[Update: Confirmed] Unlimited* Powaaa! – Scientists achieve net positive nuclear fusion reaction

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

And of course the problems associated with a limited fuel supply, especially Uranium for the current reactor types.

There isn't actually a supply shortage, supply is artificially restricted for well, obvious reasons. Also the US unlike Europe does not reprocess fuel so there is massive quantiles of usable material buried because new fuel is cheaper.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

There isn't actually a supply shortage, supply is artificially restricted for well, obvious reasons. Also the US unlike Europe does not reprocess fuel so there is massive quantiles of usable material buried because new fuel is cheaper.

Well in the end supply is still finite and not enough to replace world-wide fossile electricity (plus heating) for 100+ years, no?

[leadeater]

41 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Well in the end supply is still finite and not enough to replace world-wide fossile electricity (plus heating) for 100+ years, no?

Nobody really knows, there's lots of mineral sources that have not been publicly disclosed. For example my country is heavily anti nuclear yet I know of a geological study that found deposits that would be minable but where that is was not put in the report nor made public.

 

Trying to project out 100 years is a little fruitless as technology changes far too much in the time and immediate needs really do outweigh future concerns like that.

[BabaGanuche]

38 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Well in the end supply is still finite and not enough to replace world-wide fossile electricity (plus heating) for 100+ years, no?

The estimate is 230 year supply assuming today's prices and no change to existing technology or current use of reprocessing. However if you assume technology possible but not currently economical, options there is an estimated 30-60 thousand year supply.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

[oali24]

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

Political narrative and vote grabbing.    Even in France there is a strong push to reduce nuclear and go "green".    Any government that tries to be even mildly rational about power generation and the environment can kiss their election goodbye.  That is how powerful fear mongering can be.

15 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Renewables with no batteries or dams are useless.

 

Cheaper renewables are dams, followed by photovoltaic (which are useless for nighttime and peak power usage at the end of the afternoon), then wind (which isn't super reliable depending on the location).

 

Hopefully Ambri will succeed in bringing their dirty cheap calcium-antimony batteries for these kinds of applications, negating these cons.

 

But I still prefer relying on nuclear than renewables. Brazil has the biggest renewables share of large nations, and it's mostly due to hydro, ton of sun for solar and coastal winds in the northeast, which are very stable throughout the year. 

newly installed renewables are cheaper than nuclear though, in my totally broke country with no fossil fuel reserves we have been installing lots of renewables because they are so cheap, batteries are also getting cheaper, and even without that grids can operate completely on renewable energy, it has been proven on small scales and while previously it wasn't sure if you could have more than 40% renewables on a larger scale it has already happened.

https://ecos.csiro.au/baseload-power/

[Kisai]

58 minutes ago, BabaGanuche said:

The estimate is 230 year supply assuming today's prices and no change to existing technology or current use of reprocessing. However if you assume technology possible but not currently economical, options there is an estimated 30-60 thousand year supply.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

The thing is, there is a time limit for when something is financially viable. Like you always hear about copper mines being considered for re-opening that closed like a century ago, because back then they didn't use heavy machinery to mine it.

 

When the "cheap" to mine materials are gone, you have to go deeper, and we do not yet posses technology to go more than a mile straight down. Places with a lot of easy accessible minerals are usually mountains, where the earth itself has brought minerals up from 12km in the crust due to the plate tectonics itself. Easy to reach, but you aren't going to mine straight down in these areas because they will collapse in on you. No, instead you blow the entire mountain up.

 

But what do you do when you've blown up all the mountains that contain the mineral you're after? Now you gotta dig for it, and you come back to these same locations. Now only it's super expensive to keep the remainder of the mountain from collapsing since there's no longer anything solid there.

 

 

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, BabaGanuche said:

The estimate is 230 year supply assuming today's prices and no change to existing technology or current use of reprocessing. However if you assume technology possible but not currently economical, options there is an estimated 30-60 thousand year supply.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

That's interesting but assumes todays generation capacity as well, which would need to get massively upped if it were to replace all fossile energy currently in use, plus take into account a substantial growth in overall energy demand.

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Trying to project out 100 years is a little fruitless as technology changes far too much in the time and immediate needs really do outweigh future concerns like that.

