Author Topic: Nuclear Power  (Read 90508 times)

Crafty_Dog

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« Last Edit: January 25, 2020, 08:38:53 AM by Crafty_Dog »

DougMacG

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Germany scrapped nuclear power and emissions spiked
« Reply #151 on: January 29, 2020, 08:00:50 PM »
Germany scrapped nuclear power and emissions spiked
« Reply #725 on: Today at 07:11:02 AM »
QuoteModifyRemove
https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-powerand-deadly-emissions-spiked/

The math of this is kind of obvious.  End carbon free energy production and bad things happen.

DougMacG

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« Last Edit: February 02, 2020, 08:44:04 PM by Crafty_Dog »

ccp

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fusion
« Reply #153 on: February 03, 2020, 05:33:16 AM »
fascinating

Gilder fusion report?     :-)

DougMacG

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Re: fusion
« Reply #154 on: February 03, 2020, 08:34:18 AM »
fascinating

Gilder fusion report?     :-)

When we figure out fusion we will have energy we can't imagine now.


Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Federal govt just approved a new, smaller, safer nuclear power plant design
« Reply #156 on: September 09, 2020, 08:01:00 AM »
And they work when the sun and the wind go down.  Who knew!

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/09/will-americas-return-to-nuclear-power-kill-the-dems-green-new-deal-lets-hope-so/

Will America’s Return To Nuclear Power Kill The Dems’ Green New Deal? Let’s Hope So

September 9, 2020,  Issues & Insights

While the media focus on the chaos in American cities and the COVID-19 shutdowns, you might have missed this good news on the energy front: The federal government just approved a new, smaller, safer nuclear power plant design, putting nuclear back on the nation’s menu of energy choices.

It might not seem like much, but until this decade, the last nuclear power plant built in the U.S. was 1977. Today, there are an estimated 96 nuclear power plants producing 20% of all our electricity and half of our non-carbon-based power.

If that sounds impressive, consider this: As recently as the 1990s, we had 116 nuclear plants. Utilities, tired of the non-stop trouble of justifying a perpetual source of clean, CO2-free energy to radical green groups and burdened by enormous regulatory costs, have been decommissioning older plants.

But late last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a new plan for what’s called a “small modular reactor,” or SMR, designed by Portland-based NuScale Power.

Small, yes, but cheaper and safer, too. And it may be an avatar for an avalanche of new nuclear technologies in the works, including thorium and molten-salt reactors that use spent fuel, which will further cut costs and decrease reliance on fossil fuels.

Some of these are well beyond the drafting board stage.

Canada’s Terrestrial Energy has plans to produce 190 megawatts of electricity at a plant in Ontario by 2030. And the price of its energy will be competitive with natural gas, the company says.

TerraPower, with Bill Gates as a founding investor, has designed a sodium-cooled plant that can use spent fuel, depleted uranium, or even unprocessed uranium.

As for NuScale’s SMR, current plans call for Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a western energy cooperative, to build the SMRs at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, a massive 890-square-mile lab and test site.

The first workable model is scheduled to be switched on in 2029. Eleven more reactors would be put into service the following year. Each reactor, according to NuScale Power, can produce roughly 60 megawatts of energy, enough to supply 50,000 homes.

These smaller reactors include self-cooling systems and automatic shutdown features that, along with their reduced size, make the new plants far safer than first-generation nuclear power, and less costly to run. They’re virtually meltdown-proof.

Why focus on nuclear technology?

It’s not cheaper than coal or natural gas or even some renewable sources. At least, not upfront.

But these up-and-coming technologies have the potential to make our energy supply more secure and end blackouts and brownouts, such as those now taking place in California, which has moved to a radical and plainly foolish reliance on unreliable renewable energy.

And over time, new tweaks in the technology will cut costs, especially if the federal government takes its foot off the regulation pedal. Until now, that has been a major impediment, and cost, for nuclear power.

But these new nuclear models do one other very important thing: they make the Democrats’ outrageously costly and non-science based Green New Deal totally unnecessary.

The Green New Deal (GND) proposal put forth in Congress would require utilities to supply “100% of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emissions energy sources.”

What’s left out is that the full cost of such a scheme would be enormous almost beyond reckoning.

The American Action Forum, a respected center-right think tank, estimates costs of as much as $51 trillion to $93 trillion over the next 10 years if the GND is passed. In plainer numbers, that’s about $600,000 per American household.

Liberal economist Noah Smith, a finance professor and columnist for Bloomberg, likewise estimates a $6.6 trillion a year cost for the GND. That’s roughly three times what the U.S. government currently takes in from taxes.

To call the GND economically insane might be an understatement. And yet, an entire American political party and some 600 environmental groups think it’s a great idea. Call it Enviro-Socialism.

The GND does not foresee a nuclear future. We do. Small, technologically advanced nuclear power plants would replace the inefficient, costly, unreliable and wasteful renewable energy schemes at the core of the New Green Deal.

DougMacG

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #157 on: October 20, 2020, 05:50:15 PM »
https://twitter.com/i/status/1302617328140640256
1 minute video on nuclear power, Brazilian model Isabelle Boemeke
---------------------------------------------------------

This Thurs night Pres Trump will be asked again about climate change.  He should immediately pivot to fracking and especially to nuclear power.  Forget the debate about end of the earth, tampered data and flawed models.  Build the carbon free energy we need and start the construction now, speaking of second term agenda.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #158 on: January 08, 2021, 08:15:18 AM »
Labor Unions Fight for Nuclear Power

It’s another classic case of what we call the blues versus the greens. The AFL-CIO is supporting nuclear energy. But where is the climate change lobby when you need them?

We’re speaking about Big Labor’s rebellion against the early retirement of two nuclear plants in – Byron and Dresden, IL – towns located in the outer western suburbs of Chicago. The power company Exelon wants to shut them down, but the Illinois AFL-CIO argues that nuclear power provides 28,000 “high paying jobs” throughout the state. “The two plants boost Illinois’ economy, generate money for local communities and support thousands of families… and pay millions in state taxes annually, benefitting local schools, libraries, parks and public works,” the Illinois union says.

The union’s report also maintains that Exelon’s plan “would cause Illinois consumers and businesses to pay $313 million more annually for electricity, or $3.1 billion more over a decade.” And here’s the kicker: “The Byron and Dresden plants alone prevent more than 20 million metric tons of CO2 each year – like taking nearly 4.5 million cars off the road.”

But the environmental groups are nowhere to be found. Why? Because they hate nuclear power and are financed by the solar and wind industry lobby. They oppose a form of energy that emits NO greenhouse gases.  Are there no ends to leftwing hypocrisy?

ccp

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Even Democrat Bill Gates agrees -> nuclear is needed and can be done safely
« Reply #159 on: February 25, 2021, 01:38:04 PM »
[Doug]  If the alarmists would quit screaming, maybe we could think clearly and make rational public policy.  For the umpteenth time, nuclear is safest and cleanest.  Everyone knows it.  No one is building it.

Even Bill Gates said so on 60 minutes recently
He brought Anderson Cooper  on a tour of nuclear research company
and explained how they using liquid sodium instead of water
to cool down the nuclear rods .
This would be safer and prevent explosions like the one at Chernobyl

https://www.nei.org/news/2021/bill-gates-nuclear-innovation-60-minutes

My point is that even if lib Gates is for it , the yes "everyone" knows it to be true

DougMacG

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« Last Edit: March 04, 2021, 06:14:26 AM by Crafty_Dog »



DougMacG

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Nuclear Power, The Green Atom video, safest energy source known to man
« Reply #163 on: August 02, 2021, 11:02:49 AM »
Funny how the same unavoidable facts and conclusions keep coming up.  Nuclear Power is the safest form of energy.  Cleanest.  Most reliable.

