Dominion Announces Plans To Close Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station In 2013 217
An anonymous reader writes "Due to low electricity prices in the Midwest, and an inability to find a buyer for the power station, Dominion will be shutting down and decomissioning Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station. One of two operating nuclear power stations in Wisconsin, Kewaunee's license from the NRC was not due to expire until the end of 2033."
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
... the times of low electricity prices will then be over soon.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not likely. The reason they're shutting it down is that it's being undercut by cheap natural gas. A small, single-reactor power plant is very inefficient. Most plants have two or more large reactors. Economy of scale.
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Current new-build reactors being constructed in China and elsewhere in the world generate three times as much electricity (1400MW) as this 1970s PWR does (550MW). The cost of fuel is trivial so the major expenses involved in running an older reactor are things like operating costs, staffing, maintenance and insurance which are similar or even greater than the newer designs due to economies of scale, rationalisation of design etc.
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How is Dominion going to charge more for electricity when once the plant is shut down they won't be producing any in Wisconsin?
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I grew up a few miles from this plant, the local area has seen many of the factories that used to use that power have shut down and moved out of the country. The price drop is due to the reduced demand for power in the rust belt...
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But Barack Romney told me that they're bringing manufacturing back to the US!!!
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But Barack Romney told me that they're bringing manufacturing back to the US!!!
Even if true, it doesn't mean that manufacturing will return to the areas it left or employ the same number of people. Sometimes when a manufacturer returns to the US it's in the form of a more automated facility that employs fewer, but higher skilled, people. A lot of areas that lost manufacturing plants had advantages at one time that are no longer relevant. When a decision is made to re-establish manufacturing operations in the US, former rust belt locations are often not in the running because they
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I can't speak for the US but the cost of fuel in the UK is definitely not trivial, especially when you consider the cost of storage and disposal once it is spent, and especially when competing with fuel free sources.
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Actually the cost of uranium fuel for reactors is a fraction of the total price of generating electricity at 0.68 cents/kWh, (http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/costs/) and that price is similar pretty much everywhere in the world that uses reactors for electricity generation. The operators spend more running the reactors (staff, equipment, insurance premiums, landscaping etc.) than they do fuelling them. Uranium oxide (yellowcake) currently costs about $50 a pound at the minehead whic
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Actually the cost of uranium fuel for reactors is a fraction of the total price of generating electricity at 0.68 cents/kWh
So how much do you pay for electricity? 100 cents/kWh? In the UK fuel accounts for about 10% of the cost even on the cheapest tariffs, and that isn't what I would call insignificant.
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Nuclear fuel is a fraction of the cost of generating electricity compared to the cost of coal or NG for the same amount of power. The cheapest non-nuclear fuel in the UK is coal at about 3p per kWh including mining, transport, processing etc. but not including sufficient pollution controls to prevent the release of CO2, sulphur compounds, nitrogen compounds, radon gas, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, beryllium, uranium, thorium, radium etc. NG is a bit more expensive than coal and only releases CO2, a little sul
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BUT ZOMG CHERNOBYL!!!@!@#@#$!
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Yup, but your stereotypical nuke shill honestly believes he'll some day be a rich corporate plutocrat, and so they really don't care about negative externalities. They think their own kids will be living in gated community, far away from shiftless poor people and ugly power generation facilities.
Terrestrial nuclear fission power plants can't be economically viable in a free and fair market, because the insurance costs are beyond what companies can bear wit
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And natural gas has become so cheap because everybody invested in it after Wall St. tanked. Natural Gas was seen as the most stable commodity at the time, and became one of the most heavily invested resources (because it was pretty expensive at the time). Now, many are taking their money out of NG because the bottom fell out and investing elsewhere -- meaning the price will go up again (and seeing that many places are not riding out their investments in NG, but rather shuttering plants, it is looking like
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Well that post can only be described as blatantly misstating the truth. Investment flowed to natural gas because fracking proved so successful. The gas they started pulling out of the shale formations was HUGE, almost 9 times expected volumes. It helped at the time that prices of gas were at record highs but they would have drilled the shales even if it hadn't been because for the companies involved proven resources are borrowable and sellable assets even if the current price is shit.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
...apart from all that pesky CO2.
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What's wrong with CO2, it hasn't gotten any warmer for 16 years, that's over half a climatic period!