Sure, but if fuel resources are depleted in 100 years (see reasons above) and fusion still hasn't taken off by then (which I honestly think is not too far fetched at this point) we're back at square 1 in the exact same position as we are now.

 

In any case I'd say going for methods that have infinite fuel/supply is a safer/better bet.

[staticpage]

On 12/13/2022 at 12:55 PM, wanderingfool2 said:

In regards to this topic, I will not be holding my breath for Nuclear Fusion anytime soon.  With the advancements in material science and knowledge I do think that it might be possible, but the simple fact is you see news stories like this every few years about fusion.  Until proven otherwise, I will be cynical of any solution where the company tries claiming they can have a commercial reactor in like 15 years.

 

That does create an issue though moving "all nuclear".  If everyone went all nuclear we would very quickly hit a supply shortage and also hit the issue of running out of enrichable uranium.  Apparently, some of the commercial PV's have hit $0.06/kWh with a pathway to $0.03/kWh which would also make it less feasible to go all Nuclear. [https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/sunshot-2030]

 

This article says 230 years (based on discovered and estimated undiscovered uranium) at 2009 levels [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/].  Currently we have 10% nuclear (not sure if it was higher in 2009, could be).  If we assume 20% back in 2009 though, that would mean converting to all nuclear we would have 46 years.  If you consider 10%, that would be 23 years.  Based on the world-nuclear.org though, 2009 had 438 plants online and 2022 had 440 plants online so I'm assuming the 10% number is about correct.  Based on current known supplies of uranium though the numbers drop to [current year 230->~100, all nuclear (20% current) 23 years, all nuclear (10% current) 10 years]

 

Really the solution is to have a blend of all of the renewables and nuclear.  It's the most realistic way.  Nuclear is important and needs to be built, but we cannot realistically bank on it as a complete solution because in the worst case it can only buy us an additional 10 - 20 years to build out the other solutions.

I just read this a few weeks ago in a NRC report. I live in a town in Ohio that experienced one of the worst (mostly unknown) nuclear radiation spills of all time so we have lots of people here that work in the industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernald_Feed_Materials_Production_Center

A small part of the radioactive leaks was the most radioactive waste known to man (K-65) leaked from silos that was 100ft from a road and was in direct contact with our drinking water it was covered up and ignored for a decade. People think it is safe and clean but that's only because the authorities hide the many many accidents. The wiki doesn't even cover half of the stuff we as a town experienced, from lies to corruption the government can't be trusted with radioactive waste disposal. One of my favored clips of the medias discovery of the spill was mayor of nearby Cincinnati Jerry Springer (yes the talk show guy) grilling president Ronald Reagan on the tarmac when he landed here to review the site about why this was covered up and the president just keeps saying "I only know what THEY tell me"

 

Beyond that nuclear power generation is very inefficient we are taking the planets rarest elements and burning them in a fire to make steam drive a turbine. It is so rare in concentrated ore form that current prices and consumption are only guaranteed for the next 100 years, we only have 100 years of ore at cheap rates after that element recovery/mining jumps 100X. The water pumps that are now filtering and cleaning up the spills from production of fuel will require more energy than the fuel that the plant made.

 

The real solutions to the energy problem is hundreds of years away but in the mean time to get us though we need to interconnect PV with kinetic batteries kinetic batteries might even help with water shortages, forget about wind it relies on lots of gear oil for the gear transmissions. Relax laws on micro hydro and educate the communities that can leverage it. Stop Tesla owners from drag racing every BMW they see, JK but no really just stop it I get it everyday unless it's a $200,000 platinum you will lose.  We just need to work towards better bigger energy production and be more efficient with what we have.

[steelo]

I have a hard time believing this will become a practical and affordable energy source anytime soon. To me it sounds like more hype by a mainstream media machine that has proven in the past they don't want to do the leg work or the research to fully understand what they are reporting on.

 

I hope that I'm wrong.

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Nobody really knows, there's lots of mineral sources that have not been publicly disclosed. For example my country is heavily anti nuclear yet I know of a geological study that found deposits that would be minable but where that is was not put in the report nor made public.

 

Trying to project out 100 years is a little fruitless as technology changes far too much in the time and immediate needs really do outweigh future concerns like that.