If you truly were liberal, wouldn't you be open minded enough to see that?

Democrats put support of nuclear power in their platform for the first time in 48 years.  They won power.  Where are the new nuclear plants?  Instead they are closing plants ahead of schedule, forcing more fossil fuel use, more emissions.  What part of safest and cleanest don't they like? 

Anyway, take a look at this video.  Watch, learn, share.  Only 6 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOzJQJ1yAaM


Starts with examination of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima and concludes
Nuclear power is the safest energy source known to man.
Soviet Chernobyl completely avoidable accident had the only deaths ever attributed to nuclear power.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

Nuclear waste has not killed or injured anyone.  Now can be minimized or
eliminated.

France and Germany emissions comparison, amazing difference:



France's Macron regarding Germany's switch from nuclear to coal, 'They worsened their carbon footprint.  It wasn't good for the planet.  So I won't do that.'  Ouch.

"If California put the money it spent on wind and solar since 2001 into nuclear, it would now produce 100% of its electricity carbon free."

Wait. What?

"If California put the money it spent on wind and solar since 2001 into nuclear power, it would now produce 100% of its electricity carbon free."

That doesn't matter to those who vote or govern in California?  Why not??!!
« Last Edit: August 02, 2021, 11:17:52 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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« Last Edit: August 28, 2021, 06:11:38 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #165 on: August 28, 2021, 05:22:30 PM »
This looks to be HUGE.

So much for solar and wind?

G M

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #166 on: August 28, 2021, 05:59:27 PM »
This looks to be HUGE.

So much for solar and wind?

Solar and wind will continue to be funded by money taken at government gunpoint because it makes leftists feel good.

DougMacG

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Fusion Power
« Reply #167 on: August 29, 2021, 05:12:56 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Re: Nuclear Power, Rolls Royce
« Reply #170 on: November 09, 2021, 07:20:54 PM »
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59212983

Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop mini nuclear reactors

ccp

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #171 on: November 10, 2021, 05:15:00 AM »
"However, critics say the focus should be on renewable power, not new nuclear."

 :roll:

"Friends of the Earth's head of policy, Mike Childs, said government support should be "aimed at developing the UK's substantial renewable resources, such as offshore wind, tidal and solar, and boosting measures to help householders cut energy waste".

 :roll:

This criticism does make sense:

"Greenpeace's chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said SMRs were still more expensive than renewable technologies and added there was "still no solution to dispose of the radioactive waste they leave behind and no consensus on where they should be located"

DougMacG

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #172 on: November 10, 2021, 07:24:51 AM »
Critics being a major part of the story is the BBC appeasing their gradually-converting, anti-nuc. audience.  Why does a non-polluting business startup have critics - right there on the rolodex of the journalist?  This is the BBC spinning a story.  Think NPR

"However, critics say the focus should be on renewable power, not new nuclear."

"Renewable"?? Solar and wind are not alternatives to nuclear if you have to heat the homes, power the grid and charge all the vehicles OVERNIGHT. 

Lithium batteries are "renewable"?  We can't even dispose of old solar panels and wind turbines, how are we going to handle the 100-fold increase of consumable battery capacity that round-the-clock "renewables" require?

We're talking about a mini" power plants that power a million homes: 24-7-365.  How many "renewables" does it take to do that, produce at full power, overnight, year-'round?  There is no comparison.


"Friends of the Earth's head of policy [What a name!], Mike Childs, said government support should be "aimed at developing the UK's substantial renewable resources, such as offshore wind, tidal and solar, and boosting measures to help householders cut energy waste".

   - They are friends of the earth, not friends of the people.  Everyone knows "boosting measures to help householders cut energy waste" means DO WITHOUT!  That is their alternative to building new, clean power plants.  Even doing without doesn't get you there.  If you don't fill the pipelines and power the grid, people are going to burn wood or whatever it takes to heat their homes.  https://wood-energy.extension.org/what-are-the-air-emissions-of-burning-wood/  Backwards countries are not cleaner.


"Greenpeace's chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said SMRs were still more expensive than renewable technologies and added there was "still no solution to dispose of the radioactive waste they leave behind and no consensus on where they should be located"

   - Greenpeace's founder strongly disagrees. 
"Greenpeace Founder Makes the Case for Nuclear"
https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Moore_2005.pdf

The waste issue has been resolved.  It is safe to store, some processes have no waste, and "waste" by definition is a source of carbon-free power that could be used now or in the future.  I doubt Rolls Royce with government backing plans to build plants without addressing the waste issue.  Nonetheless, solar and wind waste are both much larger problems for a fraction of the energy production. 

Single-use water bottles have more than a trillion times more harmful environmental emissions than a nuclear power plant, [whose emissions are zero].

You can't be serious about climate change and be anti-nuc. 
« Last Edit: November 10, 2021, 07:50:02 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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ccp

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #174 on: November 17, 2021, 09:46:42 AM »
Doug,
Can't see article w/o subscription

Maybe I don't need to see it?  Since I already have read your posts about Nuclear power,
the source for this article

 :-D

DougMacG

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #175 on: November 17, 2021, 12:28:41 PM »
Doug,
Can't see article w/o subscription
Maybe I don't need to see it?  Since I already have read your posts about Nuclear power,
the source for this article
 :-D

Yes.  What can you say about nuclear power with the very latest safety controls?  It's safe.  It's clean.  It's 100% carbon free.   And it powers millions of homes and businesses 24/7/365 at a reasonable cost.  Could power a world full of Teslas.

I wonder how many nuclear power plants are in the build back better bill.  Let me guess.  Zero.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
At least the WSJ gives me credit when I (help) write their articles:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324105204578382572446778866
Oops, this one needs subscription too.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #176 on: December 02, 2021, 07:20:45 PM »
Nuclear-Fusion Startup Lands $1.8 Billion as Investors Chase Star Power
No one has been able to generate net energy by combining atoms, yet Commonwealth Fusion Systems has attracted Bill Gates and George Soros
Commonwealth Fusion in collaboration with MIT has tested a high-temperature superconducting fusion magnet, a key technology.
By Jennifer Hiller | Photographs by Tony Luong for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Dec. 1, 2021 10:03 am ET

Commonwealth Fusion Systems LLC said it has raised more than $1.8 billion in the largest private investment for nuclear fusion yet as startups race to be the first to generate carbon-free energy like the sun.

Big-name investors backing the latest funding round for the Massachusetts-based company include Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and George Soros via his Soros Fund Management LLC. Some of Commonwealth Fusion’s competitors, including Helion Energy Inc., have also recently secured huge funding as investors pile into clean energy technologies amid growing concerns about climate change.

Nuclear fusion has long been the holy grail of the energy world. Fusion is the process of generating energy by melding atoms. Current nuclear power plants create energy through nuclear fission, or splitting atoms. Fusion has the potential to create nearly limitless energy using common elements such as hydrogen, and has the added benefit of generating little to no long-lived nuclear waste.


Experimental equipment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Commonwealth Fusion was spun out of MIT in 2018.

But despite decades of research, no one to date has been able to produce net energy through fusion—or more energy than it takes to create a fusion reaction. Private firms are vying to be the first not only to create net-energy machines, but to commercialize them by delivering electricity to the grid on the scale of a power plant.

