The role of nuclear power in a low carbon future

Hydro is not a realistic option for large sections of the world.

I live in Texas. We don't have enough water flow volume to probably even meet 1% of demand. Many of the rivers we have are relative trickles between intermittent floods. Of the "mighty rivers" of Texas....
Red River near De Kalb (near the point it flows past Texas border) - Long term median flow 7600 cfs (USGS) (Shared with Oklahoma)
Rio Grande near Eagle Pass - 2403 CFS (Wikipedia) (Shared with Mexico)
Brazos near Rosharon - 8390 CFS (Wikipedia)
Trinity at Trinity Bay - 6368 CFS (Wikipedia)
Colorado at Bay City - 2609 CFS (Wikipedia)
Sabine at Sabine Lake - 8400 CFS (Wikipedia) (Shared with Louisiana)

Even in the Pacific NW, where I was born and raised, hydro does not meet demand. And flow is highly seasonal - there is next to zero rain in June, July and August. Average outflow at the mouth of the Columbia is 265,000 CFS and upstream of Portland it is dammed for hundreds of miles, yet that doesn't meet demand. Most large tributaries of the Columbia are also extensively dammed, I grew up in the Willamette Valley and there are literally dozens of dams on the Willamette and it's tributaries.

Brazil and other parts of tropical South America, sure, it can probably meet all demand.
Average inflow of the Parana River at the lake impounded by Itaipu Dam - roughly 300,000 CFS, and 90% of the time is over 8000 cubic meters/sec, aka, 282,517 CFS. Source: Brazilian Govt. https://www.itaipu.gov.br/en/energy/parana-river

And none of this even mentions the ecological impact - modern flood control and power generation have decimated fish runs, especially salmon in my native Pacific NW.
 
There will never be an energy source as abundant as fission. If in some far off time or millennia we succeed in sucking all the fossil fuels out of the Earth, there will always be nuclear to sustain us. For that reason beyond all others mentioned, we should be developing the technology.

Indeed, with the potential for seawater extraction or the use of breeders, the potential for fission is essentially limitless.

The big issue right now is the West's inability to execute large infrastructure projects on time and on budget. I touched-on this in another thread, but it is not limited to nuclear. While Hinkley Point C and Vogtle are examples of this problem, so are Muskrat Falls and Site C, both hydro projects. The Bay Bridge imported in segments from China is another.
 
So we're trading short term pollution for extremely long term pollution, but the greens never see beyond their nose.
It's a stop-gap measure until storage. In Texas and the SE US power companies are reconsidering the addition of NatGas generation because of advances in storage combined with wind/solar. It doesn't make financial sense to build additional NatGas. Duke Energy CEO opined that he didn't want his company to become the next Blockbuster.
 
It's a stop-gap measure until storage. In Texas and the SE US power companies are reconsidering the addition of NatGas generation because of advances in storage combined with wind/solar. It doesn't make financial sense to build additional NatGas. Duke Energy CEO opined that he didn't want his company to become the next Blockbuster.

The problem with storage is that you then need an over-build of capacity to charge it, and you need enough of it to roll through a "worst case scenario" if you intend on actually retiring gas peakers, not just idling them.

Most people don't appreciate the scale of storage required either.

I shared the math on firming Ontario's 5,000MW wind fleet in another thread, which would require, at minimum, two weeks of available storage to eliminate gas backup, as we've had wind bugger off for two weeks straight in the recent past.

Pumped hydro is currently the favourite for long-duration storage projects but clearly isn't viable in many locations. Places like South Australia with the Tesla "big battery" are using Lithium Ion, so how does that compare cost-wise?

Texas has ~29,000MW of wind capacity that's backed by more than full-nameplate with gas.

The 100MW/129MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve was constructed in 2017 for $90 million. It was later expanded and one would think that the price of the expansion would have been significantly less, but it was actually more expensive. Increasing the capacity to 150MW/194MWh cost $82 million. This gives us a total cost of $172 million; $0.89 million/MWh.

This was wind forecast vs actual back in February where there was a roughly 10GW deficit. Wind fell-off from close to nameplate well before it was anticipated to tank and you can see that it definitely tanked:

Screen Shot 2021-02-21 at 10.09.49 AM.jpg


So, let's say we wanted to firm this with Tesla grid-scale storage. We'll assume that wind will go back up to 15,000MW 48 hours later, so we are only looking to firm 10,000MW for 48 hours and we are only trying to firm wind to 50% nameplate.

