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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25696 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Happy new year, all. More geopolitics that I don't understand:

Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government? This would defuse narratives of the tech tree being made inaccessible to developing nations due to climate change campaigns. It would also promote nuclear non-proliferation and defuse narratives of preventing access to effective power technologies due to the risk of dual-use tech development. Finally, it would stabilize local power grids in regressing states and promote both stability, enabling eventual growth, and loyalty/dependency on the operator in the region. For the cost of single-digit billions of investment, the US (frex) infuses money into American industry, develops the region, and effectively infuses an extra quantum of stability and pseudo prosperity into regions that desperately need it, while extending and securing American hegemony and economic entertwinement/influence.

Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government?

Because it is impossible to operate a nuclear power plant at a profit anywhere. I can't find a single example of a nuclear power plant that's run at a profit without a galaxy of government subsidies - the EROEI is not high enough to do so (and no, France doesn't count). You'd have to clear that particular hurdle first, and so far nobody has managed it.

Is there any evidence the EROEI is negative? I've looked at a few sources and the numbers vary wildly, but they've all been positive for nuclear.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-measure-true-cost-fossil-fuels/ - this one has Nuclear as one of the lowest.

https://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf - this study shows the opposite with Nuclear as one of the highest.

Regardless, both have a positive number for nuclear.

In general, my surface-level research has shown wildly varying levels of claims.

Wikipedia claims there was a 2019 study by the economic thinktank DIW Berlin showing no nuclear plants were profitable, but the source is some guy's blog, and his blog doesn't have a source to the article he claimed he saw it in. There then is a source to a counterclaim study that goes nowhere...

This source here says only 1/3 of US power plants are unprofitable

But on the other hand, there is this report from 2021 and 2022 indicating that at least in the northeastern part of the united states Nuclear energy was making profit in recent years.

I've even seen articles claiming renewable energy like solar and wind is cheaper and more profitable than nuclear energy, but I don't know if the profit/cost values used in the comparisons were calculated using the same methodology. Like if they're factoring in subsidies for nuclear but not for solar for example.

It's pretty clear each source is calculating costs and profits differently. All I've been able to gather from my short research is that like most hot topics, there are different groups with different biases in calculating and claiming things to support their agenda, and that it is extremely difficult for a person to be able to discern the truth without investing a lot of effort into looking into the actual methodologies and processes behind the calculation and sources of data. Perhaps I'll take a deeper look at another time.

On a somewhat related note, one thing to keep in mind about nuclear energy is that it is incredibly space efficient compared to other renewable energy sources such as wind/solar/hydro energy. There is only so much land use we can dedicate to wind/solar so as long humans continue to demand energy usage I think there is no choice but to eventually go to more nuclear energy, unless new more efficient forms of energy generation are discovered.

  1. If nuclear power plants are unprofitable then why have so many countries built them, even when they're not pursuing nuclear weapons? Vietnam, South Korea, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, Spain...
  2. The high capital costs and sensitive nature of the plants (with regard to national energy security, waste and enrichment) invite government subsidies and regulation. Normal investors don't make investments that pay off over decades. Nuclear energy deserves subsidies because it enables energy security.
  3. Nuclear energy can be unprofitable when other sources of energy are cheap, when oil prices are low... but oil prices are highly volatile.
  4. The construction cost of South Korean nuclear plants stayed low unlike US and French plants and are absolutely cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
  5. The harder-to-quantify externalities of reliability v renewables and safety v fossil fuels (deaths per terawatt are very low) are considerable
  1. They provide a variety of other benefits - medical isotopes, etc. But at the same time, I really don't think that "a government decided to build it" is a compelling argument for something being profitable. Governments do unprofitable things all the time for a variety of reasons.
  2. Nuclear energy only deserves subsidies if it actually does enable energy security! If the total lifetime EROEI is negative, nuclear energy does the opposite.
  3. Oil prices play a huge part in the actual cost of nuclear plants. Petroleum is used to manufacture them, maintain them, extract that fuel and then transport the fuel to the nuclear plant. As the price of oil rises, nuclear is going to rise up as well as a result.
  4. This is just a statement of fact that I can't disagree with, but at the same time I don't actually see any evidence for it.
  5. I agree that fossil fuels are actually bad for the environment and the people around them in a lot of ways, but nuclear presents its own problems that we haven't really grappled with yet. What are the lifetime costs of having radioactive material stuck in the environment? That's a question that's going to take hundreds of thousands of years to answer. Of course, climate change and resource depletion are going to cause a lot of damage already, so this does in fact remain an open question in my book.

Nuclear energy is only expensive when it's sabotaged, introducing unnecessary costs in construction:

For example, Koomey and Hultman (2007) showed that while construction costs ($/kW) of the least and most expensive nuclear reactors in the US differed by a factor of 12, the lowest and highest levelized cost of electricity ($/kWh) from these reactors only differed by a factor of 4.

