First Nuclear Power Plant Planned In Jordan 148
jones_supa writes Jordan has signed an agreement with Russia's state-owned nuclear power giant Rosatom, that sets the legal basis for building the kingdom's first nuclear power plant with a total capacity of 2,000 MW. The agreement is worth $10 billion and it envisages the construction of a two-unit power plant at Amra in the north of the kingdom by 2022. The deal provides for a feasibility study, site evaluation process and an environmental impact assessment. Currently Jordan imports nearly 98% of its energy from oil products and crude and is struggling to meet electricity demand, which is growing by more than 7% annually due to a rising population and industrial expansion. The kingdom hopes that eventually nuclear power could provide almost 40% of its total electricity generating capacity.
Economics (Score:5, Interesting)
Could someone fill me in on the economics of nuclear power generation? I'd like to know what the usual payback period for a plant is, and how much it costs to operate a plant over that period.
Just doing some napkin figuring here, if the plant ran 24/7 at full capacity for a 20 year payback period, and assuming that operational costs are about the same as initial construction costs (i.e. using the $10 billion number from the summary, so $20 billion for construction and operation), that gives me a figure of about 5.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. Obviously the plant wouldn't run at full capacity for 20 years straight, but that does put something of a lower bound on the price of power generation, and it seems like a reasonable number given US electricity prices.
I'd also like to know how this compares to hydro, gas, coal, solar, wind, tidal, and any other generation method currently in use.
Re:Economics (Score:5, Interesting)
Very nice back of the envelope estimates.
If well operated, the capacity factors are about 90% or higher, and current designs are expected to last up to 60 years, so there is long term payback. Uranium enrichment and fuel costs are generally stable, but can vary given various external factors but it is still fairly competitive.
The issue is that so much capital investment is required up front over several years, many companies are hesitant to invest what would be their market capitalization in a single asset. State-owned utilities have greater capacity to take on that risk, so it's a smart move (long-term) on their part.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't forget the economics of decomissioning the thing. You're writing up a huge debt for your country in 60 years.
Re:Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
If you run it for 60 years, all you do is charge something like 1/10th of a center per kwh for 'decommissioning costs'.
2GW should produce about 15.8B kWh a year. Even excluding interest, that's $15.8M/year, $946M over 60.
If you figure that it earns 5%, that's $3.7B in 60 years, or $185M they can spend each year indefinitely doing whatever it takes to decommission it.
Re: (Score:2)
err.. 'cent per kWh'. Combining a touch typist with autocorrect doesn't always work well.
Re: (Score:2)
Jordan is a thin strip of arable land close to the Jordan river, and a whole lot of useless desert. They can just drag the radioactive pieces out to the desert and forget about them.
Re: (Score:3)
Nonsense, the reactor vessels are good for 60 or more years, heads might need replacing every 40. Those iron components have isotopes of concern iron-55, iron-59, cobalt-60 and zinc-65. with half lives of 2.7 years, 45 days, 5.3 years, 245 days respectively. In other words, after 50 years NO PROBLEM.
Re: (Score:2)
So a lot of decades until the repair costs exceed the worth of the thing, not just decades of sitting idle and pulling in the money.
Re: (Score:2)
My my your brain goes in random directions, I was specifically addressing typical iron reactor vessel decommisioning concerns.
So called "spent fuel" is a different topic, and the short story there is that it's a gold mine of energy that can be used in proper type of reactor, getting six or seven times the original amount taken out. It can thus be burned into waste that only takes decades to decay.
Re: (Score:2)
> and current designs are expected to last up to 60 years
No, they are designed to run for about 30 to 25 years, then be torn apart and re-built from new. All that remains is the containment building and the parts outside the nuclear island. This is supposed to get you a new reactor good for another 25 to 30 years (because now those other parts and breaking down) for about 50% of the cost.
