General > General Technical Chat
Germany shutting down last nuclear power plants on April 15th
daqq:
--- Quote from: tom66 on April 14, 2023, 10:25:22 am ---Well, aluminium can be made anywhere.
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Yes. So can everything else. That's kind of my point.
Neutrion:
--- Quote from: asmi on April 13, 2023, 06:33:18 pm ---
A lot in nuclear fission competence will be applicable to fusion power plants when we will get there, also as I mentioned before fast breeders not only provide power, but also allow getting rid of old nuclear waste, so in my opinion their somewhat higher price is justified because of that aspect.
Another aspect to it is that it's not just operational competense, but also scientific one, which tends to follow NPPs, especially if those plants are actually designed in the country, and not just purchased elsewhere as a turnkey solution. Do you know where the most of somewhat recent super-heavy elements were first synthesized? Do you think it's an accident that the country has been quite active in the NPPs construction?
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The science won't be lost, and it is quiet much different in NPP compared to fusion especially in the 30-40 years time if than at all fusion will be an option.
Please note, that even wind power, a comparatively simple tech took 30-40 years to mature to the current level, so expect the same timeframe from the point when the first practically working fusion power plant prototype will be built in the future. So to the current level of renewable cost we will get in around 40-50 years. If at all. During that time renewables will be even cheaper.
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 13, 2023, 08:03:52 pm ---
I also think it's just not possible in any near future. Just fricking do the maths with any kind of existing tech and what is reasonably possible.
You (and people making the same claims) are somehow reversing the burden of the proof by asking people to prove that it's not possible, when basic facts and evidence is all over the place, while claiming something that is backed only by speculation and fantasy at this point. Unless maybe you have a very elastic definition of "near future", of course.
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Well we already mentioned the tech:
1. Renewables.
2.Power to gas storage (Check it, a Swedish company already provides the tech in household scale,
so the physical demonstration is there if someone would not belive it is possible to produce hydrogen with current, and water. Scaling it up is all what is needed.
3.Connecting the power networks properly.
4.Demand management. In the UK the first flexible tariffs are introduced now.
It just cost money, but it cost less than ruining the planet. And compared to the amount what people spend on some nonsense throwaway stuff, including regularly buying a new smartphone just to have even more camera on the back and similar nonsense, the cost is actually peanuts.
--- Quote from: daqq on April 14, 2023, 11:34:28 am ---
--- Quote from: tom66 on April 14, 2023, 10:25:22 am ---Well, aluminium can be made anywhere.
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Yes. So can everything else. That's kind of my point.
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It is a valid point, and it happened in the last 30 years with many industrial stuff. The reason why China is the biggest polluter is actually because we outsourced our pollution there, and even now their pollution pro person is much lower than peolple in the EU or US.
And that is why the green import taxes are going to be needed, and they are in planning as far as I know. So companies can move, but than soon they can only sell their products to elswhere.
Siwastaja:
--- Quote from: daqq on April 14, 2023, 08:35:23 am ---Capacity is not the same as power.
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Yeah, which is understandable because "capacity" is not a physical entity at all, just a made up marketing word which can be arbitrarily defined.
Just like we engineers are fine with derating tantalum capacitor nominal voltage by 40% instead of wasting our time in discussing whether the stupid tantalum capacitor rating culture is Klaus Schwab's lizard conspiracy, we engineers can also look at the actual energy production graphs of wind power, which are widely available (or more complex metrics, if interested). Of course, projecting into future is always a tad difficult.
For example, directly replacing 100GWe(rated nominal) of nuclear by 100GW (rated nominal) of wind and claiming nothing else changes is obviously not going to work. Another strawman argument, because no one in their right mind would suggest doing that. Right? If they do, please show where such mistake is happening.
Kleinstein:
It is hard to replace all the fossile fuel by renewables, but it is not impossible. In some areas (especially air transport) it will be quite a bit more expensive than the current situation, but so is life.
Flying on nuclear power was a bad idea to start with.
Nuclear power is only helping to rather limited degree - building a lot more NPPs takes too much time and to really make a difference there is just not enough uranium (at least not for the existing designs).
The other point with nuclear is, that it is expensive. AFAIR the UK is guaranteeing a price of some 17 cents for the new build NPPs. For wind power they calculate with some 5 cents in favorable places and PV often gets less then 10 cents. So in many areas there is little economic sense in building new expensive nuclear power.
Some high energy industries (e.g. aluminium some chemistry like fertilizers and maybe steel) may have to move to regions with cheaper renewable power. It makes little sense to have them in areas where the supply is difficult.
For Germany it may have been the better decision to run the NPPs a little longer. Given the relatively good safety level / record (execpt for the high temperature thorium one) it would have made more sense to shut down the NPPs in Belgium and keep the better ones in Germany running. Still the difference to coal is not that big and ideally, without the war in the Ukrain it would have been gas and not coal to provide a little more power. Neither nuclear nor coal are desireable, they are best avoided both.
Siwastaja:
--- Quote from: daqq on April 14, 2023, 08:35:23 am ---See attachments (yes, possibly cherrypicked data, but quite realistic scenarios):
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So what's the problem you are seeing?
The near-zero dips (deep enough that doubling or even quadrupling the capacity would still not help, because multiplying near-zero by even a large number is still very little) constitute just maybe 5-10% of the time. You can just burn fossil fuels during that time, just like we used to do, with the exception that currently (well, not anymore everywhere) we pretty much burn fossil fuels all the time, not just 5-10%.
The whole idea of adding renewable ("uncertain") energy sources is to replace fossil fuels joule by joule, and it works out well exactly because fossil fuels can be easily stored and burning them is relatively cheap. Storage question: already solved.
Once the opponents of wind power totally ran out of credibility with their "the power is insignificant" arguments, they went full 180 degrees and excess renewable production has been made a big deal, but it doesn't have to be. If we have nothing to put the extra energy in, then... so what? All that happens is it worsens the economics of the wind turbines as they will see partial duty cycle, but it also brings down the prices of competing forms of energy, and with on-shore wind being now one of the cheapest forms of energy, even if it gets somewhat more expensive again it's still not a problem. Of course, again we will see the same discussion shift: wind power was supposed to bring prices up, and when it brings the prices down, then suddenly low prices will be the next bad thing. I have heard this a few times already: wind bad because wind makes electricity cheap! Market bully!
In other words, storage of energy is not at all mandatory to enable renewables and significant reduction in fossil fuel use; not at all! It is just that improving the storage options would make a lot of sense. It always did! Nuclear required it nearly as much as renewables. But we had cheap fossil fuels, and we needed wars to gain access to said resources. One such war is currently on-going in Europe, to gain access to more gas, to be sold to Germans, paid by the Finnish taxpayers.
Even ignoring CO2, the nastiness of the politics that goes with fossil fuels is reason enough to reduce their use. While CO2 scales down linearly, political uncertainty scales down even better. Once you buy less, you as customer can choose the terms, including price.
We engineers see problems and solve them, and sometimes it's a bit weird as laymen come and interpret this normal process of progress as some kind of "crisis". "Oh look, they are trying to store energy, LOL, they are desperate" or something like that. Pretty weird IMHO.
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