Utopia Talk / Politics / jergul

Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 12:32:06 Our oldest and least efficient combined cycle plant (without much cogen heat) broke even at 0.018 cents per kwh. Its been a while since i left that company, so i figure with a bit of inflation countered by newer tech 2 cents is a good figure. We had about 6 gw of wind, though we stopped installing in about 2012 as subsidies dried up and fracked natgas became the clear winner of the electricity industry. Wind never could compete on its own in any study location throughout the continent.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 12:32:49 0.018 dollars i mean.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 12:38:56 It was pretty cool to be kicking out multiple gws from just wind on a big storm day. Especially on an erratic late season day when it was still pretty warm and all the hydro was used up. A good wind forecaster rakes in the cash on those days! But no one has any delusion: wind will not be more than a small fraction of the game. Solar has a way brighter future. Heh.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 21 13:16:42 http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html I believe that you honestly think that is true, but I suspect what you mean by break-even is fuel costs. And even then...you had to have had a below market deal on natural gas. Its not as bad as it sounds. Fixed costs are one thing, but 18 cents sounds more like the break even point where it is cheaper to shut down production than it is to run at a fractional loss. (ie at 0.19 cents, the plant is covering some of the operating costs. At 0.17 cents it is not even covering the cost of fuel). So sort of a break even point :).
jergul large member	Tue Jan 21 13:22:10 0.18 cents*
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 13:41:57 I mean fuel and maintainence. Since it was an old plant not much depreciates existed, though that is countered some by increased fuel costs. Not surprisingly most of our natgas ccs were in the same ballpark if i remember. The industry plans around fuel delta=capital delta. Bottom line you arent beating natural gas. If you want to use something else, accept higher costs. If you want to use lots of wind, accept drastically higher costs. Same with solar but at least solar has the benefit of kindof following moores law so it has a reasonable path to 20% grid penetration without subsidies in the near future. Wind does not and likely never will.
Habebe Member	Tue Jan 21 14:25:35 Now admittedly im not well versed in these. However a quick Google search seems to say that wind is the cheapest, even beating out natural gas....however I question this mainly because if that was really case than why would places like Germany be building nee pipelines and tripling their purchases of US LNG? Why not instead of builing nordstream 2 just build more windmills? I mean this is a place that is really pushing lower emmisions.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 21 14:37:47 Sammy Well, I provided a link giving median costs. NG does not look that great. Habebe NG is replacing coal in Germany. Tripling purchases from a low baseline? NG is also good for heating (where you get 90% efficiency compared to a new combined cycle plant with 55%). The biggest problem with windmills are the small size of their generators. 6-10 MW seems to be the industrial average for offshore. Which is kind of small. A nuclear reactor is easily rated at 1000 MW. A combined cycle NG plant might be 270+130 = 400 MW. You also need weatherindependent baseload capacity. Wind and solar follow sinus curves. Electricity does not store well at large volumes. There are other reasons.
Habebe Member	Tue Jan 21 14:40:28 Ok so it seems from my quick searching that storage costs seem to play a big role since renewables fluctuate in order to keep a steady flow a lot has to be stored which drives ups costs. Again I'm not taking a stance as much as questioning.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 21 14:51:49 You cannot really store electricity large scale unless you convert it to potential energy for reconversion later. Ideally, you want on demand capacity to meet ebbs in wind or solar production relative to demand, but can be shut down when not needed. Hydro is a great at that. You just shut the turbine intake valve to stop waterflow. Potential energy in the form of water will remain in the resevoir until needed. NG is less flexible and ultimately would see productivity loss as it could not run at full capacity in such a role. LNG is incidentally far more expensive to produce than NG. You need one part NG to run the turbines cooling NG to liquid form for every part LNG you produce. The upside is that LNG can be stored. NG cannot be stored elegantly (though there are short term storage resevoirs for it), not can pumping volume be elegantly manipulated. IV generation nuclear power plants are supposed to have on demand capability. At least in theory.
Daemon Member	Tue Jan 21 15:13:00 "Why not instead of builing nordstream 2 just build more windmills? " People don't want to have huge windmills next to their homes. So a law has been made for a minimum distance for windmills of 1000 meters from residential areas. But we don't have that many lonely areas in Germany, it's difficult to find new places for windmills.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 15:58:00 Jergul is surprisingly correct. "Well, I provided a link giving median costs. NG does not look that great. " Except this bit. Every major electric outfit has gone natgas heavy the last decade or so. All the investors and engineers have looked at the data and come to the same conclusion... natgas wins. "You cannot really store electricity large scale unless you convert it to potential energy for reconversion later. Ideally, you want on demand capacity to meet ebbs in wind or solar production relative to demand, but can be shut down when not needed. Hydro is a great at that. You just shut the turbine intake valve to stop waterflow. Potential energy in the form of water will remain in the resevoir until needed. NG is less flexible and ultimately would see productivity loss as it could not run at full capacity in such a role." This all correct, except that natgas peakers are quite flexible though less efficient. Cc plants are indeed not particularly flexible though. hydro totally rocks. Cheap, emissionless, AND its instant response storage ability makes integrating solar/wind that much easier. Alas... its availability is limitted and generally cannot be expanded much in the developed world.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 16:02:43 "Ok so it seems from my quick searching that storage costs seem to play a big role since renewables fluctuate in order to keep a steady flow a lot has to be stored which drives ups costs. " Correct. Integration costs( due to their uncontrolled nature) drive up the price of already higher priced renewables. So long as wind/solar produce less than about 20% of a grid thus effect is minor. Afterwards it skyrockets. Having big dams around allows cheaper integration.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 21 16:36:37 Sammy Given the link I posted, then you may want to consider that the proof is not in the pudding. A combined cycle plant has a 8-12 year lead time. Units coming online now would have been looking at would have been looking at wind as we saw it in say 2011. Baseload plants have advantages, and windmill generation disadvantages, but the cost advantage per unit of electricity produced is eroding by the day if not gone already.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 21:44:09 Sure, a brand new plant in california might have a 10 year lead time, but adding units to an already existing plant or replacing old burners is much simpler. http://upl...n_in_the_United_States.svg.png You can see natgas is climbing faster than wind even though wind was massively subsidized. Wind cannot compete with natgas on a level playing field in most places. Not 10 years ago, not now, and probably not ever.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 21 21:45:39 also wind farms dont really get any shorter wind lead times. They get nimbyed and sebbed too.
