Small Modular Reactors Exacerbate Challenges of Nuclear Waste
news.stanford.edu
news.stanford.edu
This paper seems to have rustled a lot of feathers:
- NuScale's rebuttal: https://s24.q4cdn.com/104943030/files/PNAS-Letter-Reyes-NuSc...
- Terrestrial Energy's rebuttal: https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06...
Any citation suggesting competitiveness always neglects the subsidy of disaster insurance, which cost would exceed operations cost if paid. Instead, society at large pays it.
Renewables are by a large margin the cheapest sustainable energy production systems ever fielded. Storage cost is falling even faster than renewables costs still are. (Until we have enough renewable generating capacity to charge storage while meeting demand, building out substantial storage would be a misuse of funds better spent getting to that point. By that time, storage will be very, very cheap.)
Renewables are being built out faster than ever, but still way too slowly to fend off climate catastrophe. Diverting money from renewables build-out to anything else brings catastrophe nearer.
https://www.un.org/en/energy-compacts/page/compact-247-carbo...
If enough people/companies commit to buying carbon-free energy for every hour of the year, then money will naturally flow toward reliable sources. Let the best technology win.
If you want to not find a way, it's very easy to not find a way.
If you do want to find a way, then maybe you'll find one. Ukraine for example is trying to find a way to defeat the Russian invasion. I think they will find one. They are also trying to find a way to build more nuclear reactors, 9 of them [1]. I doubt Ukraine is in the mood to throw money down the drain.
[1] https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/energoatom-and-wes...
Ukrainians are as subject to irrationality as any population, and had recently been perceived as suffering a corruption problem. It is the role of economic analysis to recommend action based on facts. Drawing recommendations from what people choose without, particularly where corruption prevails, produces pathological outcomes.
When Ukraine is next in a position to invest in infrastructure, we may expect a bias for lower-cost, less-central infrastructure, thus favoring renewables. Erecting solar sharing fields with crops would be a good choice. Siting ammonia synthesis adjacent, for fuel, fertilizer, storage, and sale of surplus would be another.
They might be motivated to equip themselves to produce their own nuclear weapons, for quite understandable reasons.
This is not a law of nature. Nukes are technology. The cost of technology goes down in times as people make progress in that area. But if people stop building new stuff, they stop making progress, and they even regress.
America and the West stopped building nuclear power plants 30 years ago. Except for the naval nuclear reactors. America still churns them at a steady pace. Roughly new Virginia-class submarine is being commissioned every year, and a new Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier every 4 years. Columbia class submarines will be build at a pace of about one every 4 years too, the first one is being built now. All in all, the US is manufacturing between 1 and 2 nuclear reactors per year. The costs are classified, but you can infer indirectly that they are around $2-3 BN / GW. That compares quite well with the more than $10 BN / GW for civilian reactors. It is even cheaper than the capital cost for a state of the art coal power plant.
If we just increase the manufacturing of naval reactors from 1-2/year to 10-20/year, then why would we not see a decrease in cost?
That's the whole idea of the Small Modular Reactors. NuScale estimates that their levelized cost of energy will be $40-65/MWh. The average price paid by the US consumers last year was about $140/ MWh. In New York State, the average price was $220/ MWh.
You could say that the levelized cost of energy for solar is only $30/MWh. But that is based on the existing plants, and guess what, there are lots of plants in sunny California and few in New York State. If you want to build a new solar plant in NY State, then the levelized cost of energy will be higher. That cost cannot continue to decrease indefinitely, for the simple fact that the price of solar panels can only go to zero, but not less. After that, you're still left with the cost of land acquisition, of hooking to the network, with the maintenance, labor, etc, etc. Those costs won't significantly go down. The cost of land acquisition will actually go up, as you built on cheap land first, and then you need to move to more expensive one.
There is no method known or conceived to get power out of nukes other than via heat engine, such as boiling steam and running that through a turbine. So, on top of all the other operating costs -- mining, refining, handling fuel, disaster insurance (always subsidized by taxes), decommissioning cost, spent fuel handling, security -- there is the cost of maintaining ye old steam turbines.
Thus, there is no conceivable prospect for nukes ever to get as cheap as (e.g.) geothermal, which expenses are mostly just the steam turbines. But rewables are undercutting geothermal, now, because they don't need to maintain any of those. I.e., maintenance cost of renewables is also extremely low.
Land acquisition is not an issue, because solar and wind both coexist nicely with agricultural and many other uses, often synergistically. Agricultural yields increase; crop, reservoir, and canal evaporation loss decreases; roofs last longer.
Here's a better comparison. The legendary General Electric turbine LM2500 [2]. GE has built more than 2300 such engines, which operate lots of civilian and military ships and also function as electricity generators in various places.
The top of the line such engine is LM2500+G4, which can generate 35 MW and costs about $12 MM. That comes at about $350 MM/GW. That's absolutely negligible compared to the cost of a nuclear power plant, and it is a third of the cost of a solar power plant (see the EIA report [3], page 179, where they estimate a 150 MW such plant to cost - only the components - $172 MM, which translate to $1.15 BN/GW).
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/geothermal-po...
[2] http://www.fi-powerweb.com/Engine/Industrial/GE-LM2500.html
[3] https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...
My point was about operating cost, which for a steam turbine includes regular periodic maintenance. Where geothermal operates them at a lower temperature than a nuke, one might expect to need less frequent maintenance, so geo remains a conservative standard of comparison. Of course both nuke and geo have lots of piping to maintain.
The point was that solar incurs no such operating cost, besides dusting off the panels once in a while, and inspecting and replacing failed units.
These things add up.
Here's a study by NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory), which is very unlikely to be biased against solar [1]. On page 31 they estimate the annual costs O&M (operating and maintenance) costs for a 10 MW solar plant at $144k. That comes at $14 MM/GW, or about $350 MM over a lifetime of 25 years.
Just so we're clear, I read Austin Vernon's piece about why nukes cannot be economical [2]. It's just not convincing. He compares the thermal part of a nuke with a coal power plant. A coal power plant is much more complex, since it needs to move around millions of tons of coal every year. A better comparison is with natural gas power plants.
Luckily, we can check the EIE study I liked to before [3]. I normalize all the costs to 1 GW.
Coal (no CO2 capture): $3.7 BN
Natural Gas (no CO2 caputure): $0.7 BN (yes, you read that right, it's on page 77)
Fuel cells: $6.7 BN
Nuclear: $6 BN
Geothermal: $2.5 BN
Hydro: $5.3 BN
Offshore wind: $1.2 BN
Onshore wind: $1.7 BN
Solar: $1.3 BN
So, Austin Vernon's argument that turbines can't be competitive because we've had coal power plants for hundreds of years is simply flawed. Natural gas power plants can be extremely competitive from the CAPEX point of view (of course, they burn gas that costs money, so overall they are not that economical compared to solar). But if you pair the turbine from a state of the art natgas power plant with the steam coming from an inexpensive SMR, there's no reason to not be competitive.
[1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/74840.pdf
[2] https://austinvernon.site/blog/nuclear.html
[3] https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...
China is planning on building about 228 nuclear plants to provide 250 GW of power. It looks like they are very serious about de-carbonizing their grid. They will likely develop a lot of expertise in building nuclear plants.
https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/power/weekly-data-china...
Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors).
Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power. Even considering the load factors the picture is pretty clear.
Something to remember here is that the vast majority of that 26% is hydroelectric (maybe 18% or so). Wind and solar provide only a few percent of the power that is produced.
