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@tim said in Climate Change:
@nta I think it's because they stopped building nuclear reactors for a long time, and lost the expert knowledge and trained leadership and staff to build them. France had a great record of cheap and safe nuclear power, but stopped building reactors for decades.
Enormous obstacles have been put in the path of new reactors, and dismissing them is asinine, but the great pause in construction is a unique challenge for a mega scale industry.
A tragic indictment on western society.
I agree in the main, but ultimately it is just an engineering challlenge.
Like space travel, the industry generally operates on cost-plus so making it cheaper or more efficient isn't in the builder's interests when demand is low.
Nuclear needs a SpaceX style shakeup to transform the industry. Hopefully SMRs start getting regulatory approval at speed to be that kind of change.
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@nta said in Climate Change:
@tim always amazed that, despite 70 years in business, nuclear has never gotten cheaper or easier.
The supporters like to talk up political opposition, NIMBYs, and the harsh regulations that nuclear face over other types of generation, but they can't ever answer the simple question: why is a longstanding, well understood technology not following the same cost curve as almost every other technology in energy or otherwise.
Why don't we have Thorium reactors? Or at least some form of widespread deployment of a Gen IV with all the safety and high yield? They've been working on it for 20 years ffs...
You list some of the reasons and then wonder why? Are you creating your own straw man or would you like to actually know?
Making reactors is relatively simple until you decide to make new designs. France's experience in the 1970s-80s showed the benefit of proven designs, economies of scale. For those reasons we'd see the same outcome if we invested in a fleet of them now. The first ones would be expensive, the resulting ones would be increasingly cheaper and the dependency, cleanliness, safety and cheapness of each MWh these reactors produced would be a god send.
Bob Carr, shit NSW premier and shitter foreign minister actually wrote that nuclear is so bad it doesn't attract any investors in Australia. No shit dickhead - it's specifically prevented in legislation. What moron would invest? Meanwhile other countries that care about dependable cheap electricity are rolling the fuckers out.
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@nta The thing is that there is no tolerance for mistakes, little opportunity for pilot plants, and new regulations that have required new designs. So there is a massive loss of knowledge at the level of engineering practice, combined with requirement for new designs, and no tolerance for mistakes or experimental trials. Very difficult situation.
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@tim https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/
Interesting article summarising a study of the US experience.
Standardisation is not necessarily cheaper (which surprised me), and many cost overruns seem to be due to poor project management. Safety isn't the whole story, either.
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@tim said in Climate Change:
@nta Cost of finance between (then) governments and (now) companies is likely an important and overlooked factor.
Interest rates are at an all-time low BUT not for 50+ year loans. Capital cost makes the interest payments utterly shit house tho.
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@dogmeat said in Climate Change:
You can't build a hydro plant in NZ because of compliance costs. What chance nuclear?
No new hydro in the South Island will likely mean NZ's emissions will increase. Are there many more sites suitable for geothermal?
Here's California's solution:
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@antipodean Top Energy has the only plant that I am aware of outside of the Taupo / Kawerau field. It opened two years ago at Ngawha near Kaikohe. It's about 50MW with an expansion already underway that will take it to 80. There is about 350MW of capacity being built / planned for the Taupo area.
With hydro a dead duck there is again talk of a tidal bore either in the Kaipara or Cook Strait. I'd think the former would run into a lot of objections and the latter would have engineering issues.
Wind farms continue to crop up everywhere but are expensive and the government has talked a lot about a pumped hydro solution. We even have a couple of very low generation solar farms - in Taranaki of all places - with plans for a larger one in the Far North.
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@dogmeat said in Climate Change:
@antipodean Top Energy has the only plant that I am aware of outside of the Taupo / Kawerau field. It opened two years ago at Ngawha near Kaikohe. It's about 50MW with an expansion already underway that will take it to 80. There is about 350MW of capacity being built / planned for the Taupo area.
Another of those should account for the draw the NI takes from the SI. Ending reliance on coal and gas is an order of magnitude more difficult.
Given the lack of success in Kiwibuild, I'd not have much hope in a government lead initiative to raise the energy efficiency of existing homes either.
