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mobby_6kl posted:Yay! I've been hearing about them from time to time so that's good news. The closest we've built is the NIST facility, which is a scale model of the reactor module and decay heat removal system we've used to validate the design. You can see a bad picture of it at the top of this article, our public website sucks to navigate but I think it's got a few pictures as well. The first actual reactor won't exist until the UAMPS project starts building, unfortunately.
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Jan 24, 2023 10:16
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So am I correct that there are no SMR nuclear plants currently operating outside of Russia? Do we know how that's working out or are current international relations problems making that hard to track?
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Jan 24, 2023 15:39
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Jows posted:My station had to replace one of their main power transformers (~1000MWe) a couple years ago. We had a spare on site sitting about 80 feet from where it needed to be, and it took 17 days of round the clock work to execute and install. 1000 MVA transformer??? Are you sure about that? And yeah, the RRCs don't have power transformers, those are permanent install gear, and the whole point of the RRCs is temporary hotfixes to mitigate damage from LOOP.
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Jan 24, 2023 18:57
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Pander posted:And yeah, the RRCs don't have power transformers, those are permanent install gear, and the whole point of the RRCs is temporary hotfixes to mitigate damage from LOOP. Practical Engineering did a video on rifle attacks on a substations in North Carolina and he shows footage of mobile substation that was brought in to make one of them functional.
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Jan 24, 2023 19:12
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Pander posted:1000 MVA transformer??? Are you sure about that? It's kinda on the large side of things but it's possible to swap out in that kinda timeframe if you have everything organized right. At that size the cost of being down is many times the cost of around the clock labor. I'm guessing the 17 days clock started at the moment the breakers opened. The Nuscale website leaves a lot to be desired, I'm interested in how these things are going to be built and how fast.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:11
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Pander posted:1000 MVA transformer??? Are you sure about that? Yeah, it's big. I think the nameplate rating is ~1100 MVA. Reactive load or something - I dunno, electrons are magic.
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Jan 25, 2023 04:17
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The Energy Generation Megathread: Electrons Are Magic
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Jan 25, 2023 19:52
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Eric Cantonese posted:So am I correct that there are no SMR nuclear plants currently operating outside of Russia? Do we know how that's working out or are current international relations problems making that hard to track? HTR-PM in China seems to be chooching at full power supposedly: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/China-s-demonstration-HTR-PM-reaches-full-power
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Jan 25, 2023 20:36
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mobby_6kl posted:Yay! I've been hearing about them from time to time so that's good news. We'll see if any of the utilties go for it. If they can invest 1-3 billion and built on time and within budget, there may be appetite for these. But my understanding is the reactor building / turbine building for these is still pretty expensive. We'll see. mobby_6kl posted:HTR-PM in China seems to be chooching at full power supposedly: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/China-s-demonstration-HTR-PM-reaches-full-power In the U.S. they tried something similar at Fort St. Vrain in Colorado in the 1980s.
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Jan 31, 2023 06:33
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I got an email from Florida Power and Light telling me that rates are going up roughly 10% due to fuel price volatility and 2022 Hurricane relief. Odd. Let’s see here… Mmhmm. Mmmmmmmhmmmmm. Publically traded companies having a legal monopoly should be illegal.
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Feb 3, 2023 04:25
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I have become a keen watcher of https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source since it was posted in this tread. It allows me to notice that the French nuclear fleet is back up to 45 GW of power for the first time in a long time, gas generation consequently being reduced. It also lets me see just how fickle wind generation is. I dragged up from 6th of Jan to present and amusingly, at the time of lowest power requirement, wind energy was putting out ~8,700 MW and for the highest power requirement period, wind generation was at ~2,000 MW. Wind might be a cheap way to save some opex but for me it is almost irrelevant to the discussion on capex cost required for providing sufficient output unless it is relatively small fraction of the available hydro. As in, wind should be only proposed where it reduces incremental opex costs of other sources enough to pay for the capex of installing wind. It also shows that solar is really under-developed in France, its delivery timing lines up very well with the peak consumption requirements and still other dispatchable sources are having to ramp up even as solar comes online.
