Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWhy not nuclear power?
Yes, we've seen the mishaps and disasters. Three Miles island, Chernobyl, Fukushima..
But can we learn from them?
Just wondering.
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sandensea
(21,614 posts)About which can do nothing except basically hide it.
Ward Valley and Yucca Mountain are going to run out of room sometime.
Bearware
(151 posts)Typical used solid reactor fuel has 95% of energy still left in it. If it is completely burned in a MSFR the resulting ash after cooling can be put into casks and will finish decaying to background levels in 600 years (not the 10's of thousands we have all heard). The total amount of waste will only be a few percent of the original "waste".
In Terms of Ward Valley and Yucca Mountain, high level "waste", it is a valuable resource. We could start removing it in coming years to fuel the new generations of MSFR's. It will likely be possible to even turn the existing meltdown "corium" from Chernobyl and Fukushima meltdowns into a usable fuel.
You sentence "About which can do nothing except basically hide it." does currently described the waste from coal fired power plants. It seems that it may also apply to electronic waste.
Molten Salt Reactor research was stopped in 1970 for political and corporate greed reasons. As a result we still have reactors that have 1960's technology in them. Had that not happened it is likely we would have far less CO2 in our atmosphere today and Fukushima might have never happened. MSFR's do not have to be water cooled and the fuel is already melted so "meltdowns" will not happen.
sandensea
(21,614 posts)I certainly hope those plans come to fruition.
Lulu KC
(2,565 posts)
walkingman
(7,591 posts)as part of the effort to rid ourselves of fossil fuels. We definitely need another Manhattan Project.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,656 posts)than uranium and produces far less waste - and can't be used to produce weapons. But for various reasons all of the investment has been in uranium reactors and the start-up costs for thorium reactors would be enormous, so no governments or utilities have invested in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
question everything
(47,460 posts)because even with the "Green Deal" and all the marching and protesting in the streets, it is countries like China, and Brazil and, perhaps India which contribute the most. Look at the forest fire in Brazil - produce more meat for China, and similar fire in the Philippines, or, perhaps Indonesia also to clear more forest.
progree
(10,901 posts)Last edited Wed Sep 25, 2019, 04:15 PM - Edit history (1)
built long ago whose construction costs have decades ago been paid off are being shut down (in other words fuel and ongoing maintenance combined is too high). They just can't compete against natural gas or renewable energy, and legislatures don't seem to care about the carbon difference against natural gas, or that wind and solar are intermittent -- and that's fine up to a point, but an electrical system MUST MUST MUST at all times have generation match the load (within small tolerances) or the electrical system falls apart -- it is physics (I've been an electrical engineer in the generation and transmission planning of Xcel's forerunner NSP, and in the systems operations department, this is not hyperbole, it is physics). Meaning it is not only desirable, but NECESSARY for there to be sufficient reliable generation on the grid to back up the intermittent generation sources, or get used to frequent load shedding (meaning rotating brownouts and blackouts).
Re: storage to go with renewables -- I keep reading about projects with 4-hour batteries, I've never read or heard about any with batteries longer than that. Well that's great and wonderful and all that for getting solar to cover the late afternoon / early evening peak when the sun fades, and so can replace a gas turbine peaking plant in some places, but it isn't going to cover the night or cloudy days. I am hopeful for better storage economics in a few years, but right now it isn't here. (I here all the glam about pumped storage hydro, compressed air and all that, but haven't seen the beef except for a few pumped storage projects built many decades ago -- there are only so many locations to do this economically.)
The only new nuclear construction in the U.S. is units 3 and 4 at the Vogtle Nuclear Plant in Georgia, right now at $26 billion (double the original estimate) for two 1117 MWe net reactors, so that's 26B$/(2*1117MW) = .012 B$/MW = 12 M$/MW = $12/watt = $12,000/KW.
A quick Google on natural gas - fired plants: the EIA estimated that for a simple cycle plant the cost is about US$ 389/kW, whereas combined cycle plants are US$ 500-550/kW. (They of course on top of the construction cost, burn what is still expensive fuel, but I'm too lazy to go look up the levelized costs, or try to figure out the levelized construction cost of Vogtle and Flamanville (below) )
Another Google: "Most of the commercial-scale wind turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed." Math: so that's $1.5 to $2.0 per watt or $1,500 to $2,000/KW.
