Just found this in "Nature"

"Nuclear power for energy independence "Reliance on [Russian oil] delayed a dignified, united condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine, and continues to interfere with the European Union's response," writes energy researcher Nicolas Mazzucchi. He argues that the EU must conquer its squeamishness about nuclear power and take advantage of practical, agile new nuclear technologies. For example, fast neutron reactors operate with enough energy to cause fission of many heavy atoms, potentially eliminating both nuclear waste material and reliance on uranium as the sole fuel source, he writes. Nature | 5 min read "

Food for thought!

From the nuclear lobbyists

world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.aspx

Today there has been progress on the technical front, but the economics of FNRs still depends on the value of the plutonium fuel which is bred and used, relative to the cost of fresh uranium.

So these reactors make even more expensive electricity than the old kind

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FormulaNova said..

So is Paradox right that (even) less government regulations would have made the insulation scheme better? Clearly not.

The cynic in me says that the public want no red-tape as long as nothing goes wrong and lots of regulations if things screw up. If you extrapolate this to hospitals, people will think that there is too much waste when hospitals are not under pressure, and under-resourced when put under pressure such as in a pandemic.

The free market will always find the most efficient way of doing something. However it is not a magic bullet. Dumping 10X the industry funds into the market and expecting an instant perfect fix, was the failed policy. If you want a very short term result with massive amounts of money and there is no current industry to support it, then the free market will simply not work in that timeframe. You have to spend the money to manage it properly, and it will cost a lot more than it should because of that oversight and management.

It was essentially Rudd throwing hand grenades over his shoulder saying, "the free market will get that". It kind of did, but the cost was safety and people died.

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Mr Milk said..
So these reactors make even more expensive electricity than the old kind

Correct, it will be new tech and expensive. Costs will come down over time though, a bit like solar panels.

Standard larger nuclear plants are what we need.

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Paradox said..

Mr Milk said..
So these reactors make even more expensive electricity than the old kind

Correct, it will be new tech and expensive. Costs will come down over time though, a bit like solar panels.

Standard larger nuclear plants are what we need.

Madness! The construction, operation, and decommissioning of reactors plus the mining, pre and post treatment and disposal of fuel costs colossal amounts of money. And then if there's a disaster....

Expensive electricity is the green dream as most of them are rich inner city elites and it doesn't bother them

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Paradox said..
The free market will always find the most efficient way of doing something.

That dogma has been proven wrong time and again.
Read up on the river in Ohio that caught fire many times because the free market was so efficient.

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/

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Mr Milk said..

Paradox said..
The free market will always find the most efficient way of doing something.

That dogma has been proven wrong time and again.
Read up on the river in Ohio that caught fire many times because the free market was so efficient.

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/

Oh no, Paradox is 100% correct. It's just the term 'efficient' that is open to debate.

From an industrial perspective, dumping waste into a river is cheap and very efficient. It's a sewer running straight past you and the other businesses are doing it.

Digging up minerals? Eficient, as long as you don't factor in the cost of rehabilitation of the site and worker safety.

Fracking for natural gas? Efficient if you don't consider possible losses to ground water and water poisoning.

Hospitals cut to the bone? Efficient as long as you don't have an influx of patients or expect good customer service.

This approach is naive in this day and age when we are accepting that there is more to life than just profit and loss. Its an easy political tag-line when you can say 'cutting red-tape'. What does it really mean? Well to the public it implies that there are layers and layers of needless rules and regulations and they can be removed with no affect. In reality there are not thousands of public servants sitting there stamping the same form and then passing it onto someone else to also stamp.

Then, if things go wrong, the public will cry out 'where are the rules? Why were there not more regulations?'.

Privatising things introduces a need to make a profit on top of any inefficiencies that occur in any large business.

This 'pink batts fiasco' makes me laugh. The criticism seems to always be from people that want to reduce rules and regulations, but in this case there was a perfect example of what can happen if there are minimal rules and regulation. Does it change the mind of those people that want to remove rules and regulations? No, it just means they bite down harder and want both to remove rules and regulations and also have them when things go wrong.

Had roof insulation been installed by responsible businesses, this wouldn't have been an issue. Instead, some unscrupulous businesses thought it was a good opportunity to neglect safety and training.

Efficiency is not something we want to aim for if it means ignoring a lot of the other parts of running a business in the modern world.

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Mr Milk said..

That dogma has been proven wrong time and again.
Read up on the river in Ohio that caught fire many times because the free market was so efficient.

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/

I think you are mistaking a free market with a society that doesn't care about the environment. Whether privately or government controlled that was a problem with peoples attitudes and education, not how the factories operated. Once people recognised the problem they acted.

