>Er is geen enkele valabele reden om kerncentrales langer open te houden, en toch is het een boodschap die de groenen onmogelijk verkocht kregen aan hun coalitiepartners en aan de brede publieke opinie.
> Laat ons even het rijtje afgaan. Kerncentrales zijn zo duur dat ze enkel met monstersubsidies kunnen worden gebouwd en rendabel kunnen worden gemaakt. Kerncentrales zijn stroef: ze kunnen moeilijk aan- en uitgeschakeld worden om pieken en dalen van wind- en zonne-energie op te vangen. Gascentrales zijn daar veel beter voor geschikt en ook waterstof en opslag in batterijen kunnen – op termijn – meer soelaas bieden. Kerncentrales stoten dan wel erg weinig CO2 uit, ze produceren wel gevaarlijk hoogradioactief afval dat voor vele honderdduizenden jaren moet worden geborgen in diepe kleilagen. Een ‘stort’ dat geen enkele gemeente onder haar grondgebied wil.
> Bovendien zijn de centrales erg onveilig. Wereldwijd zijn er 440 operationeel en sinds 1957 zijn er al meer dan twintig ernstige ongevallen geweest, dat is 5%. Het argument dat daarbij weinig dodelijke slachtoffers vielen, is correct, maar mag niet doen vergeten dat de financiële schade in de tientallen miljarden loopt en de ecologische schade eveneens immens is (het gebied rond de centrale van Tsjernobyl is nu nog altijd off limits). Het feit dat geen enkele verzekeraar kerncentrales wil verzekeren, spreekt boekdelen
Ooof, the inconvenient truth about nuclear! Since this is reddit this article will be downvoted to hell over speaking this truth.
> Wat de kernuitstap betreft, wordt de bal nu vakkundig in het kamp van de believers gelegd. Zij zullen de argumenten (en wellicht ook de miljoenen) moeten aandragen om ENGIE ervan te overtuigen om Doel 4 en Tihange 3 open te houden. Het Franse energiebedrijf liet in het verleden al verstaan dat dat haast niet meer mogelijk is. Het heeft kernenergie afgezworen en zal enkel toestemmen met een verlenging – zo wordt algemeen aangenomen – als het gaat over een beperkte periode. De vraag van N-VA om ook de vijf oude centrales (zelfs de ‘scheurtjescentrales’) open te houden maakt geen schijn van kans, zo valt te horen binnen het bedrijf. De kostprijs van de verlenging is de grote onbekende. ENGIE zou daar zelf niet eens een berekening van hebben gemaakt.
Awesome. Let them do it. Every fucking time jealous nuclear fanboys shout that we should keep the plants open and even build new ones, they completely ignore the fact that the private industry has zero interest in doing so because nuclear isn’t economically viable.
Now let NVA figure it out. They won’t be able to (and probably blame Groen, somehow).
Same old arguments that have been rebutted time and time again.
We’ve got our gas-supplier using our euros to invade friendly nations right on our doorstep, causing prices in oil, gas and electricity to skyrocket and an energy crisis not seen since 1970 exactly because of our dependence on gas, and that’s _before_ the nuclear power plants are even shut down.
Anyone who’s still supporting relying _more_ on gas in this day and age, should be properly embarassed, ashamed and ge-pek-en-verend.
Whatever “monstersubsidies” nuclear power requires [citation needed], it pales in comparison to the monster subsidies the state will have to pay for the surge in poverty households who can’t afford their electricity and heating bills anymore, the extra defense costs we’ll have to pay in order to counter-balance the self-funded military nation next door, the social welfare costs for the refugee crisis building in the east, and the indulgences for our moral because we could’ve helped stop this but instead we prefer sucking Putin’s gas dick some more.
Was this article written last year? Jesus christ, talk about tone-deaf.
Problem was that someone whafted at engie with a lot of money for new gas power plants. Management of Engie is not going to let that money go. So yeah, keeping them open longer will cost money now (a lot more) then in 2015. It is still possible to prolong the operational lifespan of 4 of the newest reactors from an engineering standpoint, however due to the legaslative fuck up that is called Belgium, the will be closed.
