Well yea, countries keep buying nuclear from France because it’s clean, cheap, and they don’t want to suffer the political backlash from the science lacking environmentalists which come forward when they talk about building nuclear on their own land
They have spurred on the solar/wind movement successfully though, albeit whilst using coal as a crutch. Even so, without the greens, alternative energy might never have been a discussion in a country like Germany which is positively obsessed with gas and cars
The problem is replacing nuclear with renewables does nothing to combat climate change. We need to be reducing fossil fuels. At the very least, they should have phased out coal before nuclear. While france was busy reducing its dependence on coal, Germany remains the largest producer of coal in Europe.
You’re certainly right that their handling of nuclear was inefficient for reducing carbon output.
I’m pretty pro nuclear, but I don’t think that really takes away from their success in pushing renewables forward, they were a very early adopter of solar thanks to their very generous subsidies and probably helped fuel its growth at a faster rate, so regardless of their unfortunate paranoia around nuclear, they do deserve some praise. Perfect is the enemy of good, and given the speed the world has responded to climate change, Germanys mixed and painful transition was certainly not the worst.
The nuclear ship had sailed long before the Green Party became part of the current government. While I also think that nuclear power is a much better alternative to coal power plants it’s simply not feasible to revert Germany’s decision when wind and solar is as cheap as it is now.
The problem with solar is going to be scaling it to meet power demands. Never mind the fact that solar companies are cutting down trees to make way for solar fields.
Nuclear energy and hopefully nuclear fusion will be the future
It’s too late to start new nuclear projects. The quickest Gen 3 reactor build in the US was 14 years. So starting now, you’re looking to finish near 2040. And for those 14 years of construction, you’re pumping huge amounts of CO2. Over its lifetime it will emit less CO2 than many other forms of power, but that’s too slow. We need to be reducing emissions now, not reducing emissions in the 2050s and beyond.
It’s literally never too late to start them. It’s too late for them, alone, to reverse the damage to the climate change but make no mistake that until we’re dead and buried it’s not too late to make more. The KW/h per measurement of CO2 that nuclear plants produce is incomprehensible. It surpasses even renewable energy, that causes pollution from the broken panels and other e-waste. Fission has always been the answer and it needs to be pushed through no matter how fucking late it is so they can then be repurposed into fusion based when we make that advancement.
The life-cycle emissions from nuclear are better than PV, but it’s still not as good as wind or hydro. But the issue is that it’s massively front loaded - you have huge emissions during construction that are slowly undone over the decades of operation. But we can’t afford to ramp up emissions for the next 14+ years (both the emissions of building a nuclear plant, and the fact that the existing coal/gas plants will have to run for another 14 years). If you switch to renewables, you can reduce emissions this year, not in the 2050s.
And there is absolutely no way you’re going to repurpose a fission plant into a fusion plant. They have basically nothing in common apart from the name.
What? Is there a good alternative? If we could magically make the world 100% renewable+nuclear in only 14 years that would be amazing I think. It would not solve everything, but sometimes it takes a bit to stop the bleeding before healing can start (carbon capture and planting trees during nuclear construction maybe?)
Yes. Regulatory overreach has made it 14 years to build nuclear plants. Almost all of which is interminable red tape. We should fix that, not pretend it’s a feature of the technology.
These decisions are mainly rooted in the peace movement of the 80s (fueled by the nuclear missiles in Germany installed by the US) and the direct experience of Tschernobyl. Its supported by the majority in the public.
The current political decision was made by the more conversative government.
See also: the “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” sticker that has a cartoon picture of the biggest nuclear reactor in the solar system on it. Irony: it’s good for the blood dearie.
France has been importing more electricity than exporting in 2022 because their nuclear reactors can’t perform in the heat resulting from climate change. And this is more likely to happen again as each year becomes hotter.
I’m not sure where this fetishism for France‘s nuclear energy is coming from.
France has been a net exporter for 40 years straight before that, as well as being the top exporter most of that time in Europe.
Also they’re back to Top 1 right now.
Last year’s gap in electricity production was not due to heat (only a few reactors were slowed down for a few hours, and we’re talking about less than 0.5% loss due to these shutdowns over the year).
Besides, it’s not a technical limitation on nuclear power, it’s an ecological measure.
The hole in production was due to a corrosion problem detected in several reactors, which occurred at the same time as maintenance work in other reactors that were behind schedule because of COVID. This would have had no impact if nuclear power had not been left virtually abandoned for 30 years because of the anti-nuclear movement.
It’s the classic story: anti-nukes shoot nuclear power in the foot, then claim that nuclear power doesn’t work, despite reality.
Genuinely curious here… what about the concerns of nuclear waste? My understanding of it is based on the Simpsons so ELI5 how modern tech resolves the waste issues?
The question of nuclear waste is an extremely minor problem compared to the ecological issues we’re facing, and which we’ve been addressing for decades.
Anti-nuclear people just prefer to cover their ears and pretend it’s an insolvable problem.
Most of it can be recycled (as in used for other nuclear products or services like MRI machines), but it doesn’t because of fear of weaponization. What can’t be recycled can be buried.