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 04:26:17 You are misunderstanding my point. Decisions on what energy is best are made 10 years ago for new capacity coming online today. So the decision on wind or NG is based on their relative advantages 10 years ago. Nice graph. NG is clearly replacing coal. Which is entirely natural. They share similar characteristics. The level playing field depends on to what extent CO2 emission costs are internalized. CO2 quotas are getting expensive. I think we may mean different things when we think of level playing fields :). With that said, I think we may even agree on the future of landbased windmills. They cannot be scaled up appropriately. Offshore windmills can (it has mostly to do with road clearance limitations being a dimensioning factor onshore).
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Jan 22 05:34:26 This isn't really rocket science. Build hydro, build solar, build wind, build geothermal AND build nuclear. The ratios will depends on the given geography. A country like Iceland can probably go near to 100% geothermal, Algeria can go nuts on solar. Sweden for instance gets 40% from hydro and 40% nuclear. The real battle to be fought are the concerns around nuclear and the public fears.
Seb Member	Wed Jan 22 06:05:55 I'm not sure I can will myself to go back and catch up. Yes, NG is dirt cheap if costs of co2 emissions are fully externalised. But that wasn't and isn't the point. Wind (both off-shore and on-shore) were once considered niche players that could never in principle usefully scale to meet large fractions of the electricity supply due to variability, low capacity factor, footprint and cost. They've now got to the point where they are substantially cheaper and more reliable an investment with lower subsidy (from an investment perspective, given nuclear over run and project cancellations) than new build nuclear. The fact it is not as cheap as gas, which is driving down electricity prices - is neither here nor there. The adoption of renewables at the price of wind represents an opportunity cost vis-a-vis gas where co2 emission costs are fully externalised; not a massive increase in the price of electricity which would pull the rug from under the global economy and cast is into some antediluvian pre-tech dark age as some are still claiming. And yes, you have wind, solar, tidal, hydro and - when the industry gets it act together to design build commercially viable options - nuclear. This is entirely achievable over a thirty year time frame, if we were to put the kind of focus and effort behind it as we put to, say, the cold war. Yes, that was costly, but it also corresponded to the fastest and longest expansion of Western economies in the last 150 years. The argument we will all be having to live in ditches is simply bullshit
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 06:12:44 Nimi Its not that I disagree, I just think its a bit more nuanced. The first thing that should be phased out is actually LNG except for specialty use (we need low production levels for storage. There are several reasons for this). Secondly, coal. That has to go. Then we have electrification and hydrogen use to replace fossil fuel combustion engines and turbines. Natural gas plays an important role in achieving above. After that, get carbon capture into place at large cement and combustion facilities everywhere. This is a massive undertaking with pipeline systems rivaling that of NG to dispose of the CO2 appropriately (it is not appropriate to turn CO2 into liquid for natural reasons, though you will get slurry automatically as you pump it down into resevoirs). Adding nuclear and green power is important, but only against the backdrop of what I outlined above. Minipute nations like Iceland, Norway and Sweden can transition faster because we have like 4 people and 7 sheep using electricity. But we are exceptions proving the rule.
Seb Member	Wed Jan 22 06:25:05 Agree with jergul: caveat is that CCS needs to have supper robust standards or we could screw the pooch without knowing it for decades; and add that new build nuclear is terrible. We've created an industry of massive power plants that are very efficient from a thermal perspective, but when you price in risk, they need to be state financed or a planned economy to work. And by price in risk I mean "risk your plant doesn't work as well as you hope or as economically as you hope", the risks associated with failure and fuel cycle costs are, as ever, still not priced in. From a commercial prospective, conventional fission nuclear is a turkey. Small modular reactors are the way to go.
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 07:27:28 Seb By small, you mean in the 250-500 MW range? There are specialty use reactors that are much smaller of course and do have niche value (thermal+electicity is a winner for isolated artic communities or isolated arid ones if you use thermal for desalination). Standardization within the IV generation framework will hopefully give nuclear its proper place in the energy mix. But that remains future tech where state ownership curtails the emergence of standard construction and practices (every country will tend to go its own way in a marketplace dominated by various state actors. The can be corrected, but there has to be a lot of political will behind it).
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 07:39:34 Seb One interesting potential for carbon capture that I have not seen anywhere: New materials and airflow control can allow closer to stochiometric combustion. Assuming 0 sulphur, then isolating CO2 may become redundant. Simply combust, then dehumidify, then pipe the CO2+N2+O2 mix to sequestering in deep sea resevoirs. Let the devil sort it out down there. (the caveats included cover technical aspects).
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 07:40:47 strike deep sea. Any suitable resevoir.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Jan 22 09:05:01 Jerul I do not disagree with the nuances. My main gripe is with countries like Germany. Developed countries like Germany do not really need to switch to NG, they can go nuclear. I am not sure in what way NG is better than a Gen 3 reactor. Sure the direct emission are ~50% that of coal, but for it to be better the indirect emission in the forms of leakage of methane. In the USA that amounts to 2.3% and the cut off point for the benefit compared to goal is 3%. So that 50% reduction compared to coal, it isn't that great anymore. You know what is? A gen 3 reactor ;) The main problem is that the people most fervent about the CC problem are also against nuclear power in any shape a form. Yet, not matter how we twist and turn this equation there is no possible scenario without nuclear. When are the Gen 4 reactors commercially available, 10 years, 20 years? And then another 10 years for the first plants to go online and another 20 years before we have enough of them online. 40 years of burning NG that is moderatly better than coal taken as a whole. There just isn't anyway we are going to make 3 degrees like this. The IPCC say 50-350% more nuclear is needed, we need to start splitting!
