tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033288879708780106.post2791606324278675563..comments2023-04-07T05:19:44.951-04:00Comments on Yes Vermont Yankee: (Escu) Five things I like about nuclear powerMeredith Angwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737538041807740424noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033288879708780106.post-92003460043937399142018-03-17T07:47:50.122-04:002018-03-17T07:47:50.122-04:00One of the big factors that I like to emphasize in...One of the big factors that I like to emphasize in favoring nuclear is energy density. You get a lot more energy and a lot less waste on a per unit fuel basis (e.g., grams of fuel input) from "burning" uranium (or thorium, or plutonium) than you do an equivalent amount of carbon-based fuels. You also save on the extraction and transport steps. True, you need to enrich the natural material, but you must also process fossil fuels in some ways prior to combustion. So on the input side we sometimes have coal trains that are miles long feeding fuel to our power plant, compared to the amount of uranium that produces the same quantity of energy, which would fit into a typical ambassador bag. On the waste stream side, you've got some fuel assemblies cooling off in a storage pool, all packaged and contained, managed and monitored, contrasted with a sludge pond hundreds of acres in areal extent, open to the environment, ready to leak or collapse (as has happened).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033288879708780106.post-45118746760329521722018-03-14T21:26:27.331-04:002018-03-14T21:26:27.331-04:00Walt,
Walt,
Thank you for your comments.
This i...Walt,<br /><br />Walt,<br /><br />Thank you for your comments.<br /><br />This is a guest post and I do not know precisely what the author intended. However, I don't think he was deliberately "spinning" things to look bad for non-nuclear plants. He may have just looked up capacity factors for various types of plants in EIA or Wikipedia and done the comparison.<br /><br /> Indeed, gas-fired plants are often load following plants. However, there is no reason that a coal plant or a combined cycle gas plant should be load-following, as I see it. Why doesn't this type of plant run as baseload with the same capacity factor as nuclear? These are steam cycle plants, after all, as nuclear is. <br /><br />Why don't these types of steam plants run as 90% capacity factor baseload? Perhaps because they are more expensive or less reliable than nuclear? I think that teasing out dispatch % from intrinsic availability % is not an easy call, especially for non-nuclear steam plants.<br /><br />While we are at it, I get annoyed when hydro plants are called baseload. Hydro plants, overall, have less than 50% capacity factors. Many have capacity factors down around 25%. They are eminently dispatchable and very useful and very low carbon but...they are not baseload! (Walt, you didn't say hydro was baseload. This is not about your comment! I am just sounding off about one of my pet peeves.)<br /><br />And, I totally agree with you that nuclear plants are the best at managing their waste streams! Meredith Angwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02737538041807740424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033288879708780106.post-35882385783547305332018-03-14T20:32:10.030-04:002018-03-14T20:32:10.030-04:00Hi Meredith,
First, I am a huge supporter of nucle...Hi Meredith,<br />First, I am a huge supporter of nuclear and I agree with everything you said. But to John's point, the way the capacity factors were presented seemed a bit deceptive. I am a big fan of full disclosure and as soon as I see someone appearing to "spin" something, everything that say becomes suspect to me. On the other hand, had the post clarified the percentages given were somewhat overstated because of that coal and gas were sometimes intentionally throttled back to follow demand, it would have been more accurate and made me, at least, think wow, this guy's really trying to present an accurate and balanced picture. <br /><br />OTOH, if he had simply compared nuclear to the abysmal CF's for wind and solar, we could have avoided the problem altogether.<br /><br />BTW, the best thing about nuclear for me wasn't even mentioned. And that's it's lack of emissions, especially carbon. <br /><br />I also like that its waste stream is completely contained, tracked, audited, and inexpensively managed. Unlike ALL other forms of energy generation including wind and solar.<br /><br />Cheers<br />Walt Heenanhttp://www.utimz2.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033288879708780106.post-36799367055082109302018-03-14T10:18:41.998-04:002018-03-14T10:18:41.998-04:00John,
You are correct. Part of it is load follow...John,<br /><br /> You are correct. Part of it is load following. But part of the lower capacity factor is "organic" to the type of plant. <br /><br />When we visited a coal plant, ("All Around the Coal Boiler" posst on this blog) we learned that they use a lot of coal (no surprise) but it is impossible to do real quality control input on that amount of coal. So sometimes the coal had the wrong kind of slag and the boiler was messed up for several days. In the early days of nuclear, it didn't have such a good capacity factor, but people were: "all right! we are doing better than the coal plants!" They didn't realize how well nuclear can do.<br /><br />And the problems of getting gas in the winter in the Northeast are well known. <br /><br />So, only part of the difference is load following.Meredith Angwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02737538041807740424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033288879708780106.post-12623967278066232902018-03-14T09:47:35.642-04:002018-03-14T09:47:35.642-04:00Nuclear plants produce power over 92% of the time....<i> Nuclear plants produce power over 92% of the time. Coal approximately 57% of the time, and natural gas only 53% of the time. </i><br /><br />Is this referring to capacity factor?<br /><br />In which case don't the rather low figures for coal and gas reflect the fact that these plants are typically load-following whereas nuclear (in the US and most other places) runs flat out. Although in France where they have such a high proportion of nuclear that they have to load-follow, I think they get a capacity factor of around 77%.John Stumbleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04019330196397041999noreply@blogger.com