Utopia Talk / Politics / We need nuclear power ...

Daemon Member	Wed Sep 28 06:12:24 ... because nuclear power is failing http://www...se-energy-situation-in-france/ BERLIN — Germany will "probably" extend the runtime of two of its three remaining nuclear power plants until April, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Tuesday, blaming energy supply issues in France for the decision. (...) Germany's energy emergency is forcing Habeck to backtrack on a key principle of his Green party. The original plan was to shutter Germany's three remaining reactors by the end of the year, but earlier this month, he opened the door for two of them — Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim — to be activated in an emergency. But with 31 of France's 56 nuclear reactors offline, Germany can't expect to buy the power it usually gets from France this winter. Habeck said: "If this development is not reversed, we will leave Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim connected to the grid in the first quarter of 2023." A final decision will be taken by December at the latest. Habeck said that a recent stress test by France's EDF indicated the country would generate only 45 gigawatts of power this winter instead of the expected 50 GW, and that could fall as low as 40 GW in February, calling earlier French forecasts "too optimistic." (...)
Habebe Member	Wed Sep 28 06:27:42 Yes...come to the darkside, forget Habeck and think Habebe. But be careful, Klaus is loving this.
Habebe Member	Wed Sep 28 06:33:23 Also, Nuclear power isn't failing. Poor maintenance seems to be at play. How does one schedule the majority of your power plants to not be working due to regukar maintance all at once. 4 of the 32 offline are for corrosion. The rest are routine maintenance.
Daemon Member	Wed Sep 28 07:35:48 "4 of the 32 offline are for corrosion. The rest are routine maintenance." ? http://www...wer-shortage-looms-2022-08-30/ EDF CEO Jean-Bernard Levy said on Monday that among the reactors that are closed, 12 were for corrosion problems and the rest were either shut for routine maintenance delayed by the pandemic or taken off-line to prepare them for winter.
habebe Member	Wed Sep 28 07:50:31 You are correct. 4 have known corrosion issues, another 8 for suspected from the article I read.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 28 08:11:42 They are old and all about the same age. You need to get to a sustainable continual rate of build, of a common design, with only incremental design changes.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 28 08:12:10 Aka product maturity. Nuclear never got there because of market dogma
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Sep 28 08:49:49 Something broke that isn't easy to fix in one of Sweden's reactors a month ago. Daemon, wake up! All of these problems including destroying western nuclear industry is by design. Nuclear failed because we didn't want it to succeed. Because your country and my country have been run with the help of people who emerged out of an ideological resistance to nuclear power, not global warming, not caring about "the environment", but scared of nuclear power.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 28 13:10:59 Nim: Not so much that, more a lack of proponents for it. Gas basically left nuclear needing supporters that would look at it and say: "yes, it is more expensive than gas now, and maybe always will be, but burning gas is bad, even if it is better than coal, and in the long run it gives us more security because the gas will run out". I.e. long term policy thought. There are always opponents to everything, but I think the real demise of nuclear is that it needs sustained and costly intervention from the govt or regulator to make it viable - and it did not fit with market orthodoxy of the 80's and 90's; plus it was more expensive than switching to gas.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 28 13:13:03 Public opposition to nuclear is overrated - I looked a decade ago at nuclear schemes in the west shit canned due to opposition to nuclear - generally the biggest reason was because it was seen as too expensive to alternatives. The exception is the wave of post Fukushima closures.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Sep 28 14:03:08 We don’t use gas in Sweden to any significant degree. And again, shutting down functioning reactors built and paid for long long ago in Germany or Sweden had nothing to do with the price of gas. The lack of long term planning and view is a factor in pretty much everything these days, you just feel it the most when the shit lines converge on energy production, since everything need energy. Nobody in their right mind would invest in nuclear when the political and legislative landscape was ambigious and hostile at times. This is true in Sweden and germany. Like I said there were far gone plans to build 2 new reactors as recently as a few years ago in Sweden. The reason for why they were not was policy decisions.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Sep 28 14:07:38 2012 to be excat. New Red-green governmant came to power in 2014 and those plans were shut down and the board on Vattenfall reshuffled to have ”the right competency” for reneawables. I wish this was the market failing to see things beyond the quarterly cycle, but it is a road paved with effort and good intentions with a long term view around renewables that ultimately leads to a cold frozen hell.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 28 14:45:11 Nim: Yeah, the shutdowns post fukushima are about the only thing. But how many new reactors were bought or commissioned between the 80's and 2010? You may not have used gas in Sweden, but your wider neighbourhood did, and the countries that would have provided the market (Sweden too small) for a nuclear industry with the scale and order book needed to run - they did. And that is why the nuclear industry is where it is. The hostility simply reflected the fact that the only people that cared about nuclear one way or another were the minority of green wingnuts. People who cared about power generation didn't see it as helpful: too expensive and too long lead compared to gas to be worth investing in. "policy reasons" - well, look at the EPR track record - policy reasons are as much about "these things are white elephants" as "argh nuclear".