The bad news with those numbers is that they won't be able to grow hydroelectric by very much as there aren't many places they haven't built a dam already. The good news is that with such low percentages for solar and wind, there is plenty of growth available before they run into real problems with the intermittent nature of wind and solar.
If China can decarbonize its grid with solar/wind and some new grid storage they develop in the future that would be amazing. If China ends up decarbonizing its grid by building hundreds of nuclear power plants along with solar/wind, that would also be amazing. I think we are in agreement that the goal is really to decarbonize the grid.
Indeed, however this is all about heavy industry (producing gridpower), and about recent trends. Hydroelectricity is a way older industry than solar and wind.
Photovoltaïcs: from 0MW (2000) to 306560MW (2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China#Solar_pho...
Wind: from 2GWh produced in 2005 to 655600GWh in 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China#Installed_...
> run into real problems with the intermittent nature of wind and solar.
Denmark already produces 55% of its electricity thanks to wind and targets 84% by 2035 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
In China the effect of spreading-out production units is well-known since at least 2009: "Liu et al. investigated wind energy complementarity across China, demonstrating that whereas a combination of wind and solar resources over a given area reduces the occurrence of zero-power hours, wind resources alone are sufficient to provide baseline power production, if a large enough area is considered." Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...
> the goal is really to decarbonize the grid
It is a goal, not the (single) goal. There are others criteria: risk, waste, cost, dependency towards uranium, decommission-related uncertainties, ability to export know-how with profit...
If I recall, the paper was based on wind data for 1 year. Unclear how much variability there is over time or will be in the future with climate change. The estimate is that over a wide enough area the occurrence of zero power hours is greatly reduced but it doesn't claim that wind is sufficient to provide baseline power production. We will see I guess.
>...Denmark already produces 55% of its electricity thanks to wind and targets 84% by 2035
The capacity factor for wind power is still low in Denmark. They are able to rely so much on wind because they still burn fossil fuels and fortunately the neighboring countries don't heavily rely on intermittent energy sources and can buffer Denmark's under and over supply of electricity. This works for Denmark, but not every country will be so lucky to have neighbors with nuclear and hydro capability. For Germany one estimate is that for it to rely only on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their current capacity. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...
If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have built it decades ago. In order for everyone to only use intermittent energy sources though, it will be necessary.
>> the goal is really to decarbonize the grid
>It is a goal, not the (single) goal.
It is possible there will be some major advances in grid storage that will allow us to stop using fossil fuels to cover for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. In that case - great, problem solved! But... what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are facing in the coming decades are immense. If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?
They selected 2011 as representative and detailed it, however the underlying numerical series cover decades (see the 'Ninja' project https://www.renewables.ninja/ )
> how much variability ((...) will be in the future with climate change
Indeed, there is a non-negligible challenge here. It is also true for nuclear, for example when it comes to cool a reactor down: water ill be more and more scarce, heating it isn't neutral, installing a reactor on seashore exposes it to sea level rise...
> capacity factor
Is way less a criteria for production units not consuming any fuel (wind, solar...) not waste.
>. They are able to rely so much on wind because they still burn fossil fuels and fortunately the neighboring countries don't heavily rely on intermittent energy sources and can buffer Denmark's under and over supply of electricity.
Yes, and each and every clean energy source type now needs such a backup.
No industrialized nation (bar maybe very low-population density coupled with huge natural resources, mainly hydro) can produce all its electricity without either not negligible curtailment or burning fossil fuel in 'backup' powerplants.
Even hugely-nuclearized France could never, cannot (and don't even plan to) produce all its electricity thanks to nuclear: around 9% of their electricity is produced by backup 'thermal' plants: gas (methane), oil, coal, see https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/editi... ), either due to load-following or peak consumption.
> For Germany one estimate is that for it to rely only on solar and wind
AFAI no nation targets such an ordeal, they plan to reduce the need for backup units to an acceptable (and always lower) level thanks to production units geographic spread-out, mix (solar, wind...), storage (including V2G) and low-impact curtailment.
> If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have built it decades ago
No, mainly because there was no perceived need (burning fossils was practical and cheap), and also as some rather recent advances (network management enabling better integration of intermittent sources, low-loss long-haul powerlines ((U)HVDC...) facilitate such projects.
Applying nuclear reactors to real-world problems (in submarines, aircraft carriers and ice breakers) date back the 1950's, and the very same reactor architecture (PWR) wasn't adopted as the main type of electricity-production unit before the 1970's.
> (renewables) ((...)) what if that doesn't pan out?
It better does, as our current (worldwide) ability to build nuclear reactors is very weak, and weakening, and as there isn't any third approach in sight.
> If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?
For the time being, and quite probably for (at best) the next 20 years, there is no such option. Nuclear produces about 2.2% of world's total final consumed energy, with approx running 450 reactors. In order for it to produce about 22% we need to build approx 4500 reactors. This isn't even an option. France is one of the leaders and doesn't hope to have more than 3 new reactors by 2040...
>Is way less a criteria for production units not consuming any fuel (wind, solar...) not waste.
Not really. Capacity factor affects everything about a power source - it is stilly to pretend it is not a big deal. If you have to overbuild by a factor of N, that obviously increases the cost, land use, etc by that factor. If you need to spend billions of dollars to add new transmission lines or some hypothetical new grid storage, that also increases the costs by those billions of dollars. Everyone making any power source will try to get as high as possible capacity factor.
>> If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have built it decades ago
>No, mainly because there was no perceived need (burning fossils was practical and cheap),
Even when the power sources weren't intermittent, there were still many reasons to try and develop grid storage. Plants offline due to maintenance, differences in demand over a 24 hour period, seasonal differences in demand, etc. Any power plant is obviously a huge capital cost and having to build extra plants is not anyone's preference. The goal for having grid storage is why pumped hydro was developed over 100 years ago. In the 100 years since pumped hydro was developed, we haven't really deployed much of any other kind of grid storage. If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have been using it for a long time.
>> (renewables) ((...)) what if that doesn't pan out?
>It better does, as our current (worldwide) ability to build nuclear reactors is very weak, and weakening, and as there isn't any third approach in sight.
You didn't actually answer the question.
If countries actually decide they need them and commit to building them, they obviously can build them. France was able to build enough plants in a 15 year period to make it the majority of their power. We will see how many nuclear plants China builds over the next 20 years.
>France is one of the leaders and doesn't hope to have more than 3 new reactors by 2040...
In 2022 France announced plans to build six new reactors and to consider building a further eight. Admittedly politics always gets involved in this kind of thing and technology is always changing, so we will see how many they actually build.
Let's see what is silly here. I wrote "way less a criteria for production units not consuming any fuel (wind, solar...) (and doesn't produce) waste", let's check the details:
> overbuild > that obviously increases the cost, land use, etc by that factor.
The capacity factor, by itself, means nothing because its impact isn't direct: it is applied to some costs, emissions and land use. The costs of renewables is very low and declining (nuclear is high and raising), therefore the fact that a given production unit isn't always active doesn't cost. See the total cost of the energy produced (integrating capacity/load factors): https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2020
Same for their emissions, which are calculated by unit of energy produced and therefore also taking into account their capacity/load factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_intensity#Electric_ge...
As for land use the main renewable reserve in nearly all nations are offshore wind which doesn't use land, or hydraulics. Moreover in most nations there are unused/unusable zones, even on buildings/parking lots/arable zones (photovoltaics)/...