Only a factor of 4! Factor of 4 price difference within the same country is insane to think about. There was a huge spike in the cost of building reactors after three mile island (where no radiation was released and nobody died) in the US because of dumb regulations. They didn't allow any new construction for decades, preventing learning by doing. In fact, they complicated construction, demanding redesigns and tearing out parts to be replaced. Thus factor of 12 price difference in construction costs. This had nothing to do with EROEI since Korea is unaffected by US stupidity but would be affected by energy prices (since they import their fuels).

Nuclear plants can run for sixty years if designed properly (and not shut down early by Greens). They absolutely are profitable, even in the US.

See page 388, it's right there in black and white, plant profitability. If it's in brackets, it's unprofitable for the year, paying off fuel, operations and capital. If not, it's profitable. 2020 was a bad year because of low demand so no plant was profitable. But see all the years before, especially 2008! On the whole, nuclear plants are profitable, even in tough market conditions.

https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2021/2021q3-som-pjm-sec7.pdf

And if they're profitable in the US, they're profitable in the rest of the world where things are run much more competently. These plants include many victims of the factor-of-12-megasabotage campaign.

Radioactive material stuck in the environment has negligible cost, just stick it in a box and leave the boxes in a desert. The quantities are so small it's trivial to deal with but everyone is addicted to bungling, building long-term storage complexes like Yucca mountain and then not using them.

Complete and utter nonsense about EROEI.

A gigawatt plant operating 70-80% of the time for decades puts out unimaginably large amounts of power.

Uranium is less than 1% of plant operating costs.

Reactor is the only unique part, steam turbines/electric machinery used are identical to those in other plants and are you really in camp of "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete' require gigawatt years worth of power?

Nuclear power isn't competitive because laws were made - e.g Alara so it couldn't be.

I'm talking about the actual EROEI - this means including all of the energy required to build, staff and maintain the plant over its lifetime. Actually digging up the uranium and transporting it to the power plant might indeed be les than 1% of plant operating costs, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore the other 99% and leave them out from your calculations. A "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete" does actually require gigawatt years of power when you remember the complicated machinery that goes into nuclear reactors and the incredible importance of regular maintenance.

[citation needed] for this claims

even under extreme security bondoogles required nowadays nuclear is energy positive - and if we would reduce safety requirements to match coal, hydro or solar, then costs would drop further

incredible importance of regular maintenance

this does not require gigawatt years of power

Here's a breakdown on EROEI of nuclear reactors.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx

You are probably riffing off this BS.

http://theoildrum.com/node/3877

Tyner was the author (or co-author) on the 1988 and 1997 reports which are examples of the lower EROI numbers -- less than 5:1. Tyner’s 1997 paper reported an “optimistic value” of 3.84 and a “less-optimistic” value of 1.86 and may be based on “pessimistic” cost estimates. For example capital monetary costs were 2.5 times higher than those reported for Generation III and III+ plants (Bruce Power 2007, see below). Fleay’s 2006 on line paper at least gives very detailed numerical analyses of costs and gains and hence probably can be checked explicitly. Different boundaries are used for these “low EROI” studies than most other recent studies that effect the results. For example Tyner takes interest (with a 4-5x larger energy cost magnitude than capital energy costs) into account in EROI (Tyner 1997). The two large EROI values reported here were for nuclear lifecycles which used centrifuge fuel enrichment as opposed to diffusion-based enrichment. Centrifuge enrichment uses much less electricity than other methods (Global Security 2007). We do not know how to interpret these analyses because centrifugal separation is an old technology. Newer rotor materials allow more rapid rotor spin which might influence results. At present much of the enriched uranium used for nuclear power is coming from dismantled nuclear warheads from the US-Russian agreement to decrease nuclear warheads but, apparently, that program will soon come to an end and we will have to contemplate again generating nuclear power from mined uranium. Much of the arguments about the great or small potential of future nuclear power comes from those who argue about the importance of technology vs. those who focus on depletion. As usual, however, technology is in a race with depletion and the winner can be determined only from empirical analysis, of which there seems to be far too little.

As anyone with a modicum of general knowledge can see, these people have no idea what they're talking about whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the world nuclear gives a clear breakdown of energy needed due to materials.

As anyone with a modicum of general knowledge can see, these people have no idea what they're talking about whatsoever.

I like to believe I have a modicum of general knowledge but it is not clear to me what is wrong here.

Though for start, EROI of 1.86 is still positive anyway. So it still goes against FirmWeird's claims.

  1. For starters, the idea that gaseous diffusion could cost more energy than you can get out of splitting uranium.

  2. Or the idea that you need to do a lot of enrichment to get useful fuel. That's only true for certain compact military and such designs, which in some cases use bomb grade material or something close to it. Famously, the RBMK reactor and the British Magnox ones can use natural uranium. It's not very efficient but good to have if you like nuclear warheads because you can extract plutonium from the 'spent' fuel.

  3. or writing that reactors use uranium from bomb warheads. The fissile elements in practically all bombs is plutonium.

You are making an extraordinary claim and should provide the source for that BS.

I remember that hogwash from the Peak Oil years when s certain contingent of doomers was getting incredibly high on their own supply, ignoring that we have enough shitty coal for centuries of early 20th cen industry.

Why does France not count?