10,000MWx48hrs = 480,000MWh
480,000MWhx$890,000=$427,200,000,000.00.

$427 BILLION dollars for 48hrs of battery storage to firm Texas wind at 50% nameplate.

On top of that, you'll need an over-build of wind capacity to charge that storage which guarantees periods of high curtailment, reducing the overall value of the wind fleet.

Now, let's compare that to Vogtle, which is 2,200MW @ $30 billion. We could build Vogtle 14 times with the cost of this storage. That's 30,800MW of nuclear with >90%CF that requires zero storage and would actually replace the output of the entire Texas wind fleet at full nameplate. On top of that, the storage has a lifespan of around 20 years while the nuke will last 80+.

What we are seeing presently is investments in short (4hr) storage solutions at small scale to buffer large swings in capacity and take a bite out of the morning/evening ramps. But these are at nowhere near grid-scale, even if they are labelled as such.
 
The problem with storage is that you then need an over-build of capacity to charge it, and you need enough of it to roll through a "worst case scenario" if you intend on actually retiring gas peakers, not just idling them.

Most people don't appreciate the scale of storage required either.

I shared the math on firming Ontario's 5,000MW wind fleet in another thread, which would require, at minimum, two weeks of available storage to eliminate gas backup, as we've had wind bugger off for two weeks straight in the recent past.

Pumped hydro is currently the favourite for long-duration storage projects but clearly isn't viable in many locations. Places like South Australia with the Tesla "big battery" are using Lithium Ion, so how does that compare cost-wise?

Texas has ~29,000MW of wind capacity that's backed by more than full-nameplate with gas.

The 100MW/129MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve was constructed in 2017 for $90 million. It was later expanded and one would think that the price of the expansion would have been significantly less, but it was actually more expensive. Increasing the capacity to 150MW/194MWh cost $82 million. This gives us a total cost of $172 million; $0.89 million/MWh.

This was wind forecast vs actual back in February where there was a roughly 10GW deficit. Wind fell-off from close to nameplate well before it was anticipated to tank and you can see that it definitely tanked:

View attachment 57570

So, let's say we wanted to firm this with Tesla grid-scale storage. We'll assume that wind will go back up to 15,000MW 48 hours later, so we are only looking to firm 10,000MW for 48 hours and we are only trying to firm wind to 50% nameplate.

10,000MWx48hrs = 480,000MWh
480,000MWhx$890,000=$427,200,000,000.00.

$427 BILLION dollars for 48hrs of battery storage to firm Texas wind at 50% nameplate.

On top of that, you'll need an over-build of wind capacity to charge that storage which guarantees periods of high curtailment, reducing the overall value of the wind fleet.

Now, let's compare that to Vogtle, which is 2,200MW @ $30 billion. We could build Vogtle 14 times with the cost of this storage. That's 30,800MW of nuclear with >90%CF that requires zero storage and would actually replace the output of the entire Texas wind fleet at full nameplate. On top of that, the storage has a lifespan of around 20 years while the nuke will last 80+.

What we are seeing presently is investments in short (4hr) storage solutions at small scale to buffer large swings in capacity and take a bite out of the morning/evening ramps. But these are at nowhere near grid-scale, even if they are labelled as such.
Remember I'm talking about investment in new NatGas plants not mothballing existing plants. As for hydro the majority of hydro has been built out in the US.

Renewables are getting closer to cost parity w/out subsidies. For example per a WSJ article, "Solar farms paired with batteries, meanwhile, are becoming competitive with gas plants that run all the time. Those types of projects can produce power for as little as $81 a megawatt-hour, according to Lazard, while the priciest of gas plants average $73 a megawatt-hour. megawatt-hour."

"Even in Texas, a state with a fiercely competitive power market and no emissions mandates, scarcely any gas plants are under construction, while solar farms and batteries are growing fast. Companies are considering nearly 88,900 megawatts of solar, 23,860 megawatts of wind and 30,300 megawatts of battery storage capacity in the state, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. By comparison, only 7,900 megawatts of new gas-fired capacity is under consideration."

