Listen up, EU, Germany: on nuclear energy

Skybird · 05-18-22, 01:19 PM

I stick to it: renewables alone will not cut it, for decades to come.

Interesting interview in the NZZ with Annalisa Manera, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the ETH Zurich.

Ms. Manera, you conduct research on nuclear energy at ETH. Do we still need it at all for the energy transition?

Nuclear energy is needed for two reasons: The most important goal is to save as much CO2 as possible. That's why we have to greatly reduce the use of fossil energy in transportation and for heating. Our demand for electricity is therefore increasing rapidly. To meet this demand, we need to expand renewable energies, but we also need nuclear energy, which is also CO2-free. At the same time, we also need reliable, constantly available electricity for industry. Here, nuclear power has a decisive advantage over wind and solar energy, whose supply fluctuates greatly.

We could also create such a reliable power system with renewable energy and storage.

In Europe today, battery storage systems are available that can hold just as much electricity as is produced in one and a half minutes. Now there are plans to have ten times as much battery storage in 2030 - which means you could store fifteen minutes' worth of electricity production. How do you shift electricity from summer to winter?

Still, nuclear power costs $131 to $204 per megawatt hour, according to one study, while solar power costs only $28 to $41.

The new renewables don't cover baseload, so we always need a back-up, which could be gas, coal or nuclear plants. So that's in addition to the cost of renewables. That's why comparing the price of solar power with electricity from nuclear power is misleading. You're comparing apples and oranges. And if you look at the plans for the Gondosolar alpine solar power plant in Valais, this energy is not cheap either.

What do you mean?

The price of this plant is 42 million francs. If you wanted to replace Leibstadt with Gondosolar, you would need about 400 of them. The cost would therefore be around 17 billion francs. At Hinkley Point, Great Britain is currently building a nuclear power plant for about 25 billion francs, which has two and a half times the capacity of Leibstadt. So you get two and a half times the output for one and a half times the cost of Gondosolar - and the electricity flows continuously.

In France, nuclear power plants are currently delivering a quarter less electricity than the long-term average because corroded pipes in some emergency systems have to be replaced. So is nuclear power not as reliable as you say?

These are old nuclear power plants. But France has woken up and wants to build up to fourteen new ones. This is also a reason why you shouldn't play one energy source off against another. I am in favor of the sensible use of renewable energies, think of solar panels on house roofs and on facades.

Why does the construction of nuclear power projects in Europe take many years longer than originally planned?

These delays are not a global phenomenon. South Korea is building nuclear power plants without delay, as is China. It is true that a third unit was recently completed in Olkiluoto in Finland. But our problem is that no new power plant has been commissioned in Western Europe for over twenty years.

Why is this a problem?

Because the safety requirements for nuclear power plants are very high, not just any company can supply pumps or valves. They have to go through certification. This know-how disappears if you don't build new power plants. For me as a nuclear engineer, it is very sad to see what has happened in Germany: The country built some of the best reactors and, together with Siemens, was significantly involved in the development of the third generation. All this knowledge will be lost with the nuclear phase-out.

If it all takes so long, aren't critics like Greenpeace right to say that the discussion about nuclear energy distracts from rapid climate protection measures?

But that can just as easily be said about renewables: For them to work, you need battery storage at a reasonable cost, for example, and we don't have that.

At least there are pilot projects in which hydrogen is produced with the help of solar power, which is then used to generate electricity when it is needed.

The hydrogen infrastructure still has to be developed first. For example, you have to design special turbines to use it. Hydrogen is also an extremely small molecule that escapes quickly. So special containers are needed.

Nevertheless, the basic problem remains that investors in Europe are not willing to bet on nuclear power. After all, it is private companies that should take risks, not the state.

I see it somewhat differently. There are some very important infrastructure goods, such as roads, public transport or energy supply, where the state has a responsibility. At the moment, it seems to me that every country in Europe is saying: If there is a shortage, we will buy electricity from abroad. But if every country says this, where is this foreign country?