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 22 09:22:35 Jergul, Coal is on its way out and that has less to do with emmisiins standards and more to do with economics, NG is crazy abundant especially in the state's, we just have more than we know what to do with, plenty of oil now too ( were finally #1 in both now)
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 11:51:51 habebe I was speaking from a global perspective. http://www...ges-past-coal-and-gas-by-2040/ NG and oil are both characterized by "having more than we know what to do with" locally. Might I suggest wallowing in it? :). A bet on shale is a bit on the economy never recovering and CO2 costs (of production, not use) never being internalized. Hydrogen is missing from the link incidentally, but could be seen as part of renewables (overcapacity being diverted to hydrogen production as it occurs. Both hydrogen and O2 could theoretically be fed directly into existing NG pipelines in smaller volumes (say 5% of flow). You have crisis level interest rates. It creates all kinds of inbalances. Nimi We will see how it plays out. I do not think we are anywhere near peak worry, so still feel we have the luxery of choosing what sources of energy to use. My main concern with nuclear power is lack of global standards. We are making nuclear power plants the way we made cars before Henry Ford.
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 22 12:03:49 Jergul, Realistically oil/ gas has been a major factor in the US economy, Trump likes to take the credit, and he has played a role in the industry. The US is now has more NG than Saudia arabia had oil at its peak. Nd produces more oil than anyone, this directly takes up 8% of our economy now and indirectly effecting transportation, machinery and manufacturing. So we kimd of can't just wallow in it...unless someone is gonna pay us to wallow in it...
jergul large member	Wed Jan 22 12:35:19 I was speaking about the "more than we know what to do with portion".
Seb Member	Wed Jan 22 12:42:36 Nim: The truth is Germany can't go nuclear. The current generation is basically unproven, and operates at too big a scale and too long a timescale to have any real confidence on cost, delivery, operation, profitability etc. nor can they be built quick enough. And we can't build gen 3 for the same reason we can't build Apollo rockets - the guys that know how have retired. We've basically run our civil nuclear industry into the ground building death stars that have brilliant performance on paper but for which there are too little potential demand for number of units to support a sustainable order book. It's madness. Across the entire of the EU, if you ignored the politics, you might just have enough to sustain a drumbeat of production that would work. But Germans aren't going to overcome their fear of nuclear so they can pay for higher energy costs (first user disadvantage) that will mostly be captured by a French company. They'd prefer to achieve the co2 reductions in other ways.
Seb Member	Wed Jan 22 12:43:16 Jergul: Yeah, the step up from 250-500 to the GW range was what killed nuclear power.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Jan 23 05:31:18 Jergul First off let me say, I am glad you have a nuanced position on this, one that does not involve "I want you to panick". The point I am making, we know nuclear will be needed for the foreseaable future, we know the more we bing the bigger the hangover. Do we need to wait until peak worry? The investment into nuclear at this point are not an sky is falling solution, it is reasonable, perhaps the only reasonable solution. One that will provide stable energy source on a small footprint Seb I am not sure I follow, there are gen 3 reactors under construction right now or built in the last decade, not that many, but they work. so I can see that the supply in the form of expertise is short, but this is largely I think a product of the death on the demand side, politics of fear. Even the drumbeat production would be good enough to raise acceptance. I think if you look at surveys this is where it collapses. Meanwhile it's exceptionally popular in France. I just do not think gen 4, whenever they come, will matter to the layperson with irrational fears and zero understanding of the difference. The Germans are solving their problem by shifting from coal to NG, which is not that great. These problems, low supply of expertise, they are certainly not going to get solved when huge economies like Germany (Or the USA, even Sweden) do not put effort and money into it. Let me flip this. You are now responsible for the EU's energy policy and infrastructure, what would you plan for the next 40 years? Most people seem to be in favor of solar and hydro, but these things are not without their share of problems, they have a relatively big footprint for the output. Dams have their known issues, but mainly the supply of suitably rivers is the bottleneck. Sunfarms take up alot of space and steralize the ground from plantlife and in extension animals. They do not beat a nuclear powerplant in this regard. The panels are in no way universally "clean" they contain toxic materials and the disposal of them, while not as problematic as nuclear waste, is still problematic. At the end of their life they have produced a fraction of the energy of the same amount of Uranium. The panels are also quite sensitive, one bad storm and you can be royally fucked.
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 08:01:04 Nimi Seb's point is like pouring money into Hydro, but focusing exclusively on Twin Gorges dimensioned power plants. Then being surprised that there is actually not much demand for Twin Gorges sized dams. Seb likes nuclear power. He has a doctorate in a closely related field. He, I, and the industry agree that nuclear power is sort of fucked. His take is because of scale. My take is because of lack of standarization. Industry take is lack of standarization due to lack of volume. All three views dovetail somewhat and also dovetail into your position. We should have more nuclear power, but there are serious problems (one of the serious problem is public sentiment).
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 09:00:34 Jergul: Standardisation is a consequence of scale. We build too few plants over too long a period for effective standards to emerge.
