Posted on 12/31/2025 5:46:38 AM PST by dennisw
Japan is restarting the world's largest nuclear power plant, after a 15-year shutdown following the Fukushima disaster.
Nuclear power used to account for over 30% of Japan's national electricity, so seeing these reactors come back online restores a key pillar of Japan's energy system.
Japan's mountainous terrain forced each region to establish large, redundant energy systems; therefore, the return of nuclear power gives Japan surplus capacity and flexibility in an otherwise stagnant environment.
With the global energy trade growing more unreliable by the day, Japan is now better positioned than most to weather the storm.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
This is the most sensible statement I have heard recently about any countries energy plan.
Unlike what we seem to be constantly subjected to here in New England.
Even though Peter Ziahan is a liberal, he actually makes sense and is very practical. For example, he says he has solar panels where he lives in SW Colorado. That is because in that location his home gets over 300 days of sunshine annually. Plus, solar panels actually function better at colder temperatures which you tend to get at the higher elevation where his home is located.
HOWEVER, he will add that solar panels are a BAD idea around the Great Lakes or Germany where it is gray and overcast so many days of the year.
This is why here in NH we should be building the SECOND reactor at Seabrook NOW. The first one(it was approved for two back in the 1980s) has been online providing consistent power since the late 1980s/early 90s. We need to start construction of the other reactor now so that when the first one expires we are not depending on wind mills and solar panels like the dub A$$es to our south in MA, RI, CT.
Keep in mind no one wants to build any new natural gas lines up to New England because the NIMBY effect. We currently get the majority of our electricity from BURNING natural gas(53%+). Yet, we have to buy a fair amount of that natural gas via LNG tankers primarily from Texas(thanks Texas !).
So, we compete with other LNG on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean on the price of the LNG.
Content ignored.
As all things from Zeihan should be. In 2022 he announced to the world that the reduction in Europe buys of Russian oil would reduce the flow in the pipes, and then the cold would condense wax and plug them entirely. This would end all oil production in Russia.
That is almost a direct quote from him.
Russian oil production 2025, about 10.36 million barrels/day, up slightly from 2024, mostly because of late this year reduction in OPEC+ constraints that Russia adheres to.
Anything from Zeihan is wisely ignored. Self promoter.
I’ve read that nuclear power represents a large percentage of France’s power production.
Just out of curiosity...how much does a kWh of power cost up there? Here in eastern Massachusetts we have the most expensive residential power in the country.
Yes, Zeihan is a man-bun leftist deep stater with such a twisted model of reality, his ramblings are worse than useless. The Fukushima nuclear reactors have generated $36 billion of electricity total during their lifetimes, and the triple reactor meltdowns cost Japan $600 billion in cleanup costs so far. While matter disassembly is obviously the future of energy, it has proven to be not cost effective at this time. If the Japanese can’t do nuclear, nobody can... yet.
I think I am locked in at around $.10/KHW or .11/kwh.
In NH we have been able to buy our power through secondary suppliers for about twenty years.
Usually the contract/rate lock/futures contract lasts about two years. Eversource is still the utility providing the power.
HOWEVER, the actual power usage is only about HALF of my total bill. All the fees, charges, taxes, etc, etc add up to about the same as the electric fee.
FYI, there was a post/thread on Facebook a few weeks ago about some wind turbines being taken down somewhere in coastal MA. I was happily surprised how many posters expressed how much a waste of money they were.
Of course, there were several defenders of how great wind turbines were. Most commenters thought they were a scam.
I posted that now the total amount of KHW would be 1.4% produced by wind power. Down from 1.5%. Which really pissed off a couple liberals(I ended up blocking one).
I looked up on the internet.
In NH throughout the year 55% of our electric comes from natural gas. Around 26% comes from the Seabrook nuclear plant.
Hydro is around 8%.
Burning wood waste(tree tops) is 3-4%.
Burning trash is 2%
Wind and solar are both 2% of less.
Coal is now zero due to the closure of the last plant in NH.
These levels all vary slightly depending on the time of year . Meaning solar does go up in the summer. Wind is also seasonal. Hydro goes up in the spring and down in late summer. Trash is pretty steady. We consistently produce trash to burn!
I didn’t read the article. I saw the name and hammered forth, as everyone should.
“As all things from Zeihan should be. In 2022 he announced to the world that the reduction in Europe buys of Russian oil would reduce the flow in the pipes, and then the cold would condense wax and plug them entirely. This would end all oil production in Russia.”
This happened in the chaotic 1990s to Russian oil production in its far north. Pipes/oil infrastructure burst mostly due to the water in the crude, its freeze-expansion cycle. Russia brought in European oil experts (Shell etc.) to repair this damage. It took them 20 years to clean up this mess.
Russia must keep their far north oil moving south, to counteract this water freeze cycle. This is why Russia/Putin is a highly motivated seller of Urals crude at 34$/barrel. It is up and out and export, or perish.