“Everything is science fiction until someone does it and then all of a sudden it goes from impossible to inevitable,” said Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018.

The recent infusion of cash into fusion startups eclipses the roughly $1.9 billion in total that was previously announced, according to data tracked by the Fusion Industry Association and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.

Helion Energy announced in early November that it had raised $500 million, with another $1.7 billion committed that is tied to meeting performance milestones. Canada’s General Fusion this week closed a $130 million fundraising round that was oversubscribed, said Chief Executive Christofer Mowry. New investors included a state pension fund and the hedge fund Segra Capital Management.

“It’s a sign of the industry growing up,” Mr. Mowry said. General Fusion plans to launch a larger fundraising effort next year.


Companies are pursuing different designs for fusion reactors, but most rely on fusion that takes place in plasma, a hot charged gas. In September, Commonwealth Fusion successfully tested the most powerful fusion magnet of its kind on Earth that would hold and compress the plasma.


Part of the test stand that powers the magnet.

An instrumentation-and-control rack.

Mr. Mumgaard said the magnet test and funding round allow it to move to the next big step in its evolution: building a net-energy fusion machine that it plans to demonstrate by 2025. It also plans to begin work on the first commercial fusion power plant that would produce electricity by the early 2030s.

New investors supporting Commonwealth Fusion’s most recent funding round include Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Salesforce.com Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures and Silicon Valley venture-capital firm DFJ Growth.

Mr. Benioff said he has backed a number of firms he thinks could scale up enough to make an environmental impact. “Commonwealth is a very important company, because if it works, it’ll help the world accelerate its energy transition,” he said.



Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was an early backer through his Khosla Ventures. He said he had the same reaction to the fusion company as he did to Impossible Foods Inc., the plant-based alternative meat maker, considering both critical for addressing climate change.


“My general view is there’s quite a few things in society that don’t get funded when they should, and frankly, some things in life are just too important to not fund,” Mr. Khosla said. His interest isn’t philanthropic, though; he said he sees an opportunity for a big financial return on fusion.

“If you’re wrong, you lose one times your money. But if you’re right, you make 100 times your money,” Mr. Khosla said. “Financially, it made sense.”

Until someone proves it, though, fusion won’t shake its reputation as a technology that is always around the corner. The world’s largest fusion project is ITER, a $22 billion multinational government-funded project in France. Scientists say the project, which has experienced delays, is on track to create superheated plasma by the end of 2025. Full fusion would come a decade later.


A detail of the top of the magnet.

A side of the magnet's test stand.

There are many skeptics of fusion as a near-term source of electricity. Retired Princeton University research physicist Daniel Jassby, a frequent critic, calls the recent private investment trend a “fusion frenzy” and notes that no one has produced electricity from fusion yet.

“A lot of it is fake it ‘till you make it,” Mr. Jassby said.

Tony Donné, program manager for a 28-country research consortium known as EUROfusion, said he likes the industrial approach of private companies, but thinks getting fusion power to the grid is likely to take 20 to 30 years.

David Kirtley, Helion’s chief executive, said he once counted himself among the skeptics. After studying fusion in graduate school, “I actually said, I quit,” Mr. Kirtley said. “I didn’t see a path where in my lifetime we were going to build a real system and get it out there.”

He pivoted to building spacecraft propulsion systems, but improvements in fields like fiber optics and computing convinced him that there was a path forward for commercial fusion.

This summer, Helion published results confirming it had become the first private firm to heat a fusion plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius, which it called the ideal temperature for a fusion power plant. It also broke ground on a facility in Everett, Wash., where it says it will demonstrate net electricity generation by 2024.


Money is a sticking point in climate-change negotiations around the world. As economists warn that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will cost many more trillions than anticipated, WSJ looks at how the funds could be spent, and who would pay. Illustration: Preston Jessee/WSJ
The company’s recent funding round included commitments from Facebook Inc. co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Altman, the former head of tech incubator Y Combinator.

Adam Stein, a senior nuclear energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based research center, said he expects successful demonstrations of net energy this decade by some of the leading private fusion companies. But he also thinks some firms will fail.

“Net positive energy is a long distance away from net positive power, which is a system that can put out more power than it uses, ultimately as electricity on the grid,” Mr. Stein said. “These are still demonstration projects we’re looking at.”

DougMacG

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Nuclear Power, LAT opposing view
« Reply #177 on: December 13, 2021, 06:24:20 AM »
Index of leading contrary indicators, LA Times lead editorial favors closing the cleanest, safest source of energy on the planet.

Fire up the coal plants then because solar doesn't work at night when your EV fleets are charging.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-12-12/diablo-canyon-nuclear-closure

PS. My understanding is that doesn't produce all it's own electricity, buys nuclear power from APS in AZ.
--------
From the article:
California is approaching an energy crossroads. In three years, its last nuclear plant will begin to power down and the state will lose its largest single source of emissions-free electricity.

A 2018 law requires state regulators to “avoid any increase in greenhouse gases” as a result of closing the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the Central Coast. But if they don’t move more quickly to replace its electricity with renewable energy from wind, solar and geothermal, the void will almost certainly be filled by burning more natural gas, which increased last year to account for nearly half of California’s in-state electricity generation.

California can’t allow the retirement of Diablo Canyon’s nuclear reactors to prolong its reliance on gas plants or increase planet-warming and health-damaging emissions. But the state’s preparations for shutdown of an around-the-clock power source that supplies more than 8% of California’s in-state electricity generation have not inspired confidence; there have been no assurances that an uptick in carbon emissions will be avoided.

That uncertainty has created an opening for a new push to extend Diablo Canyon’s life. A recently launched campaign, whose supporters include former U.S. Energy secretaries Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz, and fashion model and nuclear influencer Isabelle Boemeke, wants California to abruptly reverse course and keep Diablo Canyon operating for another 10 or even 20 years.

Proponents say this would reduce climate pollution, bolster grid reliability and buy time during a crucial period in the state’s transition toward solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, citing a recent report by Stanford University and MIT scientists that lends support to the idea. The Biden administration has chimed in receptively, with Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm suggesting in a recent interview that California might reconsider closing the facility to avoid losing an always-on source of clean electricity.

But the idea is misguided, and at this point remains largely divorced from reality. The plant’s closure should instead serve as an impetus for California do more to accelerate the shift to renewable energy and set a realistic course to meet the state’s target of getting 100% of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045.

Those floating the idea of keeping Diablo Canyon open seem to ignore many practical considerations, including how to address seismic risks, the ecological harm of using seawater for cooling, and what to do with spent nuclear fuel. The cooling system and earthquake safety upgrades that would be required for the facility to keep operating after 2025 are so extensive they would likely exceed $1 billion, according to the Public Utilities Commission.

Replacing Diablo Canyon responsibly will require faster deployment of wind and solar farms and rooftop panels as well as batteries to store energy for use when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Upgrades to transmission lines are also needed to make more carbon-free energy available.

The Public Utilities Commission took an important step in June, when it approved an order requiring utility companies to bring online a massive amount of new clean electricity resources by 2026 to help fuel demand during extreme heat events and replace generation from old, retiring gas plants and Diablo Canyon. But environmental advocates say the state’s plan moves too slowly and leaves the door open to a rise in fossil fuels to create electricity. That’s what happened in 2012, when California’s greenhouse gas emissions rose by 2%, in part because of increased used of gas plants following the unanticipated closure of the malfunctioning San Onofre nuclear power plant.

