Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

Energize said:
Using the phrase "dead technology" doesn't reflect well on your knowledge of nuclear. Obviously the first reactor is going to cost more to build, you can't use the 1st reactor as a reference point for a representative example. We just spent £100B on HS2 which is enough to build 5 Hinkley point C's which would completely replace gas. China is already building Gen 4 fast reactors and any country that doesn't follow suit is not going to be able to produce enough power for our demands in 2050.



California has rolling blackouts every year because of solar power failing the grid. We haven't seen battery storage that can yet solve the problem of highly variable renewable energy production on a national scale.



Not at all, one of the biggest advantages that nuclear has is that it produces a huge amount of energy in a small footprint. Battery chemistry and longevity is very important for grid storage unless you want the landscape smothered in wind turbines and batteries.
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Agreed. Plus, future reactors are looking more likely to be smaller scale SMRs that can be put up quicker than the giant kinds. Calling Nuclear a dead technology is quite frankly, laughable. It has room for further research like all other fields.
 
Energize said:
California has blackouts every year, so if that's what 100% renewable brings, count me out lol.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...using-electricity-black-outs/?sh=132219961591



There is enough uranium and thorium nuclear fuel to last until the end of the Earth, so for all intents and purposes nuclear is just the same as renewable.
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UK has an incredible amount of plutonium after it bought most of it a while back. They tend to issue it free to power stations. It’s an obvious secure energy source to exploit.
 
Robert said:
Hmm…

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2...tric-grid-is-not-ready-to-meet-climate-goals/

may have missed your point but this paints a different picture to me…
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Seriously? 6GW of power is 5 nuclear reactors every year, that's an enormous amount of capacity they need to add.

California had to impose rolling blackouts because it had failed to maintain sufficient reliable power from natural gas and nuclear plants, or pay in advance for enough guaranteed electricity imports from other states.

California saw its electricity prices rise six times more than the rest of the United States from 2011 to 2019, due to its huge expansion of renewables. Republicans in the U.S. Congress point to that massive increase to challenge justifications by Democrats to spend $2 trillion on renewables in the name of climate change.

Even though the cost of solar panels declined dramatically between 2011 and 2019, their unreliable and weather-dependent nature meant that they imposed large new costs in the form of storage and transmission to keep electricity as reliable. California’s solar panels and farms were all turning off as the blackouts began, with no help available from the states to the East already in nightfall.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...g-electricity-more-expensive/?sh=497f26041dc6

Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines.

People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become.

And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent.

And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in places that deployed significant quantities of renewables increased dramatically.
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California is an absolute disaster and I am shocked that people are holding it up as an example.
 
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chrcoluk said:
Is it realistic though, if we funding new nuclear stations, we not going to retire them at that date they would only be online for a few years. Or do we consider nuclear renewable?
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no, this is why we shouldn't waste money on new nuclear as it has bo future, but i believe most countries aiming for net-zero by 2035 either don't have nuclear or will leave operating nuclear plants in service but reduce their life dpan.

Ultimately economics will simply kill off nuclear plants anyway. Nuclear generation will literally end up 100x more expensive than renewables so they simply will cease to exist except for state run facilities to generate material for weapons, which has only ever been their design goal
 
chrcoluk said:
California has a bad history as well, I remember 20 years ago they were having rolling blackouts.
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indeed, California's blackouts existed long before there was any significant somar installation. Tje cause is a actually because of inadequacies in their non-renewable energy supply, rapidly increasing population and industrial needs snd unique seasonal and diurnal oower curves.

Large scale grid battery storage is being deployed to prevent the blackouts
 
jpaul said:
that was pre Ukraine -won't they reviewing that now - their emergency gas rationing proposal , they were planning a gradual transition off of gas.
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No, it was the opposite,. They had an original target of 2045, but due to Ukraine, they brought that forwards to 2035. This date is no coincidence many independent reports by the likes of INREL/USDoE etc indicate that most states/countries can become 100% or (close enough) by 2035 if significant investment is made immediately.

from earlier smr link Canada has just cued up an SMR that could be ready in 2028 -
Have any countries effectively connected up many small renewable suppliers on their grids dealing with the economies of scale of hardware/faults/harmonics .. and again, with Ukraine in mind, can we still afford to depend on China for storage batteries.

the european GDP loss through Ukraine is a big set back, let alone future trade/political allegances.
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The problem with these small nuclear reactors is they are totally unproven technology that are still in the research phase. Moreover, they are based on shoehorning nuclear reactors designed for submarines and aircraft carries into a commercial grid connected power station. This doesn't overcome many of of the most serious shortcomings, such the generation if nuclear waste that will last thousands of years and costs us billlions and billions per year in storage. These tens of billions are not even included in LCOE costs because it is impossible to incorporate what 10,billion dollars per a year will cost in 2000 years!