> If you need to spend billions of dollars to add new transmission lines or some hypothetical new grid storage, that also increases the costs
Indeed, and that's the reason why the very fact that the total cost of the energy produced by renewable energy sources is low (and declining) is of paramount importance because it offers financial provisions to compensate this.
The rest (no risk of major accident (nor risk of any terrorist/military attack triggering it), no dangerous waste, no dependency towards sources of uranium, no daunting decommissions, no hypercentralisation nor heavy bureaucracy necessary...) comes as a bonus.
> Everyone making any power source will try to get as high as possible capacity factor.
Absolutely, my thesis is not that such a strategy isn't always sound, it is that a low capacity/load factor isn't, by itself, a show-stopper.
> Even when the power sources weren't intermittent, there were still many reasons to try and develop grid storage
Yes, and it lowers the costs of the huge grid beneficial to renewable sources, because a quite large grid is good whatever the type of source (renewable or not).
In Europe the case is particularly clear:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid
> In the 100 years since pumped hydro was developed, we haven't really deployed much of any other kind of grid storage.
Because fossil fuels are so convenient for storage... and we then neglected carbon emissions. Now that peak oil/gas and climate are threatening, our attitude towards fossil fuel has to change.
> If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have been using it for a long time.
This is not sound as the objectives (avoiding emitting carbon...) and technical constraints (wind turbine and solar panels now available are much more efficient and industrial than those available even only 25 years ago) were different than ours: fossil fuels were considered vastly superior. They aren't anymore.
Same for storage: as the need for it raises, gorillas appear in the room (see batteries https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline , green hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen , V2G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ...)
>>> (renewables) ((...)) what if that doesn't pan out?
>> It better does, as our current (worldwide) ability to build nuclear reactors is very weak, and weakening, and as there isn't any third approach in sight.
> You didn't actually answer
IMHO I did, bar any other option than nuclear or renewable sources. Can you name one?
> If countries actually decide they need them and commit to building them, they obviously can build them.
In which wonderland 'wanting to' is equivalent to 'being able to'?
> France was able to build enough plants in a 15 year period to make it the majority of their power
This is not exactly comparable. France built a nuclear fleet in 25 years (1974-1999) See https://web.archive.org/web/20211225120958/https://upload.wi...
France was then equipped with heavy industry (it isn't anymore ), financially at ease (after the 30 Glorieuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses ) while it now deeply indebted, facing a way smoother challenge (the amount of electricity consumed was then a third of what it now it, moreover there was no 'electrification' (replacing all fossil fuels uses by electricity) real plan) and pushed by a major strategic risk (Arabs/Israel - triggered risk of oil embargo) while climate wasn't really a thing for long (and facts show that it really isn't yet).
This nuclear fleet then produced up to 90% of their gridpower. Note: this electricity is 25% of the total amount of final energy consumed in France.
As for present times France tries, since 2005, to build a reactor in Finland and it is a major failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant?... another one in France and this is another major failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan... 2 reactors were built in China (60% overbudget, 5 year late, 1 reactor stopped since mid-2017 after and incident and the other one in low-power mode for the same reason). The more recently launched project, in the U.K. is already drifting away and serious doubts about its economic performance are building up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C
> We will see how many nuclear plants China builds over the next 20 years.
The recent information about this is a Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... ) which states that the boss of Chine General Power corp. announced his plans 200GW for 2035, nothing more.
Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors).
Those last years China built between 1 and 5 reactors per year and nuclear produces about 6% of their electricity.
Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power.
From your lazard source on levelized costs, take a look at the Unsubsidized Levelized Cost of Storage Comparison-Capacity table. The storage extra costs to get around the variability of wind and solar are substantial. They will hopefully come down in the future, but when and exactly how much, no one could really say right now. If you want to actually rely 100% on renewable, you need to take into account the capacity factor - to pretend the intermittency of these power sources doesn't matter is silly.
>…As for land use the main renewable reserve in nearly all nations are offshore wind…
Well there are dozens of landlocked countries, so I am not sure I would say 'nearly all'
>…which doesn't use land, or hydraulics. Moreover in most nations there are unused/unusable zones, even on buildings/parking lots/arable zones (photovoltaics)/...
You have mentioned several times how cheap renewable power has become. As your source shows, rooftop solar has not been, is not and likely will never be cheap. Consumer rooftop is particularly expensive and the cost is is usually hidden by implementing a big subsidy to wealthy consumers that is paid for by less wealthy consumers - sort of a reverse robin hood scheme. We are well past the point where anyone can argue we should subsidize rooftop solar because we need to help build a fledgling industry - yet I see solar advocates continue to advocate for this wealth transfer from the poor to the well off.
>> If you need to spend billions of dollars to add new transmission lines or some hypothetical new grid storage, that also increases the costs
>Indeed, and that's the reason why the very fact that the total cost of the energy produced by renewable energy sources is low (and declining) is of paramount importance because it offers financial provisions to compensate this.
That is a bit of a handwave answer that ignores the actual costs (and difficulties) of doing that. One study estimated that to support renewables, the US would have to double the number of power lines at a cost of around 700 billion. Such a project could end up being much more expensive than that since in places like CA, climate change is causing dryer summers, which has lead to many more fires from power lines. There is now a move to spend billions to move current power lines underground. Besides that huge buildout expense of the power grid, one estimate is that maintaining even the current grid already costs $750 per year per customer. A substantially larger grid will cost more to maintain. Besides direct cost, getting agreement from all the stakeholders seems to sometimes be an issue - even the relatively small proposed Tres Amigas SuperStation has dragged on for many years.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-elec...
>> Everyone making any power source will try to get as high as possible capacity factor.
>Absolutely, my thesis is not that such a strategy isn't always sound, it is that a low capacity/load factor isn't, by itself, a show-stopper.
I never said it was a 'show stopper'. I said it was a big deal and right now it is neither cheap or simple to work around.
>> In the 100 years since pumped hydro was developed, we haven't really deployed much of any other kind of grid storage.
>Because fossil fuels are so convenient for storage...
A coal plant isn't cheap to build. A nuclear power plant isn't cheap to build. Building extra plants to cover for planned/unplanned maintenance, daily variations in demand, seasonal variations, etc. is very expensive and wouldn't have been done if anyone thought building grid storage was going to be cheap or simple. The very fact that the first pumped hydro was built a hundred years ago means people have been thinking about it for a very long time. The difference is that coal/nuclear/hydro don't absolutely need grid storage. Solar and wind do, so even if the cost is high, it would need to be paid.
>…Same for storage: as the need for it raises, gorillas appear in the room (see batteries https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline , green hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen , V2G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ...)
Yes there are lots of people researching grid storage since it would be impossible to build a reliable grid using intermittent sources without it. And hopefully, we will find some technologies that are economical and scalable. In order to meet climate goals, there will have to be much more dependence on the grid as fossil fuels are removed from transportation, heating, etc. The goal has to be to make a carbon free grid that is at least as reliable as the current grid. As the small power failure in Texas showed blackouts kill people. Not only does our economy rely on reliable electrical power, so do human lives.
>> You didn't actually answer
>IMHO I did, bar any other option than nuclear or renewable sources. Can you name one?
My original question was simple:
>…It is possible there will be some major advances in grid storage that will allow us to stop using fossil fuels to cover for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. In that case - great, problem solved! But... what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are facing in the coming decades are immense. If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?
>> If countries actually decide they need them and commit to building them, they obviously can build them.