Over the ditch we're doubling down on bad policy by providing interest free loans for those who can afford to get battery storage, an EV or solar. Although I'm opposed to it as a policy measure, I'm not completely stupid so as to look a gift horse in the mouth.
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@nta said in Climate Change:
Why don't we have Thorium reactors?
The Americans had the choice in the 60s.
India was looking to develop them (I've not kept up to date on India) but China may have or may in future beat them to the starting line:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-wBut one answer to your question:
“Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and so it would be a very useful technology to have in 50 or 100 years’ time,” when uranium reserves start to run low, says Lyndon Edwards, a nuclear engineer at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney. But the technology will take many decades to realize, so we need to start now, he adds.
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@nostrildamus India and China have large reserves of Thorium don't they?
I thought Thorium was a cost issue plus the nuclear industry is obviously risk averse and so are slow adopters?
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@dogmeat yes, my understanding is that Thorium is difficult to develop but the US had the chance in the 60s and decided it wasn't worth the extra time risk or cost to develop, and when I looked before yesterday, India was considered the leader (not China, but that either looks like it changed or they were just under the radar).
The three-stage nuclear power production program in India had been conceived with the ultimate objective of utilizing the country’s vast reserves of thorium-232. It is important to note that India has the world’s third largest reserves of thorium. Thorium, however, cannot be used as a fuel in its natural state. It needs to be converted into its usable “fissile” form after a series of reactions. To aid this and **to eventually produce** nuclear power from its thorium reserves, Indian scientist Dr. Homi J. Bhabha drew the road map of the three-stage nuclear program.
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Nuclear technology (or at least the physics is behind it) is fascinating.
But to implement it fully in a place like Australia raises for me the following questions:- is it just a sop to avoid cutting emissions now?
- does it need to be near large populations (and bodies of water) and if so will locals know and accept it (before it is built)
- can we trust it to be developed on time and on price?
- can we trust whoever to build it and run it cleanly, efficiently, economically, and safely? (Australia even has trouble building subs).
- if nuclear waste is safe why is its current disposal issues so under the radar? (Terrorism might be the main answer but so could transport issues.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-12/nuclear-waste-from-australias-only-reactor-needs-to-be-removed/9643428)
- will it, when built, be as or more efficient than rivals?
- for NZ more than for Australia: how can we guarantee it against natural disasters given the Japanese could not and their engineering, planning, and technical know-how is arguably superior...
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@nostrildamus said in Climate Change:
Nuclear technology (or at least the physics is behind it) is fascinating.
But to implement it fully in a place like Australia raises for me the following questions:- is it just a sop to avoid cutting emissions now?
Hopefully not. Nowhere has dependable low emissions electricity outside of geothermal, hydro and nuclear. Australia doesn't have much in the way of development opportunities for the first two.
- does it need to be near large populations (and bodies of water) and if so will locals know and accept it (before it is built)
Generally speaking yes to water sources, although developments like molten salt reactors make that unnecessary. I'd expect a big dose of NIMBYism, but jobs are jobs...
- can we trust it to be developed on time and on price?
No. But then nothing ever is here.
- can we trust whoever to build it and run it cleanly, efficiently, economically, and safely? (Australia even has trouble building subs).
Yes. We've had ANSTO and Lucas Heights running for decades.
- if nuclear waste is safe why is its current disposal issues so under the radar? (Terrorism might be the main answer but so could transport issues.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-12/nuclear-waste-from-australias-only-reactor-needs-to-be-removed/9643428)
Because we currently don't have reprocessing ability here. That could change and disposal in Australia is generally the easiest solution.
- will it, when built, be as or more efficient than rivals?
More efficient than what?
- for NZ more than for Australia: how can we guarantee it against natural disasters given the Japanese could not and their engineering, planning, and technical know-how is arguably superior...
It took a magnitude 9 earthquake and a 15m tsunami. Everything at Fukushima Daiichi that could go wrong did and yet not a single life was lost in the meltdown. Just down the road Fukushima Daini achieved cold shutdown. Australia is the most unlikely place to have to deal with that type of issue and modern designs make them safe regardless.
Ultimately we can either trust science and become a 21st century civilisation or we can slowly go back to banging rocks together.