When people are skeptical about nuclear power, it often has to do with the unresolved disposal of radioactive waste. How can this technology be trusted?

To put the problem in context: The amount of toxic chemical waste is orders of magnitude higher. According to Nagra, which is pushing for safe final disposal in Switzerland, the fuel waste over the entire operating life of the four nuclear power plants amounts to 1,500 cubic meters, which is equivalent in volume to just two single-family homes. Technologically, waste disposal has been solved; Finland is just opening the first final repository. It is politics that causes delays.

While we are on the subject of safety: Can a reactor disaster like Fukushima happen again?

Third-generation reactors, so-called EPRs, are being built at Hinkley Point and Flamanville. They are much safer than second-generation reactors, which include the Swiss nuclear power plants. The EPR is designed so that what happens in the power plant stays in the power plant and you don't have to evacuate in the event of an accident.

Which is what happened in the case of Fukushima.

Yes, Fukushima had an old reactor with a comparatively small containment vessel. In the EPR, on the other hand, the diesel engines that continue to cool the nuclear fuel rods in the event of an accident are located in a bunker. In Fukushima, they had failed due to the water ingress. In addition, the EPR prevents hydrogen from accumulating. This prevents an explosion.

What does that mean for the probability of a meltdown?

All these measures reduce the probability from 1:10,000 for Fukushima-type nuclear power plants to 1:1,000,000, or one hundredth. And there is something else: In EPR reactors, even in the event of a meltdown, there is no need for radioactivity to escape, because the melt is collected in the reactor vessel.

The big supporters of nuclear energy are France, Great Britain, USA, China and Russia. These have nuclear weapons at the same time. If more countries were to go nuclear, surely there would be an increased risk of more nuclear powers?

This is probably the biggest misconception when it comes to nuclear energy. Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy are two completely different worlds. Israel does in fact have nuclear weapons, but it has no nuclear power plants. The uranium fuel rods used in a nuclear power plant cannot be used for a nuclear bomb.

Why?

Nuclear weapons require uranium with a purity level of over 90 percent, or almost pure plutonium. Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, use uranium with a purity of only 4 percent. To enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, centrifuges are needed. But countries like Switzerland, which use nuclear power, do not need centrifuges. And vice versa: To build centrifuges, you don't need nuclear power plants.

Forty percent of the uranium for Europe comes from Kazakhstan and Russia. Moreover, China and Russia are involved in European nuclear projects. Won't we get into hot water if we rely more on nuclear energy?

In Finland and Eastern Europe, there are reactors built by Russia. And China is also building reactors. But there are also the USA, South Korea, Japan and France. So we have alternatives.

And when it comes to sourcing uranium?

The biggest producers are Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. Then come Russia, Namibia, Niger and various others. There is also a big difference compared to coal and gas.

And what is that?

Gas and coal-fired power plants need a steady supply because they consume such large quantities. Nuclear fuel, on the other hand, is not used up in minutes or hours, but remains in the reactor for four to five years. This means that you don't have to buy more nuclear fuel tomorrow. So there is plenty of time to conclude new contracts.

The war in Ukraine has heightened the question of safety. What is the greatest danger for the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant?

There are four lines there that connect the power plant to the grid. If they all break down, the reactor shuts down automatically. But then you need diesel for the generators that provide cooling. And this diesel apparently only lasts for six days in Ukraine. If there is no supply, a meltdown could occur in the event of a crisis. However, the reactor has a larger containment shell than the one at Fukushima. So the danger would build up over weeks. Interventions could still be made during that time. Fortunately, the modern reactors offer much greater safety than Fukushima.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

mapuc · 05-18-22, 01:41 PM

Had to search to find an English version of what had been said in the news at 7

Quote:

The Summit ties in with the REPowerEU plan, which the European Commission presented today as a roadmap to further decreasing dependence on Russian fossil fuels and to accelerate the transition to clean, reliable energy production. A key aim of the Summit is to identify ways to improve the conditions for business to help drive forward the transition to renewable energy sources, like offshore wind and green hydrogen.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/presi...2022-may-18_da

So you see EU are stubborn they see only windmills

Markus

Kapitan · 05-20-22, 06:49 PM

Interesting documentary on this subject

Skybird · 05-20-22, 07:53 PM

Germany wastes much, much more money on - claimed - climate protection policies than France. Nevertheless, in efficiency of climate protection and especially CO2 avoidance - France leaves Germany in the dust. Because it has many nuclear power plants, and will build even more.

The Germans shoot themselves, and thats all that they acchieve. And they use not lead or steel but golden bullets.

Next drama to explode into our faces over here: Habeck's obsession with heat pumps as house heating. That is where these political madnesses will start to not just ruin state finances, and the economic competitiveness, but really ruin private home and house owners. The other flat owners in my house where I live did not want to believe me when I started to attack these mad demands already years ago, but now we will be soon confronted with them because for mandatory legal rules we must replace our heating until 2025 at the latest. Its the add-on costs that mutliply the costs of what they expected by severla factors, it will cost us 8-10 times more than they expected. I warned them since years, and they just laughed. We now got the first analysis of financial calculations, its a shocker for them, not for me. How comes that all of a sudden they do not laugh at me anymore like in the past years...? Its not just the heat pump, its also the add-.on costs for the needed house preparation, the isolation needed, and I do not even mention the exloding costs for electricity...

And for what all this waste of money, you damn stupid Germany - FOR WHAT...?

The net effects for the climate from the German acts are so microscopical and irrelevant that they simply play absolutely no role at all in the greater scheme of global climate things. But we put our complete economy and the special stability of our social order at risk here. And we will NOT get away with it, the damage we're about to inflict onto ourselves simply is too big - by factors. And not just since the crisis of corona, globalization, and Ukraine war, but already before.

Stupid, stupid Germany. So totally stupid.