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Feb 3, 2023 12:57
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Electric Wrigglies posted:I have become a keen watcher of https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source since it was posted in this tread. It allows me to notice that the French nuclear fleet is back up to 45 GW of power for the first time in a long time, gas generation consequently being reduced. As for wind, check out December 4-14th as well.  Sure would've been nice to have some wind  Another fun site is electricitymaps.com which aggregates data from multiple countries/grids. Looking at the same period as you did, there's also an interesting pattern emerging Wind is correlated in all North-Western countries which isn't great either  The other cool thing about the French site is that you can also download an Excel with 30-minute granularity for the whole year and play with that.
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Feb 5, 2023 00:23
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That's a thing I've thought about for some time and interesting to see stats bear it out. Wind patterns seem to be large enough and not localized enough that you can say there's always somewhere in europe where the wind is blowing. Which bodes ill for that scenario. Not that it was ever a desireable or realistic scenario IMO. We're gonna need more nuclear regardless of how much wind is built is simple fact.
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Feb 5, 2023 11:34
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 i'm not exactly a "i love markets" guy, but its amazing the degree to which reality went one way while a decade of conventional wisdom in this thread insisted it must go the other (check the OP post date, its really been that long)
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Feb 5, 2023 15:27
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MightyBigMinus posted:
Huh, I didn't realise nuclear was producing more power than wind and solar until very recently. Thought Nuclear production had significantly decreased in the 2010s but is within a bee's dick of pre-2010.. Also, I think you continually misread the thread conventional wisdom. I don't really remember when it was conventional wisdom that nuclear is being widely increased in production and projects are getting executed in large numbers. The chart doesn't really say anything else does it? This thread is really supportive of renewables and I notice you weren't rushing in here to point out with freely available charts on how Germany getting rid of nuclear and embracing solar/wind has meant it has put in a dismal showing on reducing its carbon emissions per kw generated and therefore the thread conventional wisdom is wrong on liking renewables.
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Feb 5, 2023 15:45
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Reality isn't done with that chart yet. We didn't raise the one number, so now both will inevitably go down as increasingly erratic climate patterns disrupt the fragile economic and material cycles that produced gains for the other number. Also, more people fell off roofs than was needed. 
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Feb 5, 2023 15:56
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Electric Wrigglies posted:I notice you weren't rushing in here to point out with freely available charts on how Germany getting rid of nuclear and embracing solar/wind has meant it has put in a dismal showing on reducing its carbon emissions per kw generated
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Feb 5, 2023 15:58
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Do we need charts to prove that burning wood, peat, and coal makes extra CO2? Seems a bit, elementary
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Feb 5, 2023 16:03
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Pander posted:1000 MVA transformer??? Are you sure about that? How do you think those 1200 MW nuclear generators get their power up to transmission voltages? They need a transformer that can handle that power. Some stations will use two transformers in parallel, but some will us a giant single transformer. Lots of oil pumps and fans to keep it cool. For extra fun there are the 765kV to 345kV transmission transformers. Those things need to be so big they are actually 3 single phase transformers. At least that’s how my utility has them. I finally got to tour a 765kV yard last year, and the size and spacing of everything is just huge. Really simple yard, line comes in, two breakers and their MODs, two sets of transformers (so 6 total) and that’s it. And it is one of the bigger footprints out there. All the 345kV equipment was in its own separate adjacent yard.
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Feb 5, 2023 16:19
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MightyBigMinus posted:i triple dog dare you to cough up a chart (with at least a decade, preferably two, of context) that shows that To be clear, I meant Germany replacing nuclear with renewable (including biomass, which is not the win it is made out to be for emissions) as CommieGT used to constantly harp on about (but is mostly right) rather than using renewable to shut high carbon. A little confession first, I don't know how to host or otherwise put a picture in a post on SA. I tried finding out by looking up imgur but it is filtered where I am. Anyway, in lieu of embedded images, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#/media/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg is electrical generation for Germany, on first blush looks like progress. Now put the biomass under Nuclear (because biomass is just manufactured coal - a lot of it even goes through old coal power stations) and it can be seen that low carbon sources (wind, solar, nuclear) have mostly replaced each other (ie, wind and solar have replaced nuclear) and that biomass has replaced a bit of lignite/hard coal. Certainly, less intensive at the end of the chart than at the start (from about 30% low carbon to 50% low carbon in 2020) but; Let's look at a similar-ish sort of nation, France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#/media/File:FR_ELEC_PROD_PERC.png about 88% low carbon in 1990 to about 90% (again with wind/solar replacing nuclear for the most part but much smaller percentage). Not being able to get even remotely close to 1990 France in 30 years of desk thumping German renewable leadership is dismal. Now that wind farms are getting obstinate and unconstructive pushback, even the progress made is slowing. Now if nuclear had continued without expansion (but still achieved its renewable gains), Germany would be knocking on the door of 75% low carbon right now, a larger percentage if it had expanded (which was technically in its own capacity to do so unlike a lot of other countries such as Australia) - within cooee of France and a genuine leadership example for climate change action. Incidentally, UAE has gone big on solar more recently and along with a nuclear expansion will make simarlish improvements (ie about 20-25% increase in low carbon generation in the mix) in 20 years then what Germany has in 30 despite being a country I think most associate with climate denial living the high life off gas (the second bit is definitely true, not sure about the first).