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@antipodean thanks for the detailed answers.
More efficient than...renewables...for example in India renewables have proven so far much cheaper than expected compared to nuclear but I don't know the context.
Here is an interesting article:
https://www.cnet.com/features/nuclear-power-is-clean-and-safe-why-arent-we-using-å-of-it/ -
@nostrildamus "efficient" is a piece of string in this discussion. There are a few things to consider.
The first thing is capacity factor (cf) - the ratio of how much output you get for how much capacity you install. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor
Nuclear sits around the 80-90% if well managed - it can always operate except for downtime required for maintenance and refuelling.
Wind varies a bit depending on site. A good site you can get around 45% (offshore) but generally you're in the 20-40% bracket because wind starts and stops.
Solar at the commercial scale is highly variable because the site can have various factors - are your mounts static, 1-axis tracking, or 2-axis tracking? What's your cleaning routine? Was it a good season for clear skies? There are some that report as high as ~30%, but then you have others as low as 12%. Sun doesn't shine at night.
Hydro is a bit different than the above because in most systems it is used as a battery, so you're not trying to squeze it for everything you can all the time. Again anywhere between 20-50% depending on how it is used.
Gas is used as a peaker so cf isn't really relevant, while coal has varied a lot in the last few years in Australia, due to growing renewables and changing demand patterns from consumers. And the fact the plants are getting old and break down a lot.
Cost - construction, maintenance, generation, decommissioning - is then overlaid on that figure to see what your bang-for-buck is.
Nuclear = high capital cost but operating cost is usually OK. With a High cf and therefore very efficient generation, it beats pretty much everything once it is built because it has a long life (in theory 80-100 years if you want to add the cost of refit). However the strike price of each MWh takes all costs into account so you get high numbers on the first cut which is usually 40-50 years depending on the design.
Wind and solar = low capital cost and very low operating cost. There is still maintenance to perform and so it isn't free, but the cost of generation is so low as to be zero. This is why wind and solar always bid in very low to the market process - enough to cover their contracts + small profit, and use it while you got it.
Hydro = also big capital cost but low operating cost. There are growing environmental concerns over the effect of hydro as well https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/nov/14/hydroelectric-dams-emit-billion-tonnes-greenhouse-gas-methane-study-climate-change
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Capacity factor is going to be interesting to look at as market demand changes.
In theory, coal stations have a cf north of 70% but they've been operating at around 50% in the Australian market due to the growing share of renewables. Gas only chimes in when absolutely required, and at ridiculous prices (which ironically sets the price for the whole market and therefore raises the cost of renewables).
The issue for different technologies is how they're going to be profitable (or at least maintainable) in a user market with rapidly changing parameters.
User demand used to be a fairly steady requirement around the clock a few decades ago. It would go up during the day when big industry came online, and go a bit sleepy after dinner was finished. Coal stations could plan for these ups and downs and stay in a fairly good band for their operating equipment, without the need to ramp up or down quickly. Gas plants could come online if something broke or it was a particularly difficult day. Hydro would fill the gaps on demand.
Things have changed, of course. We've now got shitloads of air conditioners and other appliances. More solar and a bit of wind has changed the demand curve that big generators have to meet. Big industry is still there, but with variable generation in the market and solar eroding a chunk of the day's demand when the conditions are right. And this means in part that aging coal and gas infrastructure is under more pressure.
I saw a lecture from an engineer, and she was talking about the issues faced by gas peaker plants in the current market - they're actually designed to run all the time, not in short bursts. When you start making a Big Spinning Thing start and stop infrequently you get problems the design engineering didn't take into account.
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@nta interesting, and yes efficient is a difficult term, but I meant total energy and emissions over life of the plant, decommissioning, removing waste, the concrete to shield it, all have an environmental cost.
I think 15 years is an optimistic starting date for nuclear and in that time I think the alternatives will have advanced in leaps and bounds. Whether a country like Australia will have access to and good will for this technology is another question...
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@antipodean said in Climate Change:
Yes. We've had ANSTO and Lucas Heights running for decades.
Aren't they significantly smaller and less developed than what is proposed or would they scale up easily?
Have they been safe? Don't know, just asking.
Climate Change