>In which wonderland 'wanting to' is equivalent to 'being able to'?
If we could build nuclear plants 50 years ago, we can build them now. This isn't like nuclear fusion where we've never built a commercial plant. France went from about 0% to >70% electrical power from nuclear energy in 15 years using the technology available in the 1970s. We haven't entered some primitive dark age where he knowledge to build a nuclear power plant has been lost to time.
>> France was able to build enough plants in a 15 year period to make it the majority of their power
>This is not exactly comparable. France built a nuclear fleet in 25 years (1974-1999) See https://web.archive.org/web/20211225120958/https://upload.wi...
France built the bulk of them (56 reactors) in about 15 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
>As for present times France tries, since 2005, to build a reactor in Finland and it is a major failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant?... another one in France and this is another major failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
The EPR is a next generation design that was supposed to be a French/German collaboration, but since Germany decided to phase out nuclear power, Siemens sold their shares in the joint venture. (If Siemens had been involved, maybe things might have gone smoother.) It does make one realize that the approach France took in the 70s of using a proven design and committing to building a number of them was a good approach. France has recently committed to to implementing small modular reactors, which is what a lot of people are recommending. We will see how they do.
>…Those last years China built between 1 and 5 reactors per year and nuclear produces about 6% of their electricity.
To add some context, in 2009, China's National Development and Reform Commission indicated the intention to raise the percentage of China's electricity produced by nuclear power to 6% by 2020. In 2018 the China NDRC said that China's nuclear generating capacity must increase to 554 GWe by 2050 if the country is to play its part in limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5 °C. They estimate nuclear power would grow to 28% of power transmitted on the grid.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
In terms of the present, China has released its 14th Five-Year Plan covering the 2021-2025 period and announced its aim to increase its nuclear power capacity by 40% from 50 GW in 2020 to 70 GW in 2025.
https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/nucl...
Much as China now dominates solar cell production, it appears that they intend to dominate nuclear power plant construction. China plans to build as many as thirty nuclear power reactors in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative by 2030.[17][18][19] On COP26 in 2021 China has announced plans to build 150 new civilian reactors until 2035.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
If China can decarbonize its grid with solar/wind and some new grid storage they develop in the future that would be amazing. If China ends up decarbonizing its grid by building hundreds of nuclear power plants along with solar/wind, that would also be amazing.
Yes, and we have to consider new ways to tackle this, for example as already stated V2G (using vehicles' batteries, powerwalls...), green hydrogen...
> you need to take into account the capacity factor - to pretend the intermittency of these power sources doesn't matter is silly.
Yes, let me repeat: I don't ignore it and wrote that it is "way less a criteria for production units not consuming any fuel (wind, solar...) (and doesn't produce) waste", nothing less or more.
>> As for land use the main renewable reserve in nearly all nations are offshore wind…
> Well there are dozens of landlocked countries, so I am not sure I would say 'nearly all'
7% of world's population https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/groups/Landlocked-... Onshore wind/solar/hydro stay potentially pertinent, and nations enjoying nothing of all this are rare.
> You have mentioned several times how cheap renewable power has become. As your source shows, rooftop solar has not been, is not and likely will never be cheap.
This is true but, just as your argument about the LCOE not integrating all costs, don't neglect that a local (rooftop...) source alleviates all distribution costs and losses, and also consumer-dependency.
> big subsidy to wealthy consumers that is paid for by less wealthy consumers
This is a political problem.
> I see solar advocates continue to advocate for this wealth transfer
I, for one, am opposed to any subsidizing.
>> add new transmission lines or some hypothetical new grid storage
> that ignores the actual costs (and difficulties) of doing that
I showed that a dense grid is pursued whatever the type of source (nuclear also massively benefits from it), and this is true for many perspective (economical, supply guarantee, flexibility...). The era of loose and local grids is over since the 1970's.
> One study estimated that to support renewables, the US would have to double the number of power lines at a cost of around 700 billion
Let's approximate. Production costs / MWh (LCOE): renewables at $80 (this is wayyyy too high...), nuclear at $120 (wayyy too low) / MWh https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2020
Let's neglect the trend (renewables getting cheaper, nuclear getting more expensive) Yearly demand: 4000TWh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=ch...
(* 4000000000 (- 120 80)): 160 billions/year spared production-side thanks to renewables
(/ 700 160): the system will be paid for in 5 years
That's neglecting that renewable relieve us from bad surprises: major accident, uranium prices/availability, waste management, decommission overcosts/overdelays...
> being much more expensive than that since in places like CA
CA's grid is notoriously way under-connected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California#Electrici...
> climate change is causing dryer summers, which has lead to many more fires from power lines
This is true whatever the type of source (renewable, nuclear, oil...).
Climate change will also impact nuclear reactors installed near rivers (cool down).
> to move current power lines underground
And this is, indeed, a major way to bump costs up. However there is no other realistic way when the line has to cross a densely populated area.
Renewables only add quantitatively to the necessary grid. Qualitatively the very mesh (interconnections) are already considered as justified (economically sound) even with a 100% nuclear (at this stage completely impossible) option.
> getting agreement from all the stakeholders seems to sometimes be an issue
Yes! This is a major point. It also plays for production units: the NIMBY effect is quite stronger against nuclear and fossils than against renewable units.
>> Everyone making any power source will try to get as high as possible capacity factor.
>Absolutely, my thesis is not that such a strategy isn't always sound, it is that a low capacity/load factor isn't, by itself, a show-stopper.
I never said it was a 'show stopper'. I said it was a big deal and right now it is neither cheap or simple to work around.
>>> In the 100 years since pumped hydro was developed, we haven't really deployed much of any other kind of grid storage.
>> Because fossil fuels are so convenient for storage...
> A coal plant isn't cheap to build. A nuclear power plant isn't cheap to build
They are way cheaper, compact and they used to be less-NIMBY-inducing than double-lake hydro plants! They were more flexible too, and stay way better at inter-seasonal storage.
> Building extra plants to cover for planned/unplanned maintenance, daily variations in demand, seasonal variations, etc. is very expensive and wouldn't have been done if anyone thought building grid storage was going to be cheap or simple.
Grid storage simply wasn't even an option before at best the 2000's No 'green hydrogen' concept, batteries wayyy too expensive (see https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline ) and therefore rare, and consequently no V2G (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid )...
> coal/nuclear/hydro don't absolutely need grid storage. Solar and wind do, so even if the cost is high, it would need to be paid.
True, however a very large part of hydro potential is already built and ready to serve for quite a while.
> the intermittent nature of wind and solar > what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are facing in the coming decades are immense. If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?
Nuclear is, right now, not panning out. It produces around 2.2% of world's final energy consumed, with 450 active reactors. In order to nuclear to provide a mere 22% of the final energy needed now we have to build 4500 new reactors. The average new reactor type produces around 1.4 times more than the average existing one, therefore 3215 new reactors would be sufficient (neglecting the necessary replacement of existing old ones). Does it seems realistic to you? Did you check the overcosts and overdelays of reactors built since the 2000's? They are huge!
Uranium reserves at current conditions can provide for at best 200 years (more probably 130 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium ), therefore the conditions (price and emissions, as the raise as the ore grade lowers, see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2051332 ) may worsen. Who will take the risk and invest?
Even investing in order to build a few reactors is distracting huge money from more efficient tools (renewables). Worse: as fixed costs (mining uranium, designing reactors, safety agencies, waste management logistics...) are high and necessary for any amount of reactors. Paying all this for a few reactors leads to an even more expensive system, distracting even more resources from more efficient tools.