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Feb 5, 2023 19:33
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literally the first result for googling "german ghg per mwh" reminder before you try to move the goalpost again: Electric Wrigglies posted:I notice you weren't rushing in here to point out with freely available charts on how Germany getting rid of nuclear and embracing solar/wind has meant it has put in a dismal showing on reducing its carbon emissions per kw generated
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Feb 5, 2023 19:59
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MightyBigMinus posted:i'm not exactly a "i love markets" guy, but its amazing the degree to which reality went one way while a decade of conventional wisdom in this thread insisted it must go the other (check the OP post date, its really been that long) The thread said we'd get hosed by climate change if we didn't roll out a whole lot of nuclear energy, that green energy alone wasn't enough. The thread was right
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Feb 5, 2023 20:14
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It's a pretty narrow window to view the conflict with. Wind and solar do not threaten oil and gas baseload generation and so have relatively proliferated in the last 10-20 years, whereas nuclear has to battle for its life just to keep existing generation, because it's being "made green" by replacing it with natural gas or renamed coal. None of this is news to this thread and indeed has been the subject of discussion numerous times. Nuclear does not generate CO2, reductions in emissions would not come from shuttering plants, nor would the recent sign of the trend reversing as energy becomes more expensive and precarious (also common thread knowledge) be because they realized they need to keep nuclear after all.
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Feb 5, 2023 20:26
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This video taught me a new word, Dunkelflaute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo
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Feb 6, 2023 07:10
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QuarkJets posted:The thread said we'd get hosed by climate change if we didn't roll out a whole lot of nuclear energy, that green energy alone wasn't enough. The thread was right I am not sure the thread ever proposed a solution to climate change. Do you have a post that actually provides a case that nuclear energy would enable the world to stop climate change in this thread? When I looked into this earlier, no one actually provided any evidence that we could produce enough nuclear power plants to even replace current fossil fuel electrical generation infrastructure, let alone the energy needs of literally everything not electrified.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:32
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Partial replacement is still far better than no replacement, and keeping reactors running safely is better than shuttering them early. No single thing is going to solve climate change on its own.
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Feb 6, 2023 08:37
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freezepops posted:I am not sure the thread ever proposed a solution to climate change. Do you have a post that actually provides a case that nuclear energy would enable the world to stop climate change in this thread? When I looked into this earlier, no one actually provided any evidence that we could produce enough nuclear power plants to even replace current fossil fuel electrical generation infrastructure, let alone the energy needs of literally everything not electrified. I thought everyone already understood that climate change exists on a sliding scale of extremity, the issue is not a simple binary between "oh no climate change is happening" vs "yay we stopped it" - an excess of 1 degree is a lot less bad than an excess of 10 degrees. Less greenhouse gas means less trapped heat, more nuclear power means less greenhouse gas, therefore more nuclear power means less trapped heat and therefore a less bad ongoing disaster. This seems obvious and I thought surely there didn't have to exist a post that spells it out, yet here I am writing one lol
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Feb 6, 2023 09:01
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Adenoid Dan posted:Partial replacement is still far better than no replacement, and keeping reactors running safely is better than shuttering them early. Building more reactors is also better than not building any. Nuclear the energy source with the smallest carbon footprint per generated unit of power even when the complete cycle is considered. And the video I linked touches on an interesting point regarding storage, which is btw is a vastly more unfeasible solution than nuclear, that factoring in storage really increases the carbon footprint of renewables. Still better than fossil fuels, but nuclear really pulls ahead then.