See these videos for more info on nuclear energy. The first one includes a nukeE’s commentary. His intros are a bit dry, but he’s very informative on kurzgesagt’s content.
This is a complex issue, not just because storing radioactive material is complex, but because the “waste” are not a uniform single material. Some have a decaying process of 300 years (90% of the waste, actually), some have a much longer one.
In the beginning of the nuclear era, some wastes were… dumped in the ocean (it’s as bad as it sounds). This is fortunately no longer the normal practice. Some dedicated storage sites are used to store them depending on their lifetime.
The latest solution is geologic storage (some caves were found with waste from naturally occurring fission, eons ago, radioactivity never escaped, so let’s just… do that?). A site was identified in Finland with a hope it can store them for 100,000 years (of course, we don’t have any reference that would last that long…). And the good thing is the storage is “reversible” for the first 100 years (if we change our mind/find better, we can still retrieve the waste during the first 100 years).
Finally, and that will resonate with @Waryle@lemmy.world comment: France had a 4th generation prototype reactor called SuperPhenix. Particularity of a 4th gen reactor is it can use some wastes to produce more energy. SuperPhenix being a prototype, it suffered from many issues through its lifetime. But at the end, it had a 90% uptime, and though it wasn’t generating a lot of power (that was never the goal, remember: development…), some reports were recommending to keep it up so that it could have processed part of the existing nuclear waste.
To appeal to the ecologists party allied to the socialist Prime Minister at that time, SuperPhenix was definitely shutdown in 1997.
And now, the same ecologists use the nuclear wastes issue as a big reason to push back any plan on nuclear power.
You’re quoting 2022 because that year >30% of the reactrors were taken offline for maintenance. The French government is also shutting down nuclear reactors due to lack of funding & outdated technology.
This is not an inherant problem with nuclear, but because the French government hasn’t invested since the 70s.
If funding wasn’t cut (due to environmental activists), the output would be more than needed.
Nuclear is still our best bet for combatting climate change and reducing carbon emissions.
Actually, in a nuclear power plan, except the tank itself (not sure I’m translating “cuve” properly, every part can be upgraded.
“Lifetime exceeded” in a nuclear reactor is a misleading statement. The truth is we don’t know how long they can last. We know some minimum lifetimes only, by being cautious.
Example: you build the first plants, and you “slap” them with a 40 years lifetime. Why 40 years? Because we have enough records and historical data to back the structure and materials with enough confidence they will last 40 years at least. Beyond 40 years, we start venturing in uncertainty. That doesn’t mean we even trust the 40 years. Every 10 years, a power plant is getting fully audited to get an authorization to run for the next 10 years (and there are less deep regular audits as well).
Later, with more data, and more reference, you can establish that the structure and material have proven to have an even longer lifetime, and you can extend it (50, 60 years). It may come with extra-conditions, though. But there is a certain confidence that with the proper funding, France could keep its plants up and running for a lot longer than the initial 40 years.
Ironically, France shutdown the oldest reactors that just had received the very latest upgrade, making it also the most modern reactors in service.
Im quoting 2022 because this was last year. As in, the most recent year.
I don’t disagree that we should have phased out coal instead of nuclear first. But what has happened has happened. I do disagree that we need a „nuclear renessaince“ now, because neither the economics nor the timelines work out at this point in time. Solar and wind is cheaper, faster to build, and more flexible as you can iterate on their designs MUCH more quickly than nuclear plants.
That’s the main reason why solar panel efficiency is going through the roof.
Why cannibalize the investments in what obviously works?
One other problem with nuclear is that it has to run at a fixed output level, and can’t be scaled down if there is eg. lots of solar power being generated. In this case, you have to scale down renewables to make sure you can use the nuclear power, which makes it clash with the eventual goal to power everything with renewables.
You need a pilotable generator matching renewables. You can’t do without it. The only question is how much of it you need to plan.
Existing approaches are storage: batteries, hydro where it’s possible (you pump the water up a dam to store back energy) and backup generators: coal, gas, and in some future plans, hydrogen.
None of these is a perfect solution (well, nothing is a perfect solution).
Hydro: that’s the ideal, but obviously, you need a very large body of water, and heavy construction. But it ends up being a very clean energy with long lifetime.
Batteries: lifetime considerably reduced, requires very large amount of precious minerals (today, car industry assume they’ll get ~100% of lithium extracted, aeronautic assumes they’ll get as much as they need without counting, and then you have the energy sector counting on very large quantities as well ; there won’t be enough we can extract for everyone, and lithium mines are all but clean).
Backup generators: no need to comment on fossil fuel, but hydrogen has a big issue: it is very inefficient, ~30%. So if you need it 10% of the time, you need to plan 30% more capacity of renewable, and that’s assuming you can pilot it all the way from total shutdown to 100% capacity, probably very optimistic. You will need to have it running at some minimum levels, that’s even more renewables you need to keep it running.
It is not completely true that nuclear needs to run at fixed level. Depending on their design, some plants are pilotable and some are not. But I don’t think (I’ll be happily corrected if needed) any had the flexibility you need to be used with renewable (quick large variations).
So the ideal mix is, IMHO, a baseline provided by nuclear, and a mix of renewable and complements to produce the difference.