Most uranium comes form Kazakhstan and Russian currently, which hardly makes them a safe source. Just yesterday reading the local swiss paper the swiss nuclear stations are looking for different sources because currently all their uranium comes form Russia.
 
kinetic747 said:
It's supposed to be far cleaner and the waste easier to manage
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IIRC it is quite the opposite. Spent thorium fuel has nastier isotopes.
I think it was promoted as not produsing fissible plutonium, so would be safer to export in terms of bomb capability.

If thorium was better, everyone would already be using it. Right now the only large scale user is India, because they have problems acquiring uranium.

Whether U or Th, the future is in breeder reactors.
 
alec said:
IIRC it is quite the opposite. Spent thorium fuel has nastier isotopes.
I think it was promoted as not produsing fissible plutonium, so would be safer to export in terms of bomb capability.

If thorium was better, everyone would already be using it. Right now the only large scale user is India, because they have problems acquiring uranium.

Whether U or Th, the future is in breeder reactors.
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I'm not sure about Thorium waste being worse... Sure the waste still needs handling very carefully and the isotopes in it are different, but there's a lot less of it than from uranium reactors, and normally when experts talk about dealing with it I've not heard them say it's worse than Uranium reactor waste... better if anything.

I think you're being a bit optimistic assuming countries would already be using Thorium reactors if it was 'better'. There's a lot of inertia behind Uranium reactors, with a lot of historic R&D for them (potentially in large part due to the drive to produce plutonium for atomic bombs during the 20th century), but that doesn't mean Thorium reactors don't have the potential to be much better options.

kinetic747 said:
Has there been any progress on using Thorium as fuel? It's supposed to be far cleaner and the waste easier to manage.
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China is also making progress with Thorium reactor designs including molten salt reactors.
 
Rroff said:
As always it is the power storage which is the problem - over an entire year I could easily cover my usage in total on-site generation with solar, wind, etc. but the time shifted demand is another matter.
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which is why the battery storage race has started. Massive increase in orders. In California there is more planned battery storage than any kind of any generation.

Costs have reduced about 70-80% in the last 20 years snd will further decrease by 60-70 in the next. Which is why by 2030 it will cheap than pumped hydro.
Installed Capacity and duration are doubling every 2-3 years.
 
D.P. said:
No, it was the opposite,. They had an original target of 2045, but due to Ukraine, they brought that forwards to 2035. This date is no coincidence many independent reports by the likes of INREL/USDoE etc indicate that most states/countries can become 100% or (close enough) by 2035 if significant investment is made immediately.
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yes you are right De response was in reply to russian threat - the accompanying article, with De minister speech,
does say medium solution is additional LNG terminals and coal station/nuclear overrun - tipping them over the climate edge if we believe yesterdays united nations discourse) https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-step-up-plans-cut-dependence-russia-gas-2022-02-27/


octopus ceo on radio4 today just after 7 talking up wind, without addressing battery needs.

On the California shortfall front - can't see costing of their battery option for peak/non-wind situation
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-biggest-batteries-coming-soon-to-a-grid-near-you
but a similar 2022 60MW/ 240Mwhr scheme, seems to come in at $5.83 versus gas $7.29M annualized cost
https://www.cleanegroup.org/wp-content/uploads/Energy-Storage-Alternatives-Peabody-MA.pdf
however, whether we have battery supply in UK to match that kind of costing.
 
As has been said, Thorium isn't the fuel of choice because development went into Uranium reactors because they could produce weapons grade plutonium. The combined IP of the major reactor builders meant they didn't want to swap horses and start over again. Thorium should be considered because molten slat reactors have far greater capacity for passive safeguards. Also because they are fast reactors there are ways to balance molten salt reactors in such ways that they break up the nastier isotopes. This requires research and has problems of it's own but does provide a route out of large amounts of high level waste to lower level waste.

We haven't reached the point yet but sooner or later we are going to start having problems with waste from renewable generators. Solar panels will have difficult to recycle nasty chemicals in them and wind turbine blades equally cannot be recycled.

Batteries already have uses on grids for frequency response and short term reserve but as you move further from reliable generation into intermittent generation the size of the problem scales up very quickly and there are no suitable solutions to deploy batteries on the scale needed. The battery also becomes another overhead that has to be managed and maintained like your primary generation source.

Nuclear reliable generation makes all of these problems easier to manage.
 
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