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. Oh, and you forgot Mitt Romney's actions-that-speak-louder-than-lies position on coal plants [politifact.com] in your rush to make this a Democrat-only political football.
Coal is taking a hammering because they compete in exactly the same areas a natural gas. Natural Gas is at an all-time low in price and an all-time high in availability.
Two independent financial firms say the Marcellus isnâ(TM)t just the biggest natural gas field in the country â" itâ(TM)s the cheapest place for energy companies to drill.
The Marcellus could contain "almost half of the current proven natural gas reserves in the U.S," a report from Standard & Poorâ(TM)s issued last week said.
http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/reports-marcellus-shale-reserves-larger-and-cheaper-to-develop-1.344086 [ohio.com]
Geology.com has reports [geology.com] of super-sized fields that are turning up there.
Output from the Marcellus - a rich seam of gas-bearing rock that straddles Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia - has jumped nearly ten fold since 2009, flooding pipelines and playing a central role in pushing futures prices to ten-year lows earlier this year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/15/us-energy-natgas-marcellus-idUSBRE89E12B20121015 [reuters.com]
Local radio up in the Eastern West Virginia Panhandle has run stories about the switch from coal to natgas and the jobs issue. It starts with people who've been in the coal business for generations complaining about losing jobs -- then finishes with THOSE SAME PEOPLE saying they moved over to natgas jobs that PAY MORE and ARE SAFER. They just had an emotional tie to the coal, which has employed their families for generations which took some getting over.
People may bitch about fracking, but it doesn't hold a candle to the environmental damage caused by mountaintop removal and coal mining. Coal mining is also one of the single most dangerous jobs in the country.
The coal isn't going anywhere. It'll still be there if we ever need it. But pure economics is driving the industry to natural gas and coal is the primary loser -- and rightfully so. It is more expensive to produce, more dangerous to both the producers (miners) and end users (people who breathe), more difficult to transport in quantity (can't use pipelines), cleaner (natgas doesn't leave coal dust messes in homes that use it for heat) and all-around substandard to natural gas.
This is capitalism and the free market at work, baby. Or are you one of those planned-economy socialists longing for the good-old days of Marx, Lenin and Mao?
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People may bitch about fracking, but it doesn't hold a candle to the environmental damage caused by mountaintop removal and coal mining.
Just make sure to keep that candle away from your faucets.
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I grew up on a water well that had gas in it, the faucets never lit, but the air space in the water tank accumulated a lot of gas; the relief valve would support a 3 foot flame! We had an oil seep down the hill too.
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Coal plants aren't going anywhere - they are replacing the burners in existing plants with natural gas burners. If gas goes up in price relative to coal, they will convert them right back to coal.
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we have enough to meet our needs of several centuries, using the most conservative efforts. Men like Sherrod Brown and Obama are determined to make its use impossible.
GOOD
Actually releasing those several centuries of carbon into the atmosphere would be an unmitigated disaster, dwarfing any conceivable so-called "economic calamity" caused by using energy sources that cost a little more.
As far as nuclear power's viability to solve the world's energy problems, I offer one word: Iran.
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So how is that increase of the 7% of the 0.04% of CO2 going to do anything again?
The 7% increase is incorrect. Its approximately 40%. Look it up.
How does a 40% of .04% increase do anything? It's undergraduate level thermodynamics. Do the math.
My mom used to tell me that she didn't like to fly because thought that airplanes were too big to get off the ground. Well, we all know that's bunk. Sometimes your "common sense" instincts are just plain WRONG.
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As long as you keep in mind that a well maintained pipeline is lossless, and wires are lossy, you're right.
If we ever manage to create a sustainable biologically derived natural gas infrastructure, we'll be using lots of both wires and pipes.
But a simple, workable plan based on domestic labor and agriculture that would actu
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If as a GP stated the plant is only 550MW, that is two large natural gas turbines equivalent. There is about 4x the staffing cost for the nuclear plant, at least double the insurance cost, and at least triple the ongoing maintenance costs with nuclear. The fuel cost is about 10% though.
The "right" solution would be to try and build a new, larger reactor on the same site that could have better economies of scale. Alternatively, you could build one of the "micro" reactors on the site in the 250MW range tha
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They also don't like hydro. How can you not like hydro? It's renewable, it doesn't generate waste or pollute the environment. Sure, but it kills the fish. Seriously???? WTF???
