The climate change debate continues.

[Siso]

France exporting approx. 18GW of very low carbon electricity at the moment

[octave]

9 minutes ago, Siso said:

France exporting approx. 18GW of very low carbon electricity at the moment

What is your point?  Is this a bad thing?

[Siso]

Good thing, shows who is doing the best at CO2 emmisions.

[facthunter]

You might make your Point stronger if you Elaborated. Nev

[Siso]

Pretty basic really. Green is good black/brown is bad. Yellow mediocre. Close to 17 at the moment. Even exporting 1.8GW  into Spain which doesn't happen much. Make your own minds up.

 

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/72h/hourly - 

[onetrack]

And what is the total cost of Frances nuclear energy, including decomissioning of nuclear power plants, disposing of nuclear waste, and the cost of nuclear accidents. Are you happy to have nuclear waste buried next to your house?

[Siso]

they add a cent? per kWh to take care of decommissioning costs. They also make a lot of money exporting energy to country's who have spent billions on intermittent. Germany has 170GW of installed intermittent generation for a 60GW (72GW max 2025) grid and are still building. They also reprocess some of their spent fuel. If the spent fuel is buried in the proper way, i would not have a problem. Spent fuel is a public perception and political problem, not an engineering one. There is more chance of getting hit by a truck than injured from spent fuel. These costs seem large but NP can make a lot of energy. 

 

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-renewable-electricity-generation-capacity-rises-11-driven-solar

[facthunter]

 Wasn't it Einstein who said it's the worst way ever to boil wate. It Needs a Lot of cooling as well.  Doesn't that Heat add to the Problem.? Your dismissal of the dangers of the waste is wrong. It's a World wide problem.  it's About the COST if the other Matters don't sway you. Nev

[octave]

27 minutes ago, Siso said:

they add a cent? per kWh to take care of decommissioning costs.

 

I am not necessarily anti-nuclear, in fact, in some maybe it makes sense.   Whilst decommissioning may be a small cost, all up the building of the NP in the first place is enormous.  

 

Decommissioning can sound straightforward, but at least at this stage, it is not.

 

Common Problems and Challenges

Decommissioning is a complex engineering task that often faces technical, financial, and logistical hurdles: 

Financial Shortfalls: Costs typically range from $500 million to $2 billion per reactor. Some countries, like France, face concerns that set-aside funds may be insufficient to cover the total future costs.

Waste Disposal Bottlenecks: No country currently has an operating deep geological repository for high-level nuclear waste (spent fuel). This often forces waste to stay on-site in dry casks indefinitely, preventing the site from being fully released.

Technical Delays: Projects frequently experience timeline extensions. For example, Japan's Tokai 1 reactor dismantling was delayed by over a decade, with completion now pushed to 2030.

Unexpected Hazards: Older plants often lack detailed historical records, leading to the discovery of unexpected contamination or structural issues during dismantling.

Workforce Shortages: As a "wave" of plants reaches retirement, there is a growing need for a highly skilled, specialized workforce that the industry currently lacks. 

World Nuclear Association +4

 

 

[Siso]

Yes, major hurdle is the high capital cost in the western world. Hinkley Point C has blown out because of design changes during the build and covid. The UK are still planning another EPR though. (Sizewell C) France is looking at building another 6(EPR's again.) Snowy 2.0 has blown out from 4$B to probably $20B by the end of the build so this isn't just a NP thing. Decommissioning reactors will be easier with the newer build as more thought ill be put into it in the design phase. Sellafield and Hanford get a fair bit of press, but we need to remember these reactors were built for primarily for plutonium production at the start of the atom bomb race and were built quickly with only 1 thing in mind.. Finland have a deep repository due for opening this year. The spent fuel sitting at npp's is harming no-one and getting less radioactive every year. 300 or 500 years(depends on where you get your info from) the real nasty stuff will have decayed away. The rest is potential more fuel for fast reactors. Russia also have there BN series reactors that use lead for a coolant. India have recently fired up a 500MWe Big first of a kind) fast reactor to eventually use thorium but the same sort of reactor can turn the uranium 238 and plutonium's into fissionable fuel. We need to also think that the older reactors where designed in the 1950's with the first large ones in the late 50's. less than 20 years after the Chicago pile first fissioned.(1942)This is like flying around in a Vickers Vimy.

 

We will get a workforce as more get built.

 

A few companys are looking at building micro reactors to replace diesel generators at remote sights. This sound good in practice but again the capital cost will be expensive because the are planning to put 10-20 years worth of fuel in them at the start. These will probably use Haleu fuel which is enriched between 5-20%.

 

 

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/first-criticality-for-indian-fast-breeder-reactor

[facthunter]

The best and cheapest reactor is 93 Million miles away.. Nev

[kgwilson]

And it is a fusion reactor with no radioactive waste, something we have not been able to replicate for any length of time so the simple option is to use it and we are via solar, wind, hydro and every other form of energy capture and use other than those that have been stored as fossil fuels for millions of years.