However, those that have actually tried this have a 100% rate of overrunning the budgets, to the point where it's >
Re: (Score:2)
Also, this link is a good quick summary using US metrics.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/a... [eia.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
Could someone fill me in on the economics of nuclear power generation? I'd like to know what the usual payback period for a plant is, and how much it costs to operate a plant over that period.
Well in terms of foreign aid and keeping a positive political presence in the area, the payback for Russia is priceless.
Re: (Score:2)
Economics?!?! It's politics! Tell your people, "Look, we are a nuclear power now!"
Even if that is not the truth, most folks in Jordan won't be able to recognize the difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Can anyone speak to the costs that are often left out of pro nuclear equations;
Half of all nuclear power plants don't seem to get completed -- is that fair?
Cost over-runs are rampant, they never cost what is projected, often this is 2 to 10 times projected, but maybe that's just in the USA where the winning lowest bid forces unrealistic expectations.
After the plant is out of service, they have to maintain it for 2000 years -- or that's what I'd heard. Good luck getting humanity to keep going on a project th
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, that's just in the USA.
Concrete and steel are cheap. Refining uranium to the point it will heat up is easy, if somewhat energy intensive.
2000 years? Ah, you might mean the 'nuclear waste' sitting in water pools at reactors all over. Yes, that's nasty stuff. Can't even bury it under the Rocky Mountains.
What to do... what to do with it?...
Nuclear fuel, that's still radioactive as hell. Huh.
No, don't tell me; it will come to me...
Stuck, saddled even, with tons of nuclear fuel, in an age where we need carb
Re: (Score:2)
You know people have had that thought before but it didn't work out for them... Put it this way, if it was that obvious and that much of a good idea someone would be doing it. I don't see anyone other than governments doing research trying to build them though.
Re: (Score:2)
Who knows our civilisation may be at its peak right now and we will never reach these technological heights again. For all we know our selfishness will drive humanity back to nomads with some crazy old man poking a stick in a fire saying 'We used to have great machines that could fly'. Not what I want, but just as likely.
Re: (Score:2)
"Just as likely" huh. Seems legit.
Re: (Score:2)
"Just as likely" huh. Seems legit.
as a "a genetically engineered Kaiju that eats Plutonium and shits out crude oil" - for sure
Re: (Score:2)
As much as it sounds like a cop out, leaving it to future generation who will no doubt have better technology isn't such a bad idea. As a poor example, we didn't have the capability to combat microbiology 200 years ago, now it's trivial (well in some cases at least). Who knows, when space travel becomes cheap we could shoot it all into the sun, or maybe someone will invent a genetically engineered Kaiju that eats Plutonium and shits out crude oil. As long as the costs of long term storage and maintenance are taken into account, I have no problem with this approach.
You honestly couldn't make this shit up if you were trying to make an anti-nuclear point.
With friends like you...
Re: (Score:2)
> Cost over-runs are rampant, they never cost what is projected, often this is 2 to 10 times projected,
> but maybe that's just in the USA where the winning lowest bid forces unrealistic expectations.
Cost overruns in Canada were 100%, both on initial construction and refurbs. Current cost overruns in Europe are the same.
If there is a *real* theoretical problem with nuclear power is that its economics scale with size. To compete with wind or gas they have to make really large plants. That complicates fi
Re: (Score:2)
That was an awesome and insightful response.
So while Nuclear is getting better technology -- it's providers are only in the game if the Government can flip the bill.
Has any business in the past two decades actually financed and built a nuclear power plant? If not, then that would challenge the concept that they are economical.
Economics is not the reason (Score:2)
The banks don't believe that either which is why the only entities that put up the cash are governments. So nuclear is built due to a perceived National need for GigaWatts that don't have to come from coal or oil (eg. Japan worried about a blockade and maybe Jordan for the same reason) and not for economic reasons at all.
So good economic performance is gravy if it happ
Re: (Score:2)
Could someone fill me in on the economics of nuclear power generation? I'd like to know what the usual payback period for a plant is, and how much it costs to operate a plant over that period.
Absolutely. Here is a link to the peer reviewed science [stormsmith.nl] that details net energy return after factoring input costs.
