Nuclear Power: Do you support it?

[wayneL]

Sidebar @Smurf1976

I look at the mount of ash generated by coal/coke just in my little one man forge and have always wondered about the logistics of disposing of that in a power station... What do they do with it all?

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Sidebar @Smurf1976

I look at the mount of ash generated by coal/coke just in my little one man forge and have always wondered about the logistics of disposing of that in a power station... What do they do with it all?

You can mix in with concrete mixes, use it in plastic solutions, or just bury it.

I have done a fair bit of research on this for a waste-to-energy plant concept of mine.

 

[sptrawler]

Nuclear reactors cannot currently be built in Australia under any Federal or State law, and I see no prospect of that changing any time soon.

N.R's built by private companies in Oz are a pipe dream, Labor and the Greens will block it, and you have to ask why any Coalition members would support it, looking for a cosy job on a Board perhaps ?

Plenty of ex Labor members on boards.

 

[Smurf1976]

Sidebar @Smurf1976

I look at the mount of ash generated by coal/coke just in my little one man forge and have always wondered about the logistics of disposing of that in a power station... What do they do with it all?

Used in concrete or as fill as others have said and the rest is dumped as landfill for disposal.

Where to dump it varies. If the mine is open cut and right near the power station then putting the ash back in the mine is one option. If not then it's generally dumped at a suitable location nearby. Dumped as in legitimately disposed of, I don't mean anyone's doing something they shouldn't be etc.

Following image shows the Yallourn open cut in Victoria as an example of that.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-38.197041,146.351679,9856m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Or at Port Augusta it was simply dumped on ground and later sealed. The now demolished power stations were to the immediate south and there's still some visible remnant infrastructure (most obviously the appropriately named Power Station Rd and Northern Power Station Rd). That is the facility best known for having been blown up - literally blown up with explosives.

The coal came from a mine ~250km away so not sensible to send the ash back to it.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-32.5346167,137.7794248,5286m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

How much of a problem it is depends on the detail. Some contains toxic nasties certainly but then there's other coal which actually has a second use as fertilzer and is deemed safe for that purpose. So "it depends" is very much the case there.

 

[Muckman]

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Asia embracing Nuclear:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-worlds-nuclear-reactor-landscape/

 

[IFocus]

Think I have posted here before about the only reason you would go nuclear power to justify the cost and lead time is if you are looking to acquire nuclear weapons.

The problem or one of the problems is enrichment (Australia has no capability or technology) which has a long lead time to develop and is very expensive but if you enrich for weapons then there is plenty of fuel to run power stations.

At some point if China continues to expand its aggression nuclear weapons maybe Australia's only realistic means of defence unless some other Armageddon type weapons turn up.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Think I have posted here before about the only reason you would go nuclear power to justify the cost and lead time is if you are looking to acquire nuclear weapons.

The problem or one of the problems is enrichment (Australia has no capability or technology) which has a long lead time to develop and is very expensive but if you enrich for weapons then there is plenty of fuel to run power stations.

At some point if China continues to expand its aggression nuclear weapons maybe Australia's only realistic means of defence unless some other Armageddon type weapons turn up.

The nuclear market is fast evolving towards small and micro modular reactors that can be built in mass production and sent anywhere in the world. Here is a recent Market and Technical assessment in the UK which states that micro modular reactors are feasible:

"This study concludes that MNRs are feasible and have a potential market in the hundreds by 2030. MNRs could also bring significant economic benefits to the UK but must be decisively supported as they will only proceed with clear support and facilitation of political, regulatory and financial factors. The study also concludes that, whilst there are differences with the larger SMRs, no specific cut-offs have yet been identified in technical, financial or regulatory factors. However, further investigation may yield more definitive differentiators depending on the regulatory and market requirements of specific countries."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/market-and-technical-assessment-of-micro-nuclear-reactors

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

I like Terrestrial Energy with small/micro modular manufactured molten salt reactors:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/market-and-technical-assessment-of-micro-nuclear-reactors

https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/technology/competitive/

 

[Smurf1976]

Think I have posted here before about the only reason you would go nuclear power to justify the cost and lead time is if you are looking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Ideologically I'm not keen on nuclear weapons.

Pragmatically I think we probably have no choice.

 

[SirRumpole]

Think I have posted here before about the only reason you would go nuclear power to justify the cost and lead time is if you are looking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Possibly, but also fuel for things like nuclear submarines, the air breathing ones are just too archaic.

 

[basilio]

If one thought the promotional figures of companies promoting their nuclear plans was honest and likely then we would have already built scores of modular reactors and there would be a thriving industry.

Of course they would say they were cheaper than others. The fact is that all other alternatives ct have operational plants and can be costed on real dollars. The nuclear industry figures are vapourware designed to extract multi billion subsidies from governments just to keep them going.