Insurance wise: a nuclear powerplant is way safer to operate then a gas powerplant (1 death every 14 years, while gas powerplants do 3 deaths per year) in other words: energy produced via atom splitting has saved lives.
From an insurance standpoint of view: sure they still will be insured, why not. It is a heck of an ROI.
Safetyguidelines: a nuclear powerplant has a lot, and I mean a lot of safety guidelines (practically taking a shit requires you to fill out a LOPA). There are redudant systems on redundancies. This is the reason why they are so expensive here: legislation and safetyguidelines/systems.
Operating life: a nuclear powerplant as we know it today, like the PWR in Doel 4, has an operating lifespan of at least 40 years, but you can prolong it even further when they upgrade the system (to 60, even 75 years) Doel 4 (and 3) came online in 1985. So they still have a lot of life left (would´nt it be a waste of money to shut them down now ? I mean, they are already built, lets use them to their fullest).
The operating lifespan of a gas plant is roughly 30 years.
Maintenance: a nuclear powerplant can work continously for 1 to 2 years before new rods needed to be installed. Gas powerplants require maintenance twice a year, which will result in a shutdown of operation (no energy production). Due to the redundant systems on a nuclear powerplant, if something fails, they do not need to take the whole plant off line. For gasplants, it is different, they are not bound to the same legislation so they can skip redundant systems (cheaper to build).
Efficiency: a nucleair powerplant has an efficiency of 93%, whilst gasfired plants are around 56%. So you need to burn more gas then uranium (same energy equivalent, not weight !).
Pollution: nucleair powerplants do produce nuclear waste and they are split up in 3 categories: low level (90%), intermediate level (7%) and high level waste (3%). The high level waste is the nucleair fuel, the others are from maintenance and decomissioning. For a decade now, the EU, Japan and US are processing this high level waste to extract the fissile material still present in the waste and reintroducing it with new fuel to the plants. There is an estimation that globally 127000 Mt are reprocessed since the start of civil nuclear energy production out of the 390000Mt that was produced. To this day, we are reprocessing waste. New nuclear reactors like a thorium plant with a breeder reactor can even use nuclear waste as a fuel without any preconditioning. High level waste stays active for 9000 years, intermediate max 50, low 1 year. The waste is now stored in places with enough shielding that exposure to the atmosphere is impossible (earths core is radioactive too 😉). CO2 wise, a nuclear powerplant emits 117 grams of CO2 per kWh generated on average. This includes the construction, dismanteling and fueling.
A gas powerplant emits around 450 grams of CO2 per kWh generated (for the newest ones, older ones emit 600 to 650 grams of CO2 per kWh generated). And that is just 1 gas. You have methane leaks during extraction, transport and usage. The heat capacity of methane is 30 times higher then CO2. On average, about 2.3% of the annual gas extraction leaks away in the atmosphere (7.5 Mt per annum). 1 kg of methane equals 30 kg of CO2. My guesstimate is that the actual emission of a gas powered plant is around 800 grams per kWh produced.
Then we have the NOx part, Particulate matter 2.5 and 10, dihydrogen sulfide and SOx.
ROI: the cost to generate 1 kWh of electricity is around 6 cents (euro) with nuclear. For gas it is hard to say as most literature was made when gas was cheap (1 cent ?). So your ROI for a gas plant is way shorter then for a nuclear powerplant (figures without construction or labour costs, if you add those, the difference will be greater but the conxlusion the same)
Is a nuclear powerplant plant the sacred grail for everything? No, but it does emit less of greenhouse gasses. We should use this as a backbone, max energy production from nuclear, converting excess power into hydrogen, use wind, solar and biomass as standard and use hydrogen fuel cells/burner plants as peaker plants.
De Vlaamse regering… we zijn onherroepelijk verloren, dan.