Bonus: there is a “method” promoted by some (ignorant) politics they call “proliferation” (“foisonnement”, not sure I’m translating that the best). This is utter BS…
The idea is there will always be sun or wind somewhere in a super-grid spreading through Europe. If you think about it for 1 minute, that means that small part of Europe where there is wind will power, for a more or less short time, a large portion of the whole Europe?? Not only is that totally insane from the capacity point of view, but it also completely neglects the grid’s stability and electricity transportation issue. It is very difficult to transport electricity over very large distances without disturbing the grid. Ask Germany, they spend massively on infrastructures right now without counting on proliferation. That would raise the requirements further…
What do you mean by cheapest energy? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables, if you factor in construction and maintenance cost. It only works because it has been massively subdisidized.
Or do you have some source that this energy is „cheaper“? Please be aware that France caps their electricity prices internally and subsidizes them with taxes (which is fine, but makes the prices incomparable to other countries).
„The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.“
Are you pretending that renewable are not subsidised? Renewable are young yet, how will the prices do in 10 years when they will start to be maintained and replaced? What about the energy you need to complement renewable? Is it considered in their price or not? Do you consider the price of renewable when they’re cheap because of overproduction?
You’re like “did you consider factors a, b, c, d?” and then link to an article that explicitly ignores all of those factors and compares only the amortized cost of the construction of the plants, omitting all other operating costs.
We omit the higher operational costs for the nuclear power plant as they are an economic benefit as well. These costs are recycled back into the economy through wages and taxes.
On top of that, this argument is a classic economic fallacy. It’s a little bit like saying “breaking windows is an economic benefit because people will pay glass makers to fix them and so money flows back into the economy.” It completely ignores opportunity costs.
I haven’t seen any levelized cost of electricity study that makes nuclear competitive with wind and solar power. Now I’m not against nuclear power in principle, and as the renewable share goes up grid operators might be willing to pay a premium to subsidize reliable nuclear base load generators.
However the economic proposition I just cannot see. The long lifetime is actually working against nuclear plants here as potential investors assume much greater risk, combined with enormous up-front construction costs. Who wants to invest billions of dollars to bet on electricity prices 60 years into the future? Lots of things can happen in that time.
That’s why small reactors are developed. So these parasites of investors can finally be useful to society.
Now I linked the first article I found. It’s hard enough to find any relevant information. You chose to answer that only. Fine.
In Europe the market is not free. And any sane country would subsidised energy production. I would bet USA also does it. In Europe ARENH means all énergies are helped by nuclear energy production, a system meant to help other energies to compete with it. Renewable are funded by states for decades now, and they’ve been so eventhough they were far from competitive 20 years ago.
Ok, so obviously, you’re not well aware of how the new European open market works, and why France ended up paying part of consumer’s bills.
France uses to have a state-owned company, EDF, producing and distributing electricity in France. EDF had a monopole. France had the cheapest electricity of Europe, and EDF was profitable.
Sink that in, when you say nuclear is expensive:
EDF was delivering the cheapest electricity of Europe and was profitable.
A decision from the European Union was taken to force all members to switch to an open market. French government at the time was conservative, so they happily went along with it. Everyone “knows” that private sector always does better than whatever has “public” or “state” in its description.
But how would you introduce competition when virtually no one else produces any electricity? How to kickstart it? That’s where bright people went very very creative.
Production and distribution of electricity was split as separate activities. EDF spinned off the distribution part of its work. In parallel, a quota of nuclear production was allocated to new companies, “electricity suppliers”, so that they got something to sell at an affordable price.
That’s where it starts to be interesting: to guarantee a margin to electricity suppliers, so that they would make enough money to invest in production, the daily price of electricity on the market is set to the marginal cost of the most expensive power plant that’s turned on. Do you follow me? If today, 99% of electricity is coming from a nuclear power plant, but you need to start a coal power plant to provide the last 1%, all 100% of the electricity that day is billed at the cost of the coal power plant! I am not kidding, I am not making that shit up!
Why prices exploded since last year? Well, you’ve heard about gas prices, right? Every day a gas power plan is turned on with gas prices through the roof, 100% of the electricity that day is billed at the cost of the gas power plant. That’s why France started subsidizing the consumers bills, because most of them could not afford a x6, 7, 10 on their electricity bills.
But at least, we do have competition now, don’t we? Well… not on the production side…
No condition on investment was given to the electricity supplier. Read that again. Guess what happened.
Electricity suppliers were buying most of their electricity at a cheap regulated cost from EDF and selling it with a big profit to consumers, all while producing nothing themselves. Why would they?? Money is trickling down to them for free!
Even better: as they were more competitive than EDF, thanks to having 0 maintenance and 0 investment to make, and cheap electricity to resell, their customers base grew. Then they found out that they were not getting enough cheap electricity, and they faced a dilemma: buy a larger share of electricity from other real producers, that would have increased their cost, or cap their customers base (or of course, invest in production, but who wants to do that, right?).
