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China starts up world's first fourth-generation nuclear reactor
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Notify me if they can keep it running economically and without hidden costs.
Have others been uneconomical?
Not at all, but long term storage of exhausted nuclear rods still costs an unknown amount of money endless centuries into the future. So you can't really put a number on the final bill.
Some types of reactors can also use those waste products as fuel and in turn make them into other waste products that only last a couple hundred years, so it's not a easy calculation to make unless you know what's deployed in the future.
Eh we’ll just dump em into the Sun someday if we start running out of space here on earth.
That has been suggested for decades, problem is that if any of the transporters blow up on their way to space, you essentially have a dirty bomb covering half the planet. No bueno.
It was usually old-style (insecure) and expensive, covered with hidden funding, or new tech (somewhat secure) and even more expensive.
Depends. Right now it isnt really that impressive. Bit questionable to build new nuclear power imho.
Just given that other power sources are so much cheaper.
Then there is also the controversy of explicit and implicit subsidies. For instance here: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/nuclear_subsidies_summary.pdf
a report that shows historically the subsidies were enormous. Right now it seems a bit tricky to estimate - but I haven't read the report in detail.
Edit: sorry wanted to answer @qooqie
Cheaper because it’s being subsidised and supported by gas peaker plants. If renewables had to deliver guaranteed capacity (and not just “yeah, I might deliver some power and some point and when I do, you better be able to receive it”) the real price would show. As it happens, grid operators can accept it because we’ve still got a grid full of steerable generation (mainly gas and nuclear) that they can turn off. Once it’s renewables all the way down, what are we going to do on the many periods where we don’t have wind for days? Storage?! Puhlese, the scale of the requirement is a magnitude higher than we could ever hope to store.
In the end, renewables will be shitloads cheaper if we maintain some steerable demand. I’d rather that be nuclear.
It’s best if we don’t think like a fanboy - but instead have a realistic debate about the price of integration nuclear at high penetration. The total mix price will be a lot cheaper if we maintain 20% steerable.
The science is pretty clear on this.
I think that is a relevant point. But if solar capacity is that much cheaper you can just build much more of it and still offset thenprice.
Germany had >80% renewables for many days this year
Are you suggesting nuclear is steerable? Because afaik it is not.
I don't see an alternative to 100% renewable + higher capacity to offset storage inefficiency. France is trying it, but it is super costly and unreliable.
Not going to happen. That's not how nuclear works.
Nuclear is steerable for renewables, sure. You wouldn’t use nuclear for frequency management (pumped storage, battery and a few - hopefully never used - gas plants manage frequency) but renewables don’t change their output that quickly. You pretty much know what you’re going to get out of renewable resources tomorrow and you certainly know what you’re going to get out in the next four hours. If nuclear was built to support this planning (with molten salt or other heat store) it could be done very economically. Look at how Sweden manage their nuclear output depending on the amount of wind Denmark has to sell them cheaply.
I'm struggling to fine anything that says Sweden have used there nuclear power flexibility. That's not even mentioning if they have done it for a good price point.
Off shore wind hehe
Why is it hydro always left out of these comparisons?
Have you got a nice big valley with an existing water flow to donate or sell to a new hydro plant?
Hydro is absolutely great (if you ignore local ecosystem ecological damage) but it has very significant land use requirements. These can make it difficult to build practically once you have most of the good spots filled in, so it's incredibly difficult to price new builds of it. Some areas may be infinite cost because the land topology simply doesn't exist. Others may have the perfect site and be relatively cheap.
All power sources have requirements. It's no reason to remove this or that one from the comparison.
Nuclear was never "really" that cheap.