If you want to compare environmental action, why don't you compare relatively free market societies with those more heavily government controlled. Say western environmental standards v China, Russia.

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Buster fin said..

Madness! The construction, operation, and decommissioning of reactors plus the mining, pre and post treatment and disposal of fuel costs colossal amounts of money. And then if there's a disaster....

All that still adds up to cheaper electricity than renewables. There is not an electricity market on the planet that does not have significantly higher retail electricity prices due to uptake of wind and solar. Nuclear is high upfront cost, very low operating costs over it's 60+ years of operation. Just compare Germany and France electricity prices.

As for the "disasters" there is always risk in any power generation. but there has only been one nuclear plant with serious impacts on people and the environment and that was Chernobyl. Stupid design, even worse government management and appalling response that killed 50 people. It will never be repeated. Even with those impacts Nuclear is statistically the safest form of power generation.

"there has only been one nuclear plant with serious impacts on people and the environment and that was Chernobyl"
Yes, no doubt 'serious' is subjective, but I literally wouldn't be sitting here if you were correct.
And very low operating costs? Pfft. You've conveniently forgotten decommissioning costs too.

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Buster fin said..
And very low operating costs? Pfft. You've conveniently forgotten decommissioning costs too.

Unlike renewable energy facilities, modern western nuclear plants are required to plan and fund thier decomissioning over thier operating life. It typically takes about 2-4% of revenue and this is placed into managed trusts. To be used at the end of thier life.

Operating a nuclear plant is very cheap once it is built. People just don't realise the energy density of Uranium. It is literally about 4million times more energy dense than coal. One nuclear plant uses about the size of a small car in Uranium each year.

This is not secret information, it is readily available. Where are you getting your information from?

EDIT: this is one of the few studies that looks at all costs of energy including network, market and legislation that effect the market. It clearly shows intermittant generators like wind and solar as very expensive, as is shown in the real world.

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/IER_LCOE2019Final-.pdf

environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis

When solar energy companies have to start absorbing the costs of dealing with this waste it'll lose its shine.

This is one of the finest threads in the 30 year history of Seabreeze

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Paradox said
Unlike renewable energy facilities, modern western nuclear plants are required to plan and fund thier decomissioning over thier operating life. It typically takes about 2-4% of revenue and this is placed into managed trusts. To be used at the end of th

So that's a bit like mine rehabilitation bonds, is it? Which are known to be inadequate. You can expect private owners of nuclear reactors to do some paper shuffling to avoid end of use expenses. Business efficiency demands that losses be socialised.

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myscreenname said..
This is one of the finest threads in the 30 year history of Seabreeze

Is this your way of pushing yourself as the winner of the worst thread in the 90 years of seabreeze forums?

Come on, try harder. You can start a better one. Surely? Maybe? Something about cyrpto?

A good paper on the disaster that has been energy policy in the EU. We are now heading down the same path, except we don't even have a nuclear program to fall back on. www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/07/EU-Climate-Policy-Failure.pdf

It is all unravellling....www.dailywire.com/news/trump-was-right-world-leaders-were-wrong-russia-just-cut-off-germanys-fuel-supply-whos-laughing-now?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR0dso5ZlGLxLGs7WfzZ2nh79SeW-YjdC1ZmT7w2hZHjSR8VWsgPT6RPOlw

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Paradox said..
It is all unravellling....www.dailywire.com/news/trump-was-right-world-leaders-were-wrong-russia-just-cut-off-germanys-fuel-supply-whos-laughing-now?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR0dso5ZlGLxLGs7WfzZ2nh79SeW-YjdC1ZmT7w2hZHjSR8VWsgPT6RPOlw

As far i am aware the Germans turned off NS2 tap for themselves. Country like Australia produce 10 or 100x more energy in gas and coal that we could eat. There is no need for higher prices....

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Macroscien said..

As far i am aware the Germans turned off NS2 tap for themselves. Country like Australia produce 10 or 100x more energy in gas and coal that we could eat. There is no need for higher prices....

Simple supply and demand. We are providing the world with energy, not just ourselves and the world is simply not producing enough gas. That is what underpins our standard of living. Even here we have constant legal challenges and delays to gas development. Some states have banned production.Europe over the last 10+ years has deliberately shut down coal and nuclear and moved to renewables and gas. wind and solar do little in reality so its mostly a move to gas and biofuel (wood burning). At the same time they have stopped production of gas in thier own countries and become increasingly reliant on Russia and the middle east.

Russia just turned off the gas. Make no mistake many thousands of people will die from cold this winter because of the choices politicians have made against the advice of experts.