They did neither of these. They pleaded to the current government to get MORE cheap electricity from EDF. And the government did that: forced EDF to allocate more of its cheap nuclear electricity to them, increasing the quota. Needless to say that if EDF needed more electricity for their own customers, they were answered that they could buy the more expensive electricity from outside, or invest in more capacity. Makes sense, right? The exact opposite of what the system was supposed to do.
Now, the very best part: when gas price exploded, even the small fraction of electricity bought by the electricity suppliers impacted their cost. It was unacceptable to them. So they raised their rate to be above EDF, or even outright cancelled contracts with their customers, so that customers would go back to EDF (EDF cannot refuse contracts, and is not allowed to adjust its own rates). But… electricity suppliers do not have to give up on their quota from EDF… so…
EDF had to buy back the electricity EDF produces, to companies producing nothing, at the rate of the market, of course, not the rate at which EDF is forced to sell that electricity to these companies. So it’s even better now. EDF sells them electricity (which is a virtual sale, electricity still goes from EDF plants to households like it did before). These companies sell it back to EDF with a big margin. Dream business, isn’t it?
So France does not subsidize bills because nuclear is too expensive.
France literally subsidizes a scam scheme, in which most of the money going to parasitic companies producing nothing.
Any sources on any of that? That’s a lot of „you just know that“ information, and I do consider myself well informed. I am not from France though.
Anyway:
neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.
getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)
I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.
neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.
I am all but convinced any of this will last. Pressure on solar panel has increased, it is deeply connected to the semiconductor’s industry. In the coming decades, it will raise questions on water usage, minerals, etc.
Wind farms occupy very large surfaces, and they already compete with other usage of the land. Dismantling them is problematic too: a large body of concrete is left behind in the ground.
getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)
Unfortunately, can’t but agree, though it’s infuriating every time.
I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.
They don’t reinvest (in France, I mean). They just cash the money. Keeping EDF as a state-owned monopoly has been working great for France for decades. The same model works great in Québec. There was no need to change it. EDF being state-owned, you can require it to invest in whatever you want: give it target on renewables, etc. What we have here instead is parasitic companies. Crushing majority of the production investment still comes from EDF, and their investment capacity is fading as their finances are gutted in the name of an “open market” ideology.
I’d love to see the science behind why the reactors couldn’t perform in the heat seeing as how essentially all regular power generation involves spinning a turbine with steam. Temps might be hot in Europe, but they aren’t quite 100C/212F hot.
Why don’t they build them in cold places then? They don’t have any cold areas north? Can they build em next to glaciers before those melt too. If they all melt, we may be too dead for it to matter anyways.
Or you know, it just makes sense and wasn’t imported from anywhere? Some of us actually prefer real data and science instead of sensationalism and fear mongering.
It’s just so apparent that the pro nuclear brigade is not preferring all real data, just the one it fits. I am not against nuclear per se, I just find it hilarious how at reddit and here as well, people are just SO pro nuclear that nothing else should even be considered. Which made me think if all that is just a very persistent astroturfing campaign
Then look at the data. Vogtle was just completed for over $30/watt. You could build solar with 16x the nameplate capacity and 24 hours of lithium battery storage to make it baseload for that same amount.
"In December 2020 IEA and OECD NEA published a joint Projected Costs of Generating Electricity study which looks at a very broad range of electricity generating technologies based on 243 power plants in 24 countries. The primary finding was that “low-carbon generation is overall becoming increasingly cost competitive” and “new nuclear power will remain the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025”. The report calculated LCOE with assumed 7% discount rate and adjusted for systemic costs of generation.[79] "
Hell no. It’s economically only justifiable for france, because they need an excuse to finance their nuclear research. Ecologically it would be, if the Uranium just popped out of the ground before the power plant and not producing waste.
Still a sweet deal: we get the energy, france keeps the risk, russia mines get the pollution.
I’m mocking the guy. I said “liberals” because people like conservatives love combining everyone who disagrees with them on anything into the word “liberals”.
I’m not a liberal or a conservative. I’m an unregistered voter and have voted for Democrats and Republicans. My ideology sits center-right, but I’m definitely not a conservative as I’m an atheist.
The groups I spoke of only like to use science that supports their narrative. If there’s any studies/experiments that refute what they belive in, they’ll usually disregard it.
Well yea, countries keep buying nuclear from France because it’s clean, cheap, and they don’t want to suffer the political backlash from the science lacking environmentalists which come forward when they talk about building nuclear on their own land
German green party
Nuclear plants:🤮
Carbon plants (that actually produce more radiation that nuclear plants): 🥰
They have spurred on the solar/wind movement successfully though, albeit whilst using coal as a crutch. Even so, without the greens, alternative energy might never have been a discussion in a country like Germany which is positively obsessed with gas and cars
Germany co2 emission for energy is 3 times that of France thanks to ecologists!
The problem is replacing nuclear with renewables does nothing to combat climate change. We need to be reducing fossil fuels. At the very least, they should have phased out coal before nuclear. While france was busy reducing its dependence on coal, Germany remains the largest producer of coal in Europe.
You’re certainly right that their handling of nuclear was inefficient for reducing carbon output.