While it is pretty much impossible to know where we will be in 100 years, there is still an importance of trying to judge what might be the worst case scenario.  Nuclear plants are designed to potentially last 100 years in this day and age.  It's an important discussion in terms of sustainability because it is a limited resource and our best guess is that there is only 230 years at the current guessed quantities left remaining (including undiscovered).

 

It's why the discussion of we should all go nuclear is an important one, because if the world truly went all nuclear that 230 capacity drops down to less than 50 years (and could realistically be sub 25 years).  I don't think we would ever realistically hit that point but it's still to put into consideration.  I do think nuclear is the way forward, maybe Thorium, but it should not be relied on as the end solution to the problem.  The solution has to be multiple types of renewables.

 

6 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

And yeah, if people are going to make an argument against nuclear for its mining process, guess what? Rare earth still need to be mined for solar, steel still has to be mined mill, and in order to have a system that runs all day long, batteries still have materials that to be mined, that leaves as much of a wasteland as uranium mining does.

Overall it's a bit more tricky than just assuming mining for materials are equally as bad for the environment without considering the mining process (which of course I am in no way qualified so I could be wrong and my conclusion could be wrong)

 

Uranium mining, your goal is to extract the Uranium that is nuclear grade which leaves a bunch of other radioactive rocks.  While it's low grade radioactive, it can't simply be treated as any regular tailings now.  Since it's mildly radioactive you don't want any of it getting dissolved into the water and released into the ecosystem, as a result Uranium mining is a bit more of a complicated process where the reclamation process can't be realistically done by filling in the tailing.

 

When the site is eventually closed and reclamation occurs the company mining the resources has to do the upkeep on it.  This is still true about some regular mines as well, but with Uranium mines there is a lot more expense.  Then you have the fact that some of the companies end up going bankrupt so then the government essentially ends up picking up the tab.

 

The benefit of some of the rare earth that is used in solar though is that it can be recycled (it's just at the moment it's not economically feasible to).  As you get more solar though, and as governments start catching on and making specific standards the process to recycle will become cheaper and eventually we will hit an equilibrium where we require a lot less materials mined (as you treat the waste PV cells as the raw ore).  Similar thing occurs with batteries for vehicle (and could apply to megapack storage).  Even modern processes can recover 95% of the battery, where the lithium is 99% recovered.  So there is an eventual path for solar and batteries, and with batteries distributed amoungst houses, using LFP which can have like a 25 year cycle life when using in a battery pack for the house and you have a recipe for having homes that can withstand more disaster scenarios (and handle surge grid demand).  Uranium on the other hand can only be recycled up to about 30%.  It's not like you can keep recycling Uranium forever, nor can you batteries but currently we can recycle 95% of batteries which is a major difference than 30% Uranium.

 

Things of course change with Thorium reactors but China is I believe the only one actively testing it at large scale.

[WolframaticAlpha]

Can someone suggest a resource to me about fusion/nuclear energy in general? My knowledge extends to basic undergrad physics and chemistry 

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Can someone suggest a resource to me about fusion/nuclear energy in general? My knowledge extends to basic undergrad physics and chemistry 

Gptchat

[Lightwreather]

Well, it appears it has been confirmed by the Department of Energy,

Quote

On Tuesday, the US Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed information that had leaked out earlier this week: its National Ignition Facility had reached a new milestone, releasing significantly more fusion energy than was supplied by the lasers that triggered the fusion. "Monday, December 5, 2022 was an important day in science," said Jill Hruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. "Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering, and experimentation."

Quote

In terms of specifics, the lasers of the National Ignition Facility deposited 2.05 megajoules into their target in that experiment. Measurements of the energy released afterward indicate that the resulting fusion reactions set loose 3.15 megajoules, a factor of roughly 1.5. That's the highest output-to-input ratio yet achieved in a fusion experiment.

Although there is a bit of a snag here, it appears that the lasers that produced the 2 MJ, used about 300MJ.

Quote

As we noted above, the 3 MJ released in this experiment is a big step up from the amount of energy deposited in the target by the National Ignition Facility's lasers. But it's an enormous step down from the 300 MJ or so of grid power that was needed to get the lasers to fire in the first place.