France, whose electric sector is majority nuclear, and is famously a nuclear success story, is having troubles too building new plants -- Flamanville reactor #3 in construction $7,700/KW as of 7/25/18, a factor of 3 times over the original budget.
There may be all kinds of exciting nuclear concepts in the lab and in various prototype stages, and we can all goo and gurgle about thorium and modular units, but at best they aren't going to have any significant impact for the next 20 years on the climate problem. Not unless we are willing to pay much higher electricity rates and start massively building like right now, and then they might have some impact near the end of 20 years.
Edited: the commercial scale turbines that are $1,500 to $2,000/KW are wind turbines, I left the "wind" out.
Edited Wednesday 9/25/19: Hinkley Point C reactors, being built in Somerset, England by mainly state-owned EDF of France and state-owned CGN of China, is a twin reactor project totalling 2 X 1630 MWe = 3260 Mwe. News reports today, 9/25/19, is that its cost estimate has risen to somewhere between 21.5 billion and 22.5 billion pounds. That comes to 8,370 US$/KW --
Details in post#18 ( https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=132417 )
Bearware
(151 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 23, 2019, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)
The best example I can think of is SpaceX. A manned flight to the moon and back used to be enormously expensive. Fifty years later after challenging lots of accepted wisdom on how rockets have to work, SpaceX is making a spaceship capable of taking a very sizable crew and payload to the moon and back. Only this time both the booster and the spaceship will land on earth and be reusable. As an afterthought the spaceship is designed so it can be refueled by a sister ship and carry a much larger payload to the moon or Mars.
Most of the main concepts seem obvious to the average person but a lot of technical expertise had to go into making them work. Among the most important may be the ability to ignore conventional wisdom that doesn't apply in this case.
On the construction of nuclear power plants we have blinders imposed by the obvious need to have truly massive reactor vessels (8' steel with perfect welds only made by one company in Japan). Because of the high pressures to get reasonable efficiency out of the steam turbines we need MASSIVE containment buildings, massive amounts of water (usually near large bodies of water) and massive cooling towers.
Molten Salt reactors with the fuel dissolved in the salt have much higher temperatures because of the salt melting and vaporization points. This allows near normal atmospheric pressure, no concerns about fuel rods melting because they are not in the design, continuous refueling, much less fuel to remain critical compared to using fuel rods, no requirement for high volumes of cooling water or massive cooling towers. The reactor vessel can be manufactured in a normal factory and one design I know of, the reactor vessel can be shipped on the highway by truck.
The cost of the land can be much less because far less is needed and it doesn't need to be near lots of cooling water. The reactor building will likely be buried for protection from crashing sabotage aircraft and the thickness of the concrete walls also will be based on that need. Instead of sites consisting of square miles they can probably be a reasonable number of acres - depending on security needs.
When you automate the production of the reactor in a precision factory you eliminate and enormous amount of costs trying to achieve precision on something so large it must be done outdoors.
Molten Salt also has the advantage of freezing if it should leak out of the reactor vessel and the salt bonds as well as becoming a solid greatly reduces the escape of volatile radioactive gasses. Further the reactor design allows it to automatically shut down if it gets too hot with no operator interference and operator interference cannot prevent it.
The above is why I think the liquid fuel Molten Salt Fast Reactor is a disruptive a technology on a scale similar to SpaceX.
P.S. Most nuclear reactors come with a multi-month to multi-year "backup battery". It's technical name is "Nuclear Fuel".
progree
(10,901 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 23, 2019, 04:16 AM - Edit history (2)
I've been hearing about all these wonderful technologies for decades, including molten salt reactors (it is NOT a new idea) and cheap modular reactors, and yet no country has built anything ... other than some prototypes long long ago. Besides the U.S. and Europe, there's also Russia, China, Israel, Japan, S. Korea that has the kind of expertise to do this, and I just don't think they are ALL held back by political correctness or some other mental glitches. The country that can demonstrate this technology and have it turn out as well as the nuclear ecstatics having been saying for decades would have an industry in the $100's of billions.