I’m pretty pro nuclear, but I don’t think that really takes away from their success in pushing renewables forward, they were a very early adopter of solar thanks to their very generous subsidies and probably helped fuel its growth at a faster rate, so regardless of their unfortunate paranoia around nuclear, they do deserve some praise. Perfect is the enemy of good, and given the speed the world has responded to climate change, Germanys mixed and painful transition was certainly not the worst.
The nuclear ship had sailed long before the Green Party became part of the current government. While I also think that nuclear power is a much better alternative to coal power plants it’s simply not feasible to revert Germany’s decision when wind and solar is as cheap as it is now.
The problem with solar is going to be scaling it to meet power demands. Never mind the fact that solar companies are cutting down trees to make way for solar fields.
Nuclear energy and hopefully nuclear fusion will be the future
It’s too late to start new nuclear projects. The quickest Gen 3 reactor build in the US was 14 years. So starting now, you’re looking to finish near 2040. And for those 14 years of construction, you’re pumping huge amounts of CO2. Over its lifetime it will emit less CO2 than many other forms of power, but that’s too slow. We need to be reducing emissions now, not reducing emissions in the 2050s and beyond.
It’s literally never too late to start them. It’s too late for them, alone, to reverse the damage to the climate change but make no mistake that until we’re dead and buried it’s not too late to make more. The KW/h per measurement of CO2 that nuclear plants produce is incomprehensible. It surpasses even renewable energy, that causes pollution from the broken panels and other e-waste. Fission has always been the answer and it needs to be pushed through no matter how fucking late it is so they can then be repurposed into fusion based when we make that advancement.
The life-cycle emissions from nuclear are better than PV, but it’s still not as good as wind or hydro. But the issue is that it’s massively front loaded - you have huge emissions during construction that are slowly undone over the decades of operation. But we can’t afford to ramp up emissions for the next 14+ years (both the emissions of building a nuclear plant, and the fact that the existing coal/gas plants will have to run for another 14 years). If you switch to renewables, you can reduce emissions this year, not in the 2050s.
And there is absolutely no way you’re going to repurpose a fission plant into a fusion plant. They have basically nothing in common apart from the name.
What? Is there a good alternative? If we could magically make the world 100% renewable+nuclear in only 14 years that would be amazing I think. It would not solve everything, but sometimes it takes a bit to stop the bleeding before healing can start (carbon capture and planting trees during nuclear construction maybe?)
Is there a faster way?
Yes. Regulatory overreach has made it 14 years to build nuclear plants. Almost all of which is interminable red tape. We should fix that, not pretend it’s a feature of the technology.
I’m not familiar with the German politics, but are you saying that Germany got rid of nuclear despite environmentalists?
These decisions are mainly rooted in the peace movement of the 80s (fueled by the nuclear missiles in Germany installed by the US) and the direct experience of Tschernobyl. Its supported by the majority in the public.
The current political decision was made by the more conversative government.
Thanks for the clarification!
Why would you oppose nuclear and renewable? Except if your an ecology fanatic that is.
See also: the “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” sticker that has a cartoon picture of the biggest nuclear reactor in the solar system on it. Irony: it’s good for the blood dearie.
Fusion is way better than fission
Agreed. There is a problem we have about where to put the fission waste but the actual generation process is cleaner than carbon.
France has been importing more electricity than exporting in 2022 because their nuclear reactors can’t perform in the heat resulting from climate change. And this is more likely to happen again as each year becomes hotter.
I’m not sure where this fetishism for France‘s nuclear energy is coming from.
Besides, it’s not a technical limitation on nuclear power, it’s an ecological measure.
The hole in production was due to a corrosion problem detected in several reactors, which occurred at the same time as maintenance work in other reactors that were behind schedule because of COVID. This would have had no impact if nuclear power had not been left virtually abandoned for 30 years because of the anti-nuclear movement.
It’s the classic story: anti-nukes shoot nuclear power in the foot, then claim that nuclear power doesn’t work, despite reality.
Genuinely curious here… what about the concerns of nuclear waste? My understanding of it is based on the Simpsons so ELI5 how modern tech resolves the waste issues?
This is the entirety of the high-level nuclear waste that France produced for 80 years while having 70%+ of nuclear in its electricity mix.
The question of nuclear waste is an extremely minor problem compared to the ecological issues we’re facing, and which we’ve been addressing for decades.
Anti-nuclear people just prefer to cover their ears and pretend it’s an insolvable problem.
Most of it can be recycled (as in used for other nuclear products or services like MRI machines), but it doesn’t because of fear of weaponization. What can’t be recycled can be buried.
See these videos for more info on nuclear energy. The first one includes a nukeE’s commentary. His intros are a bit dry, but he’s very informative on kurzgesagt’s content.
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This is a complex issue, not just because storing radioactive material is complex, but because the “waste” are not a uniform single material. Some have a decaying process of 300 years (90% of the waste, actually), some have a much longer one.
In the beginning of the nuclear era, some wastes were… dumped in the ocean (it’s as bad as it sounds). This is fortunately no longer the normal practice. Some dedicated storage sites are used to store them depending on their lifetime.