>
Hydro power plants can have problems with each particular project. The Army Corp of Engineers wanted to dam up the Deleware Water Gap with the Tux Island dam. Project went far enough to create four ghost towns on the New Jersey side. It took about a decade to get the idea across that building dam backing up that much water on ground that was fundamentally unstable was not a good idea.
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The financial considerations killed it more than the unstable ground, but the irony of it is that the park that resulted is pretty nice :)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
... the times of low electricity prices will then be over soon.
You still have low electricity prices in the USA. In the UK prices have doubled in under a decade [castlecover.co.uk]
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I see that the USA hasn't had the same increase (Score:4, Insightful)
in the USA real consumer prices for electricity have fallen slightly [eia.gov] over the same period!
So much for "this is a world problem" that the governments kept telling us
That's because North Sea gas is used up. (Score:2)
In the UK prices have doubled in under a decade
That's because their North Sea natural gas supply has been used up. Output peaked in 2000. With gas fields, production increases rapidly after drilling, much faster than with oil. At the end of a field's life, it falls off rapidly, much faster than with oil. For oil, there are "stripper wells", producing less than 10 bbl a day as crude slowly seeps through cracks in the rock. The US has about a million of those, and it adds up. Gas doesn't work that way; it can be extracted at high speed, but when it's gon
Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that in the US, that's prepaid to the federal government on a charge-per-unit-energy basis, so that's already paid for (give or take any shortfall or surplus compared to the actual net present value of the cost of storage).
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Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:4, Informative)
A big chunk of it has been spent building the Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada. Whether it ever gets used for storage of spent nuclear fuel is another matter.
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So the federal government has all this money in the bank waiting to be spent on the clean-up, or they have already spent it all and will be taxing future generations?
FederalDeficit is $901 billion [wikipedia.org], and the Federal Debt is, $16,198,677,971,774.43 [treasurydirect.gov], so that would be no; we already spent the money on other things.
Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:5, Insightful)
Kewaunee's decommissioning trust is currently fully funded, and the company believes that the amounts available in the trust plus expected earnings will be sufficient to cover all decommissioning costs expected to be incurred after the station closes.
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In the US you don't do full clean up. The site is made safe and the reactor is entombed, meaning the land is written off and can't be used for anything else. That is fine when you have plenty of land I suppose.
In the UK it costs a lot more because we require the power company to put the land back as it was before the plant existed, including complete removal of the reactor and decontamination of the site. Actually that isn't quite true because due to the huge cost we agreed to pay for much of it ourselves,
Re:And if it were not sufficient? (Score:4, Informative)
Do we go back and ask for more from the company running this?
So it would seem, according to the Unites States Nuclear Regulatory Commission [nrc.gov], although the point is a moot one in light of the fact this particular fund appears to be sufficiently funded.
Although there are many factors that affect reactor decommissioning costs, generally they range from $300 million to $400 million. Approximately 70 percent of licensees are authorized to accumulate decommissioning funds over the operating life of their plants. These owners – generally traditional, rate-regulated electric utilities or indirectly regulated generation companies – are not required today to have all of the funds needed for decommissioning. The remaining licensees must provide financial assurance through other methods such as prepaid decommissioning funds and/or a surety method or guarantee. The staff performs an independent analysis of each of these reports to determine whether licensees are providing reasonable “decommissioning funding assurance” for radiological decommissioning of the reactor at the permanent termination of operation.
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Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the cost was factored in. All US nuclear operators pay 0.1c per kWh generated to the US government to deal with spent nuclear fuel. They also pay into a fund for decommissioning reactors at end-of-life; I don't know whether this particular reactor's fund is paid off.
I don't know if they're going to decommission this reactor quickly or not; British practice is to seal the reactor building after final defuelling, demolish the ancillary buildings like turbine halls etc. which have no radiological problems and let the reactor vessel "cool down" for about 80 years in a custodianship period. That costs very little to do (basically a wire fence, secure doors and a few watchmen) and at the end of that period the rest of the plant can be demolished like any other building, with maybe some asbestos to worry about.
Faster decommissioning of the site requires the reactor vessel, the only part which is noticeably radioactive, to be removed and then buried in a pit for a few decades after which it can be dug up and treated as regular scrap. All of the really radioactive material on the site is in the fuel rods and that is dealt with separately when the reactor is taken out of service.
Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the cost was factored in. All US nuclear operators pay 0.1c per kWh generated to the US government to deal with spent nuclear fuel.