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 09:09:05 Seb Its a conscequence of many things. We are not disagreeing, we are simply weighing things a bit differently. I agree that the ideal 6x1500 MW reactor plant is stupid. It barely works for China. If it even works for China. But I weigh national control as the greatest barrier (and I often favour national control). Countries running with their own solutions is a huge barrier to standarization. We need the political will to regulate global production standards. A will I do not see emerging anytime soon.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Jan 23 14:06:55 If we built more than a nuclear core every 5 years, and had fewer whining hippies, the price would be much lower.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 15:42:34 jergul: If it was 36 250mw reactor instead of 6 x 1500, with say a 30 year life span, that would be a reactor a year; then national control and each having their own "national champion" would not be so much an issue. Standardisation is great, but effective standards need to emerge from learning, and basically the production runs are too small and build times so long that you both can't not incorporate upgrades based on new technologies in sub systems at the earliest possibility, but at the same time that prevents standardisation and also prevents effective learning. Nim/Sam: Yes, costs would come down if we built more than one core every 5 years, but part of the reason there is no demand is because each plant is effectively an untested new venture and, in a free market, a 60 year bet on no unpleasant surprises in interest rates, electricity prices, disruptive technologies and the plant performing as intended. People blame regulation, but even when all those hurdles have been cleared and nimbyism overcome, often these schemes collapse under the weight of their own complexity, delays and finance costs. The plant in Finland? Over budget, under performing. The UK plants? Repeatedly delayed over concerns of being able to meet delivery times, and need for subsidized floor price twice that of wind. Nuclear is just too big to scale, because we've let engineers run the industry as an outputs of the 1970s with what (even in the US) have effectively been state bodies with either the ability to set prices via monopoly or explicit the state pocketing the risk; so they can focus on building ever bigger and more "efficient" plants and not think about what actually works in a competitive and dynamic electricity market with private finance costs. It's one thing to say "fears" - but when you have a cluster fuck like Fukushima - it's impossible to turn around and say "ok folks, it wasn't that bad, you should get over your irrational fear and accept a nuclear plant in your back yard, oh, and er, just before I go, you will be locked into guaranteeing to pay the operator electricity prices twice the current rate you'd pay (including subsidies) for wind power or solar right now for, oh, 60 years, and most of that cash will go to a foreign country 'k thks by."
Habebe Member	Thu Jan 23 15:46:09 I seen something about rolls Royce building micro nuclear plants...could be interesting.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Jan 23 16:17:20 "guaranteeing to pay the operator electricity prices twice the current rate you'd pay (including subsidies) for wind power or solar" Utterly untrue, as proven by nuclear france paying much less than its neighbors.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 16:49:13 Lol. France hasn't successfully built a new nuclear reactor in over two decades. The latest one under construction is Flamville, it's seven years late and costs are over 300% budgeted for. The EPR that EDF was going to build at Hinkley C needed an inflation gauranteed strike price of GBP 92.50 /mwh in 2010 prices. Off shore wind is now around 50 GBP/MWh. Yeah, France sells nuclear power extremely cheap from old reactors that have had life extension from 30 to 60 years, so their capital costs are already paid off. Sweating assets makes for cheap power when almost all your costs are capital. The thing is, even if you wanted to, you couldn't build those plants again: the supply chain doesn't exist, the knowhow is vested in the dead and retired. The best you can do is build a new plant with the materials and tech you have now. But there's no gaurantee they will last 60 years, and you have to pay off all the new r_d and design costs. This is why new nuclear is dying on its arse. You need a continuous build of plants. This book e bust is fundamentally incompatible with free market economics. Also, Sam is clearly economically illiterate.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 16:50:10 Dumbass.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Jan 23 16:57:29 "France sells nuclear power extremely cheap from old reactors that have had life extension from 30 to 60 years, so their capital costs are already paid off." So what you are saying is that nuclear investment kicks ass in the long term? Thanks for proving my point retard.
Habebe Member	Thu Jan 23 17:01:48 http://www...olls-royce-tiny-nuclear-power/
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 17:04:56 Seb Well, if that volume is what is needed, then China has 16 of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One planned or under construction. So the problem is solved. We now have a design that is standarised and is being serial produced. Why is that not helping the UK any? Lack of standarization is why. Its like the principles of interchangable parts are yet to be discovered by the sector. The industry agrees with me incidentally.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 17:11:12 Sam: Tell that to BNFL. All their reactors, that were much better than the French ones at the time, started to develop cracks in the primary coolant pipes and had to be shut down, just as the dash for gas happened. The French state directed energy industry on the other hand faced no gas competition because the state, as owners, didn't want it and they had no natural gas. So the question is, will the EPRs turn out to last twice their expected life span and pay out Megabucks in the second half of the 21st century (after the investors are dead), or will the investors lose their shirts in 2050 when Elon musk launches his gigawatt space solar arrays. Btw, EPRs were designed by BNFL and the IP bought by EDF... Caveat emptor.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 17:12:44 Jergul: China, it might just work for, and if it does we should adopt their standards, but we won't be sure for about two decades, by which time we won't be able to build them as all the supply chains will be obsolete and the engineers retired.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 17:13:52 The industry is run by idiots who don't recognise basic issues about economics, skills and knowledge.
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 17:16:06 habebe Russia is global leader on small nuclear power plants for civilian use. Seb That was a bit messy. Lack of global standardization keeps other nuclear plant producers from benefiting from Chinese advances in serial production. Somthing as simple as being able to order off the shelf piping and fittings instead of bespoke crap that meets the same parameters through a national certification programme would help dramatically lower costs and lead time.
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 17:18:43 We may be talking about different things. I am not really talking about reactor design (thats a part of it, but its not a deal breaker that those are artisan made custom designs) but rather the infrastructure the reactor is attached to.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 17:43:33 Jergul: And yet you find these horrific incidents where the head plates on reactors nearly corrode through. I'm far from convinced the Chinese aren't going though what the US did in the 60s rec regulatory capture. Sure, the root cause for Fukushima was using a layout from Arizona on a coastal setting, but the lesson learned is that the main vessel and primary and secondary containment completely failed and should never have been approved. We won't really know if the Chinese stuff is up to snuff for decades: not just in design but also in the parts. Cf. Microcracks in bnfls agrs, nothing that problematic from a safety perspective, but a company destroying billion pounds problem lying in wait to manifest for two decades.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 23 17:54:30 Look, I think we are talking a very fine nuance here. But I don't think we will see viable standards emerge unless we get nuclear down to commercially viable sized bets. At the moment, these things are on the scale of medieval cathedrals: you can't build them unless society had the kind of faith in them that allows for multi-generational programmes of work. Saturn Vs were great, but that doesn't mean that SLV will be equally great, even though they are both rockets. We need sustainable production runs where we can learn, keep people continuously employed for a career and do skills transfer in the workplace, and make incremental improvements. And frankly the case isn't that compelling, if we can get the same outcomes with a mix of carbon capture, other offset sinks, and non-nuclear renewables. I'm not intrinsically opposed to it, quite the opposite, but a hard headed, cold eyed analysis is that the market ain't offering anything with a USP I'd buy at this point, and nor am I convinced I'd pay a premium to broaden my choice. I think we can hit net zero without needing to state subsidise nuclear. However, if we did want to expend the political capital of nationalising energy production, then nuclear would probably be a good way to go.