Because their nuclear power system is failing, taking on vast amounts of debt and is on the verge of being nationalised due to financial problems, which is why it isn't an example of a successful, profitable nuclear power system.

the EROEI is not high enough to do so

Nuclear should have an excellent EROEI. The problems with profitability come from organizational dysfunction.

They also deal with a galaxy of government regulations.

I still dont know if they'd be profitable without both the regulations and the subsidies, but it at least makes me uncertain.

I'd also guess that the best application for nuclear engines is strictly forbidden by regulations: maritime usage. The US Navy has nuclear submarines and nuclear powered aircraft carriers. The US Navy isn't stupid. Nuclear power has a really good power density ratio, especially when you are surrounded by unlimited water.

Disclaimer: all guesses, just talking out of my ass.

Maritime/naval usage is indeed the best use-case for nuclear power, and that's one of the reasons why the military uses nuclear-powered vessels.

As for the government regulations, I'm not actually too bothered by them on nuclear. I don't have a problem with laws preventing my neighbours from operating a backyard nuclear reactor or building a perfect replica of the demon core in order to test their reactions and screwdriver control. I'm sure a case can be made that those regulations are badly written and far too onerous, but I'm very happy that we do actually regulate them.

I'm sure a case can be made that those regulations are badly written and far too onerous, but I'm very happy that we do actually regulate them.

I might be misinterpreting you because of the "but" in your sentence:

It is not contradictory to think "I'm glad a thing is regulated" and "the regulations on that thing are too onerous".

A regulation can be too onerous when the cost of the regulation is greater than the expected benefit in safety.

An example: imagine a 1 in 10 chance of a $1 million dollar disaster -$100k expected value. A safety regulation reduces that chance by 50%, meaning the value of that safety regulation is $50k. If it costs more than $50k to implement it is onerous.

Some laws pass this hurdle, others don't. Seatbelt laws pass. Child safety seat laws fail.

There are multiple reasons to believe that nuclear power regulations are going to tend to be more onerous:

  1. Fears of radiation are overblown. Most voters don't understand the actual dangers of radiation and nuclear power plants, politicians have an incentive to cater to these fears.
  2. The US military doesn't care about economics and costs and just wants to make sure certain capabilities remain outside of civilian control.
  3. Bootleggers and Baptists type story with oil producers and environmentalists.

Has anyone calculated the price per KWh for nuclear to break even without subsidies, and compared that to other power sources? My problem with this argument is that energy gets subsidized up the wazoo regardless whether it's nuclear, "green", or fossil fuels, so just shouting "look, subsidies!" doesn't really prove anything.

Sabine Hossenfelder looked at the topic and came up with numbers of Nuclear costing 2-3 times more compared to other sources of energy. Mostly due to longer building time, which increases financial costs (interest) which in turn feeds into a lot of negative feedback loops.

Nevertheless I am still very skeptical about any cost calcultions. Nuclear seems to be the worst, but it is also the most thorough source of energy where everybody is obsessed about everything due to decades long campaign against this type of energy. As far as I know it may be the only source of energy where we calculate all costs ranging from building costs, operation costs including nuclear fuel as well as decommissioning cost. I am yet to see some comparisons where let's say fossil fuel costs will also include all the damages caused by climate change, respiratory diseases and/or hypothetical costs of carbon capture and storing of all the CO2 released - that would be equivalent of nuclear waste storage and power plant decommissioning for nuclear power.

I am also vastly skeptical regarding the prices of wind/solar as this new and cheap perfect solution. Renewable energy is supposed to be the most efficient and greenest energy - and yet the one country that heavily invested in the plan of turning their energy system to this new source (Germany) sees rapid rise of energy prices. Try even googling things like "total cost of German Energiewende" and you will see widely different estimates ranging from tens of billions to trillions of EUR. The costs are hidden in various types of subsidies, surcharges but also regular infrastructure projects. I am more inclined to see the costs in hundreds of billions just by looking at one project of new north-south grid that is supposed to bring wind power from windy North to industrial South with the price tag according to Bloomberg from years ago exceeding EUR 100 billion and that was in 2020. This grid upgrade alone has the price equivalent to that of around 9 nuclear power plants similar to highly criticized one constructed in Finland. These 9 nuclear power plants could produce 130 TWh of reliable baseload output that could be thrown onto the old grid providing over 20% of energy production in Germany (all renewables now produce 40% of electricity). And we are talking only about grid cables - the costs are insane.

When the cost varies by several hundred procent thats a bit hard to do.

Are we going with the cost per kW/h of a EPR1 reactor at Hinkely point C or a APR1400 reactor like the one in Barakah?

The more the merrier, but either one will do, really.

It is very hard to do which why combined with the very strong partisan interests involved and data secrecy it hasn't really been done. You have to make fairly major assumptions and these are inherently going to be politicised.

You can read the following report if you want but be aware of the severe limitations in the assumptions. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020. Read the actual report and not what they created graphics for at the website.

My impression is that more rigorous analyses are probably only going to be done as we start to really experience the problems of decarbonisation and renewables.

I would also caution you to be very suspicious of LCOE and LCOE calculations in general. Never take them at face value.

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