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Nuclear or Renewables?

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Would you adjust your lifestyle and embrace a shift to renewables or more nuclear power

Yes
44
71%
No
18
29%
 
Total votes : 62

Re: Nuclear or Renewables?

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 18 Nov 2017, 18:19:33

baha wrote:When I was a kid nuclear was the too cheap to meter power of the future. 60's...Over the years the first buildout has worked fairly well...fewer failures than oil pipelines :) But it still costs money. And the final accounting isn't done yet.

Show me a nuke plant that uses at least 75% of the power in the fuel and can shut down cold with a switch and I'll think about it.


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Re: Nuclear or Renewables?

Unread postby yellowcanoe » Sat 18 Nov 2017, 19:40:33

baha wrote:When I was a kid nuclear was the too cheap to meter power of the future.

Anti-nuclear people love to say that but no one directly involved with the development of nuclear power ever said that.

baha wrote:It's very clear how I feel about renewables. They're not just free, they pay the bills :)


I'll be visiting my sister and brother-inlaw tomorrow. They have one of the earliest feed in tariff solar contracts in Ontario that pays them 80.2 cents per Kwh. This isn't a net metering scheme -- they get to sell all the power they generate at 80.2 cents per Kwh while paying the much lower regulated rate for all the power they consume. A great deal for them but a fucking ripoff for the rest of us.

Wind and solar really don't work for us in Ontario. The hot summer days and extremely cold days in the winter when we need the most power tend to have little wind. Ontario doesn't have consistent winds. We get strong winds in the fall and spring but unfortunately that doesn't coincide with peak power demands -- our requirements for cooling or heating in those seasons are minimal. What happens is that we get lots of wind power when we don't need it and we actually pay (not sell) neighbouring states to take our excess power. Solar power is good in the summer when we need air conditioning but it is much less effective in the winter months. Where I live, on the winter solstice sunrise is at 7:39 and sunset is at 16:22. Availability of power in the winter months is much more critical -- if you don't have power for air conditioning when it is 30C out that is an inconvenience, if you don't have power to run your furnace when it is -25C that is life threatening.

At the moment, 60% of our power is nuclear generated. We are more dependent on nuclear power than any other province or state in North America. The only source of power cheaper than nuclear in Ontario is hydro electric. Wind, solar, biomass and natural gas generated electricity is far more expensive. However, the public are not appreciative of our nuclear power. The oldest power reactors are scheduled to be retired from service in a few years. There are no plans to replace them. We have completely phased out coal but as nuclear plants are retired we will start depending more and more on natural gas fired electricity.
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Re: Nuclear or Renewables?

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 18 Nov 2017, 20:58:59

yellowcanoe wrote:.... as nuclear plants are retired we will start depending more and more on natural gas fired electricity.


Yes. Thats what Germany did. But its very short-sighted. Greenhouse warming is going to cook the planet from all the CO2 being released by Germany, China, India, Indonesia,the US, and other countries.

After Germany phased out their nuclear they fired up more coal-fired electrical power plants. Now Germany mines and uses more low grade brown coal (lignite) then any country in the world. This is the worst possible kind of coal to burn. Its a disgrace, really.

NG isn't much better. The NG fired plants the US is switching to and that Ontario, Canada is going to build need NG well and pipelines that release significant amounts of methane---and methane is an even worse greenhouse gas then CO2.

Nuclear power releases ZERO CO2----its crazy to be shutting down nuclear power to switch to coal and NG, because this just adds to the amount of Greenhouse Gases going into the atmosphere.

Cheers!

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its crazy to be shutting down nuclear power to switch to coal and NG because this just adds to the amount of Greenhouse Gases going into the atmosphere
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Re: Nuclear or Renewables?

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 10:11:19

baha wrote:Thank you Tanada...I see that as an exciting development. I definitely support continued research in Nuclear power.

I am a scientist. It really upsets me when fear, uncertainty, and doubt are used by TPTB to prevent progress and deny science. It never works, someone is always smart enough to see thru the FUD and keep pushing anyway.

I would love to have a teeny-tiny nuke plant in my backyard. That is my criteria for the power of the future. It needs to be scaled to individuals and communities. The grid is a dinosaur that needs to go extinct. It's like group think...Once a technology becomes too widespread and distant. Everyone stops thinking about it.

