Photonic

what do you don't understand about that?

Maybe the problem is not me not understanding, but you not making any sense.

How many nuclear reactors can we build now and will be finished fully in 50 years?

Like a whole lot lol.

How much will it cost?

Also a lot, but you haven’t shown any alternative that actually works. Nor are they cheap either.

How expensive will be the electricity?

About as expensive as it is in France right now.

Generation mix. France's nuclear-heavy fleet keeps wholesale costs at €30–€80/MWh. Germany's gas-coupled merit order pushes wholesale to €60–€120/MWh.

https://euenergy.live/articles/average-electricity-bill-europe

Nuclear power is much cheaper than Germany’s gas-backed renewables mix. You really don’t have a clue do you? You’re just making assumptions as they suit you best.

Yes there will be a few weeks/days during winter which will need gas plants. Do you understand that this is not anlong time during the year? Maybe 2 weeks in a year?

Ok, do the napkin math with me again, because you can’t seem to do it…

As you know, solar power will be greatly reduced in the winter. At a capacity factor of 25%, let’s say 15% of that is generated in summer, 4% in spring and fall each and 2% in winter (and the rest is no power at all, like night or overcast days). Wind has a capacity factor of 35%, let’s assume it’s similar throughout the year.

So then in the most optimistic scenario you have power for ~37% of winter, if sun shines when there is no wind and can take over (unrealistic but I’m helping you).

So at leaves us ~63% of winter. At 90 days of winter gas plants will be running for:

90 * 0,63 = 56,7 full days

In just winter….

And then we haven’t even covered spring or fall….

At least PV and batterys are build very fast.

PV cells still don’t cover winter. It’s a false equivalence.

Just tell me where you read that we will have problems with lithium cobalt and all the stuff. Please. Nobody is worrying about it as much as you do.

Did you read the part where I showed you we needed 800 entire German mines worth of lithium to get the energy equivalent of one NPP? The resources being in the ground isn’t so much the issue, the getting it out is. What’s your plan for that, magic again?

Also:

Nickel, lithium, cobalt, and graphite reserves risk 100% depletion with significant consumption of known resources. Furthermore, over 700 new critical mineral mines will need to be developed to meet the required production rates for decarbonisation by 2050. Demand for critical minerals will out-pace mine development timelines even as improvements are made to battery energy density and compositions.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42461-024-01070-7

starting to build NOW some reactors would be the most dumbest thing we could do.

The best time was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Renewables still don’t get you through winter, no matter how much you try. Your plan entails running gas plants for a significant portion of the year for decades to come while we hope for some tech that we don’t have, don’t have the resources for, can’t mine the resources for or can’t produce.

Could you please, for the love of god stop arguing in bad faith and actually try to do some of the math behind your claims?

Wait, so first NPP’s are too slow to build at 7-10 years and now suddenly we are talking about 50+ years into the future?

We need a plan for now and the next decade just as much as 50+ years. Droughts and heat waves are giving all of Europe a beating this summer and it’s only going to get worse, while energy demand goes up.

Do you think there is no wind during winter?

Yes. There will be so many days and especially nights with little to no wind come winter. Did you see the capacity factor of 35% ? Do you get what it means? If you don’t, feel free to ask. Again, please read what is written or we will be here a very long. This is really getting a bit frustrating now.

I feel like you don't understand that nuclear plants make finacially zero sense.

Who needs finance if there is literally no other option? You’re not talking to the brick. You are it.

Batteries don’t come out of thin air. PV cells don’t either.

You don’t even understand the basic math about energy density that I laid out for you like you’re in kindergarten and you want to tell me I don’t understand stuff? Remember that? Where you needed 800 of your German mines to match one single NPP? Please puzzle that together and think about where you’re going to get all that lithium, cobalt and other stuff from, process, transport and place 5 million kilograms of battery for every single kilogram of uranium.

I feel like Germans (I’m assuming) can’t handle the fact that they made the wrong decision to dump nuclear and are now doubling down on why it was the best decision ever.

So, again, no magic hydrogen farts this time and no 50 year sci fi time jumps. What’s your plan to keep us powered on quiet winter nights after an overcast day in the decade to come?

Please read what it actually says or we’re gonna be here a long ass time.

Green hydrogen is only a percentage of 1% of hydrogen being produced worldwide. 99% of it comes from fossil fuels. What is your plan, are you going to magically fart out all that hydrogen?

Gas will also not run a couple of days lol. Solar will hardly provide anything in the winter. Solar only runs at 25% of it’s max capacity, wind at 35%, because solar and wind are so unpredictable and unreliable.

Don’t kid yourself: your gas plants will be on throughout most of the winter. For decades to come in your scenario.