But many speakers emphasized that the facility was built with once-state-of-the-art technology that's now over 30 years old. And, given its purpose of testing conditions for nuclear weapons, keeping power use low wasn't one of the design goals. "The laser wasn't designed to be efficient," said Herrmann, "the laser was designed to give us as much juice as possible to make these incredible conditions happen in the laboratory."

However she noted

Quote

Tammy Ma leads the DOE's Inertial Fusion Energy Institutional Initiative, which is designed to explore its possible use for electricity generation. She estimated that simply switching to current laser technology would immediately knock 20 percent off the energy use. She also mentioned that these lasers could fire far more regularly than the existing hardware at the National Ignition Facility.

And there are a host of other issues with Intertial Confinement.

Quote

Kim Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, mentioned the other barriers. "This is one igniting capsule one time," Budil said. "To realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things; you have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute. And you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that." Drivers like consistent manufacturing of the targets, hardware that can survive repeated neutron exposures, and so on.

Therefore, despite the fact that laser-driven fusion has achieved significant energy milestones, a long list of issues still need to be resolved before it can be commercialised. An alternate strategy, magnetic confinement in tokamaks, is considered to primarily deal with difficulties of scale and magnetic field intensity and, as a result, to be considerably closer to commercialisation.

Quote

"There's a lot of commonalities between the two where we can learn from each other," Ma said optimistically. "There's burning plasma physics, material science, reactor engineering, and we're very supportive of each other in this community. A win for either inertial or magnetic confinement is a win for all of us." But another speaker noted that magnetic confinement works at much lower densities than laser-driven fusion, so not all of the physics would apply.

But Ma also suggested that, for laser-driven fusion to thrive, it may need to break away from its past in weapons testing. "Where we are right now is at a divergent point," she said. "We've been very lucky to be able to leverage the work that the National Nuclear Security Administration has done for inertial confinement fusion. But if we want to get serious about [using it for energy production], we need to figure out what an integrated system looks like... and what we need for a power plant. It has to be simple, it has to be high volume, it needs to be robust." None of those things had been required for the weapons work.

My thoughts

So while this has indeed confirmed that there was indeed a net positive energy output, this is only in relation to the power outputted by the lasers. Furthermore, it appears the NIF is having some difficulty reproducing what happened here, so yea. But there is hope that this milestone will be able to be carried forth to more efficient designs and bring commercial reactors. Although it is certainly some time away, this has certainly reduced the time that we will be waiting. Until it happens though, I seriously hope that governments start investing not only in fusion but fission and other renewables as well.

Sources

ArsTechnica

[mr moose]

16 hours ago, oali24 said:

newly installed renewables are cheaper than nuclear though, in my totally broke country with no fossil fuel reserves we have been installing lots of renewables because they are so cheap, batteries are also getting cheaper, and even without that grids can operate completely on renewable energy, it has been proven on small scales and while previously it wasn't sure if you could have more than 40% renewables on a larger scale it has already happened.

https://ecos.csiro.au/baseload-power/

 

Well of course if your country has no fossil fuels or access to Uranium then solar and wind would be cheaper.  that's like saying sand is cheaper in Africa than Brazilian rain forest timber.

 

Another thing is not to confuse future possibilities with current actual abilities,  batteries are getting better, but they aren't there yet and I am told we need a solution today.  

 

Lastly, I don't think you read that CSIRO article quite right.   Yes they can do 100% on small islands, Islands with so much consistent wind that they make way more than they need because they are small.  Or places like Scotland which apparently is so windy so often it makes sense there.  It makes no sense in a lot more places because those places have industrial loads and wind variance so much that they simply cannot control the grid.  This is all pointed out in that CSIRO article*.  Which I should also mention is heavily influenced by social narrative because it gets all it's funding from government which needs votes.    

 

 

 

*

Quote

Theoretically, with careful load and generation control systems mixed with energy storage, a power system could operate on 100 per cent variable renewable energy, and this has been demonstrated on various small grids around the world (such as those on remote islands). However, there are open questions about how such results translate to a large grid with major industrial loads,

"Theoretically" means not actually shown to work in reality yet, 

 

"with careful load and generation controls systems",  means: with very complex systems that need to be way more agile, responsive and predictable than current technology. 