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Sep 28 15:10:22 But how many new reactors were bought or commissioned between the 80's and 2010? Zero, because of politics. http://en....edish_nuclear_power_referendum After this referendum parliament decided that *all* reactors were to be shut down by 2010. It didn't happen because it was physically impossible and would have turned Sweden to North Korea. They did however add additional costs to nuclear power. Which of course again threw a wrench in any calculus. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rnkraftsskatt While subsidizing wind. "The market" has spoken! The shut down of Ringhals 1 and 2 are a direct effect of this "effect" tax and subsidizing of wind btw, without it the economic calculus would have been different. This is the legislative climate in the decades you ask about. 2010 parliament decides to allow for new reactors to be built to replace old ones and it has been this political seesaw. 2012 Vattenfall conducts their study for 2 new reactors and then another 2 years and we had this election and poof those plans die and Vattenfall is steered by politicians to concentrate on renewable. The effect tax was removed in 2018. As soon as the Social democrats sorta changed their stance early 2022, Vattenfall (the state owned energy company) started talking about SMRs. Not politics you say? Ok.
Seb Member	Wed Sep 28 15:25:29 Nim: I meant globally. An order book of two reactors isn't enough to sustain an industry. You are being a bit parochial.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Sep 28 15:48:42 Ok sure. I started talking about the specific situation here in Sweden, you asked follow up questions and I gave you more specific details about 1980-2010, and I am telling you that what you say isn't applicable. If you look at Germany in the same period, you will see roughly the same thing play out, but the Germans have been much less ambivalent and more extreme, their Green party got 14.8% in the last election. We don't have a natural gas industry in Sweden and Germany like you do in the UK, so it's not economic factor where we have the emergent dynamics of one energy industry competing with another. It's probably the case, that it varies from place to place, which multitude of factors are most prominent, and at the base sits political will. If it doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter what the market does. The down sides of nuclear power plants and their security risks inherently puts them at the center of policy making.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 29 14:00:06 Nim: Germany should have started investing in new plants from the mid 80s to 90s. During that time the proportion of gas production ramped up. Was anyone even proposing nuclear power during that time? Part of the reason there's so little support is there's no one purshing the nuclear industry because it's out of step with economic orthodoxy: state financing, high prices etc. Whereas gas is cheaper and can be left to private cos to finance. And if that's the case in the big economies then it takes nuclear off the table for the smaller economies because you need the kind of order book only larger countries can sustain. I guess what I'm saying is opponents to nuclear care about the technology. People don't support nuclear because of the tech, they are actually mostly "people who want to generate electricity" and if gas looks a better tech for building electricity on a per-power plant basis, it requires a govts to look at systemic benefits of nuclear sector and make it happen. That's the problem I see across the West from the late 80s. To even have that kind of function was against the economic orthodoxy of the time. Nuclear opposition is overrated: economics and political ideology on role of state were already stacked against it meaning there was no real sustained effort for opponents to fight against. What maybe did matter is that some of the people that ought to have been advocating for nuclear (against the economic orthodoxy of the day, on the basis of climate etc.) we're arguing against it instead. Not that they had many real schemes that were going ahead, and not that they successfully won in cases, just happened to be there when financiers pulled the plug.