05-18-22, 01:19 PM	#1
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,486 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	Listen up, EU, Germany: on nuclear energy I stick to it: renewables alone will not cut it, for decades to come. Interesting interview in the NZZ with Annalisa Manera, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the ETH Zurich. Ms. Manera, you conduct research on nuclear energy at ETH. Do we still need it at all for the energy transition? Nuclear energy is needed for two reasons: The most important goal is to save as much CO2 as possible. That's why we have to greatly reduce the use of fossil energy in transportation and for heating. Our demand for electricity is therefore increasing rapidly. To meet this demand, we need to expand renewable energies, but we also need nuclear energy, which is also CO2-free. At the same time, we also need reliable, constantly available electricity for industry. Here, nuclear power has a decisive advantage over wind and solar energy, whose supply fluctuates greatly. We could also create such a reliable power system with renewable energy and storage. In Europe today, battery storage systems are available that can hold just as much electricity as is produced in one and a half minutes. Now there are plans to have ten times as much battery storage in 2030 - which means you could store fifteen minutes' worth of electricity production. How do you shift electricity from summer to winter? Still, nuclear power costs $131 to $204 per megawatt hour, according to one study, while solar power costs only $28 to $41. The new renewables don't cover baseload, so we always need a back-up, which could be gas, coal or nuclear plants. So that's in addition to the cost of renewables. That's why comparing the price of solar power with electricity from nuclear power is misleading. You're comparing apples and oranges. And if you look at the plans for the Gondosolar alpine solar power plant in Valais, this energy is not cheap either. What do you mean? The price of this plant is 42 million francs. If you wanted to replace Leibstadt with Gondosolar, you would need about 400 of them. The cost would therefore be around 17 billion francs. At Hinkley Point, Great Britain is currently building a nuclear power plant for about 25 billion francs, which has two and a half times the capacity of Leibstadt. So you get two and a half times the output for one and a half times the cost of Gondosolar - and the electricity flows continuously. In France, nuclear power plants are currently delivering a quarter less electricity than the long-term average because corroded pipes in some emergency systems have to be replaced. So is nuclear power not as reliable as you say? These are old nuclear power plants. But France has woken up and wants to build up to fourteen new ones. This is also a reason why you shouldn't play one energy source off against another. I am in favor of the sensible use of renewable energies, think of solar panels on house roofs and on facades. Why does the construction of nuclear power projects in Europe take many years longer than originally planned? These delays are not a global phenomenon. South Korea is building nuclear power plants without delay, as is China. It is true that a third unit was recently completed in Olkiluoto in Finland. But our problem is that no new power plant has been commissioned in Western Europe for over twenty years. Why is this a problem? Because the safety requirements for nuclear power plants are very high, not just any company can supply pumps or valves. They have to go through certification. This know-how disappears if you don't build new power plants. For me as a nuclear engineer, it is very sad to see what has happened in Germany: The country built some of the best reactors and, together with Siemens, was significantly involved in the development of the third generation. All this knowledge will be lost with the nuclear phase-out. If it all takes so long, aren't critics like Greenpeace right to say that the discussion about nuclear energy distracts from rapid climate protection measures? But that can just as easily be said about renewables: For them to work, you need battery storage at a reasonable cost, for example, and we don't have that. At least there are pilot projects in which hydrogen is produced with the help of solar power, which is then used to generate electricity when it is needed. The hydrogen infrastructure still has to be developed first. For example, you have to design special turbines to use it. Hydrogen is also an extremely small molecule that escapes quickly. So special containers are needed. Nevertheless, the basic problem remains that investors in Europe are not willing to bet on nuclear power. After all, it is private companies that should take risks, not the state. I see it somewhat differently. There are some very important infrastructure goods, such as roads, public transport or energy supply, where the state has a responsibility. At the moment, it seems to me that every country in Europe is saying: If there is a shortage, we will buy electricity from abroad. But if every country says this, where is this foreign country? When people are skeptical about nuclear power, it often has to do with the unresolved disposal of radioactive waste. How can this technology be trusted? To put the problem in context: The amount of toxic chemical waste is orders of magnitude higher. According to Nagra, which is pushing for safe final disposal in Switzerland, the fuel waste over the entire operating life of the four nuclear power plants amounts to 1,500 cubic meters, which is equivalent in volume to just two single-family homes. Technologically, waste disposal has been solved; Finland is just opening the first final repository. It is politics that causes delays. While we are on the subject of safety: Can a reactor disaster like Fukushima happen again? Third-generation reactors, so-called EPRs, are being built at Hinkley Point and Flamanville. They are much safer than second-generation reactors, which include the Swiss nuclear power plants. The EPR is designed so that what happens in the power plant stays in the power plant and you don't have to evacuate in the event of an accident. Which is what happened in the case of Fukushima. Yes, Fukushima had an old reactor with a comparatively small containment vessel. In the EPR, on the other hand, the diesel engines that continue to cool the nuclear fuel rods in the event of an accident are located in a bunker. In Fukushima, they had failed due to the water ingress. In addition, the EPR prevents hydrogen from accumulating. This prevents an explosion. What does that mean for the probability of a meltdown? All these measures reduce the probability from 1:10,000 for Fukushima-type nuclear power plants to 1:1,000,000, or one hundredth. And there is something else: In EPR reactors, even in the event of a meltdown, there is no need for radioactivity to escape, because the melt is collected in the reactor vessel. The big supporters of nuclear energy are France, Great Britain, USA, China and Russia. These have nuclear weapons at the same time. If more countries were to go nuclear, surely there would be an increased risk of more nuclear powers? This is probably the biggest misconception when it comes to nuclear energy. Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy are two completely different worlds. Israel does in fact have nuclear weapons, but it has no nuclear power plants. The uranium fuel rods used in a nuclear power plant cannot be used for a nuclear bomb. Why? Nuclear weapons require uranium with a purity level of over 90 percent, or almost pure plutonium. Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, use uranium with a purity of only 4 percent. To enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, centrifuges are needed. But countries like Switzerland, which use nuclear power, do not need centrifuges. And vice versa: To build centrifuges, you don't need nuclear power plants. Forty percent of the uranium for Europe comes from Kazakhstan and Russia. Moreover, China and Russia are involved in European nuclear projects. Won't we get into hot water if we rely more on nuclear energy? In Finland and Eastern Europe, there are reactors built by Russia. And China is also building reactors. But there are also the USA, South Korea, Japan and France. So we have alternatives. And when it comes to sourcing uranium? The biggest producers are Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. Then come Russia, Namibia, Niger and various others. There is also a big difference compared to coal and gas. And what is that? Gas and coal-fired power plants need a steady supply because they consume such large quantities. Nuclear fuel, on the other hand, is not used up in minutes or hours, but remains in the reactor for four to five years. This means that you don't have to buy more nuclear fuel tomorrow. So there is plenty of time to conclude new contracts. The war in Ukraine has heightened the question of safety. What is the greatest danger for the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant? There are four lines there that connect the power plant to the grid. If they all break down, the reactor shuts down automatically. But then you need diesel for the generators that provide cooling. And this diesel apparently only lasts for six days in Ukraine. If there is no supply, a meltdown could occur in the event of a crisis. However, the reactor has a larger containment shell than the one at Fukushima. So the danger would build up over weeks. Interventions could still be made during that time. Fortunately, the modern reactors offer much greater safety than Fukushima. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.