>> In which wonderland 'wanting to' is equivalent to 'being able to'?
> If we could build nuclear plants 50 years ago, we can build them now.
Since the 2000's, which nuclear reactor was built without being massively overbudget and overdelay, then now works flawlessly?
> France went from about 0% to >70% electrical power from nuclear energy in 15 years
I already answered.
This is not exactly comparable.
France faced a way smoother challenge the amount of electricity consumed was then a third of what it is now.
France built a nuclear fleet in 25 years (1974-1999) See https://web.archive.org/web/20211225120958/https://upload.wi...
France was then equipped with heavy industry (it isn't anymore ), financially at ease (after the 30 Glorieuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses ) while it now deeply indebted, moreover there was no 'electrification' (replacing all fossil fuels uses by electricity) real plan) and pushed by a major strategic risk (Arabs/Israel - triggered risk of oil embargo) while climate wasn't really a thing for long (and facts show that it really isn't yet).
This nuclear fleet then produced up to 90% of their gridpower. Note: this electricity is 25% of the total amount of final energy consumed in France.
> France built the bulk of them (56 reactors) in about 15 years. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
This is false, it took 25 years https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_r%C3%A9acteurs_nucl%...
> The EPR is a next generation design that was supposed to be a French/German collaboration, but since Germany decided to phase out nuclear power, Siemens sold their shares
France mastered building reactors, and therefore can theoretically recover (Siemens bailed out in 2009).
> China has released its 14th Five-Year Plan covering the 2021-2025 period and announced its aim to increase its nuclear power capacity by 40% from 50 GW in 2020 to 70 GW in 2025.
My answer stays: Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power.
Terrestrial Energy's rebuttal is scathing. For example
The authors then quote a value of greater than 10^12 n/cm2-sec as the IMSR’s thermal flux reaching the vessel; they conclude this will make the used vessel very radioactive. However, they reference a university paper (REF 29), whose authors clearly state they are unfamiliar with the IMSR design and that they merely made assumptions to do their modeling.
Here's another quite grievous mistake. The whole assertion that SMR's produce "increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30" relies in the calculation for sodium-cooled reactors, where the factor was found to be 30. For all other reactors, the factor was 5 or less.
Now, for sodium-cooled reactors, their claim is that the vast majority of the waste (about 75%) is the sodium itself:
Ultimately, the sodium coolant generated several hundred cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste. The 30-MWth Toshiba 4S reactor might generate 115 m3/GWth-y of contaminated pyrophoric sodium coolant in need of treatment, conditioning, and disposal.
Sodium has only one stable isotope, sodium-23. Sodium-23 is a weak neutron absorber. When it does absorb a neutron it produces sodium-24, which has a half-life of 15 hours and decays to stable isotope magnesium-24.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
Yucca Mountain would have been the solution, but it was blocked and then defunded. Then, the absence of a permanent storage facility got used as an argument against expanding nuclear, in some cases by the same people.
Renewables are much better in this respect - through there is still a lifetime material cycle to think of, it's much simpler a problem to address.
Nuclear waste only exists as a problem to kill investment. We'd just dump it deep in the ocean, but it's too valuable for future use (unlike renewable waste).
It is a completely made up issue to allow the nuclear industry to say "what about wind turbine blades?!" trying to draw an equivalency between nuclear waste and inert fiber glass.
> The catch here is that while wind turbine blade recycling is technically possible, landfill disposal remains the most cost-efficient and accessible option in many cases.
> “Physical and material scientists can recycle blades now," Eric Lantz, wind analysis manager at National Renewable Energy Laboratory told USA TODAY in an email. "But, broadly speaking, scaling up recycling technologies will require more research and development to maximize the value of the recycled materials and improve the economics of the processes.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/11/30/fac...
This makes no sense. Silicon-based solar panels are almost entirely recyclable (so if they leave any waste, you're doing something horribly wrong), and even if you couldn't use the somewhat problematic aged wind turbine blades in construction materials (which to my understanding you actually can), the weight of the global turbine blade waste mass is a tiny fraction of the global mass of other comparable waste (plastics, etc.) that our civilization is already generating. So "[holding] 100 years of turbine blades or solar panels" is an extremely unlikely thing to happen.
There would of course be no public interest in "holding" used-up wind turbine blades because they are not a public health hazard. If you were obliged to hold them anyhow, it would be super-cheap for that same reason, so would not add any to the cost of turbines.
By contrast, in addition to the expense of handling nuke waste, we are all subsidizing every nuke via indemnifying it against every conceivable disaster. We are obliged to do this because buying disaster insurance would push the price of nuke operations far, far outside even traditional marketable-cost envelopes.
Meanwhile, renewables + storage now cut way, way under traditional costs, such that nothing else is even conceivably competitive anymore, most places. In places where solar and wind are not locally practical, it is becoming similarly impossible to compete, in predictable near-future scenarios, with importing synthetic fuel from more favorable sites e.g. in the tropics.
(There are of course exceptions, such as where geothermal is already in place, but even there expanding geo is a hard sell. Steam turbines always require expensive periodic maintenance.)
We are assured a house fire cannot make your neighborhood a superfund site. I hope they are right.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Macfarlane
The authors if this study are chemists, geologists and mineralogists. Two of the three companies who's reactors were investigated already published rebutals, claiming the authors used incorrect inputs for the study.
Drawn-out discussion of consequences of things we will not do in any case is a waste of time.
No, they're not. While they're definitely not good for you they're not anything special when it comes to toxic materials. You're just unaware of all the other equally poisonous stuff humanity deals in at "industrial scales", most of which doesn't get safer by ignoring it.
At least we can detect radiation with simple equipment. Detecting most other types of contamination with some type of molecule that's no good for organic life even at low doses is far more involved. Until people start keeling over you generally have no idea whether there's bad stuff in your dirt or water.
The factories that make all sorts of things that make your modern life possible necessarily handle some stuff that's really, really, nasty in the concentrations in which they handle it.
Yes, they are - an unshielded used fuel road will give anyone within feet of it a lethal dose of ionising radiation literally in seconds. They’re over 10,000 rem/h, and exposure to 100+ causes acute radiation sickness and death.
Sticking your hand in a food-grade oven will not give you burns. When you touch the insides, you will receive second degree burns, but those burns are not going to be fatal. On top of that, the oven can be turned off, and is completely safe to handle in that state. and the oven will need to be state.
Comparing your oven with spent fuel rods is ridiculous (assuming you are referring to a food-grade oven operated on gas or electricity).
Neither apply to nuclear waste.
A single fuel rod can kill millions without them even knowing why they are dying.
Your daughter will not die from playing with a burning stove, she will burn her fingers and stop. In Brazil, a little girl ate an egg with radioactive dust on it. [0]
Your stove will not slowly kill people living on the other side of the wall.[Happened in russia].
The water supply will not be ruined if you drop your stove into it. If someone puts your oven in a truck full of fertilizer and detonates it in a large city, it will not kill millions of people and make a large area unsuitable for human life for thousands of years.
So fuel rods really are ferociously dangerous, in a way that very little else on this earth is.
As we've seen from the industrial hazards of the 20th century, once people start dropping dead the living start asking questions. It's impossible to really kill that many people with a spill of any type. Poison a watershed, render land uninhabitable, sure, but killing millions is childish fantasy.
Carbon pollution you can smell and feel long before it's lethal.