The latest solution is geologic storage (some caves were found with waste from naturally occurring fission, eons ago, radioactivity never escaped, so let’s just… do that?). A site was identified in Finland with a hope it can store them for 100,000 years (of course, we don’t have any reference that would last that long…). And the good thing is the storage is “reversible” for the first 100 years (if we change our mind/find better, we can still retrieve the waste during the first 100 years).
Finally, and that will resonate with @Waryle@lemmy.world comment: France had a 4th generation prototype reactor called SuperPhenix. Particularity of a 4th gen reactor is it can use some wastes to produce more energy. SuperPhenix being a prototype, it suffered from many issues through its lifetime. But at the end, it had a 90% uptime, and though it wasn’t generating a lot of power (that was never the goal, remember: development…), some reports were recommending to keep it up so that it could have processed part of the existing nuclear waste.
To appeal to the ecologists party allied to the socialist Prime Minister at that time, SuperPhenix was definitely shutdown in 1997. And now, the same ecologists use the nuclear wastes issue as a big reason to push back any plan on nuclear power.
You’re quoting 2022 because that year >30% of the reactrors were taken offline for maintenance. The French government is also shutting down nuclear reactors due to lack of funding & outdated technology.
This is not an inherant problem with nuclear, but because the French government hasn’t invested since the 70s.
If funding wasn’t cut (due to environmental activists), the output would be more than needed.
Nuclear is still our best bet for combatting climate change and reducing carbon emissions.
Actually, in a nuclear power plan, except the tank itself (not sure I’m translating “cuve” properly, every part can be upgraded.
“Lifetime exceeded” in a nuclear reactor is a misleading statement. The truth is we don’t know how long they can last. We know some minimum lifetimes only, by being cautious.
Example: you build the first plants, and you “slap” them with a 40 years lifetime. Why 40 years? Because we have enough records and historical data to back the structure and materials with enough confidence they will last 40 years at least. Beyond 40 years, we start venturing in uncertainty. That doesn’t mean we even trust the 40 years. Every 10 years, a power plant is getting fully audited to get an authorization to run for the next 10 years (and there are less deep regular audits as well).
Later, with more data, and more reference, you can establish that the structure and material have proven to have an even longer lifetime, and you can extend it (50, 60 years). It may come with extra-conditions, though. But there is a certain confidence that with the proper funding, France could keep its plants up and running for a lot longer than the initial 40 years.
Ironically, France shutdown the oldest reactors that just had received the very latest upgrade, making it also the most modern reactors in service.
Im quoting 2022 because this was last year. As in, the most recent year.
I don’t disagree that we should have phased out coal instead of nuclear first. But what has happened has happened. I do disagree that we need a „nuclear renessaince“ now, because neither the economics nor the timelines work out at this point in time. Solar and wind is cheaper, faster to build, and more flexible as you can iterate on their designs MUCH more quickly than nuclear plants. That’s the main reason why solar panel efficiency is going through the roof.
Why cannibalize the investments in what obviously works?
You only solve one part of the problem: what do you use when there’s no sun and no wind? Coal? Gas?
As far as I can tell, there is no time with no sun AND no wind: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_statistics_-_latest_trends_from_monthly_data
In fact, there are multiple studies claiming that you can very well supply base load with renewables, for instance this one:
https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf
One other problem with nuclear is that it has to run at a fixed output level, and can’t be scaled down if there is eg. lots of solar power being generated. In this case, you have to scale down renewables to make sure you can use the nuclear power, which makes it clash with the eventual goal to power everything with renewables.
I don’t know who, in his sane mind, can claim there will never be periods of time with no sun and no wind at the same time. https://notrickszone.com/2022/12/07/plunging-towards-darkness-germany-sees-week-long-wind-sun-lull-as-energy-supply-dwindles/
You need a pilotable generator matching renewables. You can’t do without it. The only question is how much of it you need to plan. Existing approaches are storage: batteries, hydro where it’s possible (you pump the water up a dam to store back energy) and backup generators: coal, gas, and in some future plans, hydrogen.
None of these is a perfect solution (well, nothing is a perfect solution).
It is not completely true that nuclear needs to run at fixed level. Depending on their design, some plants are pilotable and some are not. But I don’t think (I’ll be happily corrected if needed) any had the flexibility you need to be used with renewable (quick large variations).
So the ideal mix is, IMHO, a baseline provided by nuclear, and a mix of renewable and complements to produce the difference.
Bonus: there is a “method” promoted by some (ignorant) politics they call “proliferation” (“foisonnement”, not sure I’m translating that the best). This is utter BS…
The idea is there will always be sun or wind somewhere in a super-grid spreading through Europe. If you think about it for 1 minute, that means that small part of Europe where there is wind will power, for a more or less short time, a large portion of the whole Europe?? Not only is that totally insane from the capacity point of view, but it also completely neglects the grid’s stability and electricity transportation issue. It is very difficult to transport electricity over very large distances without disturbing the grid. Ask Germany, they spend massively on infrastructures right now without counting on proliferation. That would raise the requirements further…
Maybe it comes from France exporting the cheapest energy in Europe in the last 20 years. But yeah, 2022 means nuclear energy is worthless I guess.
What do you mean by cheapest energy? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables, if you factor in construction and maintenance cost. It only works because it has been massively subdisidized.