Bearware
(151 posts)At https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/molten-salt-reactors.aspx they mention a number of countries. Apparently there is a lot of support in China because the head of their molten salt program is the son of the previous Chinese Premier. Some years back they came to ORNL and requested copies of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment that was shut down in 1970. We gave them the information without batting an eye.
Why? I like an analogy to the US space program. At huge cost we made it to the moon and then stopped to wait for the "reuseable" Space Shuttle. The shuttle was an advance in reuse-ability but it cost huge amounts to prepare for another flight and could only reach low earth orbit. It also had an immense bureaucracy with lots of political and corporate influence. The Apollo program lost some astronauts in a public way on the launch pad and had some close calls. The shuttle program had two very public accidents that killed their crews one of whom was a public school teacher. After the end of the Shuttle program we needed Russian assistance to get our astronauts back into orbit. We basically stopped doing human space exploration and left it to robots.
Along comes a crazy smart guy with some serious money who has a plan for space exploration that politics and bureaucracy have little control of. He goes from creating a rocket company 2002 using existing know how and successfully makes a reuseable rocket landing in 13 years. There are a fair number of start-up companies pushing various Molten Salt Reactor designs. I suspect designing and building
a prototype will be far easier than getting them certified. The newer designs incorporate huge improvements in safety over the older designs but satisfying the bureaucracy is another matter.
Finishline42
(1,091 posts)Who insures them? With 3 very pricey incidents no insurance company will take on the risk. It is left to governments to take on that risk and that won't happen in most countries, especially here in the US.
The price of wind and solar is continuing to go down. Of course they have an inherent advantage - they don't have to pay for fuel. The cost to make nuclear fuel is anything but low carbon.
Bearware
(151 posts)I would say wind and solar have an crippling disadvantage that their proponents rarely mention. Their intermittent nature means they can only be connected to power grids by having a backup power source - often natural gas peaker plants. Peaker plants can rapidly spin up compared to continuous gas plants but are not as efficient so they burn more gas producing more CO2 and likely leak more natural gas than the more predictable continuous gas plants. When you combine the cost of mitigating the damage from extra CO2 and from the leaked natural gas with the CO2 savings by using wind and solar, the result is not so impressive and may be negative.
Wind and solar are hardly low carbon. Not only are they energy intensive to produce because of the heat required but the solar panels need to be replaced every few decades resulting in more toxic waste. We have mined so much uranium that a current design molten salt reactor would need thousands of years to burn it all into short lived isotopes. However if we build a thousand of them maybe we will start mining the ocean for uranium after we have emptied Yucca Mountain and all the stored nuclear "waste".
Germany wants to get rid of nuclear power plants and discovered the massive installation of wind and solar were not enough. They currently buy lots of French nuclear power and have slowed down their process of shutting down coal plants. Their utility bills are up as shown here in DU posts by NNadir and others.
Insurance problems will probably decline in proportion to the amount of time people are spending in the dark in declining economies because they do not have enough reliable power.
Finishline42
(1,091 posts)They don't have to pay for fuel and because of economies of scale they will continue to get better and cheaper.
Wind power is driven by a simple function - double the diameter of the blades and you cube the output, which is they continue to get bigger. Wind is always blowing somewhere so the biggest hurdle is a grid of HVDC transmission lines to bring the power to where it's needed.
"solar panels need to be replaced every few decades" - I have a hard time believing that bit of disinformation. Typical solar panel warranty guarantees 80% of rated output after 25 years. It's a straight line degradation of less than .5%/yr. You should still see 50% of rated output after 50 years. What will happen when more efficient panels get developed is the re-tasking of older panels.
Say the new owner of a house with old panels on wants to update. They won't throw the old ones out - there will be a market to sell or donate to non-profits (homeless shelters - churches - schools). At any rate they present less chance for hazardous waste than the millions of electronic devices that are being thrown out daily.
Batteries have gotten a lot better in just the last 10 years and we are just getting started using them to deal with fluctuations in the grid (which they do quicker and much cheaper than either coal or nat gas).