You make random wild assumptions about Battery prices going up again

Ever heard of supply and demand? It’s quite a basic principle.

Photovoltaic will be reaching soon peak efficiency

They’re already at 25% and efficiency breakthroughs are slowing

There will be more manufactures, so more competition.

You make random wild assumptions about battery producers… you have no base for these assumptions.

The article you linked is about a research factory. You realise research factories don’t produce anything for commercial use, right?

It would be really stupid

You keep talking about “stupid” but your solution is gas plants and magic hydrogen production out of your ass, mines with millions kg of lithium when the equivalent of only one NPP requires billions of kgs.

And then you still haven’t charged any batteries.

And then you still haven’t solved where you’re going to get your power from on all those quiet winter nights after an overcast day. Batteries will have long died by then.

Magical thinking and winging it isn’t going to cut it. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall here. I tried to explain how this works but it seems like you’re not reading any of it.

I really don’t think you have any clue what you’re talking about. Do you even know where hydrogen comes from? It’s made from fossil fuels. And:

As of 2023, less than 1% of dedicated hydrogen production is low-carbon, i.e. blue hydrogen, green hydrogen, and hydrogen produced from biomass.

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

There is still at least a decade’s worth of research to be done and then you haven’t even built or produced anything. After that we need to build production facilities for hydrogen, as well as for massive structures for pressurized storage of hydrogen. We need to alter existing plants so they can burn hydrogen. You think any of that is going to be cheap? And it may not even work as well as people think.

So yes, gas powered plants will be running for a long ass time in that scenario.

In germany alone they recently discovered 43 millions tons of lithium. It's not really a "rare" resource. It's not really a "rare" resource.

I used sodium-ion batteries as an example, since that is more widely available, but I can do the math with lithium-ion.

• Reactor-grade uranium: 3,456,000 MJ/kg
• Lithium ion batteries: 0.54 - 0.9 MJ/kg

A lithium-ion battery consists of 7% lithium by weight. […] The battery’s composition also includes 7% cobalt, 4% nickel, 5% manganese, 10% copper, 15% aluminum, 16% graphite, and 36% other materials.

https://thebatterytips.com/battery-specifications/how-much-lithium-in-a-lithium-ion-battery

So we do the math again: for the equivalent of energy in one kilogram of reactor grade uranium, you need

(3,456,000 MJ * 1kg U) / (~0,7 MJ/kg * 0.07) = 345,600 kg of pure lithium

So remember, that’s equivalent to one kg of uranium. Now one NPP can hold up to 100 tonnes of uranium fuel rods. So:

345,600 kg * 100,000 = 3,456e10 or ~34 billion kg

…of lithium for one nuclear power plant. So if we add your mine in Germany to the equation:

~34 billion / 43 million = 800 times

…the amount of lithium found in that mine to get the equivalent of energy that’s in a single nuclear power plant!

43 million may sound like a lot to a layperson, but it’s really not.

And then we still haven’t touched the

7% cobalt, 4% nickel, 5% manganese, 10% copper, 15% aluminum, 16% graphite, and 36% other materials.

…which are often harder to come by than lithium.

if you need more energy you just quickly build more. Can't say that about nuclear plants.

What if you need more energy on quiet winter nights after overcast days?

Battery prices get cheaper and cheaper every year.

Production capacity is the issue. If we really want to go for worldwide storage, we can’t build anywhere near enough and they will get way more expensive really soon. Just remember what happened to memory prices recently…

In that time renewables have evolved much more.

Yeah no. Photovoltaic cells are nearing their peak efficiency. Meanwhile there is plenty of research going on about MSR’s and SMR’s that will increase nuclear efficiency and drive down the costs.

Ya'll can be fanboying/girling to Nuclear

I actually did the math. Looks like you’re just “fan boying / girling” about non-existent storage tech, just winging it without putting any thought to it. Luckily for us, people at the top are doing their research a bit better than you did. France knows what’s up.

why I used the word "we",

Yes I understand what the word means. I used it as well. The point was the timing of your comment.

but I don't want to be accused of

You’re trying to make this problem about me again… I don’t think you’re actually trying.

any correction I'm making will seem like I'm assuming you don't understand basic concepts.

Nope. If you just discuss things normally and don’t act like you’re talking to a five-year-old that has to be taught what table salt is we be just fine. Again, I’m not the problem here. Your pedantic way of discussing with someone is.

A lower capacity factor doesn't necessarily indicate that an energy source is unreliable.

