[HN Gopher] UK to put nuclear power at heart of net zero emissio...
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UK to put nuclear power at heart of net zero emissions strategy
Author : busymom0
Score : 149 points
Date : 2021-10-16 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| jl6 wrote:
| The UK has incredible wind resources, but just look at the
| variability of output:
|
| https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
|
| The question is whether the UK can build nuclear faster than they
| can build sufficient battery capacity to smooth out all that wind
| power. Neither will be easy.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Archive around the paywall:
|
| https://archive.is/ROxkb
| atc wrote:
| Very pleased with this. Finally some sensible energy approach
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > Under the scheme, households will be charged for the cost of
| the plant via an energy levy long before it begins generating
| electricity, which could take a decade or more from when the
| final investment decision is taken.
| mdf wrote:
| It's a shame UK left EU. All help would be welcome against
| Germany's lobby to continue burning fossil fuels and spewing the
| resulting GHGs into atmosphere. If they had been still in, I'm
| sure UK would have stood with France, nine other EU countries,
| and the various expert groups' assessments for classifying
| nuclear power in the EU sustainable taxonomy.
| Zenst wrote:
| For better or worse the EU gets down to working out something
| that all members can agree and why much change can be vetoes by
| a single member.
|
| That all said we are hosting COP26 climate summit - though like
| many - the Queen sums up what we all think: -
| https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britains-queen-irritated-by...
| wiz21c wrote:
| From your Queen's article :
|
| On a trip to a school in Bristol, southwest England, Johnson
| told baffled schoolchildren: "I promise to get world leaders
| to cut greenhouse gases and save the planet."
|
| He later held up a signed, leaf-shaped piece of paper on
| which he had written his pledge.
|
| Whatever the outcome, I'll be very happy to hear about
| Johnson's pledge after the COP...
| Zenst wrote:
| Probably my age, but what a politician says and does, do
| differ.
|
| It's the actions I'll measure upon, not the promissory
| notes of intent.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I'm pretty sure parent is being sarcastic. Boris Johnson
| is the guy who literally goes 'uh, I think' when asked
| how many children he has[0]. He's not big on commitments
| of any kind.
|
| [0]: for the record, it's supposed to be six, but some
| people say seven.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Germany's lobby to continue burning fossil fuels and spewing
| the resulting GHGs into atmosphere
|
| Isn't Germany a world leader in implementing renewable energy?
| adventured wrote:
| More recently Germany has become a NIMBY country when it
| comes to building more wind power. From the outside it
| appears a lot of the easy wins have already taken place for
| wind in Germany, and once they began building closer to
| residential areas, people have gotten increasingly upset
| about it:
|
| "Wind power is Germany's most important source of clean
| energy. But wind turbines have become contentious here, as
| more and more people protest against them being built near
| where they live."
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/the-germans-fighting-wind-farms-
| close-...
|
| "Germany has set some of the most ambitious goals of any
| nation for shifting from fossil fuels to greener energy. Now
| the centerpiece of that push--onshore wind power--is
| slumping, prompting the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and
| the bankruptcies of wind-power developers and turbine
| manufacturers. Wind power, often seen as a clean, abundant
| energy source, has faced growing bureaucratic hurdles and
| acrimony in communities out to block the erection of new
| turbines. "
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-push-for-wind-power-
| en...
| imtringued wrote:
| No, but people love their misinformation (in both
| directions). Coal and gas are slowly going down in Germany.
| Germany built a new coal plant 6 years ago only to shut it
| down this year. The real problem is that renewables aren't
| being built fast enough.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not really, that was Denmark, or France's nuclear buildout.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| renewables are not big enough in a huge industrial and
| developed country like Germany
|
| Hysterical shutdown of nuclear plants following Fukushima
| lead to the gap being covered by fossil fuels
|
| also while US have very cheap gas from the domestic industry,
| Europe is constrained by a couple of pipelines and shipments
| and market fluctuations, so it didn't replace coal
|
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-
| energy-c...
| VintageCool wrote:
| Your charts show lignite holding stable, hard coal
| declining, nuclear declining, natural gas increasing
| slightly, and renewables expanding tremendously.
|
| Renewables provided 45% of Germany's power production in
| 2020, and 41% in 2021 H1.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| They are compared to all the countries bigger than them. But
| compared to other Western European countries, not so much.
|
| Merkel's CDU has been popular because they offered stability,
| but there's an understanding in Germany now that the country
| has fallen behind in critical areas like car electrification
| and grid storage technologies.