Run this through AI for more details.
“I’ve read that nuclear power represents a large percentage of France’s power production.”
65% and they export electric to Germany. Which now has no nuclear power. Germany started eliminating nuclear power due to Fukushima.
I just did.
There was a decline in Russia oil output through the 1990s from lack of investment in new fields (this is always euphemism for new drilling), high natural decline rates at existing fields, and the failure to implement enhanced recovery techniques or new field projects during the early post-Soviet period.
Nothing to do with wax or water. This stuff was always pointed at the Alyeska pipeline in Alaska. Waxy clogs and water in the oil (fyi, water is separated from oil very simply at the wellhead) never a factor in Alaska.
Look, just make life easier for yourself. Ignore all things Zeihan.
“I’ve read that nuclear power represents a large percentage of France’s power production.”
70% of the total.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france
They also load follow with their nukes as they were designed from the beginning to do so.
They also reprocess their spent fuel and their reactors can and do burn MOX which is mixed oxide fuel with the recycled plutonium and uranium sent back for more power generation and their entire fission products waste is stored as solid glass under 3 feet of concrete in a single room at La Hague. The French are not scared of using plutonium. Nor are The Russians or the Chinese both reprocess and both use MOX fuels it’s the only way to scale nuclear power up to 5000 Terawatts which is what it would take to have 8 billion humans at EU levels of energy consumption.
You can store nuke heat for up to a year underground by the multiple hundreds of gigawatt hours worth.
Or just use concrete blocks in a warehouse right next to the reactor, or sand or gravel or bricks.
https://eprijournal.com/a-new-use-for-a-3000-year-old-technology-concrete-thermal-energy-storage/
https://www.powermag.com/worlds-largest-concrete-thermal-energy-storage-pilot-successfully-tested/
50% or more of industrial processes use raw heat nukes and thermal storage can supply that 24/7/365
Sand is dense and cheap and 90% round trip efficiency too for high grade heat.
https://polarnightenergy.com/sand-battery/
https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2022/07/21/a-sand-battery-not-obviously-a-great-idea/
https://www.solarpaces.org/arpa-e-winning-thermal-energy-storage-in-sand-wins-commercial-interest/
Nukes are fueled in a schedule regardless of how much full power days they actually ran so it helps the economics greatly to run them flat out at 100% rated output and store the excess heat if you need to load follow with them any of the above do that in gigawatt hours or GW days worth with 80+ % round trip efficiency the tech is there it’s political will to use it.
Until the USA outlaws lawfare and also gets a large reprocessing plant built we can have no great nuclear renaissance here, China and Russia will continue to kick our butts in nuclear tech.
China has solved the uranium problem forever. They already proved they can get 100% recovery from seawater out of the South China Sea and do it at $83 USD per Kg that’s world changing. This is a electrochemical process that uses flows.
Shamelessly stolen from someone’s X post the math checks out.
[1 GW reactor with ocean cooling uses 29-70 m^3 per SECOND flow for it’s condensers.
29m^3/s * 86240 seconds per day = 2.5 million m^3 per day.
3ppb U in seawater=3mg/m^3 flow=7516kg per day
277GWh per kg U*7516=2086 GWh thermal=86 gigawatt days
86 times the U needed in flows for it’s thermal steam output.
277GWh/kg U*7516=2086 GWh thermal=86 GWD thermal
33% steam to electric = 28.6 times the U needed to get electricity to the bussbar vs process heat for desal or district heating or adsorption chillers.
So cooling flows= 86x process heat use or 28x for electricity in a breeder
This means a ocean once through cooled 1GWe fast reactor with it’s cooling flows if you extract the U from the seawater it flows for cooling can fuel itself and 27 other fast reactors of equal size inland via Pu breeding off the ocean captured U.]
I will add that for a CANDU reactor which can use natural uranium directly for fuel vs needing enrichment it’s flow rate of seawater cooling would be higher since it’s lower thermal efficiency for steam to electrons it’s cooling rate is 4.5 vs 2.5 million cubic meters per day. At 3ppb and electro recovery at 100% which again the Chinese proved to be feasible you get 3 milligrams of U per cubic meter flow.
4.5 billion M^3 * 3 milligrams= 13.5 billion milligrams, one g is 1E^4 milligrams so 13.5E^8 milligrams = 13,500 kg which is also 13.5 metric tonnes of U PER DAY just in the seawater coolant flows pass those trough stacks of capture plates just like China proved works gangbusters.
13.5 tonnes of U in a CANDU can use as fuel raw as is because heavy water reactors can burn U235 at 0.7% fraction of that natural uranium just fine no enrichment needed.
CANDU burn up is 7500 megawatt days per tonne of U it’s written as 7500 MWd/Thm
So 13.5T * 7500 = 101250 megawatt days thermal in uranium contained in a single days coolant flows.
For a 1000 megawatt electric sized CANDU at 30% thermal to electrons worth of steam flows you need 3,333 megawatt days thermal.
