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Earth Power

'Nuclear Power's Reliability is Dropping as Extreme Weather Increases' (arstechnica.com) 197

Posted by EditorDavid from the keeping-the-lights-on dept.
A comprehensive new analysis published in Nature "calculates that the frequency of climate-related nuclear plant outages is almost eight times higher than it was in the 1990s," reports Ars Technica.

"The analysis also estimates that the global nuclear fleet will lose up to 1.4 percent — about 36 TWh — of its energy production in the next 40 years and up to 2.4 percent, or 61 TWh, by 2081-2100." The author analyzed publicly available databases from the International Atomic Energy Agency to identify all climate-linked shutdowns (partial and complete) of the world's 408 operational reactors. Unplanned outages are generally very well documented, and available data made it possible to calculate trends in the frequency of outages that were linked to environmental causes over the past 30 years. The author also used more detailed data from the last decade (2010-2019) to provide one of the first analyses of which types of climate events have had the most impact on nuclear power.

While the paper doesn't directly link the reported events to climate change, the findings do show an overall increase in the number of outages due to a range of climate events. The two main categories of climate disruptions broke down into thermal disruptions (heat, drought, and wildfire) and storms (including hurricanes, typhoons, lightning, and flooding). In the case of heat and drought, the main problem is the lack of cool-enough water — or in the case of drought, enough water at all — to cool the reactor. However, there were also a number of outages due to ecological responses to warmer weather; for example, larger than usual jellyfish populations have blocked the intake pipes on some reactors. Storms and wildfires, on the other hand, caused a range of problems, including structural damage, precautionary preemptive shutdowns, reduced operations, and employee evacuations. In the timeframe of 2010 to 2019, the leading causes of outages were hurricanes and typhoons in most parts of the world, although heat was still the leading factor in Western Europe (France in particular). While these represented the most frequent causes, the analysis also showed that droughts were the source of the longest disruptions and thus the largest power losses.

The author calculated that the average frequency of climate-linked outages went from 0.2 outages per year in the 1990s to 1.5 outages in the timeframe of 2010 to 2019. A retrospective analysis further showed that, for every 1 degree C rise in temperature (above the average temperature between 1951 and 1980), the energy output of the global fleet fell about 0.5 percent.
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'Nuclear Power's Reliability is Dropping as Extreme Weather Increases' More

'Nuclear Power's Reliability is Dropping as Extreme Weather Increases'

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  • Only an issue for a country, like France. But not for the world.

    World wide drop of 1.4% - 2.4% says nothing about France were the drop is 30%.

    Not really an issue as France is exiting nuclear power production, shifting to wind and solar. Well, they likely keep ~20% of their plants which are not or less affected by the draughts.

    Worldwide it is not really a problem either, as China e.g. is building new types of nukes that are air cooled. More precisely: do not need as much cooling as old style plants.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The Texas power outage, which in turn lead to chemical shortages that lead to among, other things, the current foam shortage, was largely due to traditional power. Gas, coal, nuclear, water inlets froze. No power. They were not built for something that never happens, days of a hard freeze. Really, never. We do have a global supply chain. The world flys to Las Vegas and it is too hot for planes to take off to get home. There are hidden kinks everywhere.
    • Of 1 to 2% would have all sorts of implications. Things play out very differently on the global stage. There's lots of consequences you just don't think about. It's sort of the problem with climate change. Is that when you list the changes they don't sound like that big of a deal. That's because human beings are really bad at math. In terms of percentages we mostly think about the things we buy, and 1 for 2% increase in our expenses doesn't sound so bad. But think of it this way, if the baseline for inflati

  • Who was the stupid who wrote the original article? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by franzrogar ( 3986783 ) on Sunday July 25, 2021 @04:31AM (#61617901)

    I mean... Look at Fukushima: it was hit by a 9 earthquake, by a tsunami and it was still working without any problem. The problem was when the electric safety failed to keep sending cooling into the plant.

    So... please... ENLIGHTEN ME... how many coal power plants, how many wind engines, how many geothermic plans would survive an 9 earthquake and a tsunami without failing like Fukushima did?