4 comments
>Er is geen enkele valabele reden om kerncentrales langer open te houden, en toch is het een boodschap die de groenen onmogelijk verkocht kregen aan hun coalitiepartners en aan de brede publieke opinie.
> Laat ons even het rijtje afgaan. Kerncentrales zijn zo duur dat ze enkel met monstersubsidies kunnen worden gebouwd en rendabel kunnen worden gemaakt. Kerncentrales zijn stroef: ze kunnen moeilijk aan- en uitgeschakeld worden om pieken en dalen van wind- en zonne-energie op te vangen. Gascentrales zijn daar veel beter voor geschikt en ook waterstof en opslag in batterijen kunnen – op termijn – meer soelaas bieden. Kerncentrales stoten dan wel erg weinig CO2 uit, ze produceren wel gevaarlijk hoogradioactief afval dat voor vele honderdduizenden jaren moet worden geborgen in diepe kleilagen. Een ‘stort’ dat geen enkele gemeente onder haar grondgebied wil.
> Bovendien zijn de centrales erg onveilig. Wereldwijd zijn er 440 operationeel en sinds 1957 zijn er al meer dan twintig ernstige ongevallen geweest, dat is 5%. Het argument dat daarbij weinig dodelijke slachtoffers vielen, is correct, maar mag niet doen vergeten dat de financiële schade in de tientallen miljarden loopt en de ecologische schade eveneens immens is (het gebied rond de centrale van Tsjernobyl is nu nog altijd off limits). Het feit dat geen enkele verzekeraar kerncentrales wil verzekeren, spreekt boekdelen
Ooof, the inconvenient truth about nuclear! Since this is reddit this article will be downvoted to hell over speaking this truth.
> Wat de kernuitstap betreft, wordt de bal nu vakkundig in het kamp van de believers gelegd. Zij zullen de argumenten (en wellicht ook de miljoenen) moeten aandragen om ENGIE ervan te overtuigen om Doel 4 en Tihange 3 open te houden. Het Franse energiebedrijf liet in het verleden al verstaan dat dat haast niet meer mogelijk is. Het heeft kernenergie afgezworen en zal enkel toestemmen met een verlenging – zo wordt algemeen aangenomen – als het gaat over een beperkte periode. De vraag van N-VA om ook de vijf oude centrales (zelfs de ‘scheurtjescentrales’) open te houden maakt geen schijn van kans, zo valt te horen binnen het bedrijf. De kostprijs van de verlenging is de grote onbekende. ENGIE zou daar zelf niet eens een berekening van hebben gemaakt.
Awesome. Let them do it. Every fucking time jealous nuclear fanboys shout that we should keep the plants open and even build new ones, they completely ignore the fact that the private industry has zero interest in doing so because nuclear isn’t economically viable.
Now let NVA figure it out. They won’t be able to (and probably blame Groen, somehow).
Same old arguments that have been rebutted time and time again.
We’ve got our gas-supplier using our euros to invade friendly nations right on our doorstep, causing prices in oil, gas and electricity to skyrocket and an energy crisis not seen since 1970 exactly because of our dependence on gas, and that’s _before_ the nuclear power plants are even shut down.
Anyone who’s still supporting relying _more_ on gas in this day and age, should be properly embarassed, ashamed and ge-pek-en-verend.
Whatever “monstersubsidies” nuclear power requires [citation needed], it pales in comparison to the monster subsidies the state will have to pay for the surge in poverty households who can’t afford their electricity and heating bills anymore, the extra defense costs we’ll have to pay in order to counter-balance the self-funded military nation next door, the social welfare costs for the refugee crisis building in the east, and the indulgences for our moral because we could’ve helped stop this but instead we prefer sucking Putin’s gas dick some more.
Was this article written last year? Jesus christ, talk about tone-deaf.
