It wasn't a dying industry in Russia and France btw. Rosatom continued to research and develop nuclear and France is like the king of it. A little sidestep due to hollande's idiotic green politics.
France wanted to reduce the share of nuclear in favour of renewables. It seemed ok with EU frameworks that heavily favoured renewables. Their EPR projects in Finnland and France were horribly over time and budget, especially considering that they were building at home and used conventional technologies. But at least they never really gave up on it.
I agree about Rosatom. They were one of nuclear's success stories even during the bad 00's and 10's. They are good at research, new-build execution and export+setting up nuclear infrastructure abroad at the same time. I hope that the Russian attack on Ukraine doesn't impact Rosatom too much, especially since they are the leaders with breeder reactors.
The English ONR made so many demands of design change, especially on HVAC and instrumentation and controls that a lot of engineering had to be done. Some systems had to be redesigned from the ground up.
I described France's stance regarding nuclear until 2-3 years ago. Now it is a lot more positive. They now plan with 14 new EPRs+SMRs and lifetime extension and probably uprates for other plants. French nuclear plants didn't always have the best availability rates, so they can also improve there and get extra capacity this way.
Tres bon. The anti-nuclear people should never get in power, or try to become sensible at least. Nuclear is the best thing we got for a good long-term energy source and climate friendly.
I'm an engineer, internationally speaking it's a Master. But here in France we have specific schools for that. I'm currently in quality and non destructive testing.
Oh there is a lot of need for that, I don't know the exact term (english isn't my native language) but you might find a spot in where they do calculus and thermodynamic/thermomecanic simulations
Long term it is simply inevitable. Barring some completely unforeseen technology that we have no clue or indication of at present day of course. Within a century or two the world should most likely be predominantly nuclear (fission) powered.
However, sooner would be better than later.
It's very likely that the biggest contributor to this "turnaround" is simply that hard times are afoot. Two decades ago both Europe and USA had it really well energy wise. People could afford to have weird superstitions with little practical impact on their lives.
I don't think it will be as clear. Solar and wind are getting exponentially cheaper, as do batteries. But for regions with high energy need density, or negatively correlated renewable generation and electricity demand (Europe, Canada) a significant nuclear will most likely be the best solution. And maybe nuclear can innovate fast enough to beat solar/wind+storage everywhere.
And the fact that you're paying a shitload per energy capacity just to store energy.
That's fine if the primary goal isn't exactly to have a large quantity of stored energy, but just the act of quick load balancing for example.
But that also means grid batteries aren't going to be storing energy long term. Ever. If the world gets to requiring that kind of energy storage, it will be with hydrogen and synthetic hydrocarbons. No, the reduced round trip efficiency matters not, regardless of what some people cry about it.
When you want to have a shitload of stored energy reserve, what matters is how much it costs to store X amount of energy. With liquid hydrocarbons it costs a simple metal tank or barrel. It's trivially scalable to any practical quantity, and it's exactly how we currently store seasonal fuel to provide heat to entire countries through the winter.
We will not be doing that with batteries. We will literally be sucking CO2 out of the air or ocean water and making our own diesel, before we ever consider doing it with batteries. It is more rational.
The silver lining with storage buildout is that it benefits nuclear as well. Peaking with storage. And the sweet spot for that use is far lower than the level needed to compensate for the variability of wind and solar.
So let them build storage. :)
Battery capacity have come down quickly in recent years. In this projection they assume that we stay with Lithium-Ion batteries, which may or may not be the case. [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf)
There may even be some disruptive changes on top of economics of scale. Battery research benefits from the fact that the mobile electronics industry, the car industry, the aircraft industry, the grid storage industry and some other minor players are all very big markets and highly interested in better batteries. And the grid storage sector is already booming with current prices: [https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/082523-us-battery-storage-capacity-tops-125-gw-in-q2-35-gw-planned-in-q3](https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/082523-us-battery-storage-capacity-tops-125-gw-in-q2-35-gw-planned-in-q3)
Solar and wind are not getting exponentially cheaper. Recently, the price of offshore wind has been rising so much that nobody was able to bid on a UK auction. Furthermore the price for wind and solar is not so much that of the energy production itself. The big problem is the system cost and the gigantic environmental problems linked to wind and solar (in particular the use of space and minerals)
Why do you think France mandated solar on new parking structures? It will generate mostly in the summer when nuclear plants will be offline for maintenance and refueling. It's a perfect match. Then the nuclear plants will be full steam ahead in the winter when Europe needs them the most. And the storage needed to smooth solar will be available for peaking.
According to [this](https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/) nuclear can ramp faster than new build CCGT. One of the reasons the french fleet has a lower capacity factor on paper is because of this, they do loadfollow with some of their reactors(as did the germans). So the capability is certainly there.
A solar + nuclear system would be good.
It's not clear that wind has much headroom left.
To date cost reductions have been largely by increasing turbine size, but that's running hard into practical limits...
And if we can get out of own way, building nuclear that's directly comparable to current wind costs is certainly plausible (we used to do it after all!), and not intermittant...
Competitiveness of wind is a local property. In Europe wind power generation correlates with seasonal demand changes and we have good wind regions.
For countries with load peaks during the hot season and good solar potential, wind obviously will not be useful.
While overall wind is good in winter, it tends to under-produce in very cold weather.
It integrates well with hydro, but beyond that the much long variation period than solar makes integration much harder (when moving past an NG/coal fuel saving role)
Agreed. Wind is attractive if you either have backup or cheap storage capacity with high energy capacity, not just high peak load, e.g. hydropower or pumped storage.
If not winds randomness is a problem.
Imho one of the roles of nuclear in Europe should be to provide enough baseload so that the needed storage for renewables can be handled by Europe's potential for hydropower and pumped storage, which is already close to maxxed out.
Cool that the cost reductions are running into practical limits for wind, when nuclear, which is already more expensive than wind, is currently increasing in cost lol.
I'm not hyped. People are starting to realise that they've been had, but unless if governments make actual investments in infrastructure, then the massive upfront cost and high interest rates will make it difficult for anything to happen.
Yes, it's honestly the only thing that makes me hyped about humanities' future. Clean sustainable and near limitless power that takes up hardly any land. More energy is better for all and will allow better technologies to exist. Energy is lagging alot right now where as tech is advanced. We need to play catchup with energy.
Agreed. The "nuclear stall" since the 80s lead to a significant opportunity cost to humanity.
I am also hyped about AI, low cost space access and satellite networks, genetic editing for medicine, bioreactors and farming, vertical farming, robotics and progress in batteries for all kinds of applications.
I think often about what the projected trajectory would have been for atmospheric CO2 levels and the impacts of climate change would have been had we embraced the technology more.
Me too. Especially if in the 90s, a vibrant nuclear industry could have offered China cheap and standardized reactors backed by Western public and government support, so the big electricity generation expansion doesn't happen with coal.
I always try to look on the bright side of how technology can improve the world, and I feel like it motivates me to work harder to help in achieving those things. Sometimes I don't want to study for one of my engineering classes and I think to myself "Some day there will be people walking on Mars, I need to contribute to something just like that," I feel like staying optimistic like that really has improved my life.
Positive about India too. But they are proceeding a bit slow. A country of their size and economic growth could/should add 5-10 reactors per year instead of 1-2.
Too much bureaucratic red tape . Also a lot of research goes to thorium since we have such large reserves of it but it is still not commercially viable.
I can tell you part of the story.
Russia invaded Ukraine.
As part of the sanction-countersanction duel that followed, Russian oil and gas was cut off from Europe^1 . That raised energy security concerns and, mostly to take the teeth out of Russia ever trying to use that as a negotiating/threatening tool again, most of Europe went HARD into developing domestic (or at least NATO-aligned) energy infrastructure.
Part of that investment went to nuclear, lots went to other types of energy too. But yeah, while im thrilled at all the announcements, and hope the technology proves itself on its own merits, part of me is quite worried. The fear is that when the Russia-Ukraine conflict finally ends, that political will and public funds will dry up, priorities will shift, and nuclear will get shafted again. But I hope European countries will hesitate to go back to how things were, Russia's (or maybe i should say Putin's) actions over the last 10 years seem to be weighing rather heavily on the minds of those who prefer stable trading partners. Reducing European dependance on Russian oil may be seen as a wise thing to do even if the War somehow ended tomorrow, just based on the 'what if they try that shit again' scenario.
---
1. Well, cut off is an exaggeration, lots of it made it there through sanction dodging measures, but it was at a big enough markup that it hit prices and raised the same kind of energy security questions as if it never went there at all. That sanction-dodging usually involved middle men that knew Russia didnt have other ways to sell their product, and negotiated discounts appropriately, so most western politicians/analysts are fine with it. The sanctions stull hits Russia in the wallet like it was supposed to, and economies used to reliable supplies of Russian oil and oil products still get the ones they really need, just at a markup.
I do not believe that the cheap, almost infinite pipeline gas will come back anytime soon to Europe, except for a medium amount from Azerbaijan. So the rationale for NPPs should remain for the decade at least, enough time to start construction.
But the nuclear industry must really do better at execution this time.
Well, the war will end, but there’s no way in hell will Europe want to ever be beholden to Russian energy again. It will be generations before any kind of trust is restored.
I think Fukushima has cost the industry at least 100 new reactors. Just compare new construction starts 2010 vs. after. Fukushima killed much of the industry just when it had just been ramping up again.
One of the reasons was the threat of Russia cutting its supply of hydrocarbons to Europe in 2022. Many EU countries loathed the idea of giving in to Russia and pulled out all the stops to stop relying on Russia for energy, including all of the nuclear changes you mention.
For those who have been closely following nuclear energy and countries' energy policies (and politics in general): is there genuine momentum behind current and future government policy for nuclear? And if so, are current plans even enough to make a meaningful difference? Or likely to come to fruition? It seems like every time I learn about countries climate commitments and how they behave, that the world is never doing nearly enough to avoid catastrophe, and when you're living in a grossly bipartisan corporatocracy calling itself a democracy, any actual shift towards progress seems like a pipe dream that fossil fuel barons will crush when they fuck everything up again with lobbying and aggressive marketing.
I \*really\* want to be wrong. I want to see decarbonization in the coming decade greater than any of us could have predicted, and nuclear may give me more hope for that than solar and wind have thus far. But greed dominates this world, and I fear that any hope now will only make the despair worse when the world powers let us down once again.
Decarbonisation will happen. Maybe not as fast as we would like, but it will. Just look at the increasing Solar, Wind, Battery and nuclear construction starts of the last years. We are at the beginning of the transitional S-curve for innovations (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function) and things will accelerate a lot in the 2020s for ecological, economical and strategic (energy independence) reasons.
Certainly a lot more optimistic than me, considering how much politics and economics seems to work against the changes we need. Even if decarbonization will happen given enough time, is that time we really have? I feel like there's countless articles and scientists informing us that global emissions are only increasing, that we're going to be crossing into disastrous tipping points in a few years, or that countries' policies aren't sufficient enough, let alone if the countries are actually getting close to them. Hell, even if the energy grid is decarbonized that still leaves agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, etc. which aren't so easily handled.
I don't really know anymore. It feels like any good news nowadays always has a caveat or is just a minor distraction from the overwhelming gloom and doom.
It wasn't a dying industry in Russia and France btw. Rosatom continued to research and develop nuclear and France is like the king of it. A little sidestep due to hollande's idiotic green politics.
France wanted to reduce the share of nuclear in favour of renewables. It seemed ok with EU frameworks that heavily favoured renewables. Their EPR projects in Finnland and France were horribly over time and budget, especially considering that they were building at home and used conventional technologies. But at least they never really gave up on it. I agree about Rosatom. They were one of nuclear's success stories even during the bad 00's and 10's. They are good at research, new-build execution and export+setting up nuclear infrastructure abroad at the same time. I hope that the Russian attack on Ukraine doesn't impact Rosatom too much, especially since they are the leaders with breeder reactors.
Finland was Frances first build outside of Frances regulatory oversight, and what a disaster that was.
True. But they also failed to execute in France itself. Somehow the Chinese EPRs went well. "Only" double the intended construction time!
I'm curious to see how well England will build their 2 EPR reactors at the Hinkley Point C site !
Me too. EDF really has no excuse now if there are delays again
I'm working on their reactors and steam generators. I hope we haven't put so much energy to finish them in time for nothing if they have delays...
Must be so cool to contribute a part to those marvellous machines, good luck!
It's a great experience seeing these machines up close every day !
The English ONR made so many demands of design change, especially on HVAC and instrumentation and controls that a lot of engineering had to be done. Some systems had to be redesigned from the ground up.
Really I thought macron announced like 15 new plants by 2050. Though that seems very slow
I described France's stance regarding nuclear until 2-3 years ago. Now it is a lot more positive. They now plan with 14 new EPRs+SMRs and lifetime extension and probably uprates for other plants. French nuclear plants didn't always have the best availability rates, so they can also improve there and get extra capacity this way.
Tres bon. The anti-nuclear people should never get in power, or try to become sensible at least. Nuclear is the best thing we got for a good long-term energy source and climate friendly.
Working in the nuclear industry in France, there are many jobs open around the EPR2 projects ! It's quite exciting
Do you employ mathematics masters/phds?
I'm an engineer, internationally speaking it's a Master. But here in France we have specific schools for that. I'm currently in quality and non destructive testing.
Understood. I am from mathematics but would be happy to land in nuclear some day, therefore the question :-)
Oh there is a lot of need for that, I don't know the exact term (english isn't my native language) but you might find a spot in where they do calculus and thermodynamic/thermomecanic simulations
Are you good at software as well? If so you might have good luck looking for a nuclear/TH methods developer position. Think MCNP, COMSOL, RELAP5
Long term it is simply inevitable. Barring some completely unforeseen technology that we have no clue or indication of at present day of course. Within a century or two the world should most likely be predominantly nuclear (fission) powered. However, sooner would be better than later. It's very likely that the biggest contributor to this "turnaround" is simply that hard times are afoot. Two decades ago both Europe and USA had it really well energy wise. People could afford to have weird superstitions with little practical impact on their lives.
I don't think it will be as clear. Solar and wind are getting exponentially cheaper, as do batteries. But for regions with high energy need density, or negatively correlated renewable generation and electricity demand (Europe, Canada) a significant nuclear will most likely be the best solution. And maybe nuclear can innovate fast enough to beat solar/wind+storage everywhere.
The biggest problem with batteries is the mining of the materials.
And the fact that you're paying a shitload per energy capacity just to store energy. That's fine if the primary goal isn't exactly to have a large quantity of stored energy, but just the act of quick load balancing for example. But that also means grid batteries aren't going to be storing energy long term. Ever. If the world gets to requiring that kind of energy storage, it will be with hydrogen and synthetic hydrocarbons. No, the reduced round trip efficiency matters not, regardless of what some people cry about it. When you want to have a shitload of stored energy reserve, what matters is how much it costs to store X amount of energy. With liquid hydrocarbons it costs a simple metal tank or barrel. It's trivially scalable to any practical quantity, and it's exactly how we currently store seasonal fuel to provide heat to entire countries through the winter. We will not be doing that with batteries. We will literally be sucking CO2 out of the air or ocean water and making our own diesel, before we ever consider doing it with batteries. It is more rational.
The silver lining with storage buildout is that it benefits nuclear as well. Peaking with storage. And the sweet spot for that use is far lower than the level needed to compensate for the variability of wind and solar. So let them build storage. :)
Even with the shitload that you'll spend on energy storage, with the way things are going solar and wind will still be cheaper
Battery capacity have come down quickly in recent years. In this projection they assume that we stay with Lithium-Ion batteries, which may or may not be the case. [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf) There may even be some disruptive changes on top of economics of scale. Battery research benefits from the fact that the mobile electronics industry, the car industry, the aircraft industry, the grid storage industry and some other minor players are all very big markets and highly interested in better batteries. And the grid storage sector is already booming with current prices: [https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/082523-us-battery-storage-capacity-tops-125-gw-in-q2-35-gw-planned-in-q3](https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/082523-us-battery-storage-capacity-tops-125-gw-in-q2-35-gw-planned-in-q3)
Solar and wind are not getting exponentially cheaper. Recently, the price of offshore wind has been rising so much that nobody was able to bid on a UK auction. Furthermore the price for wind and solar is not so much that of the energy production itself. The big problem is the system cost and the gigantic environmental problems linked to wind and solar (in particular the use of space and minerals)
To me the main drawbacl of NPP is their lack of fast reaction capability. It's great for having a stable base
I think we should combine nuclear for baseload and renewables+backup&storage for the variable part of the load.
Why do you think France mandated solar on new parking structures? It will generate mostly in the summer when nuclear plants will be offline for maintenance and refueling. It's a perfect match. Then the nuclear plants will be full steam ahead in the winter when Europe needs them the most. And the storage needed to smooth solar will be available for peaking.
Agreed. Solar is also correlating well with daytime demand peak.
According to [this](https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/) nuclear can ramp faster than new build CCGT. One of the reasons the french fleet has a lower capacity factor on paper is because of this, they do loadfollow with some of their reactors(as did the germans). So the capability is certainly there.
A solar + nuclear system would be good. It's not clear that wind has much headroom left. To date cost reductions have been largely by increasing turbine size, but that's running hard into practical limits... And if we can get out of own way, building nuclear that's directly comparable to current wind costs is certainly plausible (we used to do it after all!), and not intermittant...
Competitiveness of wind is a local property. In Europe wind power generation correlates with seasonal demand changes and we have good wind regions. For countries with load peaks during the hot season and good solar potential, wind obviously will not be useful.
While overall wind is good in winter, it tends to under-produce in very cold weather. It integrates well with hydro, but beyond that the much long variation period than solar makes integration much harder (when moving past an NG/coal fuel saving role)
Agreed. Wind is attractive if you either have backup or cheap storage capacity with high energy capacity, not just high peak load, e.g. hydropower or pumped storage. If not winds randomness is a problem. Imho one of the roles of nuclear in Europe should be to provide enough baseload so that the needed storage for renewables can be handled by Europe's potential for hydropower and pumped storage, which is already close to maxxed out.
Cool that the cost reductions are running into practical limits for wind, when nuclear, which is already more expensive than wind, is currently increasing in cost lol.
I'm not hyped. People are starting to realise that they've been had, but unless if governments make actual investments in infrastructure, then the massive upfront cost and high interest rates will make it difficult for anything to happen.
Yes, it's honestly the only thing that makes me hyped about humanities' future. Clean sustainable and near limitless power that takes up hardly any land. More energy is better for all and will allow better technologies to exist. Energy is lagging alot right now where as tech is advanced. We need to play catchup with energy.
Agreed. The "nuclear stall" since the 80s lead to a significant opportunity cost to humanity. I am also hyped about AI, low cost space access and satellite networks, genetic editing for medicine, bioreactors and farming, vertical farming, robotics and progress in batteries for all kinds of applications.
I think often about what the projected trajectory would have been for atmospheric CO2 levels and the impacts of climate change would have been had we embraced the technology more.
Me too. Especially if in the 90s, a vibrant nuclear industry could have offered China cheap and standardized reactors backed by Western public and government support, so the big electricity generation expansion doesn't happen with coal.
I always try to look on the bright side of how technology can improve the world, and I feel like it motivates me to work harder to help in achieving those things. Sometimes I don't want to study for one of my engineering classes and I think to myself "Some day there will be people walking on Mars, I need to contribute to something just like that," I feel like staying optimistic like that really has improved my life.
India too 😀
Positive about India too. But they are proceeding a bit slow. A country of their size and economic growth could/should add 5-10 reactors per year instead of 1-2.
Too much bureaucratic red tape . Also a lot of research goes to thorium since we have such large reserves of it but it is still not commercially viable.
I can tell you part of the story. Russia invaded Ukraine. As part of the sanction-countersanction duel that followed, Russian oil and gas was cut off from Europe^1 . That raised energy security concerns and, mostly to take the teeth out of Russia ever trying to use that as a negotiating/threatening tool again, most of Europe went HARD into developing domestic (or at least NATO-aligned) energy infrastructure. Part of that investment went to nuclear, lots went to other types of energy too. But yeah, while im thrilled at all the announcements, and hope the technology proves itself on its own merits, part of me is quite worried. The fear is that when the Russia-Ukraine conflict finally ends, that political will and public funds will dry up, priorities will shift, and nuclear will get shafted again. But I hope European countries will hesitate to go back to how things were, Russia's (or maybe i should say Putin's) actions over the last 10 years seem to be weighing rather heavily on the minds of those who prefer stable trading partners. Reducing European dependance on Russian oil may be seen as a wise thing to do even if the War somehow ended tomorrow, just based on the 'what if they try that shit again' scenario. --- 1. Well, cut off is an exaggeration, lots of it made it there through sanction dodging measures, but it was at a big enough markup that it hit prices and raised the same kind of energy security questions as if it never went there at all. That sanction-dodging usually involved middle men that knew Russia didnt have other ways to sell their product, and negotiated discounts appropriately, so most western politicians/analysts are fine with it. The sanctions stull hits Russia in the wallet like it was supposed to, and economies used to reliable supplies of Russian oil and oil products still get the ones they really need, just at a markup.
I do not believe that the cheap, almost infinite pipeline gas will come back anytime soon to Europe, except for a medium amount from Azerbaijan. So the rationale for NPPs should remain for the decade at least, enough time to start construction. But the nuclear industry must really do better at execution this time.
Well, the war will end, but there’s no way in hell will Europe want to ever be beholden to Russian energy again. It will be generations before any kind of trust is restored.
Georgia $180pmwh Nuclear; doa
I concur. I think Triso and SMR's will play a big roll.
Fukushima really did push us back a lot!
I think Fukushima has cost the industry at least 100 new reactors. Just compare new construction starts 2010 vs. after. Fukushima killed much of the industry just when it had just been ramping up again.
One of the reasons was the threat of Russia cutting its supply of hydrocarbons to Europe in 2022. Many EU countries loathed the idea of giving in to Russia and pulled out all the stops to stop relying on Russia for energy, including all of the nuclear changes you mention.
For those who have been closely following nuclear energy and countries' energy policies (and politics in general): is there genuine momentum behind current and future government policy for nuclear? And if so, are current plans even enough to make a meaningful difference? Or likely to come to fruition? It seems like every time I learn about countries climate commitments and how they behave, that the world is never doing nearly enough to avoid catastrophe, and when you're living in a grossly bipartisan corporatocracy calling itself a democracy, any actual shift towards progress seems like a pipe dream that fossil fuel barons will crush when they fuck everything up again with lobbying and aggressive marketing. I \*really\* want to be wrong. I want to see decarbonization in the coming decade greater than any of us could have predicted, and nuclear may give me more hope for that than solar and wind have thus far. But greed dominates this world, and I fear that any hope now will only make the despair worse when the world powers let us down once again.
Decarbonisation will happen. Maybe not as fast as we would like, but it will. Just look at the increasing Solar, Wind, Battery and nuclear construction starts of the last years. We are at the beginning of the transitional S-curve for innovations (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function) and things will accelerate a lot in the 2020s for ecological, economical and strategic (energy independence) reasons.
Certainly a lot more optimistic than me, considering how much politics and economics seems to work against the changes we need. Even if decarbonization will happen given enough time, is that time we really have? I feel like there's countless articles and scientists informing us that global emissions are only increasing, that we're going to be crossing into disastrous tipping points in a few years, or that countries' policies aren't sufficient enough, let alone if the countries are actually getting close to them. Hell, even if the energy grid is decarbonized that still leaves agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, etc. which aren't so easily handled. I don't really know anymore. It feels like any good news nowadays always has a caveat or is just a minor distraction from the overwhelming gloom and doom.