Insurance absolutely will not get cheaper - it never has. Principle reason is that the damage an accident at a nuclear plant creates gets more expensive to clean up - not cheaper.
BTW, I think we should find a way to keep existing nuclear plants generating power, but each plant uses about 20 tons of fuel rods a year so they are absolutely not risk or cost free.
jpak
(41,757 posts)
Bearware
(151 posts)New molten salt generation reactors come with multi-month/multi-year GW-Day "batteries" for free. Their batteries are the fuel in the reactor and how much fuel is in a storage room. A few percent of the total fuel in 1 GWE reactor is about a GW-Year's worth of "battery".
One Solar axiom that doesn't seem to get much mention is "We know how many of hours of cloud-free sunlight a given site or a given area has". How do we know how cloudy it is going ANYWHERE at any time with climate change rapidly accelerating? Same for how much not-too-slow/not-too-fast wind we will get with climate change in a given area?
hunter
(38,309 posts)Modern high temperature materials science ought to make these possible.
In familiar light water reactors only a small fraction of the potential energy in the fuel is used, maybe 5%. As fission products accumulate within the solid fuel the nuclear reactions slow down and the fuel has to be replaced. This used nuclear fuel can then be reprocessed to remove fission products that interfere with the nuclear reaction, or more typically, the used fuel is simply stored for an indefinite time as waste. Reprocessing solid fuel is a potentially messy business and not economically viable when uranium prices are low.
In a liquid fuel nuclear reactor these fission products that interfere with the nuclear reaction can be removed or sequestered while the reactor is running, which means a much larger fraction of the fuel's potential energy is utilized without reprocessing.
Fluoride salts of uranium or plutonium have a lower melting point than metallic uranium or plutonium which is why they are used in many liquid fuel reactor designs. But these salts complicate the removal of undesirable fission products from the liquid fuel.
A higher temperature molten metal reactor would be more efficient and might also be more useful for extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or oceans and turning it into liquid hydrocarbon fuels, structural materials, plastics, and fabrics.
DU's NNadir has discussed this technology here.
Bearware
(151 posts)One limit on current molten salt designs is nuclear qualified piping and other materials are certified for maximum temperatures well below what the reactors could easily reach without turning the salt into vapor. Elysium Industries chose sodium chloride for the low temperature melting point and cost. They are trying to get a factory produced MSFR licensed as soon a possible so they are not trying advanced features such as super-critical CO2 or extensive fuel reprocessing.
The MSFR I mentioned is a fast reactor and does not need the same level of fuel processing that thermal reactors do. Because it is molten salt they can inject new fuel in any desired composition any time. The limited processing they do is documented in the last video below. The initial load of fuel is about 70 tons and they burn about 1 ton/per year. The two videos were made far enough apart in time that one can see how the design is evolving.
Hopefully we will get an administration in 2020 that understands Climate Change mitigation needs a super-Manhattan Project(s) on nuclear power as well as the equivalent in research on the same. Multiple designs are a good thing in the beginning.
hunter
(38,309 posts)Quick overview of Elysium technology here:
http://www.elysiumindustries.com/technology
I found a powerpoint overview of fission product removal process here (converted to pdf):
https://www.inmm.org/INMM/media/Documents/Presenations/Spent%20Fuel%20Seminar/2018%20Spent%20Fuel%20Seminar/1-24-18_0905-Pheil-Elysium-Industries-Advanced-Nuclear-Technology-to-Close-the-Fuel-Cycle.pdf
Kr, Xe, Rn
Noble metals filtered out every 4 hours.
Zr, Nb, Mo, Tc, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Cd, In, Sn, Sb, Hf, Hg, Tl, Pb, Bi, Te, Se, Po, I, At
Lanthanides extracted at a processing rate of ~40 litres/day
La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Gd, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Y (lanthanides?)
Other Soluble FPs and actinides remain in the fuel salt
Rb, Cs, Fr, Sr, Ba, Ra, Tb, Eu, Br plus all the transuranic elements
This chemistry is the meat of the reactor. The viability of the reactor depends upon how well it works.
Bearware
(151 posts)In your last sentence "The viability of the reactor depends upon how well it works." , are you referring to the planned removals above or whether they can implement the above processing?
hunter
(38,309 posts)We already know molten salt reactors work. Running them for sixty or more years, continuously extracting various fission products, is another problem.