You have to actively cool them for 5 years before putting them in a dry cask.
If you fail to keep them cool, they will release a lot of bad stuff.
One big potential disaster which was narrowly averted at Fukashima Daiichi was related to a leaking spent rod cooling pool.
The modern, large scale nuclear reactor was designed for making plutonium, not energy [2].
PU-239 has a half life (meaning it will be emit half as many radioactive particles per second) of 24,000 years. PU-239 is a gamma emitter [3], meaning its radioactive particles can slice through DNA, causing chromosomal and heritable damage.
So... it's not quite accurate to say they're "not dangerous." BTW, there is no way to "dilute" radiation, it doesn't work that way. Radiation comes from subatomic particles, not the matter they're contained in. Moving the matter (container) around doesn't "dilute" the particles, it only exposes more people to them!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-235
https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
The amount of fuel waste is small enough that burying it underground in places like Finland with suitable geology seems like a workable solution. The long-term risk doesn’t compare with the immediate threat from climate change, IMO.
Note that reactor vessels themselves are sometimes at least partially underground in a reinforced concrete pit in the containment.
I've always thought deep underwater would make sense, provided the containment was very good. You would never have to worry about a meltdown really since there's an unlimited heat sink readily available and the reactor could be constructed to passively cool itself through convection in a total failure / walk away scenario.
Problem is that if you break containment water will carry all that nasty radioactive material everywhere. I'd look at ceramic fuel packaging such as pebble beds or sealed fuel rods that are highly water insoluble, then waste vitrification or encasement in highly water insoluble glass or ceramic materials.
Until you have to. ;)
Not every country even has candidate sites. And there's a lot of issues from "I think we have a solution" to actually having implemented it.
Only in the political sense. Waste volumes are small enough that we easily could if they were willing to dig a big enough hole.
Putting the waste on a ship with the potential of the ship sinking or having an accident elicits a big "nope" from me.
France has plenty of problems with its nuclear power. Germany is moving away from Russian gas, and a lot quicker than Russia would like.
The problems France has with its nuclear reactors is the need to replace them and build new ones.
(a ship sinking is usually an environment desaster, but the nuclear waste sinking should be a very small concern because the waste are fixed in glass, and water absorb radiation)
Scaling nuclear power up by factor of 10 to 100 means scaling transport of nuclear waste up by the same factor at least. Including all the risks associated with it. People are not going to take these vague assurances after so much has gone wrong in the past.
Are you aware the several nuclear submarines have sunk? Their fuel is enriched far higher than terrestrial nuclear plants (>80% for nuclear subs, ~20-25% for power plants). Yet no adverse impact is observed. Even in cases like Kursk where some radioactivity release is monitored, it subsides to background levels just a few meters outside the wreck.
Which is surely one of the reasons why they generate less waste -- less non-fissile fuel to be irradiated, smaller reactor vessels to be activated, etc.
Plus the average power generated is way lower for a nuclear submarine. A single commercial ~1 GW nuclear reactor quite likely produces as much power as the whole US submarine fleet on average, and there's hundreds of such ~1 GW units in the world.
And less power means fewer fission events, which means less activation and less waste. So even a sunk sub is nowhere near the levels of a sunk commercial waste fuel shipment when it comes to what either of the two could release into the environment should the bad stuff leak out.
Can't they just dig down? Are you saying some countries don't have bedrock?
Once you’ve done this to little effect, the wrath of the whole world will fall on you for breaking this taboo. So it’s really not worth the trouble.
https://thebulletin.org/2014/01/mexicos-stolen-radiation-sou...
> Thus the consequences of this incident appeared to be less grave than in two earlier cases—in Brazil in 1987, and in Thailand in 2000—when unsuspecting scavengers who dismantled old radiotherapy machines exposed themselves and their families to very high doses of radiation. Four of the exposed people died in Brazil, and three in Thailand, and more were seriously injured. The cost of cleanup and recovery for their communities was substantial.
> Officials, especially in the United States, were relieved that the stolen Mexican capsule did not end up with terrorists, who could have used it to build a “dirty bomb.” Even though many planning scenarios predict that such a bomb would probably cause few radiation-related deaths, its economic impact could be disastrous.
Two previous incidents of material disappearing killed the thieves, and even still a dirty bomb isn't any more dangerous than a regular bomb to the intended victims. They're essentially not really a thing as I posted earlier. You'd probably just bake yourself trying to build one.
Do it in a place like Manhattan and the cost to remediate would be potentially huge. We're not talking about turning an isolated former nuclear or chemical weapon production/storage facility into a nature preserve, but returning a 'slimed' dense urban area into one suitable for long-term human habitation. That's the real power of a radiological dispersal device.
(Yes, this is unintuitive. It's also true. The ocean is huge, the abyss not very active and water is great at blocking radiation.)
Have you ever seen what oceans do to glass over time?
I don't care what your imaginary nuclear scientist says or what the general public thinks.
Step 1 would basically be instilling Joe Q Public with an appreciation for quantification and if you can do THAT you've also solved a huge range of problems unrelated to nuclear power at the same time. This is also an _extremely_ difficult step that I'd expect to cost tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in education and propaganda.
"17,000 containers and 19 vessels with radioactive waste, as well as 14 nuclear reactors, five of which contain hazardous spent fuel."
Seems to me we already have a working solution. We have been storing nuclear “waste” for more than 60 years like this and nothing ever happened. Problem solved.
You normally don't hear about these kind of problems because of course the people responsible don't let the simple and stupid stuff happen. But this has to be prevented forever for all practical purposes, for all waste ever generated.
And so far most of the nuclear waste has been stored right were it was used. SMRs are supposed to be everywhere. So nuclear waste will be everywhere, ready to get stolen, or shot at or blown up.
So it is a relatively close call. To close to hand-wave away the possibility of terrorists or failed states abusing nuclear material.
Just hand-waving away future risks like that does sound intellectually dishonest and careless to me.
The answer is “kick the can down the road and hope we find a better solution.” That’s not a bad plan, but we do need a better plan so that local governments are not stuck holding the bag for power companies that are long gone, having left their nuclear waste behind. I would like to avoid an “EPA nuclear super fund” To deal with messes after the fact like we have from industries in the last century.
EDIT- it does sort of seem like treating nuclear waste the same as other industrial waste and sending it off to approved Class III landfills should be acceptable. So then, kicking the can down the road leads to the public being forced to accept nuclear waste at a Class III landfill.
ISIS in Mossul contemplated building dirty bombs, for example.
- nuclear reactor containment domes, like hydro dams, are built to withstand a few bombs or the impact of a fighter jet, or maybe even a tsunami or once-a-millenium major quake
- neither of the two are built to withstand nuclear weapons or continued bunker busters - that's the job of the military...
No, apparently not all reactors are built that sturdily. Certainly the proposed SMRs and micro reactors have no such ambitions. Fukushima was built to withstand Tsunamis and earth quakes. The topic of "impossible accidents" actually happening makes the public a little uneasy about predictions by pro-nuclear salespeople.
The whole argument about dams vs nuclear plants is pointless.
It’s not like the rocks were not dangerous before we dug them out.
One day, we can dilute it; for now, it seems fair to store it in case it comes in handy later.
Wellll.. we have really good technology to reprocess the worst and reuse it as fuel. The problem is, we don't do it, because this is a whole lot like what you'd do to make nuclear weapons and there are proliferation and security concerns.
> It needs to be kept safe for many millenia.
