Thread: Nuclear power and changes

BOMB went off. No fear needed It's was a TAX imposed on mining in Kazakhstan

Some dayz! So much misinformation!

The biggest site of clean power in the USA is?
A- Hoover dam?
B-?
C- SUNZIA- A wind farm and transmission line billed as the largest clean energy project in US history has secured $11 billion in financing and started construction?
D- Battery storage story about 150 billion !!!!! $150 billion in US clean energy investments since IRA passed


The B should be a V for Plant Vogtle | Southern Nuclear

I love Trivia USS Battleship New Jersey gets fuel economy of 3 feet per gallon. Three decades ago, it was over $1 million a day to cruise. The Resever Bank says that is 2,339,860.75 in 2023 as it will not do it to 2024 ​Inflation Calculator | RBA


NOTE- It was $USD not $AUD of course
Jan Emblemsvåg: It was 2002 through 2022, so it was 20 years. After 20 years, figuring out how it has worked is interesting. Then I took the €700 billion, and then, first, I tried to estimate what it would have cost Germany to keep the nuclear power they had in 2002 operational. That was roughly €100 billion. The interesting part is that if they had just done that, they would've produced as much power as of today. The old nuke produced as much power as all the renewables in Germany today, but they would've saved €600 billion.

the cost of extending the transmission network, prematurely closing down the nuclear power plants, people, value-added tax, the fact that they have a higher mortality rate because of using coal instead of nuclear, et cetera. When everything is said and done, the €700 billion is most likely a conservative estimate.
My notes in bold and italic - German choices has killed people had a huge negative impact on the German economy and industries!
A Swedish guy called Anders Österlund and I did our first study on the best 50 states in the U.S. and Germany. It was more like a ranking study. It wasn't doing the cost calculations. That study showed that the best U.S. states, with Tennessee being one of them, outperformed Germany by a huge margin when it comes to both emission cuts and price levels in the grid. They have gone for the nuclear path. Germany has invested a lot in wind, solar, and biomass.

Why to much wind or solar can be bad!
I wrote the paper on Ireland, actually. Ireland is a very interesting case because it has the highest amount of non-synchronous power on the asynchronous grid and wind power. Ireland has to curtail the wind when it reaches about 70% of the grid. The problem with Germany is that they have so much wind and so much solar capacity that when there is wind and sun, it's massive overproduction. Still, they need to maintain the synchronicity so the coal, gas, or hydro, or if they had nuclear, would still need to run.
That means that there is probably an upper limit on what's sensible to put into the grid of non-synchronous power. For example, Sweden follows our strategy of one-third each of nuclear, hydro, and renewables. That sounds like a good one because it means that the renewables will not be able to overproduce and, therefore, drive the grid into a negative pricing area. After all, the synchronicity must be maintained. Otherwise, we have a huge blackout.

Dunkelflaute or Doludrums? Not all the time but it happens!

Dunkelflaute is a German word for dark, cold, and windless.
Ed Coyne: That sounds awful.
Jan Emblemsvåg: Yes, but it's very common in winter in Northern Europe, probably Northern Canada and the U.S. What happened then is that you have no sun or very little and no wind, but you have a very high demand because of the cold weather. In December 2022, they had 16 days of this, consecutive days. If you took the biggest grid battery in the world, Moss Landing energy storage facility in California, you would need 3,800 such batteries to handle that dunkelflaute at the whopping cost of $1,200 billion. It's not a good idea. To keep nuclear power, it's dirt cheap in comparison.

The main issue for the part of the world that is electrifying is reliability. If you take the villagers in the poor world, they are happy with just having some electricity now and then
The main issue for all developed and developing countries’ economies and people is reliable, affordable and effective electricity!

I've got a fun stat for you. Years ago, my son and I slept on the Battleship New Jersey. He was part of the Boy Scouts, and it was the last ship in operation that was using diesel fuel. You probably know that most people don't want to use it all the time, but can you guess how far they got on 1 gallon of diesel fuel when cruising?
Jan Emblemsvåg: 1 gallon, that's nothing. I don't know.
Ed Coyne: 3 feet per gallon. Three decades ago, it was over $1 million a day to cruise. Nuclear has been part of moving big ships around for quite a while in the military application. Still, I did notice on your LinkedIn the article about cargo ships, and I'm surprised that cargo ships aren't currently powered by nuclear.
😊 😊 😊
Interesting !!!
Norway takes Swedish nuclear technology to the high seas | Klimavenner for Kjernekraft

To those who think I a blindly PRO nuclear power the Fish Disco and this might suggest I am a bit more balanced?

Hinkley Point C, for example, in the UK, which is a spectacular example of how not to do it. They buy a reactor technology from France, and the laws of physics in France and the UK are the same. Yet when the same technologies move to the UK, they impose 7,000 changes on the design and the facility.

