WIP Essay about Nuclear Energy

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PhilRisk
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Re: WIP Essay about Nuclear Energy

Post by PhilRisk »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Aug 21, 2018 11:59 am Cost of nuclear power does not reflect poor EROEI, but issues like safety measures and supervision along with insurance, etc.
It's EROEI that matters in environmental terms. If we have to make them state run or subsidize them to compete with more polluting power sources or those with lower energy returns, that's what we should do.

There's a table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_re ... _influence
Nuclear is over 100, and beats everything else. New reactor designs will likely be even better.
The use of the EROEI is a good addition to the data I considered here before. I want to state some caveats against a naive interpretation, that one should only use the source with highest EROEI.

First, the EROEI depends upon the quantity of usage. The EROEI of nuclear power will be lower, if it were providing all energy and would need some backup-system as well as not following demand. This could partly be backed up by a big grid. For example France which uses mainly nuclear power supplies big parts of Europe with cheap energy in the night. Same goes for renewables which needs backup if used in a bigger share. (In Germany renewable make up roughly a third with no backup but grid integration, sadly combined with phase out of nuclear, but still lowering emissions from the energy sector). Theoretically, storage is necassary, when renewables supply more than 80% (for the USA, depending on the grid) [https://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/ ... ed-states/]. The tragic issue might be, that nuclear power is not flexible like gas power station. Then renewable plus nuclear would be the perfect match.

The second addition is concerned with new reactors getting better. This projection of future technological development is valid for renewable energy in the same manner.

Third, the use of EROEI should not be used as saying we should only use the energy source with the highest EROI. Especially, if we take the political reality into account. It might not be wise to export nuclear energy to all countries around the world for exclusive power generation (nuclear weapons, increase in Uranium demand).

To my knowledge research (for the USA) suggest to employ both nuclear and renewables to reduce emissions. This is in line with the research, for example http://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-co ... y_syst.pdf
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: WIP Essay about Nuclear Energy

Post by brimstoneSalad »

PhilRisk wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:41 am First, the EROEI depends upon the quantity of usage. The EROEI of nuclear power will be lower, if it were providing all energy and would need some backup-system as well as not following demand.
Nuclear reactors can be shut down (put in hot standby) and started up on a predictable schedule, they just can't respond quickly to compensate for unexpected cloudy weather since it takes hours.

However, EROEI is SO much better, and nuclear power so green, just dumping the extra isn't really a huge problem.
If you meter by hour, though, you can get high demand operation to offload to low demand periods and even out the demand over the day by offering variable rates. The trick is to have a reliable power source, because a lot of high demand operations can't just be quickly shut down. E.g. you could ramp up manufacture of aluminum, glass, etc. during the night if other demand is low but not shut it down quickly if there's a cloud.
PhilRisk wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:41 amThe tragic issue might be, that nuclear power is not flexible like gas power station. Then renewable plus nuclear would be the perfect match.
The trick is the inherent unreliability of solar and wind, because while you can have a night shift at your aluminum plant, you can't really easily schedule to not come to work if it happens to be cloudy that day or lose a couple hours because the wind slowed down.

Variable hourly rates also need to be predictable to make them as commercially viable as possible.

It's also worth keeping in mind that vehicle energy charging applications operate at night from the grid while parked at home.
Nothing inherently stops those cars from charging at work while the sun is up, but the path of least resistance is probably home charging stations.

It's also very easy to schedule high demand operations around the home (like water heating of running the compressor for a freezer), but much more difficult to have these things blue tooth integrated or something so they can get power rates on the fly throughout the day.
PhilRisk wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:41 am The second addition is concerned with new reactors getting better. This projection of future technological development is valid for renewable energy in the same manner.
To an extent, but renewables projections are more speculative and not nearly as dramatic. Most of them are very near thermodynamic walls of maximal efficiency already.
PhilRisk wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:41 amThird, the use of EROEI should not be used as saying we should only use the energy source with the highest EROI. Especially, if we take the political reality into account. It might not be wise to export nuclear energy to all countries around the world for exclusive power generation (nuclear weapons, increase in Uranium demand).
It's safe to say that we should only use these sources in developed countries with no nuclear weapon risk, but unenriched uranium is pretty safe. If a country has the technology to enrich uranium, they could also produce enough from ore to build a weapon.
Worst case, we could export power from more stable neighbors, or dump that power into solar manufacture and then sell them the panels and they can deal with the unreliable energy. No reason for the rest of the world to not be running on nuclear almost exclusively.

A combination isn't as bad, it's just hard to see solar is a practical solution for base load power. Or anything that can't afford to shut down randomly or isn't *very* low demand or with a battery (like street lights). That limits real practical application quite a bit.
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