| king_phil wrote:
| Was, the conservative party dismantled that pretty quickly.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The same party has been in charge for (16?) years; the
| Greens are popular in Germany.
|
| Edit: Maybe I'm misunderstanding something?
| michaelt wrote:
| Germany had a bunch of nuclear plants, which have pretty
| low carbon emissions.
|
| Then they decided to shut them all down; and that they
| urgently need a new gas pipeline - Nord Stream 2 - to
| import natural gas from Russia.
|
| Doesn't sound very carbon neutral to me.
| wiz21c wrote:
| And that'll make Europe dependent on Russia. Doesn't
| sound much of a problem to me but down here, Putin is
| seen as a somewhat bad person. So, Europe will have to
| bow to him to have not too expensive gas, I'll have a lot
| of fun hearing our politicians telling that, poor them,
| they have to negotiate with him :-)
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| The CDU has a wing that still depends on old coal-burners
| for their jobs. Shutting down nuclear was their idea of
| keeping those folks "working" for longer while solar and
| (especially) wind were spooled up.
|
| To that end, it's looking better now that the Greens are
| in the ruling coalition.
| Glench wrote:
| > The Heat and Building Strategy, to be published alongside the
| wider net zero review, will include a new 2035 target for a ban
| on fitting new domestic gas boilers.
|
| Man, I'm glad this is included but the scientific reality is that
| we need to move much much faster than this.
|
| For reference, even if we perfectly replaced every gas furnace at
| the end of its functional life starting today with a non-
| polluting heat pump, we'd still be on track for 2 degrees of
| warming.
|
| We need gas bans on new houses NOW or at the VERY least create
| major up-front discounts for heat pumps.
| fmajid wrote:
| Good thing the gas price spike has concentrated minds.
|
| My parents live in France. They have to replace their 40 year
| old gas furnace, and were originally planning on replacing it
| with a 30% more efficient condensation gas furnace, but the
| French government gave them subsidies for a heat pump instead.
| They get heating that is powered by stable French nuclear power
| and are not exposed to volatile natural gas prices, the French
| reduce their dependency on gas imports from the distasteful
| Algerian, Qatari or Russian governments, everyone wins.
| Glench wrote:
| That's great that that happened! I think it's to the point
| now where we need everyone to do that.
|
| Was it hard for them to physically change out their gas
| system for the heat pump? Was it hard to find installers or
| units?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Why is a ban on gas furnaces so important, when you can burn
| coal in your stove and oil for heating and both are still very
| common (at least here in germany)?
|
| I thought gas is way better than coal or oil, because it burns
| cleaner?
| Glench wrote:
| Ah, in the US gas is the most common and I'm not sure about
| the UK -- just going off what the article mentioned.
|
| But yeah, my understanding is that burning gas in your home
| produces less CO2 than burning coal or oil, but they ALL
| pollute (and gas often has methane leaks from pipelines which
| is worse for warming than CO2). Whereas a heat pump emits
| nothing, is ~3x more efficient than gas combustion, and will
| increasingly cause no emissions as the grid is powered by
| renewables.
|
| It's far better to emit NO pollutants in your home (and
| cars!) than to emit less, especially since polluting home
| infrastructure is replaced every ~15 years and pollutes for
| its entire lifetime.
| nly wrote:
| Are all properties suitable for a heat pump though? That's
| the question. My understanding is they are basically aircon
| units running in reverse, which means outside heat
| radiators?
| roywiggins wrote:
| If you can't fit a heat pump, resistive heating should
| work fine, but it will be more expensive to run. It would
| obviously put more load on your renewable grid, so you'd
| want to put heatpumps wherever possible, but at least
| it's better than burning gas/oil/coal for heat.
| Glench wrote:
| > Are all properties suitable for a heat pump though?
| That's the question.
|
| Generally, yes, but of course it always depends on
| specific circumstances.
|
| Read up on heat pumps! They're really cool. And yes
| they're like air conditioning units that can cool and
| also heat. In addition to heat pump space heating there
| are also heat pump hot water heaters and heat pump
| clothes driers and it seems both are more efficient and
| non-polluting.
|
| It feels magical that they can pull heat from outside in
| the winter, but that's what they do! The more recent
| units can even do it in very cold temperatures.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Residential coal heating is extremely rare in the US[0], to
| the point where it occasionally gets a human interest story
| whenever a reporter runs into someone who uses coal. Most of
| America uses gas, some newer buildings and the south uses
| electricity, and wood handily outnumbers coal. The roughest
| equivalent we have here is oil heating, which is really only
| common in the northeast. It's my understanding that that's
| being phased out, because it's unpleasant to live with.