Of course you can turn many power plants down, it’s what we’ve been discussing. That being said, the capacity factors as they are used now, for solar and wind are indeed a measure of reliability. We have simply been building wind and solar as we needed them and not building ones that were not needed anyway. So downtime is due to non-availability, and since availability isn’t plannable with solar or wind, unreliability. Now as for the calculation for peak load plants, yes it leaves room for planned downtime. So in that sense it’s not a perfect measure of reliability. But the point is that for solar and wind, it basically is, which is the way I used it.

So if you want we can also talk about other measures like effective load carrying capacity, but the reliability numbers won’t really change. Capacity factors are simple, not perfect, but that’s not really an issue in this discussion.

So while I understand your point about gas turbines, we are trying to get rid of those, so they’re kind of pointless to mention. But it does help my point a bit: NPP’s can also work in load follow mode as they already are in France. It’s also one of the main reasons why electricity is so much cheaper in France than in Germany.

We have decades of experience with NPPs as a stable and reliable source of energy. On the other hand, sodium batteries haven’t been proven to be reliable through the decades or in all sorts of conditions because we have had so little of them to be able to do anything more than speculate. We can’t bet our entire future on that. So unless you have some other kind of new green, reliable power plant that you can build quickly and easily switch on and off that you want to tell the world about, this is kinda it.

Reliability aside, there is also energy density. Comparing uranium to your example of sodium-ion batteries (which, incidentally we don’t have any production capacity for on any scale that isn’t a drop in a very salty ocean and also have very little to do with table salt),

!! WARNING !! Napkin math incoming

• Reactor-grade uranium (3.5% U-235): 3,456,000 MJ/kg
• Sodium-ion battery: 0.27-0.72 MJ/kg

Please correct my calculations if I made a mistake, but to get the same energy that only 1 kilogram of reactor-grade uranium provides, you would need sodium ion batteries with a total weight of 4.8 - 12.8 million kilograms. And a single NPP can hold up to 100 tons at any time. Even at billions of kilograms batteries don’t provide any power themselves, so you need even more solar cells to charge them. About 3-3.5 million to get the equivalent power output of one NPP. Of course these calculations don’t take rechargeability into account (but I also didn’t factor in other things that make batteries even worse), but you get the idea.

So your:

already being used and doesn't need a decade of planning to get a single powerplant up and running.

Is simply wishful thinking, like I said.

And even then… the batteries will have run out on those quiet winter nights after an overcast day, since they hold about 4-10 hours of charge. So you need an even larger multitude of batteries to get you through longer spells of windlessness in winter.

So unless you stop beating around the bush about the question I’m asking for the fourth time now:

Have you thought about how you would provide power on those windless winter nights after an overcast day?

…we are kinda done here.

Yes, but factories are expensive and cost a lot of time to build. So I’m not that sure about the financial picture of that either. Not to mention finding the space to put those factories + battery parks + more space for extra renewables to charge those batteries.

Nuclear also only makes Europe dependent on Canada or Australia, although Ukraine and Estonia have some too. The US has their own.

Not to mention batteries require a lot more resources. Whereas enriched uranium is only a few million tonnes per year, lithium- or sodium-ion battery technology requires resources that run in the trillions of tonnes. That’s because of the difference in energy density:

• Pure U-235: 144,000,000 MJ/kg
• Reactor-grade uranium: 3,456,000 MJ/kg
• Sodium-ion battery: 0.27-0.72 MJ/kg

So to put this in perspective: to get the same energy that only 1 kilogram of reactor-grade uranium (at 3.5% U-235) provides, you would need sodium ion batteries with a total weight of 4.8 - 12.8 million kilograms.

Now of course batteries are reusable and nuclear fuel rods are only partly recyclable, but batteries don’t generate any energy by themselves. They need to be recharged with extra solar or wind power, on top of the ones directly feeding into the grid that you also have to build in even more factories, place onsite and individually connect to both the grid and the battery parks, etc.

This is a more rough estimate: but here they did the math:

A rough estimate suggests that about 3 million to 3.15 million solar panels may be needed to match the annual output of a large nuclear power plant

And even then you still haven’t solved what to do on all those quiet winter nights after an overcast day.

Betting it all on one horse it what’s stupid. Especially one that needs a mind boggling amount of resources. Yes we need to make batteries, but we also need to diversify and reduce dependency by expanding our nuclear power capacity.

That’s not necessarily true. There is less need for them if NPPs are there, sure, but the price tag is always king. If renewables are simply much cheaper they will proliferate.

And we will always have to fill in the gaps for when renewables aren’t available. Betting it all on battery tech mostly coming from China is a dangerous game in this geopolitical era.