This time, regulators have had years to prepare for Diablo’s retirement and should not leave things to chance. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the incoming PUC president he recently named, Alice Reynolds, need to do more to get renewable energy sources operating as quickly as possible, and should carefully track them and impose requirements that they reduce climate pollution. It’s our planet at stake, and California’s leaders must ensure the sunset of nuclear power is not followed by a damaging rise in greenhouse gases.
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(Doug). In real winter you can't heat your car overnight with batteries much less your house.  How much Lithium Cobalt would it take.  What would that do to the price if the whole world did that at once?

I realize Calif does not have the climate of MN but it will be 32 overnight in Sacramento overnight this week and -45 degrees record cold in the mountains. What could wrong if the grid goes down at the worst possible time, and guess what that Is when it goes down.

http://coolweather.net/statetemperature/california_temperature.htm
« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 07:18:53 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #178 on: December 13, 2021, 09:21:45 AM »
agree with nuclear

here is a 'study ' of the impact of wind turbine farms
on scenic visibility

they can be seen for up 10s of miles away in flat areas:

https://blmwyomingvisual.anl.gov/docs/WindVITD.pdf

Why can we not just plant more trees?

DougMacG

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #179 on: December 13, 2021, 10:02:45 AM »
quote author=ccp
agree with nuclear ...
---------------------

Isn't it funny that the lead opinion for closing it acknowledges it's far better too.  They admit it's cleaner, carbon-free, ALWAYS ON, forgot to mention safer, far safer.

They point out that Stanford and MIT studies support it, even the Biden administration supports it, not to mention nuclear power supported is in the Democratic National Platform.  Isn't that the Bible of climate activism?

These people are deniers of math, science, history and common sense.  For example, what happens to an inelastic market when needed supply is cut by 8%?  An 8% increase in price? Not even close.

What if the electric ambulance you or your loved one will need in the morning is the one not getting charged with the grid down tonight?

Not that Diablo is well located or up to date.  If that is the question, build a new one and do it right.  The California we used to know would want to have the best in the world. 

If the state's real interest was good regulation of these monopoly providers in the public interest, it would require ALL sources to be "always on".
« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 10:07:54 AM by DougMacG »



Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Nuclear Power- part of the solution?
« Reply #183 on: January 10, 2022, 02:39:30 AM »
Is Nuclear Power Part of the Climate Solution?
Investing in the next generation of nuclear reactors could give the world an important tool for reducing carbon emissions.
By Gernot Wagner
Jan. 7, 2022 10:59 am ET


As the world’s climate continues to warm, more than 50 nations have pledged to achieve “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury. That means producing radically lower levels of these gases in the decades ahead while removing from the atmosphere the equivalent of what we do produce. Coal-burning power plants are on their way out, and clean energy sources like solar and wind are growing rapidly. In the U.S., energy generation from renewable sources, including hydropower and geothermal power, surpassed coal in 2020 and is now second only to gas.

The notable exception in this low-carbon energy boom is nuclear power, which has been stalled for decades. Most reactors now operating were built in the 1970s, and many in the U.S. and Europe are being closed. Worldwide, 450 reactors generate 10% of the total electricity consumed today, down from more than 15% in 2005, thanks to a rapid global build-out of power capacity that has largely left nuclear behind. Nuclear power in the West will start to collapse like coal generation unless aging reactors are replaced with new plants.

Despite longstanding concerns over its safety, nuclear power can play an important role in a low-carbon world.

Despite longstanding concerns over its safety, nuclear power can play an important role in a low-carbon world. A recent study sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Clean Air Task Force concluded that to meet its net-zero pledge by 2045, the state of California will need power that is not only “clean” but “firm”—that is, “electricity sources that don’t depend on the weather.” The same is true around the world, and nuclear offers a relatively stable source of power.

Nuclear plants don’t depend on a steady supply of coal or gas, where disruptions in commodity markets can lead to spikes in electricity prices, as has happened this winter in Europe. Nor do nuclear plants depend on the weather. Solar and wind have a great deal of potential, but to be reliable energy sources on their own, they require advanced batteries and high-tech grid management to balance varying levels of power generation with anticipated spikes in demand. That balancing act is easier and cheaper with the kind of firm power that nuclear can provide.


French President Emmanuel Macron at the presentation of the ‘France 2030’ investment plan, which includes funding for research and development of nuclear power, Paris, Oct. 12, 2021.
PHOTO: LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL PHOTO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The level of carbon emissions generated by nuclear power is on par with solar and wind, especially when considering the complete life cycle of a plant. Both solar and wind produce entirely carbon-free electricity once they are up and running, but they require a significant carbon investment up front. Solar panels rely on metals that need to be mined, and the average wind turbine is now large enough to contain around 200 tons of steel or more. It will eventually be possible to produce this steel without generating carbon emissions, but not yet.


Nuclear power’s biggest environmental challenge is the waste it produces, which requires thousands or tens of thousands of years of safe storage. But there isn’t a lot of it: All of the nuclear waste produced in the U.S. since the 1950s adds up to about 85,000 tons of material. Compare that with the tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide that would have been produced had that electricity come from fossil fuels instead.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the nation’s total nuclear waste would cover a single football field, 10 yards high. By contrast, carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless gas, is typically released into the atmosphere, affecting the climate of the entire globe.

The physical footprint of a nuclear plant is small compared with dams, strip mines and arrays of solar panels. Nuclear might even have large greenhouse-gas advantages compared with “bioenergy,” which can emit a lot of carbon dioxide to produce fuel from organic material, and hydropower, which generates tons of carbon dioxide from the construction of large dams and can release large quantities of methane due to decomposing plant matter in reservoirs.

Last November, the U.S. infrastructure package earmarked $2.5 billion for research and development of new nuclear technologies.

With these advantages in mind, governments around the world have started to give nuclear power another look. In the U.S., the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package signed into law by President Joe Biden in November included $6 billion in subsidies to keep existing nuclear plants running longer and earmarked $2.5 billion for research and development of new nuclear technologies.

In France, as part of a massive push to “reindustrialize,” the government will spend $1.13 billion on nuclear power R&D by 2030. The focus is on developing a new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs) to replace parts of the existing fleet that supplies around 70% of the country’s electricity.

The Netherlands’ new coalition government sees nuclear power as a “complement” to solar, wind and geothermal energy in the country’s low-carbon energy mix. The Dutch are extending the life of one nuclear plant and taking steps to build two new reactors, putting $566 million toward that goal. And just last week, in a controversial move, the European Union proposed classifying nuclear as a “green” energy source for funding purposes, “to facilitate the transition toward a predominantly renewable-based future.”

China, meanwhile, intends to build more than 150 new reactors in the next 15 years and will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest generator of nuclear power within five years. In the past decade China has invested around $470 million in molten-salt reactors, a technology that uses fuel in a liquid state rather than solid rods, reducing the risk of meltdowns. The U.S. experimented with the technology in the 1960s but gave up on it as too expensive. China is now building the first molten-salt reactor that uses thorium as fuel, instead of more radioactive plutonium or uranium. An added advantage is that thorium accumulates as a waste product in China’s growing rare-earth mines, making possible much-needed cost savings for an expensive technology.


A fuel-handling test facility at TerraPower, the nuclear energy company founded by Bill Gates.
PHOTO: TERRAPOWER
Nuclear isn’t the only stable, low-carbon source of electricity that doesn’t entail an enormous physical footprint. Geothermal power, which draws heat from beneath the surface of the earth, meets all three criteria. Hydropower, which uses the flow of water to generate electricity, is stable, though reservoirs often have a large footprint. Dams can serve as natural batteries: Water can be pumped up into a reservoir when the supply of solar and wind power is high and demand is low—as on a sunny, mild Sunday afternoon—and then used to generate power on a still day when the sun isn’t shining and demand for electricity spikes.