Which is stupid since there is no incentive to reduce waste. You pay the same per kWh no matter how much waste that kWh produces.
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The US government has chosen not to reprocess spent fuel as a matter of policy. This means the 30-odd billion dollars it has been given by the nuclear generating companies over the past few decades as a result of the 0.1c per kWh levy has to cover the cost of safe disposal of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of complete fuel rod assemblies currently in store rather than a few thousand tonnes of actual non-recyclable waste which would be the result of reprocessing.
Reprocessing doesn't actually save much mon
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The problem stems from completely short term thinking. If you're a publically traded corporation, the shareholders will have your head for trying to maintain long term profitability over immediate profits. Today it's cheaper to buy fresh Uranium and enrich it than it is to reprocess so ... we'll just wait to start reprocessing until it's too late to actually do that. Same for any nuclear revolution -- natural gas is cheap now and we have a 100 year supply at current uses, so let's quadruple our use of it a
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The way I understand it is, Spent Fuel Rods are dangerous primarily because of the cesium 137 content. The Cesium has a half-life of about 30 years, so it is gone for all practical purposes after 10 half-lives or 3 centuries. Then the result is pretty much pure plutonium, with a bunch of inert filler, and very easy to process.
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In my state, Maine, we had one of the first "large" nuclear reactors fully decommissioned. I think it took around a decade, and one of the last things they did was ship the reactor vessel to some southern state (by rail or barge) for processing/disposal. Then the containment building was demolished. The only thing left is a several acre concrete pad they constructed on which they placed "dry-cask" storage containers full of spent fuel. This fuel must remain on site, at a cost of around $1,000,000 per y
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I don't know if they're going to decommission this reactor quickly or not.
from TFA it said safe shutdown - with proper maintenance and oversight they could conceivably restart it at some future date if the economics change. I'm willing to bet they wait on decommissioning to both allow the radioactivity to decay and keep earning money on the trust fund.
I can't understand this topic. (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, why would the Dominion need nuclear power plants in the first place? Are they out of dilithium?
And even if they did need nuclear power plants, why would they be in the Alpha Quadrant?
Re:I can't understand this topic. (Score:5, Funny)
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This is the prequel. They haven't discovered dilithium yet.
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Utter idiocy (Score:2)
Alex Jones is keeping up with his reputation, I am sure.
There is statement that the radioactive materials in one of the Japanese reactors could "spread throughout the world". Utter nonsense. Things are quite well contained now and there is little possibility of any fission reaction restarting. Yes, there is quite a bit of radioactive material at the site, but exactly how would it be spread? Much less, spread beyond a small area of Japan?
Even if 100% of the high-order radioactive materials were to be cru
Re:I can't understand this topic. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Mitt Romney is a "Founder" (Shapeshifter)
It would account for his recent changes of policy if its not the real Mitt
Common mistake (Score:2, Flamebait)
See, Star Trek is a fictional, ie not TRUE, account of a future where mankind is dominated by the military, ie Federation and Starfleet.
It is a common mistake to confuse it with Star Wars, which is a historical documentary of something "Long ago, in a Galaxy far far away".
My very own troll... (Score:2)
I always wanted a troll of my very own. ;)
good! Germany is shutting down all nuclear plants (Score:2)
German is being very foolish (Score:4, Insightful)
ITYF thanks to your idiotic chancellor that german power companies are starting to build coal fired replacements for those shut down nuclear plants. So much for germany being green eh?
Renewables you say? Would those be the windfarms in the north which are 600km from where most of the energy is needed in the south? And given that the wind doesn't always blow - what other renewables did you have in mind? Solar? Yeah , right, in northern europe... suuure. Hydro? Nope, not enough locations. Tidal/wave? Same problem as wind with power transmission. So what is this great hope you germans have for renewables?
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It is quite an irony that Merkel was the one to pull the plug. She and her party have been in favor of nuclear power for decades. The nuclear industry thanked them by causing lots of embarrassing scandals. As a consequence, the point was reached when Merkel decided it was better to part with them. The Fukushima incident presented an excellent opportunity to do so.
So
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Not really. Thatcher and Carter were both keen fans of nuclear power but both pulled the plug on industries that were using unchanging nuclear technology as a excuse to extract money from the taxpayer instead of improving the technology to a point where it would be economicly viable in it's own right.
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To never again have anything to do with the nuclear industry, it seems. That they have to resort to coal and gas is, in this way, also a failure of the nuclear industry. They fucked up.