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Feb 6, 2023 09:23
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His Divine Shadow posted:Building more reactors is also better than not building any. Nuclear the energy source with the smallest carbon footprint per generated unit of power even when the complete cycle is considered. And the video I linked touches on an interesting point regarding storage, which is btw is a vastly more unfeasible solution than nuclear, that factoring in storage really increases the carbon footprint of renewables. Nuclear replacing coal is also a lot better than natgas replacing coal.
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Feb 6, 2023 09:29
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MightyBigMinus posted:literally the first result for googling "german ghg per mwh" Good point, although rather than the 20% of installed generator reduction, you have got actuals of like 40% (200/550). Better, but still dismal compared to the likes of France, Finland, Switzerland, etc. Nice choosing a chart with the y-axis starting at 300 ppm, by the way - classic MBA consultant move. Remember, if they embraced solar/wind at the expense of coal (and not put a euro cent into forest burning renewables), they would be looking closer to France by now. South Australia over the same timeframe has removed all coal generation, replacing it with gas and wind in the first instance and now reducing gas through wind, solar and the first tentative steps in battery storage. freezepops posted:I am not sure the thread ever proposed a solution to climate change. Do you have a post that actually provides a case that nuclear energy would enable the world to stop climate change in this thread? When I looked into this earlier, no one actually provided any evidence that we could produce enough nuclear power plants to even replace current fossil fuel electrical generation infrastructure, let alone the energy needs of literally everything not electrified. I think most acknowledge that renewables build quicker in the short term and nuclear is more work (suggesting that the intensive energy should go into renewable roll out and chip away on nuclear). It is going to take 30 to 50 years to see much progress on nuclear (even if a switch is flipped and the significant portion of the green movement that is opposed no longer fight tooth and nail against it). Ie the solution is 50 to 70 years of work at a minimum to get the easy wins out of the way (say the first 80% of change required). Dreams that because we squeal like pigs, all of a sudden, the world will focus week by week, quarter by quarter on GHG improvement number go up like a stock market CEO/market analyst are misplaced. The solution is embracing technology improvement (including town planning, demographic behavior modifiers, etc, not just fusion, larger wind turbines or the first pragmatic wave generator), avoiding fear, working against misplaced agendas, avoiding world war that makes all of it moot anyway (looking at you, Russia).
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Feb 6, 2023 09:33
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There was some study late last year that claims 5% of the world's power plants release 73 percent of global electricity emissions. Assuming they're not full of poo poo, we could as a global community fund the shuttering and replacement of those specific plants, we'd have a huge early win cushion to bring more solar/wind/nuclear/battery online everywhere.
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Feb 6, 2023 09:58
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It's not that Germany didn't make progress, but it's just still bad compared to its peers (or really anything but Poland or Estonia) the moment wind isn't blowing at maximum.  Similar co2 intensity as Czech Republic which has like two windmills. Dameius posted:There was some study late last year that claims 5% of the world's power plants release 73 percent of global electricity emissions. Yep I think we had this come up ITT too.
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Feb 6, 2023 15:00
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Surprise, carbon credits are bullshit: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
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Feb 6, 2023 17:02
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QuarkJets posted:I thought everyone already understood that climate change exists on a sliding scale of extremity, the issue is not a simple binary between "oh no climate change is happening" vs "yay we stopped it" - an excess of 1 degree is a lot less bad than an excess of 10 degrees. Less greenhouse gas means less trapped heat, more nuclear power means less greenhouse gas, therefore more nuclear power means less trapped heat and therefore a less bad ongoing disaster. This seems obvious and I thought surely there didn't have to exist a post that spells it out, yet here I am writing one lol I'm not entirely sure where you would get the concept that climate change or the societal impacts are a continuum. Even with your example it is pretty clear that there is a "oh no climate change is happening" vs "yay we stopped it." That's because 10C is well beyond the point where society can exist at a level to maintain nuclear power plants, so building them would be rather pointless at that level of warming. At the other end of the spectrum, we are already at 1C of warming so clearly that amount of warming is tolerable. We are currently unable to achieve less than 1.5C, and previously climate scientists have recommended keeping warming less than 2C to keep climate change impacts from being so large as to overwhelm are ability to maintain society (especially true for one advanced enough to maintain a nuclear power plant). How accurate is that line? I'm not sure, maybe we can survive to 3C or 4C, but there is a point where complex industrial society will no longer be able to maintain a nuclear power plant. This also ignores non-linear warming effects, and the possibility of irreversible climate change events that could make certain levels of CO2 emissions have the same impact. More nuclear power does not necessarily mean less greenhouse gas unless you ignore the time it takes to build a plant and when emissions are released. Nuclear power has similar emissions as wind, but a lot of those emissions are in the constructions of the power plant. It is very possible that a mad dash to build nothing but nuclear would actually mean far more CO2 is in the atmosphere than a renewable energy investment if global warming hits a tipping point prior to nuclear power's reduced emissions have had time to make an impact.
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Feb 9, 2023 07:13
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We are not even close to replacing fossil fuel generation with renewables. Any project we start that replaces fossil fuel plants is a good thing. There may be tipping points but we are not going to limbo under them by delaying the replacement of GHG emitters. It is easy to imagine very specific what-if scenarios to oppose literally anything.
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Feb 9, 2023 07:35
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freezepops posted:I'm not entirely sure where you would get the concept that climate change or the societal impacts are a continuum. Even with your example it is pretty clear that there is a "oh no climate change is happening" vs "yay we stopped it." That's because 10C is well beyond the point where society can exist at a level to maintain nuclear power plants, so building them would be rather pointless at that level of warming. At the other end of the spectrum, we are already at 1C of warming so clearly that amount of warming is tolerable. We are currently unable to achieve less than 1.5C, and previously climate scientists have recommended keeping warming less than 2C to keep climate change impacts from being so large as to overwhelm are ability to maintain society (especially true for one advanced enough to maintain a nuclear power plant). How accurate is that line? I'm not sure, maybe we can survive to 3C or 4C, but there is a point where complex industrial society will no longer be able to maintain a nuclear power plant. This also ignores non-linear warming effects, and the possibility of irreversible climate change events that could make certain levels of CO2 emissions have the same impact. What you're describing here is a continuum of societal impacts, hth.
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Feb 9, 2023 09:14
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MightyBigMinus posted:literally the first result for googling "german ghg per mwh" huh that's weird, it's been rising since 2020, with 2021 beating 2019 I'm sure that emission omission was entirely in good faith MightyBigMinus posted:
Hmmm yes. "The conventional wisdom that renewables would become cheaper and pick up more of the tab for growth while baseload chugs along has failed to bear fruit. For my first exhibit, I would like to draw your attention to a chart showing exactly what the conventional thinking predicted." I don't know what grievances you're trying to air, but read the room. Nobody is falling for it. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 09:18
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Potato Salad posted:huh that's weird, it's been rising since 2020, with 2021 beating 2019 Wow, a statistical blip in the last datapoint of the graph. Clearly that is a new trend that I should base my opinion on. Could you swing over to the graph crimes thread and defend the position that climate change is fake as proven by a recent cold snap? We are pretty bored there. I personally wouldn't believe anybody who assumes that the Merkel government was either pro-renewables or anti-nuclear. So arguments about German trends over that period representing some kind of ideal renewable build up are questionable no matter what conclusion they draw.
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Feb 9, 2023 12:12
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What's funny about turning off a bunch of capacity is that it creates a jump, and if what's turned off isn't turned back on, it will not be an anomaly. Discrete points can matter in certain systems, especially when a far greater amount is known about what's going on under the hood in each of those years because we talked about each of them at length itt. Tldr that plot isn't a set of truly random numbers. There's reasons for each number being what it is in each year. You might want walk in here and pretend that deeper discussions on energy policy in Germany haven't taken place over years, but nobody is going to let you get away with trying to wipe it all away with one bad analysis of one very high level graph. ...Especially when that graph shows exactly what started happening under recent greenwashing politics in Germany. "I personally wouldn't believe anybody who assumes that the Merkel government was either pro-renewables" She may not have been so personally, but Germany is a state with strong coalition politics and she didn't stop that renewables ball from rolling under her administration.  Side note: ffs you can look at hard and soft coal spike hard in the last two years as nuclear dips precipitously. It's right there dude, this isn't some mystery that takes 10 data points over 10 years to sus out. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 13:53
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My man, you're trying to tell me that more carbon emissions is less carbon emissions. I think you lost this one a few posts ago.MightyBigMinus posted:its amazing the degree to which reality went one way while a decade of conventional wisdom in this thread insisted it must go the other The only one trying to p-hack the world to fit a weird pretext is you. This "conventional thread wisdom" you're trying to malign has actually been fine. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 14:02
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