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 17:58:13 Seb At worst you could recertify mass produced piping and fittings meeting nuclear standards, but to think that foreign stuff is inherently more risky than domestic stuff does not seem right. Sourcing parts internationally is incredibly important if costs are a factor. But we are not there. Any UK reactor would not bother with parameters in line with what would allow it to import mass produced stuff. That would get in the way of artistic and creative artisan nuclear reactor design. Art must be free, else it is not art.
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 18:04:51 China may agree with you on your last posts. Their mass produced reactors have a nameplate capacity of around 1000 MW. They are not pushing to the 1500-1800 range. Downscaling may actually best be done by limiting the number of reactors at any site. The important thing is to identify what sized reactors (or rather what parameters) look to be industry standard. What will be produced at volume anywhere on the planet? Then take it from there. Organic standarization is really the only shot, because global regulatory standards are unlikely to emerge.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Jan 23 21:23:13 "Tell that to BNFL. All their reactors, that were much better than the French ones at the time, started to develop cracks in the primary coolant pipes and had to be shut down" Obviously they werent better than the french. Lol you got beat by france.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Jan 23 21:26:33 Jergul, 3 to 6 gw e per nuke plant seems reasonable. You dont want everything too concentrated, nor too spread out. Of course tiny countries like norway might need smaller stations :)
Sam Adams Member	Thu Jan 23 21:29:02 "The industry is run by idiots who don't recognise basic issues about economics, skills and knowledge. " Lol, seb, the failed science major, thinks everyone else is wrong. Hahahahahahahaha
jergul large member	Thu Jan 23 23:22:16 Sammy 100% hydro. Or close enough. 3-6 does seem reasonable. But with a national focus, that only gives enough reactor volume for serial production with small reactors. The problem here is bespoken, artisan nuclear plants. Seb is right that the industry sort of sucks. Its worse than the industry seemingly not having heard of Henry Ford. It seemingly has not even heard of interchangable parts (known in earnest since the days of the American Revolution. The british service musket was made to that principle). Your poster child added 3 reactors a year. It managed to get enough volume for specialization nationally only through almost fully nuclearizing its electricity supply.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 02:20:55 Jergul: And then the poster child built none for 20 years, lost the skills and capability to do so, designed a mega turkey that it can't build on time or budget, and which their board seems to think will underperform either commercially. Sam: The engineers that run the industry did. And on one view they did. They just didn't get their life extension beyond planned parameters. So why assume the EPRs will? And if "everyone else" is right, how come EPRs are all massively late, massively over budget, and their owner won't build them unless they are guaranteed decades of forced energy purchases at prices twice the price of offshore wind, and even then the companies board considers it an existential risk to go ahead because the host state, unlike the govt that owns them, can't be relied on to bail them out if it fails? Hardly exudes unbounded confidence in the commercial strength of their design does it. Sorry, you clearly don't understand this industry at all.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 02:38:45 Seb Sometimes I have to wonder. http://www...or-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx Western reactors barely register. Bespoke, artisan designs really does sum it up. I think we are actually looking at organic consolidation of the industry.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Jan 24 03:27:21 Seb I do not really understand you position here. Clearly the French reactors have a proven design and are better. This last exchange with sam, wtf? You do not seem to understand your own position? You want proven design and economic feasibility long term, France. You want volume, China. All the solutions are there, the fact that Europe and US can't get their shit together is by and large a product of idiotic policy. "We build too few plants over too long a period for effective standards to emerge." Uhm, yes, but why? This a proximate cause, not the ultimate cause. >>It's one thing to say "fears" - but when you have a cluster fuck like Fukushima - it's impossible to turn around and say "ok folks, it wasn't that bad<< Compared to what exactly? To even call it a cluster fuck, is this sort of fear mongering that results in us "not building enough reactors". One of the worst Tsunamis to hit Japan in modern history, resulted in catastrophic failure of a nuclear reactor. 1 person has died as a direct result. Now they have tours of the "disaster" area. I call that a win. Meanwhile millions of people are dying every year from burning fossil fuels. Again I ask, you are charge, what it your plan?
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 03:41:53 Rebuild and retain national nuclear competence by serial producing nuclear reactors and power plants perpetually. Set the national production rates at 1 reactor per year. Dimensioning is achieved by decreasing reactor size, not by decreasing production rate. Enshrine nuclear power plant diversity by accepting that every country will have different needs. This will give a wide range of sizes to nuclear reactors depending on national circumstance (each country with one size that meets its specific needs that warrant long term serial production). I think I got it about right :).