The vast majority of the risk disappears in a few hundred years. Very radioactive also means "decaying quickly".
Compare to other industrial byproducts that stay equivalently nasty for tens of thousands of years and more readily dissolve in groundwater.
In many jurisdictions, PUREX is routinely used to extract remaining fuel and chemically segregate the worst daughter products. A lot of the actinides can be burnt up in a normal reactor, like 239Pu.
Of course, in the long term, transmutation of LLFPs into precious metals is interesting, as is burning up more of the waste in e.g. fast reactors.
It really isn't hard, just unintuitive thanks to movies like Godzilla and shouted against by environmentalists who refuse to quantify the damage.
They're dangerous too. Natural Uranium decay creates radon gas, which seeps up through the ground an accumulates inside buildings. That radon then decays, and the products of that cause lung cancers that kill more than 20 thousand people in America every year, and contribute to 2% of cancer deaths in Europe.
The problem is concentrated in a few areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_and_radon_in_the_enviro...
I grew up in one of those areas; in public school they taught us about the importance of radon testing and making sure your house, basement particularly, is well ventilated.
An frightening anecdote from wikipedia:
> The danger of radon exposure in dwellings received more widespread public awareness after 1984, as a result of a case of Stanley Watras, an employee at the Limerick nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Mr. Watras set off the radiation alarms (see Geiger counter) on his way into work for two weeks straight while authorities searched for the source of the contamination. They were shocked to find that the source was astonishingly high levels of radon in his basement and it was not related to the nuclear plant. The risks associated with living in his house were estimated to be equivalent to smoking 135 packs of cigarettes every day.
There's a reason you don't see very many natural concentrations of dangerous fission products in the wild.
There have been a few naturally occurring nuclear reactors but that was when the Earth was younger and the natural level of uranium enrichment was different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
The corium (melted reactor core) underneath Fukushima is fissioning right now and releasing fatal amounts of radioactivity. Nuclear fuel rods are purposely designed to put a (sort of) efficient amount of fissionable material together in a (sort of) efficient configuration, originally called a pile.
Fuel pellets made of U-235 (and the rods they are stacked into) absolutely do fission on their own, and for a very long time. They're only removed from the reactor because the efficiency has gotten so low as to be nearly useless for power generation, not because they're safe.
You're incorrect here on the nature of moderators - they moderate neutron flux, but they don't moderate the reactivity, they increase it. Fast neutrons are less likely to cause a uranium atom to fission so you have to slow emitted neutrons down to generate a sustained chain reaction.
In the absence of a whole lot of work a (fresh) uranium fuel rod is fairly inert. It doesn't produce much heat or very dangerous levels of radiation. Once you put the work in to generate a sustained chain reaction the U-235 starts turning into vastly more radioactive isotopes. For comparison U-235 has a half life of 700-million years, while Caesium-137 has a half life of 90 days.
The corium underneath Fukushima is fissioning because it's full of shorter half life fission products from its time as an active reactor, not because of the remaining Uranium. Now some of that Uranium is presumably getting fissioned by neutrons flying off of all of the other stuff decaying in there, but in 20,000 years time when the core is fairly inert nearly all of the U-235 left in the core as of today will still be there.
The fact that every nuclear power plant produces these and we store them in swimming pools is really not great.
Not to push coal, but by comparison, nothing that can ever happen in a coal plant can create the unfixable mess at Fukushima, or the one at Three Mile Island, or the one at Hanford, or many other nuke accident sites. These are simply not "cleanup-able" situations and they will continue to fission for thousands of years.
I think you mean a class I landfill/disposal wells, unless there's another scale I don't know.
Something like a Yucca Mountain isn't perfect, but it's better than that.
The nice thing about nuclear waste is the hazard disappears over time.
The worst of it is spent fuel. Spent fuel does needs cooling for 40+ years. Then after 300-400 years, the vast majority of the hazard is gone. Yes, it does take tens of thousands of years to completely vanish to baseline.
Compare to various kinds of nasty toxic-to-life things that more readily dissolve in groundwater and are equivalently nasty for tens of thousands of years.
The radiation hazard disappears over time but how do you know this stuff isn't poisonous for example?
Oh, it is -- it's mostly heavy metals. But:
- We're not going to stop using heavy metals.
- We produce a lot less of it than other heavy metals-- so we're talking about a tiny portion of this hazard.
- We can reasonably expect it'll be a lot better disposed than what we typically do with heavy metals.
Yes, nuclear waste is dangerous and needs careful, well planned management. OK. Are we serious about addressing carbon emissions, or not? If we are, it's something we have to figure out. It's not beyond our capability, and any risks need to be considered in light of the alternative of continuing to dump carbon into the atmosphere.
Anyone complaining about nuclear waste is a troll or ignorant.
Radioactivity in coal ash is primarily due to small quantities of uranium in the coal. It's not significantly radioactive, though; the hazards it poses are more due to other heavy metals which are often present in the ash (lead, mercury, etc).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-ra...
And e.g. neodymium extraction for wind turbine magnets produces waste with radioactive thorium https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
Also consider that we will be able to recycle the materials used so the extraction should level off to only supplying potential market expansion and loss.
CCGT turbines are a bit different in that they have turbine first, and then the same steam boiler to turbine setup.
That is why I ask. All generation from mechanical sources needs generators, they need control circuitry. Steam plants need boilers, cooling towers and what not.
Just wanted to point out that singularly focusing on "hurr durr renewables need to dig stuff out from the ground and not made using pixie-dust" is quite the irrelevant take since the entire energy generation industry shares so much complexity, no matter the source of energy.
Is iron mining and refining as toxic as, say, lithium? Particularly when adjusted for how much extra mining you have to do for a particular amount of end product?
Just throwing out factors to consider like you are doing (and I just did) is not very useful unless you also include some numbers for scale. Do some research and share.
https://www.evwind.es/2017/05/31/rare-earths-and-wind-turbin...
https://rmi.org/rmi-reality-check-greener-friendlier-alterna...
Furthermore, batteries do not require rare-earths. (A formerly-popular chemistry needed cobalt, which is not one.) Finally, "rare-earths" is just a name; the ones used industrially, including in some wind turbines, are not rare, and are anyway recycled.
So, no, no, and no.
We will need energy storage, eventually, after we have built out enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. Fortunately, storage cost is falling very fast.
I certainly might be using the term "rare earth" imprecisely, but cobalt is used in most batteries and mining it is in fact detrimental to the environment. It's just much more localized pollution than releasing methane or carbon, which is for sure a win in the climate change fight.
You say storage cost is falling very fast, but again, what are the technologies being used backing up that storage you mention? I'm pretty sure it's batteries, but I'm totally open to facts saying otherwise.
Storage as anhydrous ammonia or liquified hydrogen is attractive because tankage is cheap and transportable, and it can be burned in existing turbines or sold to other utilities or to industry as feedstock, fertilizer, or fuel. International shipping is has begun converting to ammonia fuel.
Storage as liquified nitrogen is similarly attractive. The production equipment is very mature tech. LN2 is boiled in ambient air to drive a turbine.
Underground compressed air is attractive because it is simple and cheap. Extraction is via turbines, optionally spiked with fuel.
Underground hydrogen is common because it is simple and slots into existing NG infrastructure.
Various underwater methods -- compressed air, evacuated-cavity, buoyancy -- are very cheap if the mechanical parts remain onshore.
Battery chemistries competing with lithium use cheaper, often heavier, sometimes less inflammable materials. Iron, molten metal, sodium-ion, "flow".