And

 

"open questions" means we don't have a solution for larger scales with industrial/commercial loads yet.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Well of course if your country has no fossil fuels or access to Uranium then solar and wind would be cheaper.  that's like saying sand is cheaper in Africa than Brazilian rain forest timber.

Most countries need to import Uranium for their NPPs.

[mr moose]

Just now, Dracarris said:

Most countries need to import Uranium for their NPPs.

 

But not all countries can afford it (the fuel is dirt cheap, but the policies, politics and logistics are not).

 

 

 

[Dracarris]

29 minutes ago, mr moose said:

But not all countries can afford it (the fuel is dirt cheap, but the policies, politics and logistics are not).

Mining Uranium that is capable of fueling NPPs is dirt cheap? The processes involved give a different impression, I think.

[wanderingfool2]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:27 AM, mr moose said:

Because solar panels only last 25 years and are only yielding $3 of materials for every $30 spent recycling them.  That makes their cost per kw/h look a lot worse and their green attributes not very green at all.

The whole "25 years" for a solar panel is not true though.  Most good quality solar panels right now come with a 25 year warranty, where it's producing 80% of power after 25 years.  At the 10 year mark it's 10%.  So even at the 50 year mark, if the degradation remains the same you would still be getting 60% of the original performance.

 

Even some of the newer good quality brands are offering 25-30 year warranty (with 92% efficiency from it's initial install).  So those types of panel could realistically last 50+ years (and likely be 70 - 80% efficient there). https://www.meyerburger.com/en/installers

 

Also, $30 per panel to recycle is pretty cheap all things consider (they include transport fees as cost of panels).  That can easily be added on as a tax on panels installed (we have similar things here with electronics).  There is also going to be an economy of scales thing that happens as well.  So yes, solar can be quite a feasible option.  As I've said, it needs to be a mix of everything realistically.

 

On 12/14/2022 at 1:27 AM, mr moose said:

The problem with articles like that is they only pay lip service to breeder reactors and seawater uranium which are both possible but not feasible  financially (repeating narrative with nuclear).  but if they did bother to pull their fingers out of their ass and be more aggressive with saving the environment there is enough uranium to last 30,000 years. 

I'm not sure I can interpret what you are saying.  As you are saying breeder reactors and seawater is possible but not feasible financially...or are you saying they are only doing lip service by saying it's not financially feasible and you feel that it is?  As at least with seawater reactors https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1154652 seems to imply a $1,230/kg cost for seawater extraction.

 

The general issue being that given a choice, a lot of the time the cheaper option will be taken.  If a breeder reactor costs twice the amount for the same output the cheaper option will usually be taken.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The whole "25 years" for a solar panel is not true though.  Most good quality solar panels right now come with a 25 year warranty, where it's producing 80% of power after 25 years.  At the 10 year mark it's 10%.  So even at the 50 year mark, if the degradation remains the same you would still be getting 60% of the original performance.

 

Even some of the newer good quality brands are offering 25-30 year warranty (with 92% efficiency from it's initial install).  So those types of panel could realistically last 50+ years (and likely be 70 - 80% efficient there). https://www.meyerburger.com/en/installers

Many solar panels are replaced well before the 25 year mark due to fading output.  I have a shed full of panels (8 really) that were literally thrown out because they couldn't power a 12V fluro for more than a few hours after a day in the Australian sun.

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Also, $30 per panel to recycle is pretty cheap all things consider (they include transport fees as cost of panels).  That can easily be added on as a tax on panels installed (we have similar things here with electronics).  There is also going to be an economy of scales thing that happens as well.  So yes, solar can be quite a feasible option.  As I've said, it needs to be a mix of everything realistically.

That's still incredibly unfeasible,  no one is going to take $30 from a consumer today and guarantee that they will be able to recycle the panel properly in 25 years using that $30.  The only way that could happen would be with an investment fund setup by the government to cover the costs and essential bank roll it for the first 50 years until it had enough momentum to pay for itself.       Or you know, we could just build Nuclear and Skip all that.