Problem was that someone whafted at engie with a lot of money for new gas power plants. Management of Engie is not going to let that money go. So yeah, keeping them open longer will cost money now (a lot more) then in 2015. It is still possible to prolong the operational lifespan of 4 of the newest reactors from an engineering standpoint, however due to the legaslative fuck up that is called Belgium, the will be closed.
Insurance wise: a nuclear powerplant is way safer to operate then a gas powerplant (1 death every 14 years, while gas powerplants do 3 deaths per year) in other words: energy produced via atom splitting has saved lives.
From an insurance standpoint of view: sure they still will be insured, why not. It is a heck of an ROI.
Safetyguidelines: a nuclear powerplant has a lot, and I mean a lot of safety guidelines (practically taking a shit requires you to fill out a LOPA). There are redudant systems on redundancies. This is the reason why they are so expensive here: legislation and safetyguidelines/systems.
Operating life: a nuclear powerplant as we know it today, like the PWR in Doel 4, has an operating lifespan of at least 40 years, but you can prolong it even further when they upgrade the system (to 60, even 75 years) Doel 4 (and 3) came online in 1985. So they still have a lot of life left (would´nt it be a waste of money to shut them down now ? I mean, they are already built, lets use them to their fullest).
The operating lifespan of a gas plant is roughly 30 years.
Maintenance: a nuclear powerplant can work continously for 1 to 2 years before new rods needed to be installed. Gas powerplants require maintenance twice a year, which will result in a shutdown of operation (no energy production). Due to the redundant systems on a nuclear powerplant, if something fails, they do not need to take the whole plant off line. For gasplants, it is different, they are not bound to the same legislation so they can skip redundant systems (cheaper to build).
Efficiency: a nucleair powerplant has an efficiency of 93%, whilst gasfired plants are around 56%. So you need to burn more gas then uranium (same energy equivalent, not weight !).
Pollution: nucleair powerplants do produce nuclear waste and they are split up in 3 categories: low level (90%), intermediate level (7%) and high level waste (3%). The high level waste is the nucleair fuel, the others are from maintenance and decomissioning. For a decade now, the EU, Japan and US are processing this high level waste to extract the fissile material still present in the waste and reintroducing it with new fuel to the plants. There is an estimation that globally 127000 Mt are reprocessed since the start of civil nuclear energy production out of the 390000Mt that was produced. To this day, we are reprocessing waste. New nuclear reactors like a thorium plant with a breeder reactor can even use nuclear waste as a fuel without any preconditioning. High level waste stays active for 9000 years, intermediate max 50, low 1 year. The waste is now stored in places with enough shielding that exposure to the atmosphere is impossible (earths core is radioactive too 😉). CO2 wise, a nuclear powerplant emits 117 grams of CO2 per kWh generated on average. This includes the construction, dismanteling and fueling.
A gas powerplant emits around 450 grams of CO2 per kWh generated (for the newest ones, older ones emit 600 to 650 grams of CO2 per kWh generated). And that is just 1 gas. You have methane leaks during extraction, transport and usage. The heat capacity of methane is 30 times higher then CO2. On average, about 2.3% of the annual gas extraction leaks away in the atmosphere (7.5 Mt per annum). 1 kg of methane equals 30 kg of CO2. My guesstimate is that the actual emission of a gas powered plant is around 800 grams per kWh produced.
Then we have the NOx part, Particulate matter 2.5 and 10, dihydrogen sulfide and SOx.
ROI: the cost to generate 1 kWh of electricity is around 6 cents (euro) with nuclear. For gas it is hard to say as most literature was made when gas was cheap (1 cent ?). So your ROI for a gas plant is way shorter then for a nuclear powerplant (figures without construction or labour costs, if you add those, the difference will be greater but the conxlusion the same)
Is a nuclear powerplant plant the sacred grail for everything? No, but it does emit less of greenhouse gasses. We should use this as a backbone, max energy production from nuclear, converting excess power into hydrogen, use wind, solar and biomass as standard and use hydrogen fuel cells/burner plants as peaker plants.
De Vlaamse regering… we zijn onherroepelijk verloren, dan.