|
| I don't even know where I'd go to buy coal, to be honest. For
| most of America the closest we get to the stuff is a charcoal
| grill.
|
| 0 - 130,000 households two years ago, half in Pennsylvania.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I don't even know where I'd go to buy coal, to be honest.
| For most of America the closest we get to the stuff is a
| charcoal grill."
|
| Well here in germany in winter time, you can buy 10 kg
| packs in allmost every supermarket. Probably a side effect
| of the still big ongoing open coal mining. But its gotten
| quite rare in comparison, when I was a child, it was common
| for many houses, to have coal in the basement and regular
| getting a truck for resupply. Now it is mostly for
| additional heat.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's genuinely shocking and horrifying to me. Outside
| of coal mining areas, it's viewed as a dirty and inferior
| fuel here in America. The idea of there being just stacks
| of the stuff where I buy my food is pretty hard to accept
| for me.
|
| Outside of a specialist delivery company ("high quality
| bituminous", heh), I'd have to travel to a feed & seed
| store in the nearby farm country to buy coal for heating
| ($9 for a 40lb bag of anthracite). They're out of stock,
| but it's not clear to me if that's because of supply
| chain issues, or because nobody ever actually wants it in
| my area.
|
| Meanwhile firewood is super easy to get. It's available
| everywhere, including in huge stacks outside our grocery
| stores. I can even buy it from my city at $90 a cord, but
| it needs to be split.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "it's viewed as a dirty"
|
| It is. I lived in a small town in a river valley some
| years ago: you couldn't open the windows in late
| afternoon, when everyone started to burn their dirty
| fires.
| jamesdf wrote:
| At least in the UK, using coal or oil is very uncommon, while
| gas is very common.
|
| So gas is the bigger problem to resolve. We need to get rid
| of them all eventually.
| Glench wrote:
| > We need to get rid of them all eventually.
|
| Totally agreed! But for me I'd love to strike the word
| "eventually" from the sentence. At this point we're in such
| deep shit that we have to move more quickly than
| "eventually" in my opinion. :)
|
| It's far better to emit NO pollutants in your home (and
| cars!) than to emit less, especially since polluting home
| infrastructure is replaced every ~15 years and pollutes for
| its entire lifetime.
| Zababa wrote:
| Here in France, most furnaces are electric, a few use gas,
| and some stovetops use gas but they are becoming more rare,
| as it's cheaper to simply not include gas in a building.
|
| It's very surprising to me that people are still burning coal
| in their home, outside of very rural areas. Same thing with
| oil (except with cars of course).
| Factorium wrote:
| The UK strategy is to replace those gas burners with heat
| pumps, which you can power with nuclear energy.
|
| The problem in the UK is that many houses are very old and
| poorly insulated. Passivhaus basically needs to be the
| standard (if it isn't already).
| heurisko wrote:
| A further alternative to heat pumps is hydrogen fired boilers.
| Heat pumps work well in well insulated houses, with large
| radiators, which aren't attributes of much existing UK housing.
|
| Boiler manufacturers are already designing hydrogen boilers.
| The question is, how much existing infrastructure can be used
| to transport hydrogen.
|
| I think we should be able to get to 20% hydrogen at least
| sooner rather than later, which is being supported by modern
| boilers.
|
| https://www.worcester-bosch.co.uk/hydrogen
| Glench wrote:
| Why do you say heat pumps only work in well insulated houses
| with large radiators? Heat pumps are ~3x as efficient as the
| best gas furnaces so why would you need a better insulated
| house?
|
| Also, the problem with hydrogen is how do you produce it?
| Probably with renewable energy, right? So why would you waste
| all that energy converting from renewable electricity to
| hydrogen then burning hydrogen (which is not super efficient
| anyway)? Might as well just use the renewables to power your
| heat pump. Plus, heat pumps already work at scale whereas
| hydrogen needs a lot more work before it's ready for
| primetime.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| From the article being discussed:
|
| "The government is at present drawing up plans to subsidise
| electric pumps with grants of PS5,000 for air source heat pumps
| and PS6,000 for ground source heat pumps."
| Glench wrote:
| Yes, that's great! I just wish it was paired with the more
| ambitious stick of banning new gas hookups.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| Right now seems to be a perfect time to announce such large
| subsidies on heat pump installations. For two reasons:
|
| 1. A lot of people in the UK have actually had their
| savings grow because of covid. Not being able to spend on
| holidays and going out etc (I realise some have not fared
| so well).
