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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25665 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.

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.

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