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm not sure I can interpret what you are saying.  As you are saying breeder reactors and seawater is possible but not feasible financially...or are you saying they are only doing lip service by saying it's not financially feasible and you feel that it is?  As at least with seawater reactors https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1154652 seems to imply a $1,230/kg cost for seawater extraction.

I am saying it is possible but not financial feasible.  The actual figure could be anywhere from $300 a $1230 depending on the method and number of times they can reuse the absorbent.    The article tends to land on $600-700 per Kg as the expected cost.

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The general issue being that given a choice, a lot of the time the cheaper option will be taken.  If a breeder reactor costs twice the amount for the same output the cheaper option will usually be taken.

The issue with finances tends to be that investors will get a return regardless which tech they invest in.  The difference is they will get a large return within in years with gas,  a much bigger return in a decade with current nuclear and a whopping return in a bout 2 decades or more for seawater and breeder reactors. Guess which option majority of investors back?  

 

The reality is if they put as much effort into nuclear as they are wind and solar we would have reduced the CO2 output on this planet a hell of a lot faster and for a significantly more sustainable time without dozing millions of tons of panels and turbine blades into the earth (not to mention the resources required to make them even half useful).  That time is really important to develop other power generation technologies.  

[mr moose]

23 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Mining Uranium that is capable of fueling NPPs is dirt cheap? The processes involved give a different impression, I think.

Methinks you have a lot to learn about nuclear power.   There is a reason it took wind farms and solar panels such a long time to catch it for price/Kwh.   In fact depending on the metric you use nuclear power is still one of the cheapest power generation methods. 

 

 

Even if you look at estimated variance of this theme you will quickly see that the operation and maintenance cost of solar is more than the entire cost of running nuclear:

 

 

And the two cheaper ones (hydro and onshore wind) are the least effective in most places because they either require building a huge dam and fucking a forest or a shit load of space that does very little half the year.   And that's before you even consider hydro can be pumped but requires using shit loads of power to do it, which makes it more akin to a battery than a generation facility.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 

And the two cheaper ones (hydro and onshore wind) are the least effective in most places because they either require building a huge dam and fucking a forest or a shit load of space that does very little half the year.   And that's before you even consider hydro can be pumped but requires using shit loads of power to do it, which makes it more akin to a battery than a generation facility.

Pumped storage is largely used in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations

 

If you look at the two American ones at the top of the lists, you'll also notice that the largest one is not what it is. It's used to maximize the usage of other thermal power sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station

Where as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant is "run in reverse" during off-peak.

In both cases it removes the need to build additional "peak" load thermal plants.

 

That said, hydroelectric can't be built everywhere, and neither can wind. Solar is largely limited to places below 50 degrees north, on flat planes away from forests and mountains, where as wind is only efficient near the top of mountains, which limits their viability.

 

In BC, those wind farms are rather tiny

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/10/23/news/wind-turbine-database-canada

The Moose Lake Wind Project northwest of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Photo via Aeolis Wind Power Corporation, 15,000 kW of installed capacity.

 

The funny thing is, I didn't think BC even had wind generators until I drove through the Coquihalla highway (which is basically through 300km of nothing but forest and clearcuts) I think it was late 2019, which is actually the Pennask project (5 wind turbines with a total capacity of 15 megawatts (MW).) 

 

At any rate, the wind sources are not huge installations, We'd need 561 of them to equal Mica dam (2,805MW) which is the second largest hydro dam in BC. So if you consider that each wind tower needs about 500sq (estimate) meters of land, vs the 430,000sq meters of the hydro resevoir, the wind comes in at 860 fitting in the space, which makes the Wind power "technically" more land efficient. Generation efficient, hell no.

 

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Methinks you have a lot to learn about nuclear power.   There is a reason it took wind farms and solar panels such a long time to catch it for price/Kwh.   In fact depending on the metric you use nuclear power is still one of the cheapest power generation methods. 

Not sure where you took this data from and how old they are. But basically, every recent cost analysis that I've seen during the recent debates had the clear outcome that nuclear is by now the most expensive way of generating power - even when not considering cost for dismantling old NPPs and long-term fuel storage. IMHO it's freakin insane that dismantling an old NPP takes more than a decade and costs absolutely insane amounts of money.

