Nuclear power development in UK going bust? 6

[edison123]

Paging Scotty.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46900918

First, it was Toshiba, now it is Hitachi. Nuclear was touted as the only way forward for sating future demand. What happens now?

Muthu

http://www.edison.co.in

 

[prc]

Bright star for Hitachi is, they are buying ABB Power Grid, making them the No1 in the world for Power Generation and Transmission equipment.

 

[Mbrooke]

If you want my opinion nuclear is the only way to go for the amount of power needed. It would require less changes to the transmission network for beginners. Renewables are roulette, and battery storage of any size is like a watch battery for a home.


The down side is things like Fukashima. I remember before the event arguing that finite events and infinite time lead to a 100% outcome- its why life might exist- only to be quipped back at that it can't happen, to many safety systems, Chernobyl didn't have a containment dome and I've been watching to much Hollywood (China Syndrome)... Then the impossible become reality. I hate being right...


Perhaps the future is nuclear power that can't emit any radiation after the fact and can not melt down under any conditions.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Nuclear is uneconomical. That is the beginning and the end of it. Wind, solar, coal, natural gas, peat, and hydro all beat it out. Batteries are soon going to be replacing peaker units. In MISO, the point batteries will be replacing peaker units is like 2025. In the U.S., generation is going to be natural gas, wind, solar, and batteries in 10 years. That is utility scale solar and not residential or commercial. Those installation cost about twice as much as utility scale installations. Nuclear sounds nice because the fuel is cheap and you can build a plant almost anywhere but the plants are ridiculously expensive to build. Solar, wind, and natural gas make it very hard to even take any proposal to build a nuclear power plant seriously. Nuclear plants all over in the U.S. are shutting down because they can't compete in their markets. Westinghouse Nuclear went bankrupt two years ago. Nuclear power is dead until someone can come up with a cheaper design or a C02 tax gets implemented.

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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[Compositepro]

The cost of nuclear is artificially inflated by the regulatory system. This is probably fuily intentional. Yet the current cost is small compared to what climate alarmists want to spend in other areas.

 

[Mbrooke]

@HamburgerHelper: I beg to differ, mostly on those batteries:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihc4OY5yJxQ

Hydrocarbons aren't going to be around forever either.

 

[electricpete]

My thoughts fwiw on the general subject of nuclear (not uk specific) ...

There is a phenomenon called availability bias where we believe that things which readily come to mind are more representative than is actually the case:
[ul]
[li]Traveling by plane is safer than traveling by car (per straight-line distance origin to destination). But people think planes are less safe because the few accidents that due occur are large scale accidents with heavy news coverage that readily come to mind.[/li]
[li]Likewise nuclear power is safer than fossil fuels (per mw-hr) when you consider deaths attributed to air pollution. But people think nuclear is less safe because the few accidents that do occur are large scale accidents with wall-to-wall news coverage.[/li]

[/ul]
Also with respect to Fukishima, it's worth considering the scale of the natural disaster. In round numbers the quake and Tsunami resulted in at least 15,000 deaths (unrelated to the nuclear disaster). The deaths attributable to the nuclear disaster are small in number... the highest number I've seen anywhere is 1,500 which is predominantly people that died as a result of relocation and displacement stresses. So the natural disaster was at least 10 times as bad as the nuclear disaster by this measure! (I must admit however the cleanup effort from the nuclear disaster is much more complex, expensive and will take longer than the cleanup from the Tsunami/Flood).

That's the way I look at it. I don't claim to be free of biases and potential conflicts of interest on the subject. I appreciate and respect that many people view it much differently than I do.




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(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[prc]

Fukushima- this was shared to me by one of my Japanese friends. I don't know how much true. Fukushima would not have happened had the standby diesel generators for cooling pumps were put on a little more higher foundation. Generator was submerged in Tsunami as no body expected water to reach such levels.

 

[thebard3]

@HamburgerHelper: None of the generation technologies you list (except hydro) would be considered as base load generation. Nuclear, fossil fuel (coal), and hydroelectric plants run at full load all of the time to generate the minimum amount of electricity that is needed all of the time. Solar, wind, battery and any as-yet developed technologies are used to provide for peak demands on a reduced duty cycle basis, considering whether the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. Natural gas generation is attractive now because the fuel price is low today, but subject to unpredictable increases based on other unpredictable situations that may arise. Also, natural gas is a contributor to CO2 greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to global warming if you subscribe to that.
The Fukushima power plant employed technology that was around 50 years old at the time of the accident. New, safer technologies have been developed to safeguard against an accident of that type, but there are few installations as of today using any of the newer technologies. Provided that the regulatory requirements are frozen (instead of frequent changes requiring major redesigns during construction of new plants), nuclear power generation is economical and clean. That, of course, ignores the problem of what to do with spent fuel which is dangerous for centuries or more. That issue has become a political 'hot potato' and is likely to never be resolved to everyone's liking.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Brooke,

Supplying 8 hours of power to the system through battery power is much different than having batteries operating as peaker units. In MISO, battery installations will be cheaper than peaker units 2023-2025. This is an indisputable fact that Peaker units will be replaced largely by batteries.

Natural gas will be the cheapest form of base load generation for the foreseeable future. That is why people are shutting down coal and nuclear units and converting coal units to gas or dual fuel. Natural gas beats everything else and it is not even funny. The only place that you are going to see coal units be built is like in Alaska or some region that does not have access to natural gas. China is building them like hotcakes but that is what they have access to. I don't think anyone even considers anything but natural gas for new generation with the exception of wind and solar if you have the option for natural gas. You are seeing reciprocating natural gas units being built that can fire up fast and are cheaper than single stage gas turbine. Gas is going to be cheaper than everything else for base generation for a long time.