These alternatives mean that nuclear power won’t be the answer everywhere. Iceland has been producing low-carbon electricity since long before climate change became a concern and solar and wind power became cheap. The country used to import coal to generate electricity, before expanding its hydropower production beginning in the 1950s. Today, Iceland derives three-quarters of its electricity from hydro and a quarter from geothermal.

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Other countries have explicitly rejected nuclear power, sometimes at a considerable economic and climate cost. Austria derives 60% of its electricity from hydro plants along the Danube River and in the Alps, and it is well-integrated into the European electricity grid, which derives its stability in part from nuclear plants just across the border. The country built its only nuclear reactor in the 1970s, but in a hard-fought referendum in 1978, Austrians voted against turning on the plant. Instead, Austria built a coal-fired power plant, which became one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the country and a major source of air pollution for over three decades. It was converted to burn gas in 2019.

The most consequential story of a country with second thoughts about nuclear energy is Germany, Europe’s industrial powerhouse. Before 2011, nuclear power accounted for about 25% of Germany’s electricity production. The country had not built a new reactor since the late 1980s, influenced by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union in 1986, but it planned to operate most of its reactors through the 2030s.


The Chernobyl nuclear reactor days after it was destroyed by an accident on April 26, 1986.
PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Then came the Fukushima nuclear accident on March 11, 2011, triggered by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan. Unlike Chernobyl, which caused significant loss of life and long-term health problems—including in children exposed to radiation in utero as far away as Sweden—Fukushima resulted in no loss of life and “no adverse health effects among Fukushima residents” from radiation exposure, according to a 2021 U.N. report. In 2018, one former worker at the Fukushima plant died from cancer possibly linked to radiation, but no such link has been established for residents of surrounding communities, even those close to the reactors.

In the wake of the accident, Japan’s decision to shut down its nuclear plants instead of phasing out coal resulted in increased consumption of fossil fuels, generating air pollution that can be statistically linked to thousands of deaths. These deaths stand in stark contrast to the good safety record of reactors in the West, whose designs and safety regulations make them much safer than old Soviet reactors like the one at Chernobyl.

Fear of nuclear accidents is real and, in part, justified. It is worrisome that nine Chernobyl-style reactors are still operating in Russia, with some modifications. But it’s also important to recognize that regulatory oversight and safety provisions are usually effective. Even the Fukushima accident, or the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, could be considered a success on the safety front: Some safety features failed but others worked, containing the fallout.



A coal-burning power plant near Aachen, Germany, Dec. 28, 2021. After the Fukushima disaster, Germany shut down its nuclear power plants and relied more on coal.
PHOTO: HENNING KAISER/PICTURE ALLIANCE/GETTY IMAGES
After Fukushima, the U.S. reaffirmed its previously stated commitment to nuclear power, while Germany shut down almost half of its nuclear capacity immediately and accelerated its remaining nuclear phase-out. In 2020 Germany derived around 10% of its electricity from nuclear energy, down from 25% before Fukushima; the country’s last three reactors are scheduled to close this year. As a result, Germany emits more than 8 tons of carbon dioxide per person, compared with less than 5 tons for France, with its large fleet of nuclear plants.

The new German coalition government has moved up the country’s planned exit from coal from 2038 to 2030 as part of its ambitious Energiewende, the transition to clean energy. Even so, the reliance on coal after Fukushima has led to hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide pollution and thousands of deaths from local air pollution.

Nuclear power has also stagnated in the West because of its high cost, which is partly related to safety measures. While solar and wind have been getting cheaper, nuclear power has been getting more expensive. The U.S. is building only two new reactors at the moment, both outside Augusta, Ga., at a combined cost of over $28 billion, roughly double the original projection. France is currently building only one reactor, which will go on line later this year; it has cost $21.5 billion, instead of the originally budgeted $3.9 billion, and is a decade behind schedule. The U.K. has two reactors currently under construction at a total cost of $30 billion, dwarfing the country’s $516 million investment in research and development on small modular reactors.


Bill Gates, seen here in October 2021, founded the nuclear energy company TerraPower in 2006.
PHOTO: LEON NEAL/POOL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
SMRs and other new technologies are the nuclear industry’s big hope. One focus of research is using new fissile materials such as thorium, which is more abundant, produces less waste and has no direct military applications. Other technologies look to using existing nuclear waste as a fuel source. Turning away from massive reactors toward SMRs might, at first, increase costs per unit of energy produced. But it would open financing models unavailable to large reactors, allowing costs to come down, with reactors following a uniform design instead of being designed one by one. Building many small reactors also allows for learning-by-doing, a model actively pursued by China at home and as part of its Belt and Road Initiative abroad.

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None of these new technologies is sure to be economically competitive. Some of the more experimental technologies, like China’s thorium reactors, might yet pay off. TerraPower, a venture founded by Bill Gates, has been working on natrium reactors for over a decade and recently added a molten-salt design to the mix, which could make a real difference if it works out. The point is to try. Like solar and wind, nuclear energy could climb the learning curve and slide down the cost curve with the right financial backing.

Government support for research on nuclear power is no substitute for rapidly developing solar and wind power. Subsidizing the quest for new nuclear technologies is akin to investing in technologies that capture carbon dioxide in smokestacks or directly from the air: They aren’t a replacement for cutting carbon emissions now, but both will be necessary to achieve ambitious net-zero climate goals. The world can’t afford to dismiss the possibilities of new nuclear technologies, or to prematurely shut down existing nuclear plants that operate safely.

Nuclear power comes with risks. So does a warming planet. The high cost of nuclear power today says little about where things might stand in a few decades, when the world should be well on its way to powering its grids with low-carbon technologies alone. For reasons of both energy security and climate change, governments in the West, China and beyond should continue to invest in nuclear research and development.

—Dr. Wagner teaches climate economics at Columbia Business School (on leave from New York University). He writes the Risky Climate column for Bloomberg Green and is the author of “Geoengineering: The Gamble” (Polity Press, 2021).


Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the January 8, 2022, print edition as 'Is Nuclear Power Part of the Climate Solution? Nuclear Power in A Greener Future.'

DougMacG

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Re: WSJ: Nuclear Power- part of the solution?
« Reply #184 on: January 10, 2022, 09:50:36 AM »
Part of the solution?  It IS the solution.  What is the alternative?  Waterfalls?  Solar charged batteries.  Right now Asia has enough total batteries to power itself for 6 seconds.  Grow that exponentially and by 2030 it will be 10 minutes of power.  Europe has 1 minute of backup battery power.  Heat your home with THAT.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/01/dont-bet-on-batteries.php

Every other "solution" just involves being poor and doing without, and still we will burn enough wood and coal, when they take away everything else, to end breathing as we know it.

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WT: Cutting down fossil fuels leads some states to Nuclear Power
« Reply #185 on: January 25, 2022, 03:40:21 AM »
Race to cut down on fossil fuels leads some states to nuclear power

BY JENNIFER MCDERMOTT ASSOCIATED PRESS PROVIDENCE, R.I. | As climate change pushes states in the U.S. to dramatically cut their use of fossil fuels, many are coming to the conclusion that solar, wind and other renewable power sources might not be enough to keep the lights on.

Nuclear power is emerging as an answer to fill the gap as states transition away from coal, oil and natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst effects of a warming planet.