Mind you I'm not a chemist or materials scientist.
Extracting the gasses seems easy enough; they bubble out of the solution. But then you've got a pipe carrying nightmares like Xenon-135 that have to be sequestered while they decay into easier to handle elements. (Xenon-135 has a half life of about 9.2 hours.)
Elysium Industries seems to be calling anything that doesn't tend to form a chloride in this molten salt mix a "Noble Metal." How exactly are those "filtered out?"
I don't really know where to start with the Lanthanide extraction from molten chloride salts... Do they precipitate out first as the molten salt is cooled?
That's the kind of information I was looking for.
In any case, I think the our federal government ought to be spending more money on non-military nuclear power research. I also think most anti-nuclear activism is another sort of climate change denial. A world economy powered exclusively by wind, solar, and other "renewable" energy would look nothing like the world many anti-nuclear activists now enjoy.
progree
(10,901 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 23, 2019, 12:25 PM - Edit history (4)
No, that's not why they require massive amounts of cooling and containment buildings and all that. Coal-fired plants operate at higher temperatures and pressures for example. Today's conventional nuclear power plants operate at lower temperatures than coal-fired or oil-fired steam thermal power plants because of maximum safe temperature limits of the nuclear fuel rods (only about 1000 deg F IIRC -- much above that and they melt).
Late edit 9/23 1202p ET - well, both conventional (LWR nuclear) and coal-fired plants need massive amounts of cooling and massive cooling towers. But conventional nuclear power plants don't need massive containment buildings (I'm assuming you mean the big thick containment domes) because of their low temperature high pressure operation normally. Coal-fired power plants don't have containment domes. I don't think the regular builidings housing MSR plants would be much smaller than that for coal-fired plants producing the same total MWe. Nor compared to LWR nuclear, if we weren't worried about steam explosions from runaway fission, or hydrogen explosions, or other sizable radioactive material leakage accidents --it is these nuclear accident scenarios that necessitates the containment domes.
I've had nuclear Navy training and experience, as well as about 15 years as an electrical engineer in the planning and generation operations area of an electric utility. I've also read gobs of nuclear magazines (I forget the titles) and books. I'm a bit rusty though, it's been about 30 years or so since I was immersed in that.
The reason for the massive amount of cooling -- both today's nuclear and coal- and oil- fired thermal plants require them, is that any thermal engine -- one that converts heat into motion (the spinning of the electric turbine-generator) -- is limited in efficiency by the difference between the heat source and the heat sink.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/carnot.html
Coal-fired and oil-fired plants need almost as much cooling as conventional nuclear power plants. Not quite as much because they operate at higher temperatures than nuclear, thus having somewhat more thermal efficiency and thus needing a little less cooling per megawatt of electricity generated. The largest coal-fired power plants are like about 40% efficient, whereas nuclear are about 35% efficient (well, Wikipedia below says 30–32%). Meaning the other 60% and 65% (or 70%) of the heat produced from the fuel must be cooled away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_power_station#Thermal_power_generation_efficiency
The containment domes are thick to withstand hydrogen explosions, and steam explosions from possible run-away fission, not because the pressures are so high normally. Again, conventional coal-fired power plants operate at higher temperatures and pressures, but don't have more than ordinary buildings to contain them (not thick high-pressure-withstanding domes).
But yeah, any thermal power plant that operates by boiling water into steam and spinning the turbine-generator with steam is going to be quite limited in its thermodynamic efficiency and thus generate a lot of waste heat that has to be removed by massive cooling towers using massive amounts of water.
Bearware
(151 posts)In PWR (pressurized water reactor) the size and strength of the containment buildings has to be able to handle steam explosions, hydrogen explosions and potential radiation leaks. Molten Salt Reactors do not need to have solid fuel or water cooling of the core so steam or hydrogen explosions do not happen in the core. Radiation leaks are possible but would not be spread by explosions and would be mostly contained chemically in the molten salt which would quickly freeze outside of the reactor.