It's hard not to fuck up when a country which is perfectly capable of running safe nuclear operations suffers from absolutely massive scale protests when a reactor on the other side of the world suffers from issues due to a natural disaster on the massive scale. I was in Germany when this happened. They were interviewing the protesters and I kid you not several of them actually were seriously worried about the nuclear fallout from Japan reaching Germany.
Think about that for a moment. It's fear like this tha
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I stand corrected, it's only to 25% in the first half of 2012 from 20% in 2011. Of that 20% of total consumption (in 2011), 19,500GWh came from hydro; 46,500GWh from wind; 31,920GWh from biomass; 5,000GWh from waste; 19,000GWh from PV; 18.8GWh from thermo.
Also, 600km is nothing (roughly 2 hours by train or 3 by car).
To be honest, I think your concerns are moot, at best.
we're actually AHEAD of schedule... (Score:5, Informative)
In September 2010, the German government announced a new aggressive energy policy with the following targets:
Increasing the relative share of renewable energy in gross energy consumption to 18% by 2020, 30% by 2030 and 60% by 2050
Increasing the relative share of renewable energy in gross electrical consumption to 35% by 2020 and 80% by 2050
Increasing the national energy efficiency by cutting electrical consumption 50% below 2008 levels by 2050
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Ok, now tell Africa they can't have electricity at all so we can maintain emissions targets.
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It was going to happen anyway (Score:2)
The real choice to scrap nuclear was made quite a few years ago when there were no more plans to build reactors. You can't stop building reactors and then expect to be able to start again with no trouble two decades later.
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Taxes drive up the cost. However, these taxes pay my pension (80% of working salary), free university, free healthcare, keep housing affordable, allow me drive on perfect roads without paying tolls and support my 8 weeks/year holiday. I'll gladly pay 3x electricity cost and 2x fuel prices than the US. Keep on raising the taxes and keep on providing a reasonable work:life balance.
Even better, they enable us in Portugal as well as friends in Spain and Greece enjoy similar things as well. Please keep raising your taxes; the rest of the EU needs them.
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How was it paid for? (Score:4, Interesting)
How was the plant paid for? I know that in my area that the power companies have managed to get the regulation authorities to increase the price of electricity long before the plant is ever built, letting the customers pay for the construction. And without giving the customers stock in the company, even though they are effectively forced to become investors. And this is done with the claims that the electricity is needed and it will keep rates low.
Now they want to shut down the plant? Because building it did help keep rates low? If it was financed completely with private money then they might just get away with that. But if it was financed with rate payer money. then there ought to be a hell of a lawsuit over this move that will drive down supply and drive up rates.
Nuclear Plant Can't Compete with Natural Gas (Score:3)
Such a mistake (Score:2)
North America's Largest Nuke Plant Expands (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile the Bruce nuclear plant [canadianenergyissues.com] near Tiverton, Ontario will soon have an eighth operating reactor unit, and a total operating capacity of 6,300 megawatts and will be North America's largest nuclear plant.
This is economically weird (Score:2)
One of the key features of a nuclear power plant is that once you've paid the huge construction costs it's not that expensive to operate.
If they think they might ever need a nuclear plant in the future, they'd be much better off to mothball it until electricity prices go up.
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Thorium has some advantages but it's not really a new idea and particularly full of roses. Why do we need to switch to it? Not really a magic bullet. Just gradually move to better nuclear plants as time rolls on, whether Uranium or Thorium or Hydrogen-Fusion or what-have-you. Do the same with every power plant of every kind that we keep using. Phase out fossil fuels where we can.
I don't want to sound like a dick, but the bit about penning traps and black holes are so sci-fi that it makes you sound like
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Because the current uranium reactors are not very good and the ones under construction do not appear to be much better. In comparison the thorium experimental reactors showed a lot of promise and there's one under construction in India that will test it at a larger scale. "Just gradually moving to better plants" implies some sort of organic growth which isn't really possible with something so inflexible with such long lead times. The design for the AP1000 got started in the
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"They're all great to invest in, but none of them are as technology feasible right now as these new nuclear reactors."
OTOH you can get a fucking insurance to pay for any damages they may cause. The sexy new reactors still don't.
Re:The real reason nuclear power is not taking off (Score:5, Insightful)
One power plant in one place is economically unviable, therefore nuclear power is a bad idea always everywhere and there has never been opposition that could be described as irrational.