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Paradox said..

Macroscien said..

As far i am aware the Germans turned off NS2 tap for themselves. Country like Australia produce 10 or 100x more energy in gas and coal that we could eat. There is no need for higher prices....

Simple supply and demand. We are providing the world with energy, not just ourselves and the world is simply not producing enough gas. That is what underpins our standard of living. Even here we have constant legal challenges and delays to gas development. Some states have banned production.Europe over the last 10+ years has deliberately shut down coal and nuclear and moved to renewables and gas. wind and solar do little in reality so its mostly a move to gas and biofuel (wood burning). At the same time they have stopped production of gas in thier own countries and become increasingly reliant on Russia and the middle east.

Russia just turned off the gas. Make no mistake many thousands of people will die from cold this winter because of the choices politicians have made against the advice of experts.

Completely false analysis. Have you got any data at all showing that global production of all energy sourcess suddenly declined and demand increased?
Nope, I am affraid...
We still entering recession and demand is already much lower for energy and commodities.
Prices distortion is all man made. Preventing market forces to engage. Like old communists planing goes wrong by by western leaders this time.

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Completely false analysis. Have you got any data at all showing that global production of all energy sourcess suddenly declined and demand increased?
Nope, I am affraid...
We still entering recession and demand is already much lower for energy and commodities.
Prices distortion is all man made. Preventing market forces to engage. Like old communists planing goes wrong by by western leaders this time.

You don't need a reduction in production to create a supply issue, just an increase in demand. Which is what has happened. Would you argue that if the EU had developed it's own gas reserves it would still be facing a gas shortage?I am not saying there is not enough potential production, only that the potential that is there is not fully available. Some of that is because Russia has turned off the supply, part of it is because the EU decided to rely on Russia rather than develop their own supply to match thier needs and ensure energy security. My point is this is a horrible failure of policy through over investment and reliance on intermittant power sources and not enough investment in securing the energy needed to support reliable power. ie gas, nuclear, coal. That is now rapidly changing with the EU (and indeed globally) now investing heavily in nuclear power and even mothballed coal plants being restarted but the lead times make it a very late decision with a lot of pain to come.

We need to learn the lessons, as we are rapidly heading down an even worse path.

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Paradox said..

Completely false analysis. Have you got any data at all showing that global production of all energy sourcess suddenly declined and demand increased?
Nope, I am affraid...
We still entering recession and demand is already much lower for energy and commodities.
Prices distortion is all man made. Preventing market forces to engage. Like old communists planing goes wrong by by western leaders this time.

You don't need a reduction in production to create a supply issue, just an increase in demand. Which is what has happened. Would you argue that if the EU had developed it's own gas reserves it would still be facing a gas shortage?I am not saying there is not enough potential production, only that the potential that is there is not fully available. Some of that is because Russia has turned off the supply, part of it is because the EU decided to rely on Russia rather than develop their own supply to match thier needs and ensure energy security. My point is this is a horrible failure of policy through over investment and reliance on intermittant power sources and not enough investment in securing the energy needed to support reliable power. ie gas, nuclear, coal. That is now rapidly changing with the EU (and indeed globally) now investing heavily in nuclear power and even mothballed coal plants being restarted but the lead times make it a very late decision with a lot of pain to come.

We need to learn the lessons, as we are rapidly heading down an even worse path.

Nuclear power plants experts claims that none of plants in whole world was designed to withstand terrorist attack. This is possibly the reason for closing existing power plants in Western countries. With all antitanks weapons supplied at enormous amount that is disaster waiting to happen. In the middle of Europe and could be worse then 10 energy crisis together.
As to current European energy crisis there is brand new pipeline North Stream 2 with capacity 55 bln and that is Germany decision not to run it. Purely political decision not technical problem . Energy crisis is purely political tug war, nothing to do with supply constrain or demand increase.

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Macroscien said..
Nuclear power plants experts claims that none of plants in whole world was designed to withstand terrorist attack...

Depends what you define as "attack".

And what you call "design"

All power plants in the western world are designed - or have been retro fitted, with a certain level of redundancy of systems so they can / will safely shut down in the case of an unplanned incident.

The requirements for "safe shutdown" are pretty well limited to removing heat (so the cooling gases / liquids pressure are containable and nothing melts) and no breach of radiation containment.

If you define a terrorist attack as a bomb left in car at the entrance security gate, then yes they are designed to "safely" withstand this.


But if you are going to claim a 'terrorist attack' is something you don't really understand doing something to something you don't understand - so causing what you think is a radiation failure but you don't really understand - then nope, no-one will spend too much time disagreeing with you.