In all cases, the determiner of competitiveness is economics. It is far from clear which aspects will dominate, and which will end up cheapest in them. Batteries cost per max MWh stored. Some cost per max MW in or out, with cheap tankage. Some are very cheap to construct and add onto. Some produce saleable surplus. Round-trip efficiency is all over the map, and in some is improving fast. Round-trip efficiency doesn't matter like it did when top-line generation was costly.
One thing we know is that Energy Vault, a $2B market-cap property, will not be in the mix.
Plus now you have to maintain and staff those facilities for millennia...
No mention of fuel reprocessing, or using it in a fast breeder reactor?
- Reprocessing generally involves plenty of kinda-horrific chemicals, and radioactive waste sludge stuff which is also (chemically) pretty horrific. With the (long, bad) track record of such facilities...yeah. Pretty hard to fault anyone who's a NIMBY about 'em.
- Reprocessing technology is a critical piece of having a nice, efficient modern nuclear weapons program. That gets into non-proliferation efforts, politics, and how well most national leaders react to "we can have & use that handy technology, but you can't".
- Fast breeder reactors are another really-important part of having a nice, efficient modern nuclear weapons program.
At best, those technologies could scale down the waste problem by a certain factor. It's not like you put in radioactive waste and something completely harmless comes out... There's still some radioactive waste left.
that is false. High radioactivity means a very short half life. You only need to store such things for a few seconds before they degrade into something else - normally something with a much longer half life.
The really bad stuff is only somewhat radioactive: enough to be dangerous, but degrades over a few ten thousand years. There are a lot of atoms in even a small thing, and so even with half life in the tousands of years range odds are still high that several atoms in a bunch will degrade at anytime, enough to push radiation above background levels. Of course things go through many cycles of decay before they become safe.
> There is enough energy in the nuclear waste in the United States to power the entire country for 100 years, and doing so could help solve the thorny and politically fraught problem of managing spent nuclear waste.
> That’s according to Jess C. Gehin, an associate laboratory director at Idaho National Laboratory, one of the government’s premier energy research labs.
* https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power...
Cheaper, too.
Efficiency has become much less important than capital cost because solar and wind have become so cheap.
Come on, please read things before citing them...
But if you get it a little too close together, it goes boom. So for all the reasons that nuclear reactors are expensive, a waste heat generator would be larger and at least as complex.
It won't go boom. One of the difficulties (of many) of the Manhattan project was that it was really really difficult to get fissile material together fast enough to cause a significant explosion. Those conditions are impossible in reactors. What does happen is that gaseous hydrogen is generated and that subsequently explodes.
A company called TerraPower is planning to build a test reactor soon.
For nuclear the target is being able to deploy many small plants where we need them quickly vs create in a decade or more one big + adapt the electricity grid to that. Let's say a powerful landslide crush a main high-voltage line: how many people are affected? How many cascading effects? How much time and cost to restore? Vs how quick and economic is just deliver by air few diesel generators? The issue with them is the hyper-big amount of fuel they need, but if we ever been able to create really small nuclear generator we can imagine future small cities with local-only infra for their electricity needs. That allow for hyper-big flexibility.
I suspect such push is done because of climate change and wars that probably, inevitably follow, so we want to be able to keep a kind of civil society in the storm... There will be a rush for the arctic but with melting permafrost is next to impossible developing infra there beside a very small scale. There will be a vast set of mass relocation due to floods and wildfires so again we need to be able to respond in emergency mode quickly. Probably no one is really sure what will happen, at what scale, in how many years and anyway planning for space exploration expansion we need something small enough to fit satellites and ships to Mars and Moon so, for earth we will need them to de-carbonize shipping... They are not something we can build for tomorrow morning so research on them is useful for many reasons.
I can't be sure, but IMVHO that's the most significant reasons behind this push.
Weren't the real reasons why we can't use nuclear power the long time needed to finish a plant and unreasonable economics?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
The nuclear waste problem never goes away, that's what makes nuclear power special. (I am not a nuclear power engineer.)
So I am for new nuclear power projects because we will need generations of people that can steward the waste regardless. And it's important to keep the ability and technical expertise with these materials for centuries. If the industry is abandoned the risk of a mishandling the waste will increase every year.
Having an advanced civilization means we're going to exploit the environment and generate waste products. It doesn't mean we can't exploit the environment sustainably or let our waste products harm the environment, but it does mean that a choice has to be made. We have almost 8 billion humans to house, clothe, and feed. Windmills aren't going to cut it. Unless you want us to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Renewable energy is actually more on track to solve the carbon emissions problem than nuclear energy.
"On track to solve" sounds like a forward looking statement, which goes back to my issue of people insisting on solving today's problem with tomorrow's technology. You simply can't put shovel in the ground today and build out a green solution to power manhattan, but you can start constructing a nuclear reactor with a proven design.
But it takes time to build out a wholesale replacement for existing global infrastructure. Fortunately, it takes much, much less time and expense than replacing with nukes, and much, much less expense than continuing to operate existing infrastructure.
We could have started this decades ago, and not be facing imminent catastrophe. Jimmy Carter (a former nuclear engineer) tried to get us on that road. The overwhelmingly biggest impediment to wholesale replacement for radically cheaper energy is social and structural inertia, chiefly apathy in the ruling class. Ignorance is the largest contributor.
Fortunately, storage cost is falling even faster than wind or solar ever did, so by the time we need much, it will be very, very cheap.
At present the main value in storage is load smoothing, where you don't need much.
1) Launch failure could scatter nuclear waste over a large area
2) It takes a LOT of delta-V to fire something into the sun. It took the world's most powerful rocket to put the Parker Solar Probe even close to the sun and that was only 700kg.
3) If it doesn't get to the sun it could easily return to Earth accidentally.
We aren't exploding the nuclear waste in the form of a bomb when we launch it via satellite. It could also just fall into the ocean in case of a failed launch, where it probably won't be a problem.
That’s why the US launches from Cape Canaveral (avoids all land), and Russia launches from Baikonur in Kazakhstan (avoids Chinese airspace).
Now imagine not only launching rockets, but nuclear rockets. ”Hello Mr Putin, yeah the rocket we’ve launched, it only contains nuclear waste, not nuclear weapons, we promise!”
What if the US government agreed to purchase “coined” waste after 30 years in circulation for a set, relatively high price, making it, in effect, a treasury or bond?
At the end of the day, this would incentivize production of nuclear power, kick the can down the road, incentivizes the US government to research storage or processing techniques or simply resell back into the market.
If the whole effort is backstopped by the potential to find a process 30 years out that can squeeze more energy out of old SNF or further refine it, then there's an interesting potential value store as well.
Low-enriched uranium (suitable for burning in standard power reactors) is 3-5% U-235
Highly-enriched uranium (suitable for building bombs) is >= 20% U-235.
Spent fuel is typically < 1% U-235.
If you are not thinking about cost, you really cannot be said to be thinking at all.
It's a false choice. Nuclear power has proven so unwieldy and hard to scale that renewable energy is going to be the faster solution, even if it is not fast enough.
And with renewable energy, the technology might advance faster than anticipated. With nuclear energy, the risk might turn out more catastrophic than anticipated.
Also, that was the reason everyone was so thrilled by the news that Russian troups camped and lit fires in the contaminated forests around the reactor, both endangering themselves and spreading more radioactivity. Of course there is much less material involved than with the original accident, but still one wants to avoid any of this.