The renewed interest in nuclear comes as companies, including one started by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, are developing smaller, cheaper reactors that could supplement the power grid in communities across the U.S.

Nuclear power comes with its own set of potential problems, especially radioactive waste that can remain dangerous for thousands of years.

But supporters say the risks can be minimized and that the energy source will be essential to stabilize power supplies as the world tries to move away from carbon dioxideemitting fossil fuels.

Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Jeff Lyash puts it simply: You can’t significantly reduce carbon emissions without nuclear power.

“At this point in time, I don’t see a path that gets us there without preserving the existing fleet and building new nuclear,” Mr. Lyash said. “And that’s after having maximized the amount of solar we can build in the system.”

The TVA is a federally owned utility that provides electricity to seven states as the nation’s third largest electricity generator.

It’s adding about 10,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2035 — enough to power nearly 1 million homes annually — but also operates three nuclear plants and plans to test a small reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

By 2050, it hopes to hit its goal of becoming net zero, which means the amount of greenhouse gases produced is no more than the amount removed from the atmosphere.

An Associated Press survey of the energy policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that the strong majority — about two-thirds — say nuclear, in one fashion or another, will help take the place of fossil fuels.

The momentum building behind nuclear power could lead to the first expansion of nuclear reactor construction in the U.S. in more than three decades.

Roughly one-third of the states and the District of Columbia responded to the AP’s survey by saying they have no plans to incorporate nuclear power in their green energy goals, instead leaning heavily on renewables.

Energy officials in those states said their goals are achievable because of advances in energy storage using batteries, investments in the grid for high-voltage interstate transmission, energy efficiency efforts to reduce demand and power provided by hydroelectric dams.

The split over nuclear power in U.S. states mirrors a similar debate unfolding in Europe, where countries including Germany are phasing out their reactors while others, such as France, are sticking with the technology or planning to build more plants.

The Biden administration, which has tried to take aggressive steps to reduce greenhouse gases, views nuclear as necessary to help compensate for the decline of carbon-based fuels in the nation’s energy grid.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told the AP that the administration wants to get to zero-carbon electricity, and “that means nuclear, that means hydropower, that means geothermal, that means obviously wind on and offshore, that means solar.”

Ms. Granholm said “We want it all,” during a visit in December to Providence, Rhode Island, to promote an offshore wind project.

The $1 trillion infrastructure package championed by Mr. Biden and signed into law last year will allocate about $2.5 billion for advanced reactor demonstration projects. The Energy Department said studies by Princeton University and the Decarb America Research Initiative show that nuclear is necessary for a carbon-free future.


Nuclear power is emerging as an answer to fill the gap as states transition away from fossil fuels. Some states said they had no plans to use it in their energy goals and will rely on things like wind power

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WT: Fusion Power test
« Reply #186 on: January 28, 2022, 02:42:18 AM »
Hot stuff: California lab hits milestone on road to fusion power

BY SETH BORENSTEIN ASSOCIATED PRESS

With 192 lasers and temperatures more than three times hotter than the center of the sun, scientists hit — at least for a fraction of a second — a key milestone on the long road toward nearly pollution-free fusion energy.

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California were able to spark a fusion reaction that briefly sustained itself — a major feat because fusion requires such high temperatures and pressures that it easily fizzles out.

The ultimate goal, still years away, is to generate power the way the sun generates heat, by smooshing hydrogen atoms so close to each other that they combine into helium, which releases torrents of energy.

A team of more than 100 scientists published the results of four experiments that achieved what is known as a burning plasma in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

With those results, along with preliminary results announced last August from follow-up experiments, scientists say they are on the threshold of an even bigger advance: ignition. That’s when the fuel can continue to “burn” on its own and produce more energy than what’s needed to spark the initial reaction.

“We’re very close to that next step,” said study lead author Alex Zylstra, an experimental physicist at Livermore.

Nuclear fusion presses together two types of hydrogen found in water molecules. When they fuse, “a small amount [milligrams] of fuel produces enormous amounts of energy and it’s also very ‘clean’ in that it produces no radioactive waste,” said Carolyn Kuranz, a University of Michigan experimental plasma physicist who wasn’t part of the research. “It’s basically limitless, clean energy that can be deployed anywhere.”

Researchers around the world have been working on the technology for decades, trying different approaches. Thirty-five countries are collaborating on a project in Southern France called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor that uses enormous magnets to control the superheated plasma. That is expected to begin operating in 2026.

Earlier experiments in the United States and United Kingdom succeeded in fusing atoms, but achieved no self-heating, said Steven Cowley, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who wasn’t part of this study.

But don’t bank on fusion just yet. “The result is scientifically very exciting for us,” said study co-author Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for Lawrence Livermore’s fusion program. “But we’re a long way from useful energy.”

Maybe decades, he said. It’s already taken several years inside a lab that is straight out of “Star Trek” — one of the movies used the lab as background visuals for the Enterprise’s engine room — and many failed attempts to get to this point. One adjustment that helped: Researchers made the fuel capsule about 10% bigger. Now it’s up to the size of a BB.

That capsule fits in a tiny gold metal can that researchers aim 192 lasers at. They heat it to about 100 million degrees, creating about 50% more pressure inside the capsule than what’s inside the center of the sun. These experiments created burning plasmas that lasted just a trillionth of a second, but that was enough to be considered a success, Mr. Zylstra said.

Overall, the four experiments in the Nature study — conducted in November 2020 and February 2021 — produced as much as 0.17 megajoules of energy, That’s far more than previous attempts, but still less than one-tenth of the power used to start the process, Mr. Zylstra said. A megajoule is about enough energy to heat a gallon of water 100 degrees Fahrenheit.


Crafty_Dog

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High quality assessment of nuclear power
« Reply #188 on: July 16, 2022, 11:22:19 AM »

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #189 on: July 16, 2022, 01:36:55 PM »
Good summary of nuclear power

disappointed to hear how complex it is
and there are so many pros and cons

perhaps are next best hope is advancements in fusion

though that won't happen anytime soon...

 :|

or better carbon capture......

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Nuclear Power
« Reply #190 on: July 16, 2022, 02:19:10 PM »
As good as the piece is, IMHO it misses:

a) Transmission lines and their costs.  Sun and Wind are energy consumers are often in different places.

b) Sun and Wind require storage-- i.e. batteries.  Batteries require REEs, which are toxic.

c) Solar panels require REEs, which are toxic.

d) REEs, which are toxic, require mining.

e) Batteries and panels degrade, requiring disposal, which is toxic

f) Requiring solar and batteries helps China, which dominates, achieve economies of scale. 

g) Choosing to be dependent on Chinese suppliers and technology for our energy grid is no different than Germany depending on Russian gas.


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DougMacG

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Post Chernobyl, post Fukushima
« Reply #193 on: November 15, 2022, 08:45:28 AM »
Further to my post on energy, here is the public perception problem with nuclear in one picture:



https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/08/27/nuclear-power-could-cut-the-worlds-carbon-emissions-in-half/?sh=2f8c741f7738

But...  Chernobyl was a Soviet contraption built with no safeguards, and Fukushima was a case of diesel generators failing in a 1000 year tsunami. 

We have 65 years of experience with nuclear power.  Do we have the ability to eliminate the causes of these two meltdowns?  The answer is yes.