Nuclear power plants are not designed to withstand an anti-nuclear power plant terrorist nuclear missiles.

Then again acme explosives weren't designed to be detonated by Wile-E. Coyote.

Today, each kWh of electricity costs 28p, according to regulator Ofgem.

So at the moment, David's fridge is costing him ?448 a year to run.

From October, when the energy price cap jumps from ?1,971 a year to ?3,549 a year for the average home, electricity will jump to 52p per kWh, a rise of almost 86 percent.

This will drive up the cost of using his American fridge freezer to a staggering ?832 a year, and David is taking action.

New fridge freezers cost between ?350 and ?2,000, depending on the make and model, but David considers buying a new one a good investment.

Typically, a brand new fridge freezer will use a maximum of 400 kWh of electricity each year, which will cost him ?208 a year when prices jump . "That will save me at least ?624 a year, so upgrading my fridge freezer will pay for itself in two or three years, plus I will also slash my home's carbon footprint.

"David's experience is far from unusual. Research from consumer champion Which? showed that American fridge freezers are the second most expensive household appliance to run.Its research was carried out on June 30 when electricity cost 28p per kWh, but we have updated the numbers to reflect October's 52p per kWh charge.

Which? tests showed that condenser tumble dryers are the most expensive appliances to run, as we revealed last week.

They will cost the average household more than ?262 a year from October.

American-style fridge freezers the next biggest energy guzzler, costing on average ?223 a year to run from the autumn.

As David discovered with his 25-year-old behemoth, the older the appliance, the less energy efficient it is likely to be.

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Macroscien said..

As to current European energy crisis there is brand new pipeline North Stream 2 with capacity 55 bln and that is Germany decision not to run it. Purely political decision not technical problem . Energy crisis is purely political tug war, nothing to do with supply constrain or demand increase.

Nord Stream 2 was not completed due to the issues in Ukraine, but even if it was, it is still the same supply source that has just been turned off, it would be just as useless. They are better off for not finishing it, they would be even more reliant on Russian gas by now.

The EU energy crisis trigger was political strife and the war in Ukraine, the underlying cause is much more complex and goes back to policy decisions made over the last 10-15 years. Quite simply if the EU had not agressively shut down coal and nuclear and shifted to gas and a bit of wind and solar then they would not have a problem. If they did the shift and developed thier own gas reserves, there would not be as much of a problem. They were warned, it was avoidable.

My point was that this was entirely predictable and avoidable, but no one wanted to listen to those saying there will be problems. Now there are problems and people like you just want to say its a short term politicial cause, not a long term energy policy one.

fee.org/articles/why-nuclear-power-is-quietly-making-a-big-comeback-all-around-the-world/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebook_zapier&fbclid=IwAR3iYMgecFxijPl8rmnWPAvJBk7_TbFx2PxqgGxhYAVoRFJLCvJBhGIYc4A

Donald Trump warned of German dependence on Russian oil at the 2018 UN General Assembly

Currently in the U.K the average cost per year for electricity and gas is a little under 2K pounds.

On Oct 1st the PRICE GAP i believe it is called is set to increase to over 3.3K pounds.

An 80 percent increase.

Fast forward another 12 months the PRICE GAP is set to rise to over 6K per year.

The PRICE GAP is set by the government.

This will have a catastrophic impact on their economy as businesses will not be able to pay their utilities bill.

For the people part starvation for millions is inevitable unless these utility companies are reigned in.

I heard the government will subsidize the amount over 2.5K. A gap of 800 pounds per year for every household starting on October 1st.

I doubt businesses will receive their subsidy.

A transference of wealth from the people to these corporations in effect.

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Pcdefender said..
Currently in the U.K the average cost per year for electricity and gas is a little under 2K pounds.

On Oct 1st the PRICE GAP i believe it is called is set to increase to over 3.3K pounds.

An 80 percent increase.

Fast forward another 12 months the PRICE GAP is set to rise to over 6K per year.

The PRICE GAP is set by the government.

This will have a catastrophic impact on their economy as businesses will not be able to pay their utilities bill.

For the people part starvation for millions is inevitable unless these utility companies are reigned in.

I heard the government will subsidize the amount over 2.5K. A gap of 800 pounds per year for every household starting on October 1st.

I doubt businesses will receive their subsidy.

A transference of wealth from the people to these corporations in effect.

This is quite interesting how everything works here.
There is not enough gas .
So price is high.
Government will print some money.
Suddenly there is enough gas for everybody.
Problem solved.

What is actually going on......

A way to get users to cut back on utilities.

Because to own anything in the future will be so prohibitively expensive.

So you will be better off without it which seemingly will make you happy.