Also, restaurants won't ever take off because I know this one restaurant halfway across the country that closed down because ingredients cost too much and nobody would eat there if they used cheaper ingredients.
This whole thing seems like a non-story to me. "EXTRA! EXTRA! Random business venture you probably never heard of before this news article folds after almost 40 years!"
Re:The real reason nuclear power is not taking off (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear is just too freaking expensive to operate with any semblance of reasonable safety.
Nuclear has to pay to clean up the mess. Whereas a coal plant can dump megatonnes of CO2 and sulphur into the air and just collect the money from selling power, leaving the rest of us to pay the cost for the next centuries.
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They're both similar.
Both nuclear and coal are obligated to clean up their own site upon retirement. In the case of nuclear, there are typically trust funds established. In the case of coal, differing states have differing requirements, but site remediation is typically part of the requirements.
Now, for off-site pollution, neither coal nor nuclear are responsible for their own mess. Coal plants emit SO2, NOx, CO2, Hg, PM2.5, PM10, and other effluents and pollutants, and once it's out of the smoke stack,
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They're both similar.
Bollocks. You say why they're not -- nukes don't emit much to the environment (unless they melt down). Fossil fuel plants emit just about all their waste into the air.
Divide by zero error (Score:2)
Don't worry - I'm from the future and I can tell
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"Nuclear has to pay to clean up the mess."
Really? The have a trust fund to pay for the armed guards for their ashes for the next 184000 years?
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Whereas a coal plant can dump megatonnes of CO2 and sulphur into the air and just collect the money from selling power, leaving the rest of us to pay the cost for the next centuries.
Except that they no longer can get away with this. EPA regulations requiring retrofits were going to make it so prohibitively expensive that coal plants planned to retire in droves. [chicagotribune.com] Then that regulation got knocked back, but the coal plants are still closing because of other regulations around mercury, etc.
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Not in the EU. If you allow coal to pollute at zero cost your environmental protection laws a broken.
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The problem with the fashionably renewables is continuity of supply. Both wind and solar are intermittent. It was reported that one day a third of German's electricity was provided by wind, and four days later none was. Either you get used to having power only when the wind blows, or you need to have effectively 100% capacity in non-intermittent supplies.
Hydroelectric is an excellent renewable, but most of the sites near users have been exploited. Some of the solar variants with heat storage may work, parti
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How is 30GW of solar in Germany not a major amount of generation?
Also, the world still seems to consume the brunt of the electricity during the daytime hours, because we're mostly awake when it's light.
Because the maximum peak is in the early evening, after dark in winter. When solar power production is zero. Even on a cloudy day, a lot of that 30GW is not available. Are you happy to be able to work only on sunny days? Of course we use little energy after midnight. But we use a lot before, and we will need power stations to provide that on windless evenings,
My house uses partial electric heating, which I want in winter, when solar power is at its lowest.
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To put it simply:
You only get the 30GW when the sun is shining. There isn't enough battery capacity to store what isn't used for later. Therefore some fraction of that 30GW is not used to actually power anything. That fraction may be large or small.
No one is saying that you can't build a big solar plant infrastructure and have it output gigawatts. The problem is, if you have more production than you can use, then you either store it or it goes to "waste". And while there are methods for storing power l
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Coal is no alternative to nuclear regarding the environment.
Why reply to my post with this ? I never suggested anything like that.
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If you really want to cure yourself of this annoying little urban myth invented by PR folks you can try the exercise of looking up how radioactive the most radioactive coal found on earth is and then calculate how many hundreds of thousands of tons of coal you would need to get the fa
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Radiation from coal is not that the carbon itself is radioactive, it's that there are amounts of radioactive uranium and thorium in the actual material being burned. That material is released from the coal it is embedded in by the coal being burned as fly ash. The production of ash does in fact release some of the same elements and compounds that you might associate with a nuclear plant, but in somewhat greater quantities.
You are correct, however, in stating that it is a background threat, but so is a nuc
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Windmills in space sound like a great idea! Satellites would look so much prettier with big turbines on them instead of all those blue panels.
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Exactly! If we can have solar sails, there's no reason we can't have solar windmills.
Re: (Score:2)
an inability to find a buyer
Did they try putting it on ebay? If they keep the shipping costs down then I'm sure they could find a buyer for it.
Local pick up only.