"Enormous batteries are also edging out older gas plants elsewhere across the country. Florida Power & Light Co., a utility owned by NextEra Energy Inc., began construction earlier this year on what is expected to be the world’s largest solar-powered battery system, which will replace two natural-gas turbines at a neighboring plant. The Manatee Energy Storage Center will have 409 megawatts of capacity, enough to power Disney World for about seven hours."

"
Quantum Energy Partners, a Houston-based private-equity firm, in the last several years sold a portfolio of six gas plants in Texas and three other states upon seeing just how competitive renewable energy was becoming. It is now working to develop more than 8,000 megawatts of wind, solar and battery projects in 10 states.


“We pivoted,” said Sean O’Donnell, a partner in the firm who helps oversee the firm’s power investments. “Everything that we had on the conventional power side, we decided to sell, given our outlook of increasing competition and diminishing returns.”"
 
Remember I'm talking about investment in new NatGas plants not mothballing existing plants. As for hydro the majority of hydro has been built out in the US.

Renewables are getting closer to cost parity w/out subsidies. For example per a WSJ article, "Solar farms paired with batteries, meanwhile, are becoming competitive with gas plants that run all the time. Those types of projects can produce power for as little as $81 a megawatt-hour, according to Lazard, while the priciest of gas plants average $73 a megawatt-hour. megawatt-hour."

"Even in Texas, a state with a fiercely competitive power market and no emissions mandates, scarcely any gas plants are under construction, while solar farms and batteries are growing fast. Companies are considering nearly 88,900 megawatts of solar, 23,860 megawatts of wind and 30,300 megawatts of battery storage capacity in the state, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. By comparison, only 7,900 megawatts of new gas-fired capacity is under consideration."

"Enormous batteries are also edging out older gas plants elsewhere across the country. Florida Power & Light Co., a utility owned by NextEra Energy Inc., began construction earlier this year on what is expected to be the world’s largest solar-powered battery system, which will replace two natural-gas turbines at a neighboring plant. The Manatee Energy Storage Center will have 409 megawatts of capacity, enough to power Disney World for about seven hours."

"
Quantum Energy Partners, a Houston-based private-equity firm, in the last several years sold a portfolio of six gas plants in Texas and three other states upon seeing just how competitive renewable energy was becoming. It is now working to develop more than 8,000 megawatts of wind, solar and battery projects in 10 states.


“We pivoted,” said Sean O’Donnell, a partner in the firm who helps oversee the firm’s power investments. “Everything that we had on the conventional power side, we decided to sell, given our outlook of increasing competition and diminishing returns.”"

You'll note they use MW, not MWh for storage, which is a tell. Note that I used MWh in my calculations. It isn't the nameplate capacity of the storage that's the issue, it's the duration over which it is able to deliver that capacity.

For example, let's use the Manatee Energy Storage Centre you mentioned.

The actual capacity of the Manatee battery is 900MWh, so it is able to deliver nameplate (409MW) for just over 2 hours. That is not replacing a gas plant that's able to delivery nameplate around the clock, no matter how you spin it. Assuming a 9PM sunset and 6AM sunrise, giving us a one hour buffer to get sun on the panels, so 8PM to 7AM is an 11 hour window, so the storage would only be able to deliver 81MW per hour (~20% nameplate) in order to last through the night.

If those gas turbines are 400MW/each, that's 800MW nameplate, able to provide 100% nameplate, that's 8,800MWh that actually needs to be replaced.

Now, they gave us the price, which is $350 million, that works out to $390,000/MWh, definitely cheaper than the Tesla install at Hornsdale. Now, assuming we wanted to actually replace our theoretical 8,800MWh of gas it would be $3.43 billion. Realistically, you don't fully discharge batteries because it hurts their lifespan, so you'd have to over-build here too, but let's keep that math out of this for the sake of keeping this discussion simple.

Remember, discussing nameplate capacity of sources that don't deliver nameplate capacity can be grossly misleading. 7,900MW of new gas capacity could produce >62TWh/year while 23,860MW of wind at 45% CF could produce 94TWh, but at points it will produce zero. Texas already has sufficient gas capacity to cover its demand spikes, so new wind will just intermittently replace that capacity like it does at present.

What may be a game changer is the new legislation that requires wind and solar companies to provide their own backup capacity. Idling a gas plant while the wind blows impacts the economics.
 
But demand tails off in the overnight hours, so I don't see that a storage plant necessarily needs to produce full nameplate all night long. I'll be the first to admit I'm not an expert in this area.