I am not ANTI nuclear clearly 😊
The South Koreans are very good at building. We see that in the maritime industry, too. They typically develop a design, then build the same ship over and over and over again. This is what they've done with the reactor.
Could we please ask/demand the CSIRO to consider South Korean in the studies they do?


Links and other bits which are taken from above or references in the Sprott pod cast and transcript!

(PDF) What if Germany had invested in nuclear power? A comparison between the German energy policy the last 20 years and an alternative policy of investing in nuclear power

Beware The Dunkelflaute | Sprott

Today a company which came out of a Australian Government nuclear reactor that my friend Michael built. The ANSTO Australian nuclear reactor that provides the medical isotopes that saved my mums life 30 years ago❤️. Silex energy Lazer tech got a part of 3,200,000,000 $USD grant👍 I sold some. I have a lot more in my super fund.NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE!!!

Not suggesting Australia can as we seem far more like cost overrun and needless changes types and crews!

"Turkey’s first nuclear power plant reactor will come online in 2025, two years behind schedule, the country’s energy minister has confirmed.Three more will follow in the next three years as part of Turkey’s efforts to diversify energy production and reduce carbon emissions.
The first reactor at the $20 billion Akkuyu nuclear power plant, in the southern province of Mersin, is already 90 percent complete.
“Today is a special day in terms of being a milestone but we have bigger goals ahead of us,” the energy and natural resources minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, said on December 13.
“We need to have all four reactors in operation by 2028 so Turkey will join the league of those who produce electricity from nuclear energy.”"

Four more by 2028! Thats fast and worth watching for those who say it takes a decade. The 2 year delay in "Türkiye"'s new reactor at Akkuyu is understandable given Covid and being the first in Turkiye.

"The Akkuyu plant is being built by the Russian state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom, and will have a combined capacity of 4,800 megawatts. When fully operational, the four reactors will provide 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity needs. It will also be the first of at least three nuclear power plants Turkey aims to have online by 2050. The country plans to build a second in the northwestern Thrace region, the area of Turkey that lies in Europe. A third will be built in the Black Sea province of Sinop. Both will have a similar capacity to the Akkuyu nuclear power plant. There are also plans for a series of small modular reactors with a combined output of 5,000 megawatts in regions across Turkey, boosting and diversifying capacity."

Russians can, China can, South Korea can. Why red tape and fish discos are allowed to blow up budgets in UK and poor planning at Vogtle 3 and 4 nuclear power in the USA is a case study in what not to allow for country building new nuclear power. The good part is those errors can be avoided if controls are put in place to stop vexatious anti nuclear power types trying to deliberately increase cost such as reported at Three Mile Island restart.

Personally cost paid by legal types in the "EDO to hand more than $9m to Santos after failed Barossa suit

" case."

SCMP News
" Chinese scientists make seawater uranium extraction 40 times more efficient | South China Morning PostChinese scientists make seawater uranium extraction 40 times more efficient


With uranium demand tipped to cross 40,000 tonnes by 2040, China is likely to increasingly turn to marine extraction for the heavy metal

"

Some parts I know are fact and some seem a bit LOOK AT MOI

"China’s increasing nuclear power capacity drives a growing demand for uranium. The country imported 13,000 tonnes of natural uranium in 2024, while domestic production was only about 1,700 tonnes.
With its uranium mines unable to keep up with demand, Chinese scientists have turned their attention to the sea.
The world’s oceans are estimated to contain 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium, 1,000 times the amount of uranium ore reserves in the ground.

"

We all know there is tiny traces of U308 in sea water and coal. 40 time almost nothing reminds me of the gold from sea water Nobel Price winner Mr Fritz Haber quest "Playing to his nationalistic side, Haber sought a process by which to extract tiny amounts of gold from seawater. Seawater contains a wellspring of elements. Sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium are present in large amounts, while an element as obscure as uranium is present in trace amounts. Haber believed the gold within the world’s oceans could be withdrawn and accumulated, to create a “free” source of money for Germany.
This bizarre scheme appeared financially viable at first. Haber initially estimated that sixty-five miligrams of gold could extracted from a metric ton of seawater.
To extract gold, Haber planned to separate the acquired seawater using massive centrifuges and his expertise in electrochemistry. Concentrating the gold would consume a phenomenal amount of energy, but at the estimated acquisition rate, an energy cost that would leave Germany with a large profit margin.
"

We all have a significant amount of our bodies to thank Mr Haber for via the food we all eat! That is true

The u308 from seawater may be??? .

AI question "
If this is true "The world’s oceans are estimated to contain 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium" what is the concentration of u308 in the entire volume of the worlds oceans"

if this is true "The world’s oceans are estimated to contain 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium" what is the concentration of u308 in the entire volume of the worlds oceans

Calculation Breakdown:

• Uranium concentration:
  
  
  • Total uranium mass:4.5×109 tonnes=4.5×1015 grams4.5×109tonnes =4.5×1015grams.
    
  • Total ocean volume:1.35×109 km3=1.35×1021 liters1.35×109km3 =1.35×1021liters
    1
    3
    4
    5
    .
    
