they consume their own waste. Some of them operate at high enough temperatures that they can produce hydrogen thermochemically.


The technology is again being developed intensively, and at least one startup, Elysium Technologies, is apparently getting close to a produceable design. See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/llewell.../#2af47c2433c6

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Wotname

. . .Nuclear - 80,000 one day and 3 days later another 70,000 (depends on who you ask).. .

You're talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right?

Because nuclear power never killed that number of people, and certainly not over 3 days.

The direct death toll at Chernobyl was 30 (or 54 or 58, depending on who you ask. Two (yes, count 'em, 2) in the first days after the accident, and some tens more over some months after the accident.

The longer term consequences of the large release of radioactive material are controversial, but even if it's 50 000 (over decades), it's still only roughly what coal power kills every month, year in and year out. See: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...559-0/fulltext

[Fendell]

Interesting youTube vid on economics of Nuclear vs Gas fired power plants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw

[SalingSue]

“The solution to the pollution is dilution”

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

“The solution to the pollution is dilution”

There is truth, oversimplification, and cynicism in the mantra that “the solution to pollution is dilution”. I’d suggest that “dilution is A solution to many pollution problems”, but, in general, prevention is, likely, the most cost-effective mitigation technique.
It takes much more than simple dilution of the pollutant stream to decrease its concentration. The water body’s capacity to receive pollutants depends on many other processes (e.g., sedimentation, volatilization, chemical breakdown, microbial breakdown/transformation, and uptake by aquatic plants, etc).
We should be concentrating more on innovating new technologies, that by-pass production of the pollutant, recycling the pollutant, into something with economic value, and only then upon dilution.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Fendell

Interesting youTube vid on economics of Nuclear vs Gas fired power plants
. . .

A very good, very deep analysis. Fantastic video.

The upshot is this:

Natural gas plants have smaller capital costs and are faster to build. Nuclear plants are eventually much more profitable because of much lower fuel cost, but it takes years to break even and there are huge risks. Therefore utilities face strong pressure to use natural gas for base load generation to complement renewables rather than nuclear.

Note however that all these targets are moving -- the big ones are (a) interest rates; and (b) fuel costs.

The real reason why nuclear power went basically dormant for the 80's and 90's was not only regulation and politics, but even more -- interest rates. High interest rates make capital-intensive, long term projects -- like nuclear power plants -- uneconomical. So correspondingly -- the main reason why nuclear power is back in favor and being built again in large quantities is -- low interest rate environment. If we now have a burst of inflation this may be all different overnight.

Likewise fuel costs. Nuclear becomes more and more attractive, the more expensive fossil fuels are. Once there are carbon taxes or other ways to reallocate the externalities of burning fossil fuels back to those activities, this will look different than it looks today. Building a natural gas plant for base load rather than a nuclear one will not be nearly as attractive, once the cost of spewing carbon into the atmosphere is taken into account.

But the wild card is interest rates. A big spike in interest rates will stop nuclear power again, at least on a commercial basis. Some governments might use public funding or guarantees to develop nuclear power just to reduce carbon emissions and/or increase energy security.

And as the video mentions near the end -- the technology is also a moving target. There are new nuclear power plant designs which contemplate production in a factory, rather than stick building on site. This could be a revolution -- for the very reasons mentioned in the video.