"New nuclear capacity of 3.3 gigawatts (GW) in 2017 was outweighed by lost capacity of 4.6 GW. Over the past 20 years, there has been modest growth (12.6%, 44 GW) in global nuclear power capacity if reactors currently in long-term outage are included. However, including those reactors ... in the count of ‘operable’ or ‘operational’ or ‘operating’ reactors is, as former WNA executive Steve Kidd states, 'misleading' and 'clearly ridiculous'."
- #JimGreen, 2018
https://energypost.eu/nuclear-power-in-crisis-welcome-to-the-era-of-nuclear-decommissioning/
"Renewables (24.5% of global generation) generate more than twice as much electricity as nuclear power (<10.5%) and the gap is growing rapidly. The International Energy Agency predicts renewable energy capacity growth of 43% (920 GW) from 2017 to 2022. Overall, the share of renewables in power generation will reach 30% in 2022 according to the IEA. By then, nuclear’s share will be around 10% and renewables will be out-generating nuclear by a factor of three."
"Lobbyists engaged each other in heated arguments over possible solutions to nuclear power’s crisis ‒ in a nutshell, some favour industry consolidation while others think innovation is essential, all of them think that taxpayer subsidies need to be massively increased, and none of them are interested in the tedious work of building public support by strengthening nuclear safety and regulatory standards, strengthening the safeguards system, etc."
It's not "nuclear power" that is the crisis today - it's the climate change. And if you have a country shutting down zero-emission energy source, saying it will replace it by a 3x more CO2 intensive source (solar) and then replaces it with one that is 30x more intensive (fossil gas) then I say this makes the crisis worse.
@kravietz Most of your talking points were covered by the author of the piece I linked in the OP. Whose point is that even if nuclear plants were a safe, cost-effective and eco-friendly energy source (and they're none of these), there isn't enough being built to replace current plants, let alone displace fossil fueled plants. So even if we embarked on a massive project of nuclear construction (funded by ?), it wouldn't come onstream soon enough to make any difference to climate change.
@strypey @kravietz >>> ...if nuclear plants were a safe, cost-effective and eco-friendly energy source (and they're none of these), there isn't enough being built to replace current plants, let alone displace fossil fueled plants. <<<
You are missing important details:
1) the so called "base load" in the electricity grid is in slight decline. Especially in the countries with better developed economies - so you don't need to build "more";
2) NPP (nuclear power plants) can't be used as a replacement of gas/coal power plants. The second ones have the property called "load following" and the NPP can't do that.;
3) The lifespan of a NPP is very long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#VVER-1200 - 60 years. The currently installed solar panels will loose around 20% of their peak capacity at 20 years age. At 25 years you will have to throw them away because it will not be economical to utilise them at large scales. Go and find out what happens currently with a decommissioned solar panel. It goes to a garbage dump where it starts to release poisons because of the heavy metals contents in the glass (lead, cadmium). The windturbines and their blades offer similar challenges - they are not easy for recycling and most of them are throw away;
4) Possibilities for modernisation. See again the VVR example. Most nuclear reactors can easily be upgraded to produce 5 to 10% more power. This covers a lot of years ahead for base load assurance.
@kravietz @strypey You are right. I've missed that. But it is used to protect the powergrid from the irregularities introduced from large amounts of solar and wind power.
https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf
I'm seeing here the examples for Germany and France. This ability must be incorporated in the design of the reactor. How it relates to the expected lifespan of the reactor?
@kravietz @strypey Also the abilities for load following are somewhat limited (3-5% change from current power lever per MINUTE, I've saw up to 10% per minute is the upper safety margin).
This seems OK for day-to-day operations but in major situations I don't think it is enough (sudden surge of consumed power, losing a big power producer). Example - given a lot of solar power and high density of the installation one cloud in the sky for 10 minutes could knock out more than 10% of the currently generated power. The situation is the same with gust of wind and a lot of wind power.
Here is an interesting read about this kind of situations in the electric power grids:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/how-engineers-kept-power-india
In this particular case it is man-made but the problem remains.
@kravietz @strypey I've just find this resource:
https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/reactor-physics/reactor-operation/normal-operation-reactor-control/load-following-power-plant/
IMO gives a good overview what's going on in a NPP. Also cover the stress of the materials used.
@kravietz @strypey Another information resource:
1) https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/advanced-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx - Gen3 nuclear reactors
2) https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/generation-iv-nuclear-reactors.aspx - Gen4 in development
This site has a lot of information and actual details on the topic:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library.aspx
For example they cover these challenges that I haven't seen being discussed anywhere:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/heavy-manufacturing-of-power-plants.aspx
For example the capacity for producing/forging the pressure vessels of the cores is very limited. It takes months to make one.
@kravietz @strypey From the document above:
" Another example is the German Konvoi reactors that were designed for 15 000 cycles with daily power varia-tions from 100% Pr to 60% Pr, and 100 000 cycles with power variations from 100% Pr to 80% Pr (see Ludwig, H., et al., 2010)."
so you loose 75 000 cycles when going from 100-80% to 100-60% variation of the output power. This is very significant change.