My favorite MSFR (Molten Salt Fast Reactor) design uses sodium chloride (NaCl) molten salt with an outlet temperature of 600 C (1111 F) and inlet of 500 C (900 F). It uses standard nuclear certified stainless steel piping which limits the temperature range they can use. In the future when certified higher temperature piping is available this will probably increase. This design does not need the large pressure differential in some existing reactors as water is not used as a coolant for the reactor (molten salt is) and non-radioactive molten salt from a heat exchanger is sent to produce steam for a Rankine cycle or later potentially CO2 for a Brayton cycle when it is shown to be reliable.
A PWR needs a strong containment for a large-break LOCA (Loss of Coolant). The MSFR above uses molten salt as a coolant and fuel carrier. A large break in a line would spill molten salt on the floor which would quickly solidify. If there was a large break in a fuel line the reactor would automatically shutdown due to loss of criticality. The reactor is always barely critical. If the reactor overheats the fuel is automatically drained into tanks that will not support criticality and stop the reactions even if all power is lost. The drain tanks can air cool without problems.
The reactor design in question has a conservative design to make it able to be certified today with existing certified materials. In the future with better materials it could go to higher temperatures and potentially use dry cooling towers.
The reactor vessel itself is about 4 meters in diameter and will fit in a standard freight truck trailer for transport on regular highways.
I do not have a background in nuclear but am really impressed with the above design because it has clearly been thought out by a group with long time experience in nuclear energy. Instead of reaching for maximum numbers they are working with what will likely get their reactor certified now and maintain the substantial advantages of molten salt fuel and molten salt coolant. As more advanced materials become certified they can take advantage of many of them without major changes.
Here are two video's on the MSFR I am talking about above. Notice the evolution in the design from one video to the next. Since you were in the Navy you might have met the speaker.
John ONeill
(60 posts)The first oil price shock hit in October 1973. At the time, France was getting nearly half its power from burning oil, the price had doubled, and they had no coal reserves. The government decided to build nuclear plants, and in fifteen years they had replaced oil, greatly reduced coal use as well, at the same time as power use more than doubled.
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/energy-issues/france/index_chart.html They just gave up on their own designs, bought one that worked off America, and built about fifty of them. Their emissions of CO2 as a result are some of the lowest in Europe.
Much of the cost of nuclear is interest, which is not charged at the low rates that governments get, and a good part of the price is due to delay and over-regulation. Lack of practice, by both management and workforce, is also a big factor. In China, they have a crew building a plant, and before it's quarter finished, they've started another right next to it. They can build US and French designs much faster than the Americans and French can themselves. South Korea and Japan were also building plants in about four years.
in2herbs
(2,944 posts)hunter
(38,309 posts)It is in fact destroying the world as we know it.
The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 23, 2019, 08:23 AM - Edit history (1)
Low-carbon energy has never reduced fossil-fuel usage. All such sources are additive, they do not displace fossil fuels. This is shown by the fact that since 1965 nuclear and renewable power have added about 1100 mtoe to the world's energy supply, while fossil fuels have added about 7800 mtoe - seven times as much.
We need to stop pretending they replace coal and gas, and attack fossil fuel use directly.
The only thing that has ever made FF use decline in the last 50 years is a global economic crisis such as we saw in 2008 and a few previous minor recessions. That points to the problem: as long as the global economy keeps growing, so will FF use.
hunter
(38,309 posts)To solve this problem we will have to ban fossil fuels and deal with the economic fallout however we can.
No invisible hand of the free market is going to bail us out.
If we could grow solar panels and wind turbines as easily as we grow zucchini, if neighbors were giving them away, world fossil fuel use would still be increasing.
I think natural gas is the scariest fossil fuel because people are not afraid of it and there is enough of it in the ground to destroy the world as we know it.
The existing fossil fueled world economy is not sustainable. We can end it on our own terms, or we can wait until it fails catastrophically.
Bearware
(151 posts)A Hydrogen economy might be a big deal to setup but appropriate nuclear reactors could produce prodigious quantities of Hydrogen from water.
MSR's could also drive machines to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and produce diethyl ether. Vehicles would have to be converted to burn it but it's production would not use fossil fuel. NNadir has written extensively about this.