 

Here's a report from the German parliament (Bundestag) that bundles many such sources: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/887090/1867659c1d4edcc0e32cb093ab073767/WD-5-005-22-pdf-data.pdf

 

The matter is quite complex since there are many ways to calculate "cost" and the span of results from different studies is quite large. Here are some of the results:

 

 

Cost per kWh, from top to bottom: Nuclear, Lignite, Coal, Gas, Wind offshore, Solar, Wind onshore - brighter bars production cost, darker bars follow-up costs

 

To reiterate, I am very pro-fission, however claiming that is't a cheap way of generating electricity is just not vindicable at this point since cost of renewables have come down dramatically over the past decade or so.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Not sure where you took this data from and how old they are. But basically, every recent cost analysis that I've seen during the recent debates had the clear outcome that nuclear is by now the most expensive way of generating power - even when not considering cost for dismantling old NPPs and long-term fuel storage. IMHO it's freakin insane that dismantling an old NPP takes more than a decade and costs absolutely insane amounts of money.

 

Here's a report from the German parliament (Bundestag) that bundles many such sources: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/887090/1867659c1d4edcc0e32cb093ab073767/WD-5-005-22-pdf-data.pdf

 

The matter is quite complex since there are many ways to calculate "cost" and the span of results from different studies is quite large. Here are some of the results:

 

 

Cost per kWh, from top to bottom: Nuclear, Lignite, Coal, Gas, Wind offshore, Solar, Wind onshore - brighter bars production cost, darker bars follow-up costs

 

To reiterate, I am very pro-fission, however claiming that is't a cheap way of generating electricity is just not vindicable at this point since cost of renewables have come down dramatically over the past decade or so.

The German government are really making great choices with nuclear and going green . You should look for better sources.

 

 

This might help:

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020

 

International energy agency, projected costs of electricity generation based on as much data as they could muster from as many countries as they could, not just one country with the worst hatred for nuclear and bad case of embarrassment trying to cover it up.  I'll cut to the chase:

 

Quote

 

Electricity from new nuclear power plants has lower expected costs in the 2020 edition than   in 2015. Again, regional differences are considerable. However, on average, overnight construction costs reflect cost reductions due to learning from first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects in several OECD countries. LCOE values for nuclear power plants are provided for nth-of-a- kind (NOAK) plants to be completed by 2025 or thereafter.

Nuclear thus remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025. Only large hydro reservoirs can provide a similar contribution at comparable costs but remain highly dependent on the natural endowments of individual countries.

 

 

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

International energy agency, projected costs of electricity generation based on as much data as they could muster from as many countries as they could, not just one country with the worst hatred for nuclear and bad case of embarrassment trying to cover it up.  I'll cut to the chase:

Not really sure you read any part of those sources properly. They used external sources that were created independently from German government. Large parts of the current gov are also pro-nuclear, just to be clear.

 

And it's a fact that the cost for renewables has come down dramatically already and will continue to do so, especially wind and solar.

 

Constructing new NPPs (since your source talks about cost of newly built plants) has also been turned out to be highly difficult/problematic with lots of cost explosions and other problems during construction, e.g., in France or Sweden. In addition there are some icky details like basically no one ready to offer insurance policies for NPPs anymore despite how safe they are. I'm afraid humanity as a whole has greatly screwed up researching better and different reactor times at the appropriate points in time - now it's simply too late and the current principle is in essence still a glorified water boiler.

[CarlBar]

54 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

 

And it's a fact that the cost for renewables has come down dramatically already and will continue to do so, especially wind and solar.

 

And the reasons thats happened would apply to large scale building of fission plants. Economy of scale applies to power generation forms just like everything else.

 

Renewables started out expensive because very few were being built. It took time, experiance and large scale use before experiance in methods of construction, optimisation of component costs, and economies of scale brought the price down.

 

Everything your complaining about is going to apply to fusion, its going to apply to any prospective battery banks to let renewables take over baseload, and any number of other greenification technologies in various industries. Comparing a highly mature widely used technology to one thats in limited use and not commercially mature, (technical wise yes, but not commercial optimisation wise), is inherently an apple to oranges comparison and is allways going to make the former look good.

 

Or to quote a very famous line: "Lies, Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics."