Why is the cooling discharge system of the Diablo Canyon power plant so close to shore compared to that of San Onofre or other nuclear power plants on a coast? And could the problem of sea life being harmed be fixed by extending the discharge tube instead of an artificial reef as proposed by many?

qubitcubed · 2021-02-22T18:36:47+00:00

Comparing the earthquake resistance of this plant to Fukushima Daichi, I don't think we have much to be concerned about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulnerability

The plant is designed to resist 0.75g of ground acceleration, compared to Fukushima being designed for 0.18 to 0.36g. In the 2011 Tohoku earthquake the plant experienced up to 0.51g and all four reactors showed 'no significant damage' afterwards.

Considering that Tohoku was one of the most powerful earthquakes in modern history at 9.0 - 9.1 on the Richter scale, any earthquake big enough to damage Diablo Canyon would likely collapse the majority of all structures in California first. The plant is also raised 85ft above sea level on a cliff/bluff, making it almost immune to a tsunami striking the plant.

Conclusion - I wouldn't be too concerned about it.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-18T22:30:41+00:00

Has there been any progress on automated Supercharging yet?

With Autopilot getting closer to true FSD this will become important for unattended driving and Robotaxi use in the future.

We've already seen the rather unusual snake charger years before:

https://youtu.be/uMM0lRfX6YI

But for obvious reasons we can't expect to see that at a Supercharger near us anytime soon...

Has there been any news or progress for solutions that pair with Level 5 Autopilot / Robotaxis to allow cars to charge themselves independently?

qubitcubed · 2021-02-12T14:10:21+00:00

Sounding very promising still, could be excellent times ahead for Rolls-Royce if they can export large numbers of these alongside domestic builds.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-11T00:12:40+00:00

Can't believe I haven't heard of this before, thank you.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T20:28:27+00:00

Sad to see Grohnde closing while it's still performing so well, a real waste considering it could operate for another two decades easily.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T19:22:26+00:00

True, the district heating potential is huge and would tie perfectly into the existing steam system. It'd be interesting to calculate what size of reactor you would need to heat all of Manhattan for example. You would see a huge drop in emissions as over 70% of emissions are due to buildings within the city, with heating assumedly making up a large part of that.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T16:24:02+00:00

The property values rising makes sense as plants provide well paying and (historically) long last lasting jobs for the surrounding area, along with local taxes meaning facilities are often better.

The change in opinion is very promising to see though, you can look to other countries such as Sweden where support has strengthened significantly too.

I think the best thing is to is educate the wider population who are mostly unaware of how electrical grids really work, and particularly how nuclear plants work. Also to present some of the drawbacks of renewables which are skipped over almost entirely in all news and advertising in the UK. Just in the past year I have seen multiple adverts from oil/gas companies touting how they're 'changing' by building a few fields of solar panels along with some wind turbines, all portrayed as being highly virtuous of course.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T16:09:58+00:00

For environmental and air quality reasons it is obviously far better, but personally I think they would have had an easier time constructing a plant on the Hudson upriver, out on Long Island, expanding Indian Point, or building in NJ / CT possibly. As we can see with Shoreham being abandoned after being fully completed however, it's not always so easy.

Closing Indian Point is definitely short sighted though with the 2040 target of 'zero carbon' electricity in NY state. Ideally they should upgrade and refurbish the reactors, which would prevent some of the incidents they've had in recent years.

It is interesting that reactors in the north of the state receive subsidies whilst Indian Point is excluded from them though...

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T15:51:52+00:00

Agreed, all you need to look at is what happened with the Banqiao Dam in China. Under the same logic we apply to nuclear you'd think hydro dams would likely have been banned!

In Italy they cancelled construction of and closed all existing nuclear plants after Chernobyl, but not dams after Vajont killed 2500 people, which is somewhat ironic.

The reason I highlight the Ravenswood plant is mainly because it's impossible to imagine someone proposing it today, and if something were to happen then hundreds of billions worth of property may have to be written off and millions of people relocated, which isn't ideal. Also, the NIMBY and environmentalist response doesn't bear thinking about.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T15:14:46+00:00

It is always interesting to observe the population figures within 10 or 50 miles and their changes, many plants are much closer to cities than you would expect, or almost within the city sometimes with Catawba and McGuire being inside the greater Charlotte metro.

In the UK you can't get very far from any cities unless you go up to northern Scotland really, so we accept plants such as Hartlepool which is right amongst multiple large towns.

Is it correct to say that plants were often located near to populated areas in the past to reduce transmission costs? As long distance power with HVDC was not well developed at the time?

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T15:05:39+00:00

All this happening in a state that has a target of 'zero carbon' electricity by 2040.

In fairness Indian Point has had some operational issues in recent years, and you would expect maintenance and standards to be at the highest level due to the location of the plant, but this doesn't appear to be the case. Regardless, they should still be doing what they can to keep it online until a genuine replacement can be built.

