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.

[facthunter]

We mine a lot of things we don't just Burn for energy. Look up the tonnage of CO2 various Countries produce and wonder where all that can go without changing things There's a lot of sulphur in the crude as well. It make s sulphuric acid when burned  and water added. Water is also a product of combusting Hydrocarbons so even in a desert acid is Made when you drive an ICE vehicle with sulphur in the fuel... Nev

[pmccarthy]

91% of Australia's energy comes from fossil fuels. There is nothing wrong in trying to develop alternatives, but acknowledge that it will take many decades to substantially replace fossil fuels. Whatever reason we have for doing it, it will make no difference to our climate, as we contribute only 1% to 1.5% of global emissions, even if you believe these affect climate. The greatest risk to our economy and way of life at present is the self destructive idea of net zero.

[octave]

5 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

Whatever reason we have for doing it, it will make no difference to our climate, as we contribute only 1% to 1.5% of global emissions, even if you believe these affect climate.

If you add up all of the countries that contribute less than 2% it comes to around 35%.

 

The amount of tax I pay is minuscule by itself, so perhaps I shouldn't have to pay it.

[facthunter]

We are big time exporters of GAS and Coal. Science PROVES CO2 has a big effect on the environment Warming permanently alters climate and Less and Less People deny it excluding Ignorant Idiots like D Trump. . Nev

[old man emu]

If the population of the Southern Hemisphere is much less that thhat of the Northern Hemisphere, where's the heat coming from to create the expected Super El Nino?

[facthunter]

Tropical Ocean temps and currents, and seasonal sun position.(Summer/Winter).  Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

Tropical Ocean temps and currents, and seasonal sun position.(Summer/Winter).  Nev

So not all caused by humans.

[facthunter]

I did not say that. Humans living on a part of the world don't confine the effect to where they live.. Nev

[Siso]

23 hours ago, octave said:

If you add up all of the countries that contribute less than 2% it comes to around 35%.

 

The amount of tax I pay is minuscule by itself, so perhaps I shouldn't have to pay it.

No one is saying all these small bits should be ignored. If everyone of these countrys halved their emissions that would be a good start. We shouldn't go hell for leather and destroy our economy in the process. We have added quite a bit of intermittent energy, it will get harder as we do more. The best thing we could do is help developing countrys get their low hanging fruit in order. The best thing Australia does for the global warming at the moment is export uranium for power generation. Exporting our resources in bunker oil burning ships so it can be processed overseas in countrys that don't have our strict environmental laws is plain stupid. makes me laugh, we export iron which is a mixture of iron and oxygen, so we are using these ships to ship air.   

[onetrack]

Quote

makes me laugh, we export iron which is a mixture of iron and oxygen, so we are using these ships to ship air

This is the biggest BS statement ever, one that ignores basic chemistry, and which is typical of Trump/MAGA scientific ignorance. A lot of minerals are made up of compounds, not just elements. Once you combine elements, or compounds of elements into other compounds, you get entirely new compounds, which have virtually no properties recognisable from the original elements or compounds.

 

Oxygen is a fundamental element that only comprises 21% of the Earth's air. 78% of our air is Nitrogen, another fundamental element. The other 1% is a range of minority gases. 

Hematite, the most common form of our iron exports is an Iron Oxide, and there are quite a number of Iron Oxide forms, all possessing different qualities and abilities.

 

These Iron Oxides are largely stable until heated to high temperatures, or become involved in chemical reactions. The bottom line is, Hematite is approximately 65% iron content and the Oxygen content of Hematite would be extremely low on a weight-comparison basis, so your argument that we are exporting air simply doesn't hold up to rigorous chemical examination.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by onetrack

[facthunter]

ALL FACTS!! Too rare here. Congratulations. Nev