|
| 2. The current crisis in gas.
|
| I think they're going to be swamped with people who want to
| take advantage of this. I don't think they're going to be
| able to keep up with the demand. I'm personally going to be
| on top of it as soon as it becomes available.
| Glench wrote:
| That's awesome! Please share with others what you learn
| in the process!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not to get you depressed, but given the amount of momentum
| involved there is absolutely no way we will meet our climate
| targets. It's game over on that front, the best you can hope
| for is damage limitation.
| Glench wrote:
| You may be right! But the time for ambition and execution is
| now because our planet is too damn important for anything
| less. :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| That I agree with. But the illusion that we're going to get
| through this unscathed if we all just pull together is at
| this point in time more harmful than helpful.
| Glench wrote:
| I'd add to that that we're already scathed! The higher
| temperatures have already affected the oceans, wildfires,
| droughts, and increased intensity for weather patterns
| like hurricanes.
| Abimelex wrote:
| well the worst of nuclear power ist not the possibility of an
| accident, but the radioactive waste. I guess UK doesn't care much
| about that since they have a history of just dumping it into the
| ocean.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The generally proposed way to deal with the worst nuclear waste
| (spent fuel) is to put it back into special reactors or to use
| special reactor designs to convert it to material with a much
| lower half life (hundreds rather than 10k years) which can then
| be stored ... somewhere ... more feasibly until it becomes
| safe.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Between this and gas boiler bans I can only assume bojo is trying
| to sink green targets by setting unrealistic, intentionally
| unaffordable and very unpopular ones.
| RobinL wrote:
| What set of technologies would be capable of achieving our
| green targets if we retained gas boilers and shunned nuclear?
| justicezyx wrote:
| Seems would be impossible were UK staying in EU?
| pjc50 wrote:
| No? What gives you that idea?
| thedrbrian wrote:
| Good. Bloody good in fact. If we can get ahead of everyone in
| making the Rolls Royce SMRs we could sell them to the rest of the
| world and maybe have some hi-tech high skill jobs in the UK.
|
| SSE however done agree and think we can get by with only
| renewables. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/offshore-power-
| will-fail-... Non paywalled
| https://archive.is/2021.07.25-233934/https://www.thetimes.co...
| Krasnol wrote:
| How sad for a country with so much wind potential.
|
| They should have learned from the ongoing Hinkley failure. I
| wonder if the French will be ready to pay for such a debacle one
| more time.
| kmlx wrote:
| uk already has large offshore and onshore wind farms that
| provided 25% of last year's consumption:
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/article...
|
| unfortunately this has dropped in 2021 due to low wind.
|
| but a lot more wind farms are planned:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingd...
| eynsham wrote:
| We ought to do both, and the two together likely won't be
| enough to sate current demand, so more than that: electricity
| is about a fifth of total energy use in the UK at the moment.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| We have just had a period where wind energy plummeted leading
| at least in part to sky high energy prices and twelve energy
| companies going out of business.
| Zenst wrote:
| That has nothing at all to do with the rising energy prices
| which have been natural gas related - not electricity.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58090533
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-13/u-k-
| power...
| addicted wrote:
| Yes, because Hinkley Point C was such an unmitigated success.
|
| It will be interesting to see how the UK actually plans on
| executing this.
|
| The only plausible way forward would be to duplicate Hinkley
| Point C basically (the 2nd phase has come in much cheaper than
| the first as they were able to reuse design and gained
| knowledge), but that would mean the UK energy industry is run by
| the Chinese and the French.
|
| I'm not sure if Global Britain is actually prepared for that.
| zh3 wrote:
| As an advocate for nuclear power, it amazed me that the UK gave
| EDF the go-ahead for Hinkley C given the Finnish experience (11
| billion euros, about 3x the original budget and getting on for
| 10 years late) with the same reactor design. At least Olkiluto
| is sort-of producing power now.
|
| Oh, and EDF in the UK really are the pits. Why anyone pays over
| the odds to use them is beyond me (it may be different for
| industrial users, but for consumers it's hard to imagine
| there's a worse choice). At least they won't go bust [0] being
| goverment backed.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/edf-restructuring-eu-
| idUSL1N...
| anttisalmela wrote:
| OL3 is not yet producing power, apparently turbines didn't
| like spending a decade waiting for use and need some
| maintenance. Current estimation is that reactor will be
| started in January 2022 and regular electricity production
| will start in March.