BTW, the cattle living outside the Fukushima reactor are well studied and living 10 years beyond pre-meltdown expectations.

https://news.yahoo.com/rancher-guards-irradiated-cattle-near-072047126.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28776900/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00128-020-02968-w
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30358029/

Given that nothing is zero risk, no power source is cleaner or safer than nuclear, the surface of the earth warmed only 2/10ths of a degree in the last 50 years, not all of that CO2 caused, the question remains, do we want to cut our emissions or not?  If so, build nuclear.  Start now.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2022, 12:50:16 PM by Crafty_Dog »

DougMacG

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Leftist Climatists caught reading the forum
« Reply #194 on: November 18, 2022, 08:41:50 PM »
https://www.discoursemagazine.com/politics/2022/11/17/climate-change-motivates-a-reevaluation-of-nuclear-energy/

Um, "Earth in the Balance" was published more than 30 years ago.  We could easily be carbon free by now using technology available then.  #Blockheads
« Last Edit: November 19, 2022, 05:45:58 AM by DougMacG »

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WSJ: A plan to make steel with nuclear fusion
« Reply #197 on: September 27, 2023, 10:10:07 AM »

A Futuristic Plan to Make Steel With Nuclear Fusion
Helion Energy and Nucor are teaming up to build a power plant at one of Nucor’s U.S. steel mills
By
Jennifer Hiller
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Amrith Ramkumar
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Sept. 27, 2023 7:30 am ET




Part of a Helion Energy prototype for fusion energy reaction experiments. PHOTO: HELION ENERGY/REUTERS
America’s largest steel company is betting nuclear fusion can help it eliminate carbon emissions and power one of the world’s most energy-intensive manufacturing processes.

In a first-of-its-kind partnership between a major industrial company and a fusion startup, Nucor NUE 2.00%increase; green up pointing triangle and Helion Energy plan to develop a 500-megawatt fusion power plant that would be placed at one of Nucor’s U.S. steel mills by 2030, the companies said.

That amount is enough electricity to power a few hundred thousand homes, about as much as a conventional power plant. Nucor is investing $35 million in Helion, which is backed by OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman.

The deal is a bet on fusion, a technology that can seem more science fiction than science and hasn’t yet produced electricity.

The agreement shows how Nucor and many other manufacturers are desperate for clean electricity to make greener products but are limited by a lack of abundant wind and solar power.


The steelmaker Nucor is under pressure to move faster on the adoption of clean energy. PHOTO: TIMOTHY D. EASLEY/AP
Many green steelmaking techniques require immense power, creating a need for energy sources such as fusion that address some of the limitations of today’s renewable and battery technologies.

“We don’t want to sit on the sidelines and wait for all these technologies and hope they get developed,” Leon Topalian, Nucor’s chief executive, said in an interview.

Fusion powers the sun and has the potential to provide vast amounts of carbon-free power if someone can figure out how to harness it on Earth. No company has proved it can get more energy out of fusion than it takes to create it, and most experts think commercial fusion remains decades away.

Money has poured into fusion following a long-awaited breakthrough in December, when Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said it had produced more energy from fusion than was delivered through lasers to drive the reaction.


Nucor’s steel goes into the world’s buildings, cars and appliances. In states where Nucor has facilities, it is among the largest electricity consumers.

Customers including General Motors and the heating and cooling equipment maker Trane Technologies are demanding greener steel, pushing Nucor to move faster on clean energy. The company has used recycled material for many years to make cleaner products, but the steel industry needs to address power consumption to meet climate targets and is currently dependent on local utility grids, many of which rely on fossil fuels.

The Nucor fusion plant would be about 10 times the capacity of another facility Helion plans to build to provide fusion-generated electricity by 2028 for Microsoft. The Microsoft deal, believed to be the fusion industry’s first commercial agreement, was announced in May.

Nucor plans to buy power directly from Helion at its steel mill rather than purchasing it from a utility or electricity grid operator. If successful, that approach could provide a blueprint for fusion companies to sign similar deals with power customers. Helion could sell excess power not used by Nucor back to the grid operator, another potential benefit for the developing fusion industry.

“This is moving out of the realm of a federally funded research program and into industrial power development,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s chief executive. “This should be the signal that fusion electricity is coming.”

Helion is building its seventh prototype, which it says will demonstrate electricity generated from fusion next year.

Current nuclear power plants use fission reactions, which split atoms to create a burst of energy. Fusion merges atoms instead.

In August, the Livermore laboratory said it had replicated its breakthrough. While the achievement doesn’t account for the electricity powering the lasers, it helped boost optimism about the decadeslong pursuit of fusion.

In addition to proving fusion can generate electricity, the companies will have to show a fusion plant can provide power directly to a big user and receive regulatory approvals for the project.

State and local regulations will be a factor in deciding where to put the fusion plant, company officials said. Helion is based near Seattle, while Nucor is based in Charlotte, N.C., and has mills across the U.S. The companies will consider local incentives that could buttress federal subsidies.

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Helion has been among the industry’s largest fundraisers, with around $630 million, including the Nucor investment. Altman has invested $375 million in Helion and has said having customers is critical for keeping Helion focused on the realities of business.

Nucor recently invested in the more conventional kind of nuclear power, fission, another carbon-free technology being pursued by startups around the world. Nucor and the fission company NuScale Power are looking at using a small modular reactor to provide power to a steel mill.

The support for nuclear fusion and fission is a blast from the past for Nucor, which was previously called Nuclear Corporation of America in the middle of the 20th century as a nuclear industry services provider before it rebranded and focused on steel.

“Wind and solar aren’t going to be enough,” Topalian said. “We’re going to need to look at how we advance the ball in other areas.”

Write to Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com and Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com

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RANE: Bitch slapped by reality, Euros reconsider Nuclear Power
« Reply #198 on: October 10, 2023, 04:54:00 PM »
New Energy and Climate Realities Prompt Europe to Revisit Nuclear Power
Oct 10, 2023 | 21:40 GMT


Climate change, the reduction of Russian natural gas, high electricity prices and safer next-generation nuclear reactors will lead more European countries to invest in new nuclear reactors. But internal EU disagreements over nuclear power, as well as technical and financial hurdles, will complicate those efforts and introduce new challenges for nuclear companies. Italy is becoming the latest European country to offer political support for nuclear power. On Sept. 21, Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin launched the National Platform for Sustainable Nuclear Power to develop guidelines in the next nine months to possibly reintroduce nuclear power to Italy's energy mix. In launching the platform, Fratin pointed out that Italy needed to secure electricity sources that, unlike renewables, can provide a stable supply of power, like nuclear power does, as the country phases out fossil fuels. If Italy builds nuclear reactors, it would most likely only consider small modular reactors or more advanced Gen IV reactors (which are safer but not expected to be commercialized until the 2040s), rather than the Gen III+ reactors being constructed today.

Italy phased out nuclear power in 1990 after a 1987 referendum in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In the late 2000s, Italy sought to revive its nuclear power industry, but this was headed off by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan and another Italian referendum shortly thereafter where over 90% of Italians voted in support of repealing the laws passed by the government to revive nuclear power.

In 2022, both the British and French governments announced new plans to build new nuclear reactors. France will build at least six new reactors, with plans to potentially build eight additional reactors, while the United Kingdom will build up to eight new reactors. In June 2023, the Swedish Riksdag also approved a new energy plan to build ten new reactors.

In February 2023, France also led the creation of a Nuclear Alliance of 16 countries, with Italy being an observer and the United Kingdom as a guest country, designed to promote nuclear power within Europe. The other members are Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden.

Central and Eastern Europe is also becoming an increasingly important area for the development of emerging nuclear technologies in the region, as exemplified by the U.S.-led plan known as ''Project Phoenix,'' which aims to replace coal-fired power plants in countries like Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia with small modular reactors.

On the other hand, Germany shut down its remaining nuclear power plant in April 2023 given that the Green Party is part of the government coalition. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sept. 2 that nuclear power was a ''dead horse'' in Germany, despite calls from both the opposition and members of his coalition government to halt the decommissioning of Germany's nuclear power plants.

Climate change, the war in Ukraine, energy security concerns, new nuclear energy technologies and high energy prices are all contributing to increased European interest in nuclear power. Last year, the outbreak of the Ukraine war and the subsequent EU decision to phase out Russian natural gas entirely by 2027 led to a spike in electricity prices driven by high natural gas prices amid limited supplies. This electricity spike prompted the European Union to temporarily loosen its state aid rules under a Temporary Crisis Framework, which allowed countries to implement subsidies, cash transfers and other mechanisms designed to combat the higher energy price environment. The Continent's push to phase out Russian natural gas following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine — coupled with the European Union's growing ambition to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 under its Fit for 55 Package — means that European governments are under pressure to ensure that their policies simultaneously hit green targets and generate enough electricity from different sources by the end of the decade and at reasonable costs for future electricity. Adding to the challenges is the fact that Europe's ambitious electrification targets for the transportation sector (i.e. to get more electric vehicles on the road) and the heating sector (i.e. to install more electric heat pumps) are expected to help boost European electricity demand by about 20% in 2030 from 2021 levels, according to the International Energy Agency. Nuclear reactors are attractive for two main reasons: 1) they can improve Europe's energy security by offering a stable supply of low-carbon electricity that does not require a constant supply of fuel, unlike coal or natural gas power plants, and 2) unlike renewables like wind and solar (which generate power intermittently), nuclear reactors can operate uninterrupted throughout the day, providing a so-called base load to the electricity grid that helps keep the power grid balanced. Moreover, over the last decade, nuclear power companies have introduced Gen III+ reactors, which are viewed as being far safer than previous generations (like the Gen II reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl). In the future, small modular reactors also offer more promise for safety as they are designed in a way so that they do not really present a risk beyond their premises and aren't at risk of having a nuclear meltdown — making them even more politically attractive.

Over the next few years, there will likely be more pressure on European governments to accelerate the energy transition, which nuclear power can help accomplish, as climate change intensifies and as evidence mounts that global actions to cut emissions are insufficient to achieve the goals outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. A technical report released on Sept. 8 ahead of the United Nations COP28 climate conference in November, which will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates, found a large gap between countries' current greenhouse gas emissions and the expected decline in emissions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement's targets.

European environmental and climate activist groups generally oppose the use of both nuclear power and fossil fuels. But as the climate crisis worsens, some activists will likely become more pragmatic about nuclear power, viewing the environmental concerns with nuclear power as a lesser of two evils compared with climate change. Already, on Aug. 29, an activist group that was a part of Greta Thunberg's school climate strikes campaign launched a ''Dear Greenpeace'' campaign to convince the global environmental organization to drop its ''old-fashioned and unscientific'' opposition to nuclear energy, arguing that Greenpeace's anti-nuclear stance supported the fossil fuel industry.

But European countries' nuclear goals, especially the ambitious ones put forth by those like France and Poland, face significant threats from technical and financial hurdles. Recent European and North American nuclear power projects have had limited success. First-of-their-kind Gen III+ reactors developed by nuclear power companies like U.S.-based Westinghouse and France's Framatome have been plagued by cost overruns and lengthy delays. Finland's Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor — the first Gen III+ EPR reactor constructed by Framatome, Germany's Siemens and France's state-owned power giant — finally began normal operations in April 2023, 18 years after construction originally began in 2005, and four years after construction was originally scheduled to be completed in 2019. The cost of the reactor ballooned from 3 billion euros initially to around 11 billion euros. The second EPR reactor being built in France has also suffered a decade-long delay in its commissioning. In the United States, Westinghouse has run into similar issues with its AP1000 reactors, with its first reactor at a power plant in Georgia being commissioned in July 2023 after long delays and cost overruns. Such struggles are significant for Europe, as the AP1000 and EPR will likely comprise the bulk of the designs selected for new reactors on the Continent. EDF, Framatome, Siemens and Westinghouse will likely be able to reduce some of the delays and cost overruns, now that the first-of-their-kind reactors have been built — especially if they can introduce economies of scale to design and build multiple reactors at the same site or in the same country. But their efforts will only go so far without improvements to the structural issues in the West that are also contributing to the high price and lengthy timelines of these projects (including a shortage of nuclear energy experts, high labor costs, and strict regulatory and safety standards).

Compared with Western countries, China and South Korea have been able to more quickly and cheaply build advanced nuclear reactors. But although both Asian countries have eyed the European nuclear market, China's involvement has become politically controversial in countries like the United Kingdom (where the government has pushed China out of multiple nuclear power projects in recent years), while South Korea has yet to prove it can export nuclear technology to Europe and meet higher European environmental and safety standards without increasing costs and timelines.

The risks of cost overruns and delays are even higher in Italy (which is considering rebuilding nuclear reactors) and Poland (which is planning to build its first reactors). This is because neither country has an established workforce with a history of working in the nuclear power industry, nor a proven track record through their respective regulatory environments to make approvals quick and easy to implement.

In Italy and other European countries that are trying to reverse a long-established anti-nuclear stance, the eventual revival of a nuclear program will face even more constraints and will likely take 10-15 years to materialize. Convincing the country's public opinion to change a deep-rooted distrust in nuclear energy, as well as finding sites to build new reactors and store nuclear waste amid local communities' traditional resistance to such infrastructure, will prove to be a long and challenging process.

The sustained push for nuclear power by some EU member states will continue to create disputes within the bloc, which will pose a financial and regulatory risk to countries and companies pursuing nuclear energy opportunities in Europe. Germany — along with fellow EU members Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Portugal, which have long opposed nuclear power — seem unlikely to reverse their anti-nuclear positions. In 2021 and 2022, these five EU countries pushed for nuclear power to be excluded from the EU Taxonomy Regulation for green finance. But while nuclear power was ultimately included in the taxonomy, political spats within the bloc over the controversial energy source have continued. Currently, EU member states are arguing over whether governments should be allowed to offer state-backed, fixed-price power contracts to existing power plants and then take the revenue to subsidize industries. France, as well as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, want to be able to spend those subsidies on existing nuclear facilities. By contrast, Germany and other anti-nuclear states are concerned that such subsidies could undermine their own electricity market's competitiveness vis-a-vis countries with nuclear plants. EU negotiators hope to reach a compromise as a part of a broader reform to the bloc's electricity market by the time EU energy ministers finish their next meeting on Oct. 17. But even if EU members are able to reach an agreement on this particular dispute, the controversy over the subsidy issue nonetheless demonstrates that the debate over nuclear power in the European Union will likely continue to play out as the EU implements energy policy reforms in the coming years, with each major change likely re-opening disagreements over the role of nuclear power. For companies, this creates a degree of uncertainty and introduces political and regulatory risk around policies by pro-nuclear EU member states that are designed to support nuclear power-related investments or lifetime extensions. The technical, financial and regulatory challenges that have recently plagued the construction of new reactors in Europe also magnify some of the political disputes in the European Union surrounding nuclear power because they risk not only adding more delays, but reducing state support for and investor interest in such projects (especially if investors aren't able to label their nuclear investments as sustainable) — both of which are necessary for the construction of nuclear reactors to be economically feasible.