Or do you have some source that this energy is „cheaper“? Please be aware that France caps their electricity prices internally and subsidizes them with taxes (which is fine, but makes the prices incomparable to other countries).
„The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.“
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J
Are you pretending that renewable are not subsidised? Renewable are young yet, how will the prices do in 10 years when they will start to be maintained and replaced? What about the energy you need to complement renewable? Is it considered in their price or not? Do you consider the price of renewable when they’re cheap because of overproduction?
https://4thgeneration.energy/the-true-costs-of-nuclear-and-renewables/
You’re like “did you consider factors a, b, c, d?” and then link to an article that explicitly ignores all of those factors and compares only the amortized cost of the construction of the plants, omitting all other operating costs.
On top of that, this argument is a classic economic fallacy. It’s a little bit like saying “breaking windows is an economic benefit because people will pay glass makers to fix them and so money flows back into the economy.” It completely ignores opportunity costs.
I haven’t seen any levelized cost of electricity study that makes nuclear competitive with wind and solar power. Now I’m not against nuclear power in principle, and as the renewable share goes up grid operators might be willing to pay a premium to subsidize reliable nuclear base load generators.
However the economic proposition I just cannot see. The long lifetime is actually working against nuclear plants here as potential investors assume much greater risk, combined with enormous up-front construction costs. Who wants to invest billions of dollars to bet on electricity prices 60 years into the future? Lots of things can happen in that time.
That’s why small reactors are developed. So these parasites of investors can finally be useful to society.
Now I linked the first article I found. It’s hard enough to find any relevant information. You chose to answer that only. Fine.
In Europe the market is not free. And any sane country would subsidised energy production. I would bet USA also does it. In Europe ARENH means all énergies are helped by nuclear energy production, a system meant to help other energies to compete with it. Renewable are funded by states for decades now, and they’ve been so eventhough they were far from competitive 20 years ago.
Ok, so obviously, you’re not well aware of how the new European open market works, and why France ended up paying part of consumer’s bills.
France uses to have a state-owned company, EDF, producing and distributing electricity in France. EDF had a monopole. France had the cheapest electricity of Europe, and EDF was profitable. Sink that in, when you say nuclear is expensive:
EDF was delivering the cheapest electricity of Europe and was profitable.
A decision from the European Union was taken to force all members to switch to an open market. French government at the time was conservative, so they happily went along with it. Everyone “knows” that private sector always does better than whatever has “public” or “state” in its description.
But how would you introduce competition when virtually no one else produces any electricity? How to kickstart it? That’s where bright people went very very creative.
Production and distribution of electricity was split as separate activities. EDF spinned off the distribution part of its work. In parallel, a quota of nuclear production was allocated to new companies, “electricity suppliers”, so that they got something to sell at an affordable price.
That’s where it starts to be interesting: to guarantee a margin to electricity suppliers, so that they would make enough money to invest in production, the daily price of electricity on the market is set to the marginal cost of the most expensive power plant that’s turned on. Do you follow me? If today, 99% of electricity is coming from a nuclear power plant, but you need to start a coal power plant to provide the last 1%, all 100% of the electricity that day is billed at the cost of the coal power plant! I am not kidding, I am not making that shit up!
Why prices exploded since last year? Well, you’ve heard about gas prices, right? Every day a gas power plan is turned on with gas prices through the roof, 100% of the electricity that day is billed at the cost of the gas power plant. That’s why France started subsidizing the consumers bills, because most of them could not afford a x6, 7, 10 on their electricity bills.
But at least, we do have competition now, don’t we? Well… not on the production side…
No condition on investment was given to the electricity supplier. Read that again. Guess what happened. Electricity suppliers were buying most of their electricity at a cheap regulated cost from EDF and selling it with a big profit to consumers, all while producing nothing themselves. Why would they?? Money is trickling down to them for free!
Even better: as they were more competitive than EDF, thanks to having 0 maintenance and 0 investment to make, and cheap electricity to resell, their customers base grew. Then they found out that they were not getting enough cheap electricity, and they faced a dilemma: buy a larger share of electricity from other real producers, that would have increased their cost, or cap their customers base (or of course, invest in production, but who wants to do that, right?).
They did neither of these. They pleaded to the current government to get MORE cheap electricity from EDF. And the government did that: forced EDF to allocate more of its cheap nuclear electricity to them, increasing the quota. Needless to say that if EDF needed more electricity for their own customers, they were answered that they could buy the more expensive electricity from outside, or invest in more capacity. Makes sense, right? The exact opposite of what the system was supposed to do.
Now, the very best part: when gas price exploded, even the small fraction of electricity bought by the electricity suppliers impacted their cost. It was unacceptable to them. So they raised their rate to be above EDF, or even outright cancelled contracts with their customers, so that customers would go back to EDF (EDF cannot refuse contracts, and is not allowed to adjust its own rates). But… electricity suppliers do not have to give up on their quota from EDF… so…
EDF had to buy back the electricity EDF produces, to companies producing nothing, at the rate of the market, of course, not the rate at which EDF is forced to sell that electricity to these companies. So it’s even better now. EDF sells them electricity (which is a virtual sale, electricity still goes from EDF plants to households like it did before). These companies sell it back to EDF with a big margin. Dream business, isn’t it?