    • 1) Fukushima did not survive an mag 9 earth quake.
      The mag 9 earth quake was 450 miles away

      2) Fukushima did not survive an mag 9 earth quake
      - oops am I repeating my self?
      all the internal piping broke through to the estimated about 6.3 mag earth quake - that actually hit the plant

      3) Fukushima did not survive an mag 9 earth quake
      - wow it seems I'm repeating my self
      Fukushima went offline long before the tsunami hit it - the surrounding power lines all had collapsed. The plant(s) itself could not provide power anymore. AND (obviously): the power from outside was cut. So it had no cooling.

      how many coal power plants, how many wind engines, how many geothermic plans
      Depends. As the Fukushima plant did not survive the mere 6.3 mag earth quake - before the tsunami put some creaming on top of the cake - who knows?

      Like the masts hoisting the power lines in and out of the Fukushima plant toppled, a wind mill might topple.
      The same way the water pipes in the Fukushima plant broke due to the earth quake, the same pipes might break in a coal plant.

      Similar in a Geo-thermal plant.

      But wat is your point?

      A breaking - insert plant type - does not make you evacuate millions of people ... unless it is a nuclear plant.

      Ah, yeah, and now after 30 minutes of chaos and wrong decisions and not knowing what to do and not even calling authorities that there is a problem:
      the tsunami hits the plant - and destroys the emergency power - which would have been completely useless anyway, see above: as the cooling pipes are already BROKEN!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That is correct. In fact emergency power to the pumps was available in time to avoid meltdowns, but because the pipework and valves were damaged almost all of the water that was pumped in ended up in storage tanks instead of in the reactors. Due to loss of monitoring capability nobody was aware of it until it was too late, and even if they had been there wasn't much they could have done.

        A relatively small quake, the kind that Japan experiences fairly regularly, damaged the plant and lead to an inevitable me

    • Re:Who was the stupid who wrote the original artic (Score:4, Informative)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Sunday July 25, 2021 @10:50AM (#61618435) Journal

      I mean... Look at Fukushima: it was hit by a 9 earthquake

      No, it wasn't. The ground acceleration or Gal [wikipedia.org] Fukushima was exposed to was 160 Gal and it was rated to 600 Gal. No it would not have survived a direct "9" on the Richter scale, it would have been rubble. Which, incidently is why the public have no input as to where nuclear facilities are sited, for this very reason. Geology determines the appropriate place to put a nuclear reactor, to minimize exposure to earthquakes.

      The problem was when the electric safety failed to keep sending cooling into the plant.

      The problem was the inherent belief in the technological superiority of nuclear power to survive such an incident produced by collusion between TEPCO and the regulator so that costs to raise seawalls or move backup power generators to where they would not be affected by flood waters were not incurred.

      You can read The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission [reliefweb.int] which is the official report produced by an independent commission mandated by the Japanese government.

      Additionally not only where TEPCO operating the reactor *outside* of its design basis, it was operating the reactor in direct contravention of the seismic guidelines for operating nuclear power plants, specifically that "S" class facilities (those that are directly exposed to radionuclides) have to have independent and reliable power facilities available to mitigate the very issues that caused Fukushima to explode.

      Criminal negligence destroyed Fukushima, the disaster should never happened if it was being operated correctly.

      • No it would not have survived a direct "9" on the Richter scale,

        There are not many buildings that can survive a direct 9 on the Richter scale. That is a hard hit.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrKaos ( 858439 )

          No it would not have survived a direct "9" on the Richter scale,

          There are not many buildings that can survive a direct 9 on the Richter scale. That is a hard hit.

          Which is why Japanese civil engineers have pointed out that the damage done to the plant, specifically the Unit 3 cooling pool is inconsistent with the ground acceleration that the plant was exposed to. Huge amounts of concrete are poured for NPPs, which is one of the reasons Nuclear reactors cost so much.

          To put this into context you have to understand what was happening at Fukushima *before* the tsunami hit the plant. This included additional shielding in the Unit 3 pool and other upgrades so that TEP

      • > Criminal negligence destroyed Fukushima, the disaster should never happened if it was being operated correctly.

        I'm only familiar with the specifics in the case of Unit 1, but certainly the moment when they decided to turn off the isolation condenser in direct contravention of the operating manual seems to be the point where this occurred. They were fully aware that no other cooling system was operational at that point, and they turned off the only remaining one, the one that had the advantage of being

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Fuckushima failed and rather dramatically so. Stop lying.