Once you have diethyl ether and/or hydrogen, you put a increasing tax on other fuels extracted from the ground.
Molten salt reactors could be setup to either use extra electricity or process heat in the appropriate reaction. This might be appropriate in a situation where a base load is going to the grid but during off hours part of that extra energy could go to synthesizing the above. For process heat some of the molten salt could be directed to the location needing heat instead of generating electricity. if one is making concrete then some electricity may be need to raise the process heat up what concrete production requires.
I do not have a background in nuclear energy. However the relative simplicity, low pressure and flexibility of the MSFR may allow a number of applications to be added on that had not been thought of when the reactor was built.
progree
(10,901 posts)Hinkley Point C reactors, being built in Somerset, England by mainly state-owned EDF of France and state-owned CGN of China, is a twin reactor project totalling 2 X 1630 MWe = 3260 Mwe. News reports today, 9/25/19, is that its cost estimate has risen to somewhere between 21.5 billion and 22.5 billion pounds.
1 pound = $1.24 per midday Google 9/25/19. So taking the 22 billion pound (midway between 21.5 and 22.5) cost, that's $27.3 B. $27.3 B / 3.260 GWe = 8.37 $/watt = 8,370 $/KW
It's original cost estimate in 2016 was 18 billion pounds. The 22 billion current estimate is only 22.2% higher than 18 billion pounds, not bad for a 3-year increase. The first reactor is still expected to go in service at the end of 2025. I couldn't find an estimate for the in-service date for the second reactor.
It's a PWR, Pressurized Water Reactor design. It's the same design as Flamanville reactor under construction in France, that is also suffering cost overruns and in-service date delays.
I posted a doleful account of new nuclear construction in the U.K. on 4/16/19 (the source article is January 2019) - Progree summary: Hitachi is walking away from $2.8 billion it invested. Looks like there will be no new nuclear in the UK (other than Hinkley Point C), government is not willing to provide the subsidies that are needed. https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127126292#post2
Bloomberg: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/edf-raises-cost-flagship-u-063219097.html
Reuters: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/french-power-group-edf-raises-064416154.html
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station
Compare to construction costs of US$ 500-550/kW for combined cycle natural gas plants, and $1,500 to $2,000/KW for wind turbines (see post#5 in this thread https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=132289 ).
(Of course the natural gas plants also have in addition to construction costs, high fuel costs)
hunter
(38,309 posts)If the world's ecosystems collapse and no longer supports billions of people because of fossil fuel use then the world's economy will collapse.
Nobody will care how much Hinkley Point C cost.
The true cost of natural gas will be immeasurably higher, paid for in human lives, suffering, and mass extinctions.
progree
(10,901 posts)Last edited Thu Sep 26, 2019, 01:37 AM - Edit history (1)
whose construction costs have long been paid off, but are being shut down because they are not cost competitive just based on the fuel and O&M costs, and can't even get a measly subsidy to keep generating electricity with about 5% of the CO2 / Kwh (mostly for enriching the uranuium) as natural gas plants. And despite being the only major source other than hydro of very low GHG electricity that is dispatchable and like 90%+ capacity factor -- regardless of sun and wind conditions.
(As for hydro there's not too much left to exploit and anyway comes with severe environmental impacts).
People freak out at the mere mention of a carbon tax, even one that is overall revenue neutral.
RockRaven
(14,950 posts)namely that current living persons are delivering a cost/hazard to other people who are not yet born and cannot consent to being subjected to that cost/hazard.
Nuclear waste products remain hazardous for longer than the lifetimes of anyone who extracts the benefit of that energy usage. That must be addressed and reckoned with in a VERY substantive way (just as with greenhouse gas emissions), or one might as well throw up one's hands and embrace either anti-natalism or abject sadism.
Bearware
(151 posts)Of the "spent" nuclear fuel which is commonly called nuclear waste, the above reactors can burn all but a few percent and that small amount can be put in casks so the remaining radioactivity will be gone to background levels in 300-600 years.
Depending on what form it is in some/most of the nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain can probably be burned the same way. There are even possibilities of doing the same to the melted Corium at Fukushima and Chernobyl. I don't know of any other process that could do that in any volume.