jergul large member	Thu Sep 29 17:33:33 The scale is too small and the time line too short. You need a procurement strategy that puts 2 reactors from a specific company online at least once a year for decades. Its the only way to build up the highly skilled industry (at ever level, from design to cement pouring) that is needed to support volume. The EU definitely needs to rally around a single design type, then fund mass producing NPP (with 6 reactors to a plant). China and Russia can do it now...maybe. Russia due to the export market.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 29 17:46:42 I don't think you necessarily need two reactors a year. Depends on time to build, lifetime of reactor, reactor output etc. You need to maintain a full workforce at close to full utilisation in perpetuity. So if Europe want n GWs of nuclear where n is some number set by target proportion of power production, and lifetime of plant is y years, you need to complete a plant every n/y years and maintain a workforce that can do that at full utilisation. If you move outside of the parameters that let you do this at full utilisation of workforce then one way or another things go wrong. This is why SMR will probably beat giant 1000MWe PWRs in the long run.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 29 18:39:42 Whoops skipped a few steps but you get the idea
Forwyn Member	Thu Sep 29 20:48:40 AFAIK Japan Steel Works is still the only firm in the world able to forge a weldless containment reactor. They tripled yearly production from 4 to 12, and their orders are filled for years.
Habebe Member	Thu Sep 29 21:19:12 #hurriacane party!!! I'm drunk as shit! I'm busy fucking your mom's drunk. Letting her eat NY butthole drunk.I have footagenyou filthy savages!
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 01:57:51 Forwyn: For a while Sheffield Forge Masters was their only competition. I can't remember if they went bust or were bought by the japs. But weldless pressure vessels aren't just for high pressure water reactors.
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 02:00:00 Also this is precisely why HPW designs are a dead end. The higher the reactor output in gwe, the more exacting the design margins, materials etc. The higher the capes, the greater the risks (less known on long term performance).. The commercial proposition starts to become too big for the private sector even if on paper the price per kWh ignoring finance looks reasonable.
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 02:00:18 You need lots of smrs
jergul large member	Fri Sep 30 02:59:45 Seb I was talking about the skilled workforce needed to build reactors on site.
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 03:08:41 Yeah, I'm just saying I don't think it needs to be two reactors a year. You just need two near fully utilised workforces.
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 03:09:04 Which might be what you are saying also.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Sep 30 03:59:00 Seb Like I said I think it varies, I think cheap alternatives (way out of the complicated national nuclear discussion) has aided the downfall, but you are underestimating the political and public side and and simply wrong on important details: ”By 1992, a group of German and Swiss firms planned to proceed with construction of a HTR-500, a design that made considerable use of the THTR-300 technology. But the by then politically hostile environment in the light of the Chernobyl disaster as well as technical issues with the THTR-300 halted any effort.” -wiki You can’t seperate public opinion, driven by fear and the greens from this issue in most of Europe. You can easily google all western countries that have outright banned or legislated a phase out. I agree that the reason they have been able to, is cheap gas. But as you can sdd with Sweden, even when a country doesn’t go gas, the decisions is still taken to phase out, it creates an environment where it is impossible to build reactors. The time just runs out, reactors get older, and you have a slow bleed out while there is a tug of war.
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 06:39:51 Nim: I am not underrating the politics - I'm saying the chief dynamic in the politics is more that there was no institutional state support for nuclear as a solution to "how do we keep the lights on". "as well as technical issues with the THTR-300 halted any effort" Do you not see why investors (who usually get their way) will pull the plug when an untested design based on an older design that runs into technical problems? Fission is heavily capex and so a 50 year bet on plant uptime, electricity prices and real interest rates. Chernobyl and anti-nuclear sentiment is over used as an explanation. The real issue is there's nobody wanting to build them in the first place. Look how successful industrial lobbying has been on coal, on gas, on oil - and then look why there's hardly any pro-nuclear lobbying.
Seb Member	Fri Sep 30 07:01:45 It's easy to imagine there are just a few people that if you could just isolate or convert would resolve the issue. Truth is the nuclear industry largely wasn't/ isn't offering the right solutions in the first place. SMRs..
jergul large member	Sat Oct 01 02:10:10 Nothing particularly new about it. Russia deployed a purpose built SMR in 2020 and talks about using docked nuclear submarines for civilian electricity production have been floated around for decades. It has a serious not in my neighbourhood problem all NPPs have, but the issue is multiplied with SMRs. How many locations would you need to give the equivalent power of a single 6x1000 NPP?
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