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 03:45:37 France did batch production over a 15 year period ending 35 years ago. There is no reason to think it has that capability currently.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 03:47:48 lol, Norway would need nano nuclear reactors in the kilowatt range to follow that plan.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 04:53:23 Nim: If I gave you a stack of cash and told you to build the reactors that the French built up until the 80s, you would not be able to do it. Not only, as with any large, complex system filled with bespoke parts, is much of the documentation lost, much would never have been documented. All the knowledge and know how that would help you do this is in the heads of people who have been retired or died. Because of advances in the supply chain, even if you had this, you wouldn't necessarily be able to get the parts: the materials have moved on, and may not have the same performance and tolerances even where they do still exist because nobodies been asking the manufacturer to keep it fit for purpose in a nuclear industry. You'd need to essentially redesign the reactor, and you'd not necessarily be able to be confident that this attempt to build a 1980s design with parts built using 2020s tech and materials substitutes is going to get that 100% life extension. You can only really gaurantee the performance of these components for 30 years. This is just the nature of things. So you need to build a new reactor design. But when you design a new reactor, the designers want to make it (on paper) a better performing reactor: more efficient, safer, higher performing. Enter the EPR. Which on paper is superior but actually has no track record at all. In the 70s/80s, the engineers thought AGRs were clearly a better design than the ones the French were building. It took until the 90s for the reality that while from a purely engineering perspective they were, from an economic perspective a few more level design choices on some pipes, combined with a period of high interest rates, low electricity prices and a refinancing point basically killed them off. So it is all very well saying the French design was proven (perhaps more accurately, the French choice of materials and specification for a few coolant pipes was better), it wasn't so obvious at the time, and actually had nothing to do with the core design itself (which the industry focuses on), and to some extent because the French govt stands as financer behind EDF, it would have survived the issue that killed BNFL even if they had been operating the same reactors BNFL did. In any case, it's all completely pointless discussion because as I've pointed out, you literally can't build these things anymore. You can only build a modern version, and you may find an analogous problem to the AGRs, a small, low level design choices that leads to something entirely manageable, but will put you out of operation at a time when it is hideously costly to do so, bankrupting you by disrupting cashflow at a time when it is critical. Do you get it now?
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 04:58:13 "Uhm, yes, but why?" Because orders for 2GW capacity don't come along very often, and when they cost 100bn of capex for a design with no track record that nobody currently in employment has any experience of building, amazingly, investors (state or otherwise) and rely on successful production of electricity and sale of it at a certain price reliably over 40 years to break even are extraordinarily reluctant to take the risk, leading to years of negotiations. Which means few people get into the industry, which means you can only build at a certain rate, which exacerbates the previous. I've said all this in this thread already. Small. Modular. Reactors. Are. The. Answer.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Jan 24 05:49:07 Seb I missed the small modular reactor part earlier. That is a technical detail I am not qualified to get in to. I take it at face value. Then that is what needs to be done so we can be somewhere in a couple decades. However, with all of that said, the reason everyone but the French didn't build enough reactors has nothing to do with the size of the reactors or ROI. "We" stopped wanting them period. Germany the extreme example, reactor size and capital is hardly the issue. "Because orders for *any type of reactor don't come along very often*" **Fixed :)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Jan 24 05:56:30 My point is that this is all policy based. Huge project like this, especially nuclear, are always political. They need to pass whatever chamber they need to pass and the trend for too many decades has been terrible. Neither small. modular. reactor nor Gen 4 is going to solve this, because nobody knows what these things are or what you are talking about. It is like talking probability and stats with someone scared of getting raped by muslims. I am a facts over emotions kinda person, but I also understand that emotions are more important than facts in general. If we do not deal with the emotions, we are not dealing with anything.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 08:02:37 Nim, you are still I think missing my point. The French didn't stop building nuclear reactors in the late 80s because they suddenly turned against them. They stopped for two reasons: 1. There was no more need for them 2. They were starting to look on balance sheets not as great a bargain as gas* It's not that there's no demand for any type of reactor, it's there's not enough demand for 2GW power plants *of any type* to sustain the orderly, regular production of nuclear plants that would make an industry sustainable and allow learning curves for incremental improvement, comodification of designs and standards to emerge. You are a lean-6-sigma practitioner iirc right? This is absolutely in your competence - this isn't really a technical problem it's a business and economics one. Now, if you could build reactors at 250mw size, you'd be able to build and sell around one a year, and it would be an entirely different story! *Of course, once the life extensions kicked in they looked a whole lot cheaper, but also kicked the need to build a new plant way down the road too, and made learnings, technical performance and economic performance of the existing plants far less relevant to forecasting new designs while the workforce she's k and deskilled - it essentially let all the risk back into the investment.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Jan 24 08:53:20 I believe you, that the French didn't have more need for them, perhaps even during periods gas was cheaper. But mostly you can't keep building reactors in France, you need to build them in Germany, Spain, Norway etc. Is your point that if someone was making small reactors or rather we had a proven small scale standardized reactor design, the political opposition would go away? It wouldn't, not today, not 20 years ago. i.e if there had been a will 30-40 years ago, we would have gotten around to the small scale reactors most likely. We would have reached the correct path. These are different issues, but the technical can never be realized without the political will. You are talking about the technical aspects and I am saying you can build the greatest, cheapest and safest reactor and people will still think Chernobyl, Fukushima and that radioactive waste is scary. >>Now, if you could build reactors at 250mw size<< The obstacles for why we can't, does not start with a lack of standard or expertise or money. I accept more or less everything you say, it has no impact on what I am saying about the lack of political will and public support. BR Nimatzo :)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Jan 24 09:06:03 Your concerns are on a higher level than mine, but the things I am raising are a soft obstacle to the hard ones you mention. I don't even think we disagree on what I am saying. The reason Germany isn't building any reactors has nothing to do with the scale of the reactors, the lack of expertise or that they are waiting for gen 4. I mean the polls even show that after Fukushima the french opinion took a hit. I ask the french public, compared to what exactly? What is your plan, and their answer isn't smaller reactors, Pierre has no answers because Pierre doesn't really know jack shit about anything. He got spooked and now he doesn't like nuclear power anymore. Pierre votes.