So France does not subsidize bills because nuclear is too expensive.
France literally subsidizes a scam scheme, in which most of the money going to parasitic companies producing nothing.
Any sources on any of that? That’s a lot of „you just know that“ information, and I do consider myself well informed. I am not from France though.
Anyway:
neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.
getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)
I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.
Hmm… sources, yes. In something that’s not in French is a tad more difficult, but I found these:
https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/france-mandates-edf-sell-100-twh-power-under-arenh-scheme-2023.html https://www.reuters.com/article/france-electricity-regulator-idUSL8N1PR6H5
I found that one about EDF regaining customers, losing money in 2022. It includes an addendum: the quota it has to sell was set back to 100TWh. But sorry, you’ll have to use a translation service… https://www.leprogres.fr/economie/2022/10/27/pourquoi-edf-gagne-des-abonnes-mais-perd-des-milliards
I am all but convinced any of this will last. Pressure on solar panel has increased, it is deeply connected to the semiconductor’s industry. In the coming decades, it will raise questions on water usage, minerals, etc.
Wind farms occupy very large surfaces, and they already compete with other usage of the land. Dismantling them is problematic too: a large body of concrete is left behind in the ground.
Unfortunately, can’t but agree, though it’s infuriating every time.
They don’t reinvest (in France, I mean). They just cash the money. Keeping EDF as a state-owned monopoly has been working great for France for decades. The same model works great in Québec. There was no need to change it. EDF being state-owned, you can require it to invest in whatever you want: give it target on renewables, etc. What we have here instead is parasitic companies. Crushing majority of the production investment still comes from EDF, and their investment capacity is fading as their finances are gutted in the name of an “open market” ideology.
I’d love to see the science behind why the reactors couldn’t perform in the heat seeing as how essentially all regular power generation involves spinning a turbine with steam. Temps might be hot in Europe, but they aren’t quite 100C/212F hot.
Nuclear plants are cooled with river water, and that water is getting too hot:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threaten-frances-already-tight-power-supply-2022-07-15/
“Reactor production is limited during times of high heat to prevent the hot water re-entering rivers from damaging wildlife.”
So it’s not due to any physical limitations but an environmental protection issue.
Also in the article
“… at a time when half its reactors are offline due to maintenance and corrosion issues.”
So they are doing maintenance and found some issues requiring more work.
Why don’t they build them in cold places then? They don’t have any cold areas north? Can they build em next to glaciers before those melt too. If they all melt, we may be too dead for it to matter anyways.
Where did you get this info from? Not saying you’re wrong, I wanna read up more
EG here: https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/
The fetishism for nuclear was just imported 1:1 from Reddit
Lemmy was pro nuclear long before the Reddit migration
Or you know, it just makes sense and wasn’t imported from anywhere? Some of us actually prefer real data and science instead of sensationalism and fear mongering.
It’s just so apparent that the pro nuclear brigade is not preferring all real data, just the one it fits. I am not against nuclear per se, I just find it hilarious how at reddit and here as well, people are just SO pro nuclear that nothing else should even be considered. Which made me think if all that is just a very persistent astroturfing campaign
Then look at the data. Vogtle was just completed for over $30/watt. You could build solar with 16x the nameplate capacity and 24 hours of lithium battery storage to make it baseload for that same amount.
It’s literally the most expensive power of any of the major options.
Yesterday the price of electricity was -1.16 c/kwh here despite having all those expensive reactors.
"In December 2020 IEA and OECD NEA published a joint Projected Costs of Generating Electricity study which looks at a very broad range of electricity generating technologies based on 243 power plants in 24 countries. The primary finding was that “low-carbon generation is overall becoming increasingly cost competitive” and “new nuclear power will remain the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025”. The report calculated LCOE with assumed 7% discount rate and adjusted for systemic costs of generation.[79] "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
The IEA is a bad joke that has been notoriously wrong in its projections for decades. Nobody in the industry takes them seriously.
Hell no. It’s economically only justifiable for france, because they need an excuse to finance their nuclear research. Ecologically it would be, if the Uranium just popped out of the ground before the power plant and not producing waste.
Still a sweet deal: we get the energy, france keeps the risk, russia mines get the pollution.
Yup, just like Vegans, environmentalists come up with an answer they like and find some shakie science to back it up.
liberals and their damn SCIENCE
LoL, I’m pretty sure believing that nuclear energy is the path forward to a green new world is SCIENCE.
WTF do “liberals” have to do with “environmentalists?” Liberals love exporting polluting activities to China in the name of “free trade.”
I’m mocking the guy. I said “liberals” because people like conservatives love combining everyone who disagrees with them on anything into the word “liberals”.
I’m not a liberal or a conservative. I’m an unregistered voter and have voted for Democrats and Republicans. My ideology sits center-right, but I’m definitely not a conservative as I’m an atheist.
What do you mean by this?
The groups I spoke of only like to use science that supports their narrative. If there’s any studies/experiments that refute what they belive in, they’ll usually disregard it.