05-20-22, 06:49 PM	#3
Kapitan Sub Test Pilot Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: UK + Canada Posts: 7,090 Downloads: 68 Uploads: 7	Interesting documentary on this subject __________________ DONT FORGET if you like a post to nominate it by using the blue diamond Find out about Museum Ships here: https://www.museumships.us/ Flickr for all my pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131313936@N03/ Navy general board articles: https://www.navygeneralboard.com/author/aegis/

05-20-22, 07:53 PM	#4
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,486 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	Germany wastes much, much more money on - claimed - climate protection policies than France. Nevertheless, in efficiency of climate protection and especially CO2 avoidance - France leaves Germany in the dust. Because it has many nuclear power plants, and will build even more. The Germans shoot themselves, and thats all that they acchieve. And they use not lead or steel but golden bullets. Next drama to explode into our faces over here: Habeck's obsession with heat pumps as house heating. That is where these political madnesses will start to not just ruin state finances, and the economic competitiveness, but really ruin private home and house owners. The other flat owners in my house where I live did not want to believe me when I started to attack these mad demands already years ago, but now we will be soon confronted with them because for mandatory legal rules we must replace our heating until 2025 at the latest. Its the add-on costs that mutliply the costs of what they expected by severla factors, it will cost us 8-10 times more than they expected. I warned them since years, and they just laughed. We now got the first analysis of financial calculations, its a shocker for them, not for me. How comes that all of a sudden they do not laugh at me anymore like in the past years...? Its not just the heat pump, its also the add-.on costs for the needed house preparation, the isolation needed, and I do not even mention the exloding costs for electricity... And for what all this waste of money, you damn stupid Germany - FOR WHAT...? The net effects for the climate from the German acts are so microscopical and irrelevant that they simply play absolutely no role at all in the greater scheme of global climate things. But we put our complete economy and the special stability of our social order at risk here. And we will NOT get away with it, the damage we're about to inflict onto ourselves simply is too big - by factors. And not just since the crisis of corona, globalization, and Ukraine war, but already before. Stupid, stupid Germany. So totally *stupid. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.*