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 09:24:11 Nim: I'm saying that the pubñic fear of reactors isn't the limiting factor. Look, in the UK, those have been overcome sufficient that ground is ready to be built on. It's not been built in because the company that actually owns this design doesn't actually want to build it unless they get paid even if they can't deliver it on time (which us already much slower than they original proposed when they won the bid) and to budget (which is already much more expensive than when they won the bid). If France replaced all its current nuclear plants wth EPRs, it would build even fewer of them and not build any new ones for fifty years after completing the last one (assuming they could actually complete any before EDF went bust of the French treasury had a collective heart attack). And if Germany were in the market for nukes, why would it use EDF? It has its own engineering firms etc. (Which gets to Jerguls point), particularly if the state as it's taxpayers or citizens needs to take all the risk and finance costs for the technologies owners to be willing to build one. Basically, the plants we are trying to build are too damned big to be a sustainable industry. Nuclear skepticism isn't the rate limiting step here. If you turned up tomorrow with planning permission for a EPR, EDF wouldn't build it unless you promised to pay them up front with no penalty even if they didn't actually deliver the plant. That's how fucked this industry is.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 11:11:04 Seb's solution does not really solve the problem short term. National nuclear industries still lack competence that need to be rebuilt. It solves the long term problem and does lessen investment risks. Even if a reactor@25% today's capacity project goes to hell, it still would only be at 33% of the current base cost, so overruns would be proportionately smaller. My feeling is that a few international companies will create organic standarization (including instrumentation, documentation, software, piping and fitting) simply by becoming massive players. Huawei type worries (how do we know that a chinese built nuclear power plant is not one huge suitcase nuke?) will hinder free competition in tenders until overwhelming safeguards are in place. AKA IV generation nuclear power plants.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 11:17:31 I am not saying that seb is wrong on scale. Right now, the nuclear industry is producing light trucks almost exclusively. It is quite possible that market demand is really for minivans or SUVs. A huge actor would still benefit from downscaling because it would give true volume of production when looking at the matter globally.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 12:40:36 There's simply no way that nuclear can make meaningful short term contributions to tackling climate change, because as you say jergul, it's too late. The growth in Asia is great, but they are following largely the path that the West took, capturing international demand will be challenging (I'm also not entirely convinced the Chinese regulators aren't as captured as the Americans were in the 60s so I'm far from convinced it would be safe to buy Chinese). In any case even their roll out doesn't have enough will trained engineers etc. to scale out rapidly, ditto the fuel cycle. Nuclear may or may not have a rosy future in the next 30 years, but it's not going to be able to scale to meet substantial proportion of electrical production by the time we need to be at net zero (it may turn out to be better in the long term). Sadly, the time for that decision was in the 90s, when Sam et al were adamant that climate change was not happening, a communist conspiracy, or driven by solar cycles.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 12:43:39 I.e. short term, if the problem is "how can we scale nuclear to displace carbon in a significantly useful way over the next 30 years" the answer is you can't. The French experience in the 70s post oil shock came after several decades of growth in the industry and peak expertise, in part driven by the need to build a fuel cycle and industry to support generation of fissile material for military purposes. That's why they decided to do it: it was already very achievable because the foundations were in place.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 13:23:10 Seb I think Sammy was adamant about his teenage mutant ninja turtle collection in the 1990s. I actually liked Adam Ant. Though that was a bit earlier. I agree. Nuclear can contribute, but it is not and cannot be a silver bullet. Its added value is mainly as a niche product (the money for baseload would still be better spent upgrading and expanding on hydro most places. This includes retiring obsolete non-producing dams, so its not all about expansion. Diminishing returns are not yet in play there). The whole point of IVth generation is being foolproof. If you worry about Chinese stuff, then its still III+ generation. But that is 20-30 years down the road. China is at least consolidating similar designs now. Which bodes well for its future.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 13:24:55 Niche product = small. So argues in favour of your miniaturisation thoughts.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 13:36:14 Example Anywhere small with a sub-quality attachment (heh) to the national grid with thermal/desalination needs in addition to electricity. Baseload electricity 50MW + 35 MW Thermal Additional 10 MW smaller scale hydro Another 5 MW Biothermal 10 MW Solar heating 20 MW wind 20 MW solar x.33 = 150 000 households. Not including industry and commercial activity. Jergulmath, but you get the points (there are actually several).
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 17:05:28 Jergul: We were all here in the late 90's no? I'm sure he had his TMNT collection, but he was spouting fox news bullshit back then though. Consistency bias is half his problem.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 18:03:46 Yes, quite. I have always wondered why he went with "sebbed!" I would have opted for substitution. Seb-optimal, seb-standard, the seb-prime crisis. But he does commit. You can say that about him.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 18:06:20 I forgot: Seb-human. An alternate reality classic!
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 18:11:05 lol, I actually had to check the timelins "His holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985)" Indeed. Murchoch took over fox prior to the 90s.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 18:27:00 Or Sam-stistics even. You had to check that? Fox news was a thing before the 2000 election of Bush.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Jan 24 18:54:21 "Nim: If I gave you a stack of cash and told you to build the reactors that the French built up until the 80s, you would not be able to do it. " Then how did the french do it in the first place i wonder? Lol seb you fucking brontosaur.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Jan 24 19:00:15 Seriously seb, id get your shit checked for brain cancer. You have experienced a marked deterioration of basic reasoning skills over the previous decade.