I don't buy the idea at all that the grid is going to change radically. Anyone who says that we are going to be moving to a system where everyone has their own battery and generates their own power is trying to sell you something, doesn’t understand the economics of the grid, or lives in a region that places no premium on cheap energy. Residential solar produces power in the range of $0.20 per kwh range. The average cost across the U.S. for transmission and distribution cost is about $0.04 per kwh. The difference between in cost between generation utility scale solar and residential solar is about $0.15 per kwh. It doesn't make any sense form an economic perspective to have residential solar over utility scale solar. The installation cost per utility scale solar vs residential scale solar is about half. You have all the benefits of scale working for you that completely offset the transmission and distribution cost. It doesn't work and only works if the regulators demand it, incredible subsidies are put in place, or you have customers that don't really care about the price of energy.

Residential battery storage cost about $0.20 per a kwh, which is a lot to pay for electricity in most regions in the U.S.. A battery unit at a residence is more a toy than something that makes any sense and no California doesn't count. Their system is completely messed up and not at all geared towards supplying cheap and reliable power.

The last point that I want to make is that the grid is extremely reliable and well understood. It is very well thought out and any proposed changes usually come from a vendor or someone that doesn't really understand all the tradeoffs that would be required to make whatever changes would have on the reliability of the system. The system is extremely well designed and well thought out. You can't change the system for a half baked idea that only provides marginal benefits. Yes, there are transmission projects that don't make sense but if anyone reviews the NERC TPL planning requirements, they will see that the system is designed for an incredible amount of reliability. It could be argued maybe too much reliability. Until something changes, or regulators start pushing for things that don't really add much of anything to the system and only decrease reliability and increase complexity and all while more often than not increasing the customers bill, the grid won't change.

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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[Mbrooke]

I agree, but up to a point. Batteries even for peak conditions have limitations. Remember there is a difference between a 3 hour reserve and a 5 minute reserve. Batteries also wear out. Of course we don't know what the future holds as history has taught us, but in so far I am leaning toward pessimism on batteries.

Personally, I would invest my money on ultra capacitors. Capacitors can in theory be mad to store more and be charged/discharged an unlimited number of times with minimal conversion losses.


Regarding NERC TPL and reliability its all relative. There are parts of the system which remain standing fine in N-5, and other parts that need load shed or collapse at N-2. N-1-1 can be argued as to conservative or to liberal based on the scenario. In truth what I think it really comes down to is that gov should not be micro managing the private sector. We should set our MHOs as we see fit, thank you very much.

 

[RVAmeche]

prc,

That's partially true, the backup generator (or maybe the batteries?) were located in the basement...which promptly flooded during the event. A report prior to the quake had recommended they relocate these items to reduce this risk and the energy company said no. Whoops.

 

[prc]

It proves the saying, if there is chance for anything to go wrong, it will today or tomorrow !!

 

[Sparweb]

Perhaps I can stay out of the nuclear good/evil debate, and respond only to the OP and the link to the BBC news item... good luck to me.

The disagreement between the UK government and Hitachi sounds a lot like the political/backroom wrangling that goes on behind the scenes everywhere. I suspect one of two things (or both) Hitachi is looking for more subsidies or a break on the crushing regulations, or the UK government keeps changing the regulations on Hitachi. Note how the project is "suspended" not "canceled" meaning Hitachi can go back to work without losing face when they get what they want, and even raising the stakes by threatening to stop another project, too. This just looks like a business pressure tactic, and for all I know either party could be trying to screw the other.


No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF

 

[Sparweb]

Great quote from the article:

Justin Bowden, the GMB union's national secretary for energy, said the decision raised "the very real prospect of a UK energy crisis. While the government has had its head up its proverbial backside over Brexit, vital matters like guaranteeing the country's future energy supply appear to have gone by the wayside."

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF

 

[thebard3]

That's partially true, the backup generator (or maybe the batteries?) were located in the basement...which promptly flooded during the event. A report prior to the quake had recommended they relocate these items to reduce this risk and the energy company said no.

I don't believe the company quite said no, but rather was investigating the need and possible options. I think the report of the deficiency was issued around 3 years before the accident and the plant was around 40 years old, so I'm sure there wasn't much urgency to make required modifications. Wrongfully so as it turned out.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

 

[marks1080]

Moving from very large units (nuke's for example) with heavy inertia to much smaller, faster, gas units will have a big impact on system stability. One of the best things you can do to help keep a faulted system from collapsing is to have very large inertia machines connected to it.

 

[controlsdude]

This whole discussion reminds me of that nuclear reactor plant that was just north of San Diego built on a quake fault near the ocean.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-chapple-san-onofre-20180815-story.html

 

[HamburgerHelper]

marks1080,

Inverters are supposed to be able to provide artificial inertia if setup correctly. This was brought up at a FERC meeting last summer with a bunch of experts. Some were claiming that it potentially should be able to provide superior inertia. Germany has nukes online still for system inertia even though they are going hard wind and solar. I don't know how anything can be superior to a big heavy rotor supplying rotational energy to the system without any programming but that is what they said. I would rather have a heavy rotor for inertia but artificial inertia will need to be worked out because there is going to only be increasing penetrations of renewables. California is talking about going 100% green in 2045. It will have to be worked out.

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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[Compositepro]

"Inverters are supposed to be able to provide artificial inertia if setup correctly."

That would be due to energy stored in the DC buss capacitors. Only a small fraction of the energy in these capacitors is useful for carrying motors through a power failure.