| [deleted]
| makomk wrote:
| The UK didn't put all their nuclear eggs in the EDF basket,
| it's just that the other companies offering to build new
| nuclear plants were even more of a disaster than EDF. At
| least they managed to actually complete a reactor build
| recently; if I remember rightly the other candidates went
| bankrupt.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Factorium wrote:
| The UK should build dozens of Rolls Royce SMRs each year, and
| setup a factory line for them with multiple in simultaneous
| construction. If we value our civilization, we would be
| building hundreds of units a year for use across the Western
| world.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/uk-poised-t...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_...
|
| https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
|
| 470MW per unit, 2 years to build, 2 years to install. 1.8
| billion pounds each. With just 64 units, combined with some
| renewables and storage (ideally allowing EVs to smart
| charge/discharge based on grid conditions), the UK would be
| completely energy secure for 115billion pounds.
| EwanToo wrote:
| It seems more and more likely they'll do this as part of the
| same announcement
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/uk-
| poised-t...
| pjc50 wrote:
| _If_ this works, it would be great. How many of them have
| been built so far?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I'm really keen to see how that plays out.
|
| As someone pointed out before on HN, various NATO countries,
| US especially, churn out small reactors for their navies,
| apparently with great success. These reactors are built on
| time, roughly in budget, work, and aren't failing all over
| the place.
|
| That's a fair few data points showing that SMRs ought to be
| very viable. Just... not here yet :)
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The navies also use fuel enriched up to the level of a
| nuclear weapon, supposedly about 97% for the US navy [0]
| making more energy dense designs possible. Weapons-grade
| are usually said to be above 90%. Wouldn't want those
| reactors placed in unstable regions.
|
| [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070209223424/http://www.
| nti.or...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Does the higher enrichment make them somehow easier to
| build, or safer?
|
| If not, my point stands, I'm not suggesting to copy the
| designs, rather that mass produced reactors can be
| viable.
| Joeri wrote:
| I'm sure Boris Johnson has a plan for scaling up nuclear every
| bit as thorough and well-conceived as the plan for Brexit.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > but that would mean the UK energy industry is run by the
| Chinese and the French.
|
| Traditionally, the UK has had no qualms about letting foreign
| companies run key industries. As long as they get run cheaply,
| the government and the consumers are happy.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Hinkley C is up past 15 years construction time, PS22Bn build
| cost and PS50Bn electricity purchase guarantee (profit subsidised
| by the taxpayer in some way). Compared to how many solar panel MW
| you can buy on the open market at consumer prices for that money,
| it's terrible value for money, ignoring winter base load concerns
| anyway.
|
| We're going to have to have Chinese expertise come in and build
| them for us. " _[China] has 38 nuclear power reactors in
| operation and 19 under construction. It has increased its number
| of operating reactors by more than ten times since 2000 and plans
| to bring five units into commercial operation this year alone._ "
| - https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/how-china-has-become-th...
| [2017]
| makomk wrote:
| No matter how cheap solar power is on paper, it's not much use
| in keeping British homes heated over the winter - solar panels
| reliably produce zero power after sunset and relatively little
| overall due to the shorter days in winter and higher latitude.
| Any realistic plan for going carbon-neutral has to deal with
| that issue.
| epistasis wrote:
| Storage will be plentiful in most homes in the future, at
| least those with cars. A 50kWh battery will provide several
| days worth of electricity, even when powering a heat pump in
| the winter. And if batteries are cheap enough to be in cars
| and idle 95%-99% of the time, they are definitely going to be
| cheap enough for daily usage on the grid.
|
| Already, in the US, the majority of new solar projects
| include storage attached to the same inverters as the solar
| panels. Batteries are on an exponential learning curve for
| cost. It's not hard to see where the future will be.
|
| Additionally, a mixture of both offshore wind solar will be
| close enough to provide all of the UK's needs.
|
| If you go and redo David MacKay's energy scenarios for the UK
| from Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, and use modern
| costs, the all renewable scenarios look pretty great. If
| nuclear can chip in and reduce some storage needs during a
| week long wind lull, that would be great too. But at this
| point in time we can't depend upon new nuclear to contribute
| anything to our immediate needs for climate solutions. Game
| day is here, now, and we have to play with the team of
| players we have currently.
| fmajid wrote:
| A country's energy policy cannot be predicated on vaporware
| energy storage technology that is "just around the corner".
| The UK is pretty good on renewables due to wind power, but
| this year's relatively low wind combined with gas price
| spikes has put the country in a very difficult position.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's not "just around the corner," it is shipping today
| and scaling.
|
| It's quite ironic to call shipping storage systems, from
| the MWh scale to GWh scale, installed all around the
| globe, "vapor ware" while not pointing out that nobody
| has ever even shipped an SMR.
|
| This sort of double standard when it comes to evaluating
| technology has been the source of so much bad capital
| allocation over the next decade.
|
| But, if you are willing to call storage vapor ware, I
| will be sure to call SMRs that from now on.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I wonder what the politics of it is: Who benefits in politics and
| in business?
|
| Also, afaik renewable energy is advancing quickly. Nuclear made
| more sense a decade ago. Why switch to it now?
| goda90 wrote:
| Nuclear still makes sense now. We can't just aim to have our
| current electricity needs be filled by renewables, we need to
| plan for even more electricity for vehicles and industrial
| processes that currently depend on fossil fuels. Not to mention
| the large amount of residential furnace and water heaters that
| also depend on fossil fuels. And if we're ever going to start
| really sequestering carbon, having excess energy from nuclear
| is going to help a ton.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Boris Johnson isn't doing it because it makes sense, but for
| political benefits. Who benefits? Who is making money?
|
| 10 years ago I thought nuclear was the clear answer - that we
| should do a moon-shot style massive project to develop a new
| generation of reactors and build them worldwide. I'm not
| against nuclear.
|
| But there's an important political dimension also, and to
| talk as if it's decided on technological merits is to
| implicitly spread the BS.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Carbon sequestration makes more sense for intermittently-
| available renewables since it can happen when the sun is
| shining or the wind is blowing and doesn't need massive
| battery storage otherwise.
|
| Nuclear makes much more sense for base load electric needs
| for homes and industry.
| fmajid wrote:
| Carbon sequestration is inefficient if you are doing it on
| diffuse CO2 in the air, as opposed to a concentrated stream
| from an industrial process like a cement factory. Battery
| electric storage, or redox flow batteries, or even hydrogen
| are more likely to work in remote locations.
| tomp wrote:
| Because it works, today. Sure, it's hard to build and
| expensive, but that's much better than being _nonexistent_ as
| grid-scale "green" technology is today.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think you've got that reversed. Grid scale wind solar and
| storage are dominating all new equipment on the grid. Check
| out the interconnection queue for ERCOT or PJM, the few
| competitive markets where there's public information like
| that, and where the choices are made purely based on profit,
| rather than the preferred whims of crafty utility executives
| that get guaranteed profits and don't have to pay for bad
| capital allocations.
|
| In contrast, new nuclear is nearly impossible to build.
| Nobody even wants to attempt to build it unless they get
| massive blank checks from governments to backstop all the
| massive cost overruns. Even China, the one country that has
| the capability to build big things still, is only building a
| tiny tiny fraction of nuclear in comparison to their massive
| renewables builds.
|
| Building new nuclear in the UK means either going with
| designs that have proven to be very difficult to construct,
| like the EPR, or going with completely unproven SMR designs,
| that are the last ditch effort to save nuclear as an energy
| source.
| kmlx wrote:
| see also france's macron announcement re nuclear:
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/france/20211012-macron-unveils-EUR...
|
| high time for nuclear to make a comback
| Zenst wrote:
| Yes France has a large Nuclear infrastructure and much of that
| is comming close to end of life. They are actively trying to
| get the EU to recognise Nuclear fission to be recognised as a
| green energy supply. If they can't achieve that then they will
| risk falling foul of the EU renewable/green targets -
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/70/renewa...
|
| So without that, getting projects going and export of energy
| (of which France does more than most) all hang upon fission
| getting that green label approved by the EU.
|
| Equally hydrogen may well prove a very economical method of
| storing electricity and for Nuclear plants (both types) the
| ability to turn them off and on per demand is something they
| can't do. So the ability to store that excess in off-peak in
| hydrogen and then converting back on-demand into electricity
| does seem like a viable solution if cheaper alternatives are
| not available. Not sure how they cost compare with lake dam
| energy storage - though that storage option for on-demand
| production is not cheap and equally limited by topography and
| land along with ecological impacts. So lots of hidden costs and
| upfront costs for those.
| polote wrote:
| Macron announced doubling down on nuclear because a poll said
| 51% of people were in favor of it. But don't forget this is
| Macron, he can say the contrary at any time, especially if a
| new poll say a majority of voters are against it. So don't bet
| too much money on it.