  • Concentration:
    
    4.5×1015 g1.35×1021 L=3.33×10−6 g/L of uranium .1.35=3.33×10

    −6

    g/Lof uranium.
  
  
• Conversion to U₃O₈:
  
  
  • Molecular weight ratio:842 g/mol (U₃O₈)3×238 g/mol (U)=1.18
    3×238g/mol (U)842g/mol (U₃O₈)
    =1.18.
    
  • U₃O₈ concentration:
    
    3.33×10−6 g/L×1.18=3.93×10−6 g/L .3.33×10

    −6

    g/L×1.18=3.93×10

    −6

    g/L.

Put simply FSA

I mention coal so how much in coal compared to seawater was fun
Uranium concentrations in coal aresignificantly higherthan in seawater, but still relatively low compared to conventional uranium ores. Here's the comparison:
Uranium in Seawater vs. Coal

	Material	U₃O₈ Concentration	Equivalent Uranium Content
Seawater	3.93 × 10⁻⁶ g/L	3.33 ppb (parts per billion)
Coal	100–200 ppm*	0.01%–0.02% uranium

*As uranium oxide concentrate (U₃O₈), coal contains approximately118–236 ppmdue to molecular weight adjustments.
Key Details:

• Coal Uranium Content:
  
  
  • Typical uranium concentrations:1–4 ppmin most coal
    2
    6
    .
    
  • Economically significant deposits:>100 ppm(0.01%), with some reaching200 ppm(0.02%)
    2
    6
    .
    
  • Uranium is often concentrated infly ashduring combustion, reaching up to10×pre-combustion levels
    1
    .
    
  • 
    

The tale of four Nuclear power countries power prices. And a Spanish omelet


"Electricity Price per kWh

	Country	Average Price (€/kWh)	Average Price (£/kWh)	Notes
France	€0.2016	~£0.17	Regulated tariff (EDF Tarif Bleu), base option
Germany	€0.3951	~£0.34	Highest in the EU for households
UK	~€0.315	£0.2703	Ofgem price cap for Q2 2025
Spain	~€0.255–€0.285*	~£0.22–£0.25	13% bill increase in 2025; VAT back to 21%

*Spain’s kWh price is estimated based on average bills and reported increases, as recent wholesale spikes and tax changes have pushed prices higher
"

In the list above one has stopped using Nuclear power. One is planning to phase out nuclear power and two have been ramping up.


Spain may be the new Look at me stuffing it up with the recent power outage which may be caused directly by too much non syncretized power. Still being investigated and shouted about of course. A very concise review available here Unsupported browser

This example was a case study that sadly killed a few people.

Meanwhile in Germany "Companies that consume a lot ofelectricity or gashave a problem inGermany:They can hardly compete with international rivals who benefit from cheaper energy — and for whom grid fees,energy taxes and government-mandated levies are unfamiliar concepts. The nitrogen plant in Piesteritz, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, for example, produces essential basic chemicals such as nitric acid and ammonia. These are used to make fertilizers or explosives, among other things. But at the beginning of the year, Managing Director Carsten Franzke had to shut down parts of his production because manufacturing had simply become unprofitable. Franzke is urgently calling on the federal government to provide better framework conditions to ensure the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries. Otherwise, there is a risk of relocation — and with it, growing dependence on imports and the goodwill of other countries, both infood productionand indefense."

Germany is a case study I follow on its shut down of nuclear power. Not bagging wind or solar. They are grid following power sources not grid forming

Grid-Following vs. Grid-Forming Power Sources

Definition and Core Functionality

	Feature	Grid-Following Sources	Grid-Forming Sources
Basic Principle	Synchronize with existing grid voltage/frequency	Create and regulate grid voltage/frequency
Control Type	Current source	Voltage source
Grid Dependency	Require stable grid to operate	Can operate independently or with grid
Role in Outages	Cannot operate in islanded/off-grid mode	Can operate in islanded/off-grid mode

The need for a reliable, stable, cheap and efficient gid depends a lot more than on just hopes and dreams.

Off to work for this black duck. Have a great day

Funny that, as a German neighbour I can tell you that we pay even more per KW/h depending on provider etc. We are committed to build two more power plants and a further two more are planned as well. Let's hope whenever the greenies get to power here they don't kill that off.

Apart from electricity prices, we may be "one united" europe, but prices between neighbours are ridiculous. I know a distance op 160k is nothing for aussies but we have people driving that distance weekly just to do grocery shopping since it is that much cheaper in germany. Fuel is also considerably cheaper there.

In any case, nuclear will be ramped up here and all (except one I believe?) coal powered plants have already been shut down which means that we buy our power from abroad or made them gas powered. Still, we were "smart" enough to close the gas field prematurely

So, as a proponent of nuclear, I do have only one burning question: will those power plants actually be built in time? And will they earn their keep? By that time surely we would have nuclear fusion up and going right?

-P