Expansion of Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant Suspended

mdsolar writes in with news that plans to build two new reactors at the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant have been put on hold. "On Friday, Luminant, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, suspended its application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new reactors at the plant. Its partner on the project, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, said it was focusing on getting its nuclear reactors in Japan back in operation. The majority of Japan's reactors were shut down because of safety concerns following a 2011 tsunami that caused a radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex 150 miles north of Tokyo. Mitsubishi 'has informed us that they will materially slow the development of their design control document for their new reactor design by several years. In addition, both [Mitsubishi] and Luminant understand the current economic reality of low Texas power prices driven in large part by the boom in natural gas,' read a statement from Luminant."

Delays not surprising

[Mr D from 63]

A slow economy and depressed energy prices due to shale gas have certainly delayed plans for new nuclear. As we shut down more coal plants and when the economy picks up, we will be faced with the choice of becoming heavily dependant on gas, or building more nuclear. Shale gas prices will rise as our dependency increases. some dream that solar and wind can fill the huge gap but as most if us know it simply can't. Meanwhile, the worldwide expansion of nuclear continues, and appears to be picking up steam.

Side note: The reactors at Fukushima are GE design, not Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, as some readers might conclude from the author's attempt to tie the two together.

Re:Delays not surprising

[dasunt]

Or, more solar and wind plugged into decentralised local grids. See: Germany and Denmark who are doing just that without the benefit of Texas Sun.

Lets check on Germany and run the numbers.

Germany peaked at 23.9 GW [cleantechnica.com]. At the peak, it was providing for 40% of Germany's electrical usage. Impressive.

But that's the peak. How about overall?

Wolfram Alpha gives 549.1 billion kwh/year for German's total electricity consumption. It also gives 19.1 billion kwh a year from solar, tide or waves [wolframalpha.com] and 46 billion kwh a year from wind [wolframalpha.com].

Now we're mixing data from different years (so this is a rough estimate), but I'm seeing a total of 65.1 billion kwh/year from solar + wind, with a usage of 549.1 billion kwh/year. So about 12%. Compare this to to the 94.1 billion kwh/year [wolframalpha.com] from nuclear.

Now this neglects another problem - the variability of solar and wind. If solar and wind make up a small fraction of the grid, or it's possible to sell to neighboring countries, it's pretty easy to sell excess energy when it's windy/sunny, and use other power plants when it's not. I'm not sure what overcapacity the US would need if it primarily resorted to wind & solar power.

Not to mention the false dichotomy. We can build solar, we can build wind, we can build nuclear - but we can also build coal power plants, natural gas power plants, and oil power plants.

There's nothing preventing us from building both nuclear and renewable energy power plants in order to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel power plants. If you believe that anthropological global warming is a real problem, I'd suggest that reducing CO2 emissions through a combination of solar, wind & nuclear would be quicker than reducing CO2 emissions by just wind & solar, or by just nuclear.

Re: Delays not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The numbers are disappointing. Fyi.
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/news/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-in-2013.pdf

Re:Delays not surprising

[Cyberax]

Germany can't do it as well. They are building 23 new coal power plants by 2020 to replace nuclear powerplants (which are NOT yet shutdown, btw).