Also. Remember, the $90M for the Hornsdale install is in Australian dollars. So based on current excahnge $70M USD, not sure what it was in 2017.
Texas already has sufficient gas capacity to cover its demand spikes, so new wind will just intermittently replace that capacity like it does at present.
Cough...so long as the wellheads don't freeze up! I hope to never see 3F/-16C at my house again.
 
Consumption is not by nature stable. In order for people not to get black out you need to either overbuild capacity, storage, drop out lower paying customers, or a combination of the above.

The amount of money spent on storage, IMO would probably be better spent on fast start capacity on fossil fuel like natural gas peaker. Paying peaker a standby rate to idle and pay them a certain amount to go up on short notice, and then have wind and solar pay for them as a guarantee capacity when others buy solar and wind as a guarantee demand (to meet regulation). This way we don't have to worry about what if we run out of storage if we have no rain for 5 months, no wind for 1 week, rain for 1 week, tornado rip out something, etc. This also means we won't get to have cheap solar or cheap wind, those will be competing with the fuel cost alone of the peaker plants because peaker plants will be fixed cost as a backup.

I still think having customers dropping off is a good idea. Let's say we have obsoleted computer equipments in data centers. Instead of tearing it down we can turn it off when the electricity is high price, then turn it on when the rate is low. It may not work well for web server or other consumer facing load but for things like transcoding, rendering, simulation, etc they can really shift the load on short notice between different region of the world, and they can easily move to the cheapest place on earth or wherever the sun shine and the wind blows.

We always have over capacity, storage or generation.
 
But demand tails off in the overnight hours, so I don't see that a storage plant necessarily needs to produce full nameplate all night long. I'll be the first to admit I'm not an expert in this area.

Also. Remember, the $90M for the Hornsdale install is in Australian dollars. So based on current excahnge $70M USD, not sure what it was in 2017.

Cough...so long as the wellheads don't freeze up! I hope to never see 3F/-16C at my house again.

People start charging EV's overnight and overnight capacity requirements will go up. But my larger point is that these x+storage projects are sold to the public as "replacing" firm capacity when in actuality, they aren't. There's a rather massive chasm between the marketing lingo that the public falls for and the actual function of these projects.

Just looking at the small Manatee project above, at $350 million for 900MWh, that's a maximum output of 328,500,000kWh/year. Assuming a 10 year lifespan, that's $0.106/kWh just to cover CAPEX. Of course cycling won't be that high (that's full cycling) so actual per kWh cost will be higher. And remember that storage doesn't actually generate electricity, it stores electricity you are already paying to generate and it isn't 100% efficient, so overall your per kWh cost of storage will be significantly higher.
 
we have here old joke about eco fanatics.
tv reporter asks: "why the nuclear must be turned off ? everybody needs electricity.."
fanatic: "well, i dont need electricity, i can watch tv at candle light !"

situation will be worse with forced arrival of electric cars.. without nuclear power, dark age awaits us. (at least in europe)
"germany/austria eco neighbors" this year almost had blackout event, but thanks to nearby states nuclear power, nothing happened.
ironically, germans are always fighing against nuclear. i hope next time somebody quietly unplugs abroad hv lines..
 
Lots of people are fine living near them here. It depends on how well educated (how low the level of anti-nuke indoctrination is also) the public is.
There are lots of deer and ducks inside the STP fence … wonder if that’s PR or an early warning system 😳
 
Lots of people are fine living near them here. It depends on how well educated (how low the level of anti-nuke indoctrination is also) the public is.
Same with prior murder house. Property value is always about the average perception and value for dollar. Not everything about pricing is rational.
 
Truth is everyone wants nuke in someone else's backyard.
why do you think so ?
having two plants on small 5,5 milion state, i think it´s just about right.
when everybody goes mental with electric cars, it should protect from blackouts.
wind? not a chance here.
according to eu rules coal should end soon.. poland are coal lovers, even for home heating. :LOL: the smell not so great.

ps-sr-2020-12-31-mapa.png
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/cnpp2018/countryprofiles/Slovakia/Slovakia.htm
 
Truth is everyone wants nuke in someone else's backyard.
I will gladly have a Nuc close to me. The taxes they provide and the income to workers makes for a great community with lots of money from tax base to spend. School systems and recreation areas are always great near these plants.
 
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