The evidence of the nuclear industry is public, historical and damning. These plants will never be economically competitive with renewable energy plus back up systems. Of course they can be built for very specific military or other installations where, frankly, cost is a secondary issue. But the idea of arguing cost effective baseload domestic power is based on a series of heroic assumptions that have seen spectacular failure.

Tall Corporate stories from Nu Scale.

Corporate spin #2: NuScale Power

US company NuScale Power has put in a submission to the federal nuclear inquiry, estimating a first-of-a-kind cost for its SMR design of US$4.35 billion / gigawatt (GW) and an nth-of-a-kind cost of US$3.6 billion / GW.

NuScale doesn’t provide a $/MWh estimate in its submission, but the company has previously said it is targeting a cost of US$65/MWh for its first SMR plant. That is 2.4 lower than the US$155/MWh (A$225/MWh) estimate based on the NuScale design in a report by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

NuScale’s cost estimates should be regarded as promotional and will continue to drop – unless and until the company actually builds an SMR. The estimated cost of power from NuScale’s non-existent SMRs fell from US$98-$108/MWh in 2015 to US$65/MWh by mid-2018. The company announced with some fanfare in 2018 that it had worked out how to make its SMRs almost 20% cheaper – by making them almost 20% bigger!

Lazard estimates costs of US$112-189/MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale’s claim that its electricity will be 2-3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65/MWh, that would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$29-56) and utility-scale solar (US$36-46).

Likewise, NuScale’s construction construction cost estimate of US$4.35 billion / GW is implausible. The latest cost estimate for the two AP1000 reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US) is US$12.3-13.6 billion / GW.

NuScale’s target is just one-third of that cost – despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale and despite the fact that every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

Further, the modular factory-line production techniques now being championed by NuScale were trialled with the AP1000 reactor project in South Carolina – a project that was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-claims-and-corporate-spin-about-small-nuclear-reactor-costs-65726/

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[Chronos-Plutus]

If one thought the promotional figures of companies promoting their nuclear plans was honest and likely then we would have already built scores of modular reactors and there would be a thriving industry.

Of course they would say they were cheaper than others. The fact is that all other alternatives ct have operational plants and can be costed on real dollars. The nuclear industry figures are vapourware designed to extract multi billion subsidies from governments just to keep them going.

The evidence of the nuclear industry is public, historical and damning. These plants will never be economically competitive with renewable energy plus back up systems. Of course they can be built for very specific military or other installations where, frankly, cost is a secondary issue. But the idea of arguing cost effective baseload domestic power is based on a series of heroic assumptions that have seen spectacular failure.

Tall Corporate stories from Nu Scale.

Corporate spin #2: NuScale Power

US company NuScale Power has put in a submission to the federal nuclear inquiry, estimating a first-of-a-kind cost for its SMR design of US$4.35 billion / gigawatt (GW) and an nth-of-a-kind cost of US$3.6 billion / GW.

NuScale doesn’t provide a $/MWh estimate in its submission, but the company has previously said it is targeting a cost of US$65/MWh for its first SMR plant. That is 2.4 lower than the US$155/MWh (A$225/MWh) estimate based on the NuScale design in a report by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

NuScale’s cost estimates should be regarded as promotional and will continue to drop – unless and until the company actually builds an SMR. The estimated cost of power from NuScale’s non-existent SMRs fell from US$98-$108/MWh in 2015 to US$65/MWh by mid-2018. The company announced with some fanfare in 2018 that it had worked out how to make its SMRs almost 20% cheaper – by making them almost 20% bigger!

Lazard estimates costs of US$112-189/MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale’s claim that its electricity will be 2-3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65/MWh, that would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$29-56) and utility-scale solar (US$36-46).

Likewise, NuScale’s construction construction cost estimate of US$4.35 billion / GW is implausible. The latest cost estimate for the two AP1000 reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US) is US$12.3-13.6 billion / GW.

NuScale’s target is just one-third of that cost – despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale and despite the fact that every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

Further, the modular factory-line production techniques now being championed by NuScale were trialled with the AP1000 reactor project in South Carolina – a project that was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-claims-and-corporate-spin-about-small-nuclear-reactor-costs-65726/

Report Bookmark

The independent UK government assessment for micro modular nuclear reactors is definitive that they are feasible.

You talk of subsidies and tax credits! What sort of subsidies and tax credits are there for EVs and solar?

Tesla wouldn't be able to operate without the tax credits.

 

[basilio]

I found a Literature on the economics and finance of SMR's. Probably the most salient points was the concern that projected economies of scale with large production of SMR's was quite unclear. See Section 3.

Everyone is aware that the initial costs for an operational reactor will be $3-4B. The theory propounded by the industry has always been that if Government supplied funds for the first reactor, underwrote the financing of future reactors and then ensured a electricity cost to the consumer that would cover all costs and profits SMR's would be viable. (certainly for the companies..)

Economics and finance of Small Modular Reactors: A systematic review and research agenda
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119307270