I don’t understand why people are so anti nuclear. It doesn’t have any emissions. The US, Canada and especially Australia have massive uranium reserves. It provides grid stability. Except for being expensive there is almost nothing going against it. And life cycle costs are likely coming down substantially in the near future with emerging technologies.

Well maybe because of your assertion that renewables and nuclear are a bad combination. Renewables are notoriously unstable sources of energy and you need grid stability or you will have power outages.

This has traditionally been achieved by coal, gas and oil plants. Nuclear power plants are a non GHG emitting way to replace this stability. Countries that have a larger share of renewables but much less nuclear than France still have to fire up their coal and gas powered plants on quiet winter nights after an overcast day. Which means more GHG emissions.

What I meant by “France is already doing just that” is that they are running their NPPs in load following mode, which means they have the ability to adjust their energy output capacity based on the share of renewable energy available.

So while I don’t know exactly why you are being downvoted (not by me in any case), it could be because you’re attacking an ally of the fight against GHG emissions. The goal is not simply to have as many solar panels or wind farms, but to reduce GHG emissions. And that’s what we have to keep in mind. So while, yes France moved to more nuclear there are more ways to look at the same news item: they are still going for 60% electrification of the nation by 2030, up from 30% right now and still going for massive expansion of renewables.

France is already doing just that

If you seriously intend to keep this discussion going, I suggest we tune down the ad hominem and change to a more productive tone. I'm tired of internet discussions working the way they do, but only the participants can change that.

Funny how it’s always completely fine when people themselves go for the ad hominem, but when someone repays them in kind, we really need to tone it down.

You implied that I was ignorant twice in your comment. Once where I supposedly didn’t understand the graph I provided and the other when you assumed I didn’t know the most basic high school chemistry and tried to mansplain that.

If you keep getting into discussions that go sour, maybe you can try to find the common denominator.

If you seriously intend to keep this discussion going

So no, it’s not about whether I intend to keep this discussion going, or factual for that matter. Stick to the facts and don’t assume the other person is a total moron and see where that gets you.

capacity factors first, since I'm under the impression, that that's the biggest source of confusion/misunderstanding here

The confusion is entirely on your side. You don’t seem to understand what these numbers mean, even after my clarification. I don’t know why your wrote a paragraph to point out how the numbers are calculated. I knew this already. It’s really basic stuff.

how things work in the status quo. Not necessarily a good indicator of the potentials of a grid with a different structure. Can we agree on that?

Unless we have a major breakthrough, solar panels and wind turbines are not going to be much more reliable in the future. So no, let’s absolutely rely on the data we have and build on that instead of tossing what we know aside and making a prediction based on wishful thinking.

But if you stop assuming you’re talking to a moron I’m willing to do my part keep the discussion more factual. So let me start by repeating this question:

Have you thought about how you would provide power on those windless winter nights after an overcast day?

A lower capicity factor just means, that wind and solar are fluctuating energy sources.

Well yes. Obviously. And they are rarely able to supply at full power. So that means you are going to have to fill the gaps. To have a functioning grid, you need stability. You can’t say, well it works 95% of the time, as good as it gets folks!

The graph underlines that NPPs can reliably un at maximum power almost all of the time. Not that they have to. I don’t think I’m the one who doesn’t get what that means.

lower capacity factor

Excuse me what? The capacity factor is about reliability, not flexibility. Why on earth would you want something that’s less reliable. You know you can’t tune the wind or sun, right?

Batteries are only one option here.

And nuclear is another. Have you thought about how you would provide power on those windless winter nights after an overcast day?

You use salt at all? That's Sodium-Chloride.

Yeah I know what sodium is. I don’t need a mansplaination, thanks.

But if you honestly think all it takes to make a sodium ion battery is slapping some salt inside a container we need to start at a whole another level…

they can use existing infrastructure.

No they can’t. We need all of those and more to make Li-ion batteries to make the transition to EVs.

Your entire premise is based on wishful thinking. Let’s not base our entire future on wishful thinking. Instead, let’s diversify, and yes, that includes nuclear to get us through the winter.

Where am I claiming we need to supply the entire world with nuclear power? Again, this isn’t a nuclear vs. renewables discussion. But nuclear can provide baseload power when renewables fail. Which will mostly be nights in winter that have little wind.

Wow genius argument.

Just your wilful misinterpretation of it. And please refrain from personal attacks when a discussion doesn’t go your way. It is not doing your case any good.

You mean the things with storage that you connect to the grid,

Yes. Those. We don’t have the production capacity to make them for everyone worldwide. What is your point?

click on my power suppliers website right now?

You will also need the right EV, the right vehicle-to-grid charging station and most importantly, a garage or a carport. So no, not just a click.

Also it will only supply enough storage for a home. Businesses and industries need power as well…