Seb Member	Fri Jan 24 19:57:29 Sam: I already answered that question, repeatedly and in depth. The French in the 80's had been building nuclear reactors of varying scales for decades with huge subsidies in order to sustain a nuclear fuel cycle to make a sizable nuclear arsenal. So they had loads of people with the know-how and tacit knowledge to design and build nuclear plants, and they designed and built them using the kinds of materials and components that were available then. For example, yay asbestos cladding etc. If you wanted to try and build the reactors the french built then, if you were able to track down all the plans, and all the amendments made to those plans during construction, and integrate them - and you could find the people who would correctly interpret any ambiguities in them - the first problem you would find is that you can't find the exact parts they specify. You'd have to find analogous parts and then check they actually met those specifications. Sometimes, you'd find that those specifications were never actually guaranteed by the manufacturer, but the nuclear industry themselves had determined that they met the specification. So you'd need to re-certify the components. In other cases, you'd discover (yay, asbestos) that you actually can't use that shit anymore, and need to develop an alternative. None of this is particularly surprising. There are people all around the world that spend ages trying to build *authentic* historical buildings: i.e. using the same materials, techniques and designs used in medieval periods. It takes them a lot longer, because they are literally re-learning obsolete techniques and materials - which you would be doing here. But the fact that something has been made obsolete does not mean that the successor will be an adequate replacement in a niche environment. E.g. this lovely new alloy that they use to make such and such a pipe is for most purposes much better, but does it get more embrittled when subjected to 30 years of neutron flux than whatever they used previously? If so, welcome to the world of BNFLs collapse. This idea you can just "build more of the reactors the french did in the 1970's" is a naive historical reenactment. It's just easier at this point to design a new reactor from scratch. The fact you don't understand why is your own failure to understand how industrial processes actually work. This is why you are faffing around building SLS rather than just building another run of Saturn IVs. You literally cannot build "another" Saturn V. At best you can make an amateur attempt at what you think a Saturn V was, based on some scant documents, using an entirely different set of materials - and you'd probably not be building it in the same way and that might have consequences. As your first one blew up on the pad, the ghost of some dead engineer would be whispering "idiot cold pressed that sheet to form the widgit, everyone knows that leads to unacceptable embrittlement - what a chump" or something like that. These things are not all recorded studiously in blueprints. IT is technical know-how. Blueprints are code for human compilers, and if the industry changes or, as in the case of nuclear, essentially stops and dies for 20 years, it's like trying to get Fortran 70 written in the 80's to compile on a modern fortran compiler. It won't work without a fair bit of refactoring.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Jan 24 21:24:06 Right, and none of that shit existed before we made a working nuclear industry the first time. But no, it cant be repeated. Lol get checked.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 23:49:28 Sammy To duplicate in the west would play right into what Seb is saying. Starting off with say 4x60MWe reactors to scale down the magnitude of potential fuck-ups. Next generation is 30 MWe, so a step-back (The example I am using is the UK). The road to large nuclear plants was incremental and ended decades ago.
jergul large member	Fri Jan 24 23:52:59 Employment has changed too. An engineer of the 1950s would have a huge entourage of support staff, so anything he learned would spin-off into journeymen, technical drawers and even electrical engineers. The sum is a broad base of technical know-how. Things do not work the same way when you employ subcontractors and as few people as possible.
jergul large member	Sat Jan 25 00:05:57 Ultimately, this is about rebuilding and keeping civilian nuclear competence by getting to serial instead of small volume batch production. There are two options. Go global, or go small. Both have problems.
seb Member	Sat Jan 25 03:56:16 Sam: No. As I've just explained you don't have the supply chain which existed then or the workforce; because France, having built a stockpile of plutonium and heu, isn't building loads of military reactors. Indeed hasn't built a reactor for years. When France decided to drastically scale out nuclear in response to the oil shocks of the early 70s. Can you not read? Ok, so your building a new reactor, trying to ape the ones the French built in 1970-1980. Basically you can only forward predict the life span for about 30 years, and your entire basis for saying it's cheaper is a life extension to 60 years. But you are using new components built from different materials, to different standards, using different techniques. So there's no basis to think that's certainly going to happen. Plus capex and finance costs are likely higher than then, while electricity prices cheaper.
seb Member	Sat Jan 25 04:00:53 Jergul: going small makes it easier to go global. The state isn't needing to stand behind individual projects, so the question of "why are we subsidising foreign state owned company" isn't an issue. Ultimately you might get to the point where the reactor core is as much a commodity item as a diesel generator. Yes there are brands with varients, but they take the same fuel and they a much of a muchness from a regulatory perspective.
jergul large member	Sat Jan 25 05:04:32 Seb Easier than impossible does not make it plausible. It seems more likely that civilian nuclear reactor sales will be dominated by a few companies with true global reach. I am not sure that "subsidising a foreign state owned company" is traditionally how we measure the impact of buying things.
seb Member	Sat Jan 25 09:45:37 Jergul: Buying say, a stream turbine from Siemens is one thing. Having an open ended agreement where you effectively agree to compensate a French company if they can't complete the plant they are contacted to on time or on budget; and gaurantee them 30 years of fixed price electricity way above market rates if they can; and they own the plant itself... that's definitely subsidising it. This works for the French govt buying plants in France from a French company owned by the French govt. It doesn't work at all for a non French customer. The French govt gets gauranteed profits, the British taxpayer bears all the risk.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Jan 25 10:54:30 Seb Ok, that is food for thought. The issue is an even bigger cluster fuck that I imagined. Frustrating.
jergul large member	Sat Jan 25 12:02:56 Seb Yah, I don't see that business model being competative on the global market. Though on pricing. Baseload electricity is inherently more valuable than intermittent supply. Demand-response is not a good way to regulate baseload demand (though is imaginably useful for peak demand, but peak demand is a grid capacity regulator most of all). Norway has 5,3 million people, is 95% hydro and we still make a dog's breakfast of pricing. The picture becomes orders of magnitude more complex with mixed supply and larger populations. I have no idea of a rational way to pay baseload suppliers the value of the electricity they produce.
Sam Adams Member	Sat Jan 25 13:56:11 "As I've just explained you don't have the supply chain which existed then or the workforce" Of course we do. Half the fleet is nuclear powered. Duh. Even if we didnt we would simply build it. Like we did the first time. Lol dumb bureaucrat is dumb.
Sam Adams Member	Sat Jan 25 14:01:47 "I have no idea of a rational way to pay baseload suppliers the value of the electricity they produce." You dont need to figure that out, silly commie. The market settles on an appropriate price.
jergul large member	Sat Jan 25 15:06:49 Sammy Except the market does not actually do that. It settles on an appropriate price for all power and does not differenciate between baseload and intermittent. This hits nuclear energy particularly hard as it has high fixed costs and very low fuel costs. The industry gains nothing by cutting back on production when energy gluts cause prices to fall. So you end up with all kinds of crazy contracts, minimum price assurances, and debt guarentees. Hydro at least can save its water resevoirs until prices improve with cloudy, windless days. The issue is problematic to a point where using electricity to refill hydro resevoirs seems like a brilliant idea despite energy losses it incurs. Carbon capture *might* help. Intermittent, energy intensive capture might take away some of the glut pressure.
jergul large member	Sat Jan 25 15:08:43 Sammy How many naval reactors of what size do you actually think you have and what do you think the yearly production rate is?
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