101250/3333=30
So even with a thermal spectrum but very efficient with fissile material CANDU you have 30 times the uranium needed in it’s seawater coolant flows pass it’s once through steam condensers vs what the reactor is burning up per day.
CANDU have a conversion ratio of 0.8 the highest of any thermal spectrum reactor 50% or more of that 7500 MWd/T was from self breed plutonium.
At discharge that tonne of fuel will contain 0.38% Pu and 70% of that will be fissile in a thermal spectrum reactor all of it in a fast breeder. Every tonne you output you have 4 grams ish of plutonium and a single CANDU will put out 160 tonnes per year so 648 grams of Pu doesn’t sound like a lot but each gram of Pu is 83.6 gigajoules worth of energy. That spent fuel will have 54241 GJ worth of energy in the plutonium in it just sitting there.
Comes down to cost for stripping the Pu out in the PUREX process it’s $450-1000 per Kg of heavy metal processed that would make for $$$$$$ like $100,000+ per gram so not economic at all vs seawater capture of more U235 even at 0.7% U235 vs U238 in natural uranium.
Another way to look at it is how many kg or spent CANDU fuel to make a kg of MOX CANDU fuel? That’s not hard to calculate.
Spent CANDU fuel is 0.2% U235 ,0.38% Pu (70% fissile isotopes of Pu) for it’s fissile materials.
0.002+0.0026=0.0046 fissile material per kg or.tonne doesn’t matter
MOX fuel needs 0.7% percent fissile to match natural uranium fuel fissile levels to reach 7500 MWd/Thm burnups
Two tonnes of spent fuel would have 0.00932 fissile contents once you strip out the fission products and half the remaining uranium. It’s slightly more complex since the fission products were 0.6% of each original tonne but close enough for gov work.
0.00932 fissile content is equal to SEU CANDU fuel at 0.9% U235 enrichment that give a burn up of 11,000 MWd/Thm
So the economics become reprocess two spent fuel tonnes to make one tonne of 0.932% MOX CANDU fuel. Which when burnt again will yield 11,000 MWd worth of energy thermal.
At South Korean $450 per tonne of PUREX reprocessing that’s $900 for the reprocessed materials.
11,000MWd thermal times 24 hours is 264,000 MWh thermal which is also 79200 megawatt hours of electricity @30% steam to electrons.
Wholesale price for power from gas turbines is $50 at $4 MMBTU natural gas which sets the floor for on demand power in the USA or ERCOT specifically
$50*79200=$3,960,000 worth of wholesale power that leave a lot of headspace for fuel fabrication , plus plant O&M plus capital expense recovery.
So even dilute CANDU spent fuel has promises to be reprocessed into more fuel because with a CR of 0.8 every time you get Pu doing 50% to 99% of your power factors.
The tech is here today the USA lacks the will.to do so but as a species at least China is leading the way.
Correction Koreans price per kilogram not tonne so not $900 per tonne it’s $900,000 per tonne of fissile materials still that tonne is going to make 3.9 million in power sales.
$900,000/ 79200= $11.36 per megawatt hour that’s 1.136 cents per kWh when retail power sells for 12 cents today.
Seawater uranium at $83 kg would be $83,000 per tonne so the choice is $83,000 for 7500MWd burn ups or $900,000 for 11,000MWd the choice is clear if you have seawater cooling access.
$83,000/54000MWh= $1.53 per megawatt hour electric in uranium coats that’s less than 1/10 of a cent vs 1.5 cents for MOX reprocessing fuels again if you have Chinese tech and seawater cooling the choice is clear
Texas is 20,000 sq miles larger than the nation of France.
France has 56 operable nuclear reactors totalling 61,370 MWe.
Texas has four reactors at two sites.
Absolutely pathetic.
61000 megawatts electric would be enough for the entire Texas ERCOT grid this time of year we peak out at 58,000 MWe minimum today was 48000.
Solar and wind peaked today around 1600 at 29,500MWe and was above 27500 from sun up 1000 till near sunset at 1700. At 1600 demand was 48000 and out of that only 18500 was not covered by solar + wind which is half the LCOE of nuclear power and gets grid priority over all.
point is Texas has 34800 MW of installed committed solar and 40600 MW of installed committed wind and 15900 MW of energy storage which is counted on 4 or 8 hour discharge ratings minimum 4 hours to be committed capacity and listed on ERCOT.
If Texas has French levels of nukes with 61000MWe we wouldn’t need any other power source at all, from our solar wind and energy storage easily covers the peaks a few times per year above 61000 MW that and demand reduction measures can be put in to make those peaks VERY expensive from bulk users like data centers or not coin mining which can be shit down or throttled at will. Demand management is one of the most effective grid tools when you have large bulk users on preferred price plans when peaks happen you don’t get those sweetheart deals for bulk power you get the full market price plus a demand kicker of 5,10 or 20x market rate to force reduction in demands.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
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