The first step in this transition is to make people realize just how dependent they are on energy. And to show some ownership.


Years ago I had a corosponding friend from Canada back in the days when Compuserve effectively was the internet for people not in large companies or government/univrsity server nodes. Anyhow he was excited about a Canadian reactor project called Slowpoke. It was just what you are looking for, a small low power long life energy source that would provide heat and light for a very large sky scraper, a small town, or a freighter at sea.

In the early 1980s AECL also designed and built a scaled-up version (2 — 10 MW) called SLOWPOKE-3 for district heating at its Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba. The economics of a district-heating system based on SLOWPOKE-3 technology were initially estimated to be competitive with that of conventional fossil fuels for use in remote communities, however market interest in the SLOWPOKE heating system eventually dwindled due to the low price of natural gas. Currently, the high price of oil and natural gas has sparked renewed interest in the use of nuclear energy for district heating purposes.


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Re: Nuclear or Renewables?

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 30 Oct 2022, 15:49:22

I say, use all low CO2 emitting power supplies until we get the fossil fuels out of the mix, then we can evaluate which ones are best.
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Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
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Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Nuclear or Renewables?

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 28 Nov 2022, 10:44:27

France shall be punished for having the lowest CO2 grid in Europe because it lacks sufficient "renewable" energy while Germany is importing wood pellets from North America to burn in coal power stations as "renewable fuel".

France to pay up to €500m for falling short of renewable energy targets

France is the only one of the 27 EU member states to have missed its objective for 2020, when renewable energy represented 19.1% of its consumption, below the 23% target.

For failing to reach its European targets for renewable energy in 2020, which it had set itself a decade earlier, the French state will have to pay out several hundred million euros. "It will cost France €500 million this year for not having met its target for renewable energy," the Minister for Energy Transition told MPs on Monday, November 21, as reported by the French daily newspaper Libération. Agnès Pannier-Runacher was appearing before the commissions on economic affairs and sustainable development, as part of the review of the bill for accelerating the development of renewable energy.

France is the only one of the 27 EU member states to have missed its goal two years ago. Renewable energy represented just 19.1% of its gross final energy consumption, well below the 23% target. As this target is binding, France must now buy "statistical amounts" of renewable energy through a European mechanism from "good performers" who have exceeded their target.

"We are negotiating to buy statistical megawatts from Italy and Sweden," said Ms. Pannier-Runacher. On Tuesday, her team said that while the final amount could well be "of the order of several hundred million euros," this had not been decided, and discussions with other member states were still ongoing.
A 'very damaging delay'

Although the statement went unnoticed at the time, Ms. Pannier-Runacher had already mentioned a sum of €500 million at the end of September, during a conference of the Renewable Energies Syndicate (SER). "If we had reached our objectives in 2020, we would have an additional volume of renewable energy of 64 TWh, which corresponds to 20% of industrial consumption," General Delegate Alexandre Roesch said. "This delay is very damaging for the state's finances but also for the security of supply as winter approaches."

While the risk of tension on the electricity grid will be high in January, France is still not on track to meet the renewable energy deployment targets set in its energy roadmap, the Multi-Annual Energy Program (PPE). Regarding onshore wind, between 1.2 and 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity will have been installed by 2022, short of the target of 1.9 GW. "The targets have never been reached since 2020, and the cumulative shortfall over the last three years is about 2 GW," Michel Gioria, general delegate of France Energie éolienne (FEE), said. The current PPE calls for 24 GW of installed capacity in 2023, while France has about 20.3 GW today.

As for the other sectors, Mr. Roesch confirms that the country is still not on the right track. "There has been fairly significant acceleration in solar, with significant levels of connections in 2021, but these are not yet sufficient," he explained. "We are also making progress on geothermal energy, but not fast enough." While the country's first offshore wind farm was fully commissioned off Saint-Nazaire, in western France, on Wednesday, France is still far behind its European neighbors.

The acceleration bill aims to "halve" the time needed to roll out these "low-carbon" energies, in particular by simplifying administrative procedures. The debate in the Assemblée Nationale will begin on December 5 and is expected to generate vivid discussion on how to allocate the value of renewable installations, protection of biodiversity, and, above all, the planning of the rollout. Some fear that the final bill will only give a very limited boost.


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Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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