    • Would have necessitated the evacuation of an entire city and it's surrounding areas for at least a decade or more. Go look up the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster sometime. This is where nimby comes from.

      Yes nuclear power has the capability of being perfectly safe, but not when run by private companies. At some point the plants lifetime is over and it costs billions to shut them down and replace them. It's too tempting to pretend that they don't need to be shut down and that you can just keep running

    • Well, all of the coal, wind, and geothermal would not have failed like Fukushima did. When they fail, they probably cause some localized damage - a boiler exploding, or the wind turbine's tower falling down on something. They don't make vast swaths of land unhealthy to simply stand on for years.

      I agree with your assessment though - even with what hit Fukushima, it could have still been saved if the operator of the plant was competent to operate it. Who puts emergency diesel generators in the basement of

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      how many coal power plants, how many wind engines, how many geothermic plans would survive an 9 earthquake and a tsunami without failing like Fukushima did?

      Without failing like Fukushima did and resulting in ~ $200 billion in costs. All of them. Nothing comes close to being as expensive as when nuclear goes wrong. And that's on top of the fact that nuclear is already one of the most expensive forms of energy.

  • On fault lines, or close to a coast, you shouldn't be terribly surprised when they don't last long.

    I'm still hoping someone comes up with a "clean" fusion reactor within my lifetime. Sooner would be much better though.

    If fusion becomes available, sure, shut down every fission reactor as quickly as possible.

    • Well, in Japan, everywhere is kinda "near the coast". It's not like you have a lot of inland to move to to avoid this.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Well Japan did try to build up some Lebensraum during WW2 Didint work. I think nukes were involved in that failure as well

      • It's not like you have a lot of inland to move to to avoid this.
        Actually they have. But traditionally it was simpler to fish at the coast and farm just right close to it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sneftel ( 15416 )

      As I see it, we have three potential lifelines.

      1. Commercially viable fusion would be nice. But honestly, we are still a very long way out. We've been making slow and steady progress for decades, now; the time for optimism is long gone. We see too clearly all the remaining obstacles.

      2.Technologically, regulatorily and politically acceptable small modular fission reactors. This is not a huge technological problem (compared to fusion), but the military/political issues around nuclear-powered container ships a

  • Given the age of the average nuclear power plant it's no wonder the weather is having an increased impact. Willing to guess weather has less impact on newer facilities.

  • Conventional generation impact (Score:3)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday July 25, 2021 @06:21AM (#61618031)
    Non nukes such as coal also rely on water as a heat sink, so efficiency issues should impact them as well; as would fires , etc. The real issue is climate change's impact on energy production and what it means for society.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The unique issue with nuclear is that you can't just turn it off, it needs water cooling for extended periods of time or it breaks.

      As a result in very hot weather they either have to shut down the nuclear plants well in advance, just as air con demand goes up, or as they did in France a few years back just dump loads of hot water into rivers and kill all the wildlife living there.

  • PG&E's electrical system near Paradise, California wasn't prepared for windy droughts.

    Austin, Texas' electrical system wasn't prepared for a blizzard.

    Zhengzhou wasn't prepared for the rain.

    The PNW and Canada weren't prepared for 120 F and fires.

    and finally, the Western US wasn't prepared for a mega-drought.

    Until bio CCS happens at a decatrillion-USD-level to undo two centuries of using the sky and the air we breathe as a sewer, every point on Earth is now subject to increasingly-intense weather. This me

    • Pretty much this.

      Nuclear plants are as safe as any building that is built with hazards in mind that are a present danger at the time of their construction. If you told me that in my landlocked, mountainous country we should build with rising sea levels in mind, I'd call you a moron. Likewise, prepping in Texas for a Blizzard would have been considered ludicrous at best ... until this year.

      • Re:Singling-out NP looks like cherry-picking (Score:4, Informative)

        by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Sunday July 25, 2021 @08:21AM (#61618185)
        Texas has had blizzards before and the last 2 times they happened the grid went down too so nothing about this years event is a surprise Texas through the free market has decided its cheaper to let the grid go down once every 10 years than spend billions to weatherproof infrastructure in a state where a blizzard happens once in 10 years. if yo ubelieve in capitalism you have to accept that decision of the free market.