|
| He let Fessenheim (one nuclear plant) close one year ago. And
| the nuclear plants he announced are a new kind of plants that
| we don't know how to create yet. (And he refuses to take
| position to open new plants with the current technology)
| Zenst wrote:
| Worth noting that they are also taking Fusion seriously and
| looking at a test site already for an initial reactor trial.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-58911210
|
| So nuclear in 2035 may have a different default definition of
| thinking in which fusion supplants fission what we currently use.
| cinntaile wrote:
| We will not have fusion by 2035, probably not even by 2050.
| Zenst wrote:
| I'd take that bet. https://www.livescience.com/nuclear-
| fusion-reactor-sparc-202...
| tuatoru wrote:
| You might be using a different definition of "have".
|
| This is a post about electricity production. "Have" would
| mean "producing at least 1 GWe commercially by a for-profit
| enterprise".
| anonporridge wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
| anonporridge wrote:
| Fusion is going to have the same kind of economic problems as
| fission, high upfront cost and long lead time.
| fleischhauf wrote:
| Not the radioactive waste and meltdown chance though
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| After France, the next big economy that let rationality prevail
| over ivory tower environmental ,,activism".
|
| Let's hope many more countries will follow suit.
| Zenst wrote:
| I suspect many will be on the fence looking at how fusion goes
| as that's getting closer and closer each day and once that
| becomes a reality in your energy grid production - fission will
| fall out of favour like a stone.
|
| [EDIT - fixed as per comment below - thank you]
| edaemon wrote:
| Did you mean to swap those? Current nuclear power plants use
| fission, while fusion is still in development.
| Zenst wrote:
| No I mixed them up and will edit that now - thank you.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Fusion is getting slightly closer every 20 years. A fusion
| power plant approaching anything like a fission power plant's
| output is still at the very least 30 years away (EUROfusion's
| timeline says 2051). And that will probably be the most
| expensive power plant in history, even ignoring all the money
| poured into ITER.
|
| That gives at least 100 years before Fusion can become a
| major part of power generation in any significant part of the
| world, and this is assuming current projects achieve all
| their milestones on time, which historically is extremely
| unlikely. And this also assumes that it's even possible to
| reduce the cost of a ten million kelvin plasma held in place
| by 12 kelvin superconducting magnets, covered in a pool of
| liquid lithium.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The parent compliments one apparent position ("rationality")
| and insults another, which only inflames conversation. What are
| these positions? Who specifically is saying what, specifically?
| What is your analysis?
|
| I get that it's cool to demean certain kinds of activists, if
| the implicit point is about trendiness.
| polote wrote:
| France only has nuclear plants because they were built a long
| time ago. Except the EPR in Flamanville, there is no other
| projects to build nuclear plants. And they closed one, one year
| ago (The ones announced by Macron, are just politic tactic to
| gain votes in the next election, and are not real yet).
|
| France is far from being rational on this topic
| epistasis wrote:
| I disagree, France is being completely rational here. There
| is a better mix of power that is possible now than in the
| 1970s, because of technology advancements. A lot has happened
| in the past 50 years.
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's a demonstration of rationality? No one builds new
| nuclear power plants _because they can not compete on price_.
| Hinkley Point C will produce power at $145 /MWh. That is
| crazy. At that kind of price point, you are better off
| building an interconnect to Norway and straight up importing
| hydro power.
|
| Think about the kind of lifetime and investment that comes
| with nuclear. You start a new plant project today. It might
| produce power _in 15 years_ , for some _30+ years_ to make it
| economical. Who the fuck wants to bet $20B+ on solar not
| supplanting our entire power generation within some 45 years?
| Because that is what you are saying: build new nuclear,
| because even half a century from now, we won 't have the
| storage technology to make solar and wind work. That's the
| bet.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Yes, because current cost is not set in stone and with mass
| production cost goes down. With removing redundant
| regulation, cost goes down. With inherently safe reactor
| designs cost goes down. I bet that if coal plants hand to
| offset the environmental externalities, it would be way
| more expensive. Setting the price from that plant is like
| saying that reusable rockets could not be competitive
| because the space shuttle was more expensive than the non-
| reusable alternatives.
|
| And, even if I am wrong and really, nuclear is more
| expensive, so what? Compared to the alternative of having
| our societies collapsing because of climate change, a 3x on
| the price of energy would be money _very_ well spent.
|
| Also, if nuclear really is that non performant, it would be
| _awesome_ for renewables. They would actually be attractive
| economically and we would see more of them, not less.
|
| Kill hidrocarbons all together. Leave the free market so
| sort out the alternative if you really care about cost.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Nuclear is the one way to solve carbon emissions with
| nothing but money. Renewables, storage etc, these are not
| quite solved problems. But we could just throw money at
| nuclear and get it done. The world was once building
| reactors like there's no tomorrow, surely we could
| restart that.
|
| Yeah it's expensive but so is sea level rise and dealing
| with hurricanes.
|
| And safety? Pollution from burning coal kills so many
| people every year, I'm slowly beginning to think nuclear
| safety is a bit if a non issue, even it a plant blows up
| every now and then.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Oh, I am on board with you here!
|
| One thing I will object to though - the claim that "one
| way to solve carbon emissions with nothing but money" -
| mostly because money is a proxy for human effort and
| physical resources. "Just money" is not really a thing,
| at least how I see it. An human effort is a great thing
| to spent and physical resources as well, but there is a
| cutoff point where "just money" doesn't cut it, because
| the underlying resource that money is supposed to buy is
| simply not enough of around. But that is not the case
| with nuclear energy. So sorry for the deviation.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I guess it depends on how you price reliability. Solar is
| cheaper but then factor in the cost of storing solar for 24
| hours and it stops looking cheaper. Of course if you are OK
| with the power not being reliable then you don't need the
| battery.
|
| > At that kind of price point, you are better off building
| an interconnect to Norway and straight up importing hydro
| power
|
| Except there isn't enough hydro power in Norway to replace
| France's nuclear production, so looking at the current spot
| price of a non-scalable resource like hydro doesn't tell
| you much. That's the problem with hydro -- there are only
| so many resources to exploit. I'm also not going to touch
| how you value energy independence, but there is a value to
| it. Of course importing oil is not energy independent, but
| you can import oil from many countries, so that is more
| resilient than a fixed interconnect to Norway.
|
| What France could do is try importing LNG or coal or oil,
| but if the restriction is low carbon power, then you are
| stuck with nuclear or having the lights go out. This
| reality is why Germany is importing gas and using coal, and
| complaining about nuclear isn't going to change that
| reality.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > factor in the cost of storing solar for 24 hours and it
| stops looking cheaper.
|
| Engineering research on grid-scale storage has barely
| begun. It's really no more than ten years old, except for
| pumped hydro. Before that it was just ideas and concept
| studies.
|
| Already storage is cheaper than gas peaker plants for
| some short-run uses according to Lazard.
|
| And there are some promising, cheap technologies for
| other uses (longer duration): iron-air batteries,
| aluminium-air batteries, latent heat and sensible heat
| storage (air liquefaction; hot rocks), various flow
| batteries.
|
| Look at the trends, not what the costs were two years
| ago. Once someone starts to look into this stuff
| properly, the costs go down quickly.
|
| Edit: and if the perovskite R&D comes up with the goods,
| we'll have dual-layer (2x output) PV panels for the same
| cost (or less) as single-layer Si panels.
| summm wrote:
| Hinckley Point does not need to be economic by far. It is
| more about nuclear weapons. UK as a country needs a new
| reactor to keep its nuclear arsenal. They made that clever
| deal to let the energy market subsidize the military.
| mnd999 wrote:
| And IETR.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Their goal is 50% nuclear by 2035. From an economical point
| of view that's probably better than trying to keep todays
| levels, since they have to replace some old plants with newer
| ones and then the economics no longer make sense. Hence
| Macrons political move towards SMRs.
| ben_w wrote:
| The U.K. didn't start down the nuclear path because of
| environmental issues, it went that way because it (a) wanted
| atomic weapons, and later (b) the power struggle between coal
| mining trade unions and the Thatcher Conservative government
| (the strikes were part of broader issues at the time, but
| nuclear energy was part of the response to that).
|
| I've read the suggestion that the anti-nuclear-power activism
| in the west was stoked by the USSR precisely because of (a). No
| idea how true that is.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Russia was always exporting energy to Europe (oil gas and
| coal) so it does make sense from that angle too.
|
| With Germany going off nuclear, they become increasingly
| dependent on Russian gas.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Anti-nuclear opposition was indeed primarily against nuclear
| weapons, until Chernobyl. But the idea that it was backed by
| the USSR is without substance, a slur that's always made
| against anyone vaguely left wing without substantiation.
|
| The aim was bilateral (or occasionally unilateral)
| disarmament, because at that time we were all worried that
| the world might be destroyed at four minutes notice. The long
| slow problem of global warming was a lot further away.
|
| Even today, this is why nobody likes the Iranian nuclear
| programme, and why Israel airstriked an earlier Iranian
| reactor.
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