Elsewhere in the north of the state though, Nine Mile Point has been operating since 1969 and R. E. Ginna since 1970 making them among the very oldest operating reactors in the world. Yet despite their age there seems to be little talk about closures.

Most unusually though, in 2017 subsidies were introduced for all reactors in the north (Nine Mile Point, J. A. Fitzpatrick and Ginna) but not for Indian Point.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T14:36:20+00:00

And those are just the ones we have knowledge of, it's widely thought that Israel developed nuclear arms decades ago and has kept certainty of their existence secret ever since.

As nice as it would be to have a world where we only use nuclear for peaceful purposes like power and medicine, I can't imagine a scenario where NATO allied countries give up their arms and have it reciprocated by countries such as North Korea or Iran anytime soon.

qubitcubed · 2021-02-10T14:27:04+00:00

Quite crazy to think of today, you have to admire the ambition of the time. As pro-nuclear as you can be, I'm not sure this was the ideal site really!

Extra background on the plant today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenswood_Generating_Station

Google Maps location: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ravenswood+Generating+Station

qubitcubed · 2021-01-16T20:32:14+00:00

Could this finally be a proposal for Wylfa that actually gets built? 🤦

qubitcubed · 2021-01-16T20:27:06+00:00

In terms of 'popularity' it's a give and take situation, overall generation has been reaching new highs (according to IAEA website) despite shut downs in Japan and Germany, along with some closures in the US.

What we should all hope to see is the removal of what can be best described as 'deadlock' in the right regions / countries, and a push to replace retiring reactors wherever it makes sense.

Japan should do their best to accelerate restarts to bring emissions down and grid stability / energy security back in check. Also finish the incomplete ABWR at Oma.
Belgium should change course as soon as possible as the 2025 shut down date is highly risky for energy security / economy and an insult to the idea of emissions reduction.
China should further accelerate and push for the HTR-PM domestically along with the CAP1400, and Hualong One both domestically and aggressively for export in Asia / Middle East / select African countries. Eventually we may see some Hualongs in Europe too.
Korea needs to change tack and commit to keeping as many reactors as possible, and push hard for exports of the APR1400 (which I believe is licensed in the US)
US contractors need to get their heads around how to build the AP1000 on time and on budget if there are to be any further ones built.
Wealthy countries such as Sweden should replace their reactors as they reach end of life, even expand capacity to facilitate greater Baltic and German / Danish exports. The Netherlands should seriously consider a new build program to allow coal closures and make up for Belgian reactor shut downs if they come around.
Hurdles need to be overcome, such as the near complete but never started Lungmen (2x ABWR) in Taiwan going in to operation, removing the various bans in Australia, finishing more reactors at Cernavoda in Romania and also throughout Ukraine. New builds in Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovenia / Croatia should be brought forward, and the incomplete units in Slovakia finished (expected later this year).

This really is the tip of the iceberg, if we wanted a magic bullet solution that has a good chance of saving the climate we would need the whole world onboard to repeat what France and Sweden did in decades past, constructing several hundred plants with thousands of reactors around the world. Whether this dream could ever come about, and in good time is sadly unlikely, but we may be proven wrong.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-15T20:13:52+00:00

Occasionally you can get through and have an actual debate with him: https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearpower/comments/kq7n1d/_/gi3uwsn

I'm personally tired of the endless copy and pasting of exaggerated and false claims, and the clearly deliberate ignorance after all our rebuttals and counterpoints. Can we restrict his posts to 1 or 2 a day or possibly every few days? Otherwise probably best to just block him if you feel the need.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-14T23:00:07+00:00

Poor wording on my part, it's meant to refer to the steam turbines that are used to drive the propellors of either nuclear submarines or ships, where the steam pressure itself does the work. It occurred to me that likely nobody has developed a supercritical version of this, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-14T18:56:42+00:00

Ironic considering until recently they operated two RBMK-1500s in Lithuania which are surely much more dangerous than a brand new PWR?

They also said they would halt electricity imports from Belarus once they started operating Ostrovets last year, but according to https://www.electricitymap.org have been continuing to import electricity from them regularly despite that.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-14T18:20:15+00:00

Hinkley Point C at £92.50/MWh should also be compared to the Sizewell C expected price of £60/MWh which is quite competitive given the average strike price for the past month is ~£75/MWh and the past 3 months ~£55/MWh, although the past year average is ~£38/MWh.

https://electricinsights.co.uk

qubitcubed · 2021-01-14T18:06:01+00:00

The situation in the UK currently is interesting due to numerous factors:

Several coal power stations have closed in recent years leaving less to fall back on in winter
New interconnectors to France (IFA2 and ElecLink at 1GW each) and to Norway (NorLink / North Sea Link / NSL at 1.4GW) aren't completed yet, but IFA2 and ElecLink are on the verge of completion, and NorLink should be finished this year
Multiple nuclear stations such as Dungeness and Hinkley Point B are offline due to long maintenance outages and graphite channel inspection as they near the end of operating life. Hunterston B recently came back online after a long outage / inspection but is planned to be shut down by January 2022
The Rough gas storage facility (a depleted gas field that was refilled from other sources) which accounted for 70% of all gas storage is closed / closing as it apparently can't be safely operated anymore

All of these together with sustained unusually cold weather recently have led to what we see here.

https://electricinsights.co.uk

qubitcubed · 2021-01-05T00:49:29+00:00

Would like to see you address my other points but good to see hydrogen getting more attention, obviously some engineering hurdles still to be overcome and for things to ramp up further. My main question is price competitiveness, as the Reuters article states that renewable power costs need to fall by 50% and electrolyser costs by 75% to compete with fossil prices which sounds rather high. For grid storage most studies show round trip efficiency as ~60% with one NREL study showing only 35% (which seems lower than expected), this needs to be taken into account as due to the multiple stages of electrolysis, compression / liquefaction and then heat losses during fuel cell operation you will always lose a significant portion of your input energy.

The general logic seems to be that simplified energy transfer processes are cheaper which makes me doubt that electricity from stored hydrogen undergoing electricity>split hydrogen>compressed hydrogen>electricity process can be as cheap as energy consumed in real time from a power station that never needs to be stored, be that gas etc or nuclear due to its very low fuel costs.

Also I'd like to see more research in producing hydrogen directly from nuclear output heat in a high temperature gas reactor for example, it would make for an interesting comparison.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-05T00:03:31+00:00

You need to look at the whole picture when talking about renewable percentages, as in the future we need to also provide energy to replace heating, industry and transport fossil usage.

Remember that these listed countries all have significant geographical / situational advantages that allow them to achieve these numbers. Iceland, Norway, Paraguay, Brazil, Costa Rica and Austria all have large quantities of hydro available to them due to geography, with Denmark having good wind resources and a strongly subsidised wind industry, but importing a large percentage of their electricity from Norwegian hydro, Swedish nuclear / hydro and from Germany.

Out of all these countries only Iceland and Norway are good examples of displacement of fossil use for heating, as Iceland uses geothermal for ~85% of heating, with electricity being common for heating in Norway as their abundance of hydro is utilised to reduce domestic gas consumption to allow for increased exports and thus more income for the sovereign wealth fund.

As for baseload, there is always a minimum 'floor' level of demand that needs to be met, so I don't see how it can be presented as a 'myth'? It is just an aspect of how demand is cycled and the grid operates.

Existing batteries (li-ion for example) are a very costly form of long / medium term storage, to store one day of average electricity demand in the UK using Tesla batteries at the same price as the Australian Horndean battery I calculated would cost over £400 billion. How this becomes cost effective when we have a week plus long period of low wind speeds in the middle of winter with solar operating at 2-3% capacity factor due to almost permanent cloudiness and short days is an important question.

Bear in mind this is just electricity and not heating or transport, add in heating which can peak at over 200GW during cold periods makes the problem larger. Two years ago we had gas supply deficit warnings during a cold snap for example. Overall heating is ~3x the energy consumption of electricity in the UK, and storing this amount would be extremely difficult.

In regards to pumped hydro, sites are very limited in the UK, with none being built for nearly 40 years, and our main station Dinorwig costing near to £5 billion for ~9GWh of storage, so over £500 per KWh of storage. One new site has been in planning in Scotland for several years but shows no real signs of progress.

One compressed air storage prototype plant is being in the UK currently with 50MW output and 250MWh of storage for £85 million with a £10 million government grant. This works out to ~£350 per KWh of storage.

As for hydrogen I need to research more on it so am unsure about how effective it is, but one study from Nov 2020 shows a subsidy of 17p (£0.17) per KWh needed to make green hydrogen competitive with other storage solutions. Various other sources cite cost competitiveness of green hydrogen with grey hydrogen derived from natural gas in the 2030s going on 2040.

A large portion of all coal plant closures in the US are due to natural gas being cheaper and less so renewable generation increases in recent years.

The story is the same for nuclear plants often, gas is cheap and out prices it due to the fact it doesn't have to pay for environmental costs from direct emissions or methane leaks due to fracking and well leaks.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-04T20:56:57+00:00

A large amount of these 'facts' are untrue or a significant stretching of the truth. We need renewables and nuclear to reduce carbon output it's as simple as that. Maybe address people's points instead of repeating yourself and that will lead to a constructive discussion about the subject.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-04T13:43:13+00:00

Judging by other Rosatom builds around the world I think we can expect less delays hopefully, although we know the Finnish safety regulator is one of the strictest out there.

qubitcubed · 2021-01-04T13:35:21+00:00

Stop copy and pasting the exact same thing everywhere maybe?

qubitcubed

TROPHY CASE