        • I don't believe in anything, actually, but that's not the point. But I was living in Texas, I'd invest in a generator.

  • Other nuclear technologies, such as pebble-bed, molten salt, and advanced small modulator reactors, may also provide more climate-resistant solutions,

    There you have it, light-water reactors (which the article is about) need to be upgraded to being a more resilient type.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Expect that to take 50 years at least and take money and resources away from tech available _now_. Way to make a problem much, much worse.

  • Nuclear is in the same crapper most other energy generation and distribution systems are. Not to be cynical but since energy markets went completely private it seems the industry just siphon off the profits not reinvesting in maintenance or renewal. Once the assets becomes a liability they either force exorbitant high increases to the bill to basically maintain their dividends and have someone pay the capital costs. If people complain too hard the company just goes bankrupt leaving the public purse to deal

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      These are public companies. Buy shares and fire CEOs through shareholder votes if they are looking at only short term profits. its in shareholder interest for a company to build for the long term.
      • Many folks can not pay their utilities least alone purchase shares in them. Realistically I have no good answer beyond government regulation, which sucks but it is a bit better than what I see in deregulated for profit markets.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        its in shareholder interest for a company to build for the long term.

        Nope and that stopped as soon as stock-trading became a thing. The only thing shareholders want is short-term and sometimes medium-term profits. If all goes to hell in the long-term, that is entirely fine.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. What we see is that unregulated private enterprise just cannot do critical infrastructure by themselves. They always go for greed and short-term profits and things go to hell in the long term. Such a non-surprise. The solution is simple: Regulate them carefully or take things away from them. No this is not "socialism". This is called "long-term survival".

  • If everything bad happening in the world is due to climate change we should do something about it.
  • This is why we need energy matrix. From a national security POV, we should never depend on single source of energy. And no, wind/solar come from the source: the sun.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And no, wind/solar come from the source: the sun.

      That is just stupid. In the end, all energy creation comes from some physical effect. Does that make them all come from the same source?

      • wind/solar comes from the sun.
        Are you claiming that geothermal and nuclear power come DIRECTLY from the sun?

        What is stupid, and a good way to help destroy America, are the ppl that continue to push for America to be JUST on wind/solar or JUST on nuclear power or JUST ....

  • Does not only affect nuclear plants, it is relevant for any heat powered plant, aka Coal or Gas,

  • The problem will be lessened as the climate change will be lessened

  • Fine, compare to other renewables. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday July 25, 2021 @09:52AM (#61618357)

    climate-linked outages went from 0.2 outages per year in the 1990s to 1.5 outages in the timeframe of 2010 to 2019.

    Ok... now compare to any renewable energy source which has prolonged outages at least once a day (solar), at least once every few weeks (wind), or maybe outages lasting a year or more (hydro, if the water levels drop enough).

    Maybe the article was meant to be pushing for greater use of coal based power plants? The Chinese have your ear on that [yale.edu]...

    It is maybe a good reason to consider building more small modular nuclear reactors that have fewer weaknesses and being geographically distributed, less prone to being affected by specific weather related events.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The difference is if a nuclear plant goes offline you lose gigawatts of power, sometimes with no notice. You either have to keep gigawatts spinning in reserve or get hit with blackouts.

      If a wind turbines goes offline... You lose some megawatts. Maybe a few hundred if the grid tie for the entire farm is damaged.

      The UK's National Grid considers wind more reliable than any other source because it is distributed, highly predictable over the short term and doesn't require nearly as much reserve as any other majo

  • When people say Nuclear has a 90% Capacity Factor they don't mention a duration, nor do they qualify how they are using the measure.

    To use it properly the duration has to be specified, for example "The nuclear facility at somewhere achieved a 90% Capacity Factor for 3 years, between 2015 and 2018". To say otherwise is like describing the speed of a vehicle as "80 miles", it doesn't make sense.

    Consequently extreme weather events will reduce the Capacity Factor for certain periods of time.

  • Replace them with Gen 4 reactors and lets see how they compare.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Outages are not "climate-related," they are weather-related. That day's weather is part of the climate. Whether the climate has really changed requires another 100 years of data.

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