Have a great day!
Re: (Score:2)
> I'd also like to know how this compares to hydro, gas, coal, solar, wind, tidal, and any other generation method currently in use.
Page 2 of this: http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
According to that, this is an *extremely* competitive plant. If you turn to Page 11 you'll see the problem - it seems *HIGHLY* unlikely that the plant can actually be built for this number. This is *well* below the worldwide average. They may be quoting the wrong number, this migh
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure where you got the 50% number, capacity factors are 90% these days,
Yet more wrong (Score:3)
Not to to mention that the 'glowing lump' in Ukraine was the result of stupid testing combined with poor design, not lack of maintenance.
Arguably the glowing lump in Japan would be a better example, in that they didn't install recommended upgrades - a system to handle hydrogen generation in an overheat event and at least a few generators in a waterproof location.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can push for the design output, but only at the expense of maintenance, and there's a glowing lump in the Ukraine that demonstrates what happens then.
Chernobyl had nothing whatsoever to do with maintenance. It happened as the direct consequence of an ill conceived experiment, which deliberately bypassed safety protocols, with the added bonus that the experiment was moved at the last minute from the day-shift to the less experienced night-shift crew.
Re: (Score:2)
Chernobyl had nothing whatsoever to do with maintenance. It happened as the direct consequence of an ill conceived experiment, which deliberately bypassed safety protocols
Granted, but the fact is that people occasionally do make dumb mistakes. The fact that a dumb mistake in a nuclear power plant can render an entire region uninhabitable is what makes nuclear power so risky, and hence uneconomical to insure. Most other forms of power plant might in the worst case be badly damaged, but they wouldn't also permanently remove the surrounding zip code from civilization.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an infitnite liability problem, not a nuclear power problem. In a world where anyone can sue anyone for anything, real, imaginary, legal or illegal, nuclear power is the ultimate source of income for lawyers. Roughly a quarter of the cost of nuclear power in the US stems directly or indirectly from paying lawyers to go away. Think about that, they've made billions extorting everyone involved in nuclear power, and you're paying for it in every power bill, and your children are paying for It in every d
Re: (Score:3)
That's an infitnite liability problem, not a nuclear power problem.
If nuclear power has an infinite liability problem, then that is a nuclear power problem.
I don't object to sensibly done nuclear power, I do object to private companies making a profit out of it at the expense of taxpayers who have to fund the downstream decomissioning and storage costs and pick up the bill in case of any unfortunate accidents.
Re: (Score:2)
> Roughly a quarter of the cost of nuclear power in the US stems directly or indirectly from paying lawyers to go away.
I keep hearing this number, but I can't find a trustworthy source for it. The recent documents I've seen, covering Crystal and Vogtle put the entire compliance load around 5 to 6%.
Re: (Score:2)
nuclear power is the ultimate source of income for lawyers.
Funny because most of the lawsuits have been trying to stop the plants being built in the first place, and most of the ones over accidents and emissions have failed due to lack of proof. It's hard to show that the cancer you developed 20 years later was the result of a leak at the local nuclear power station.
Do you have any evidence of massive income for lawyers, compared to say coal or even renewable plants? Can't include any actual accidents of course, which are entirely justified.
Re: (Score:2)
I highly doubt the Joran reactor will be a breeder reactor.
It's one thing to build a nuke plant in a non-nuclear country, it's something completely different to give them a machine for making plutonium. Yes, commercial plants produce plutonium, but it's not weapons grade and requires a lot of processing to make it so - which is why you still see RMBK-style reactors running.
As far as the thorium thing goes, considering most plutonium in the US is produced by reactors specially built for the purpose of creat
Re: (Score:2)
But the Russian's would never do that! They're the good guys, not like those sneaky Canadians that sold India the reactor they used to produce their bomb materials!
In case it wasn't obvious the above was an attempt at a joke based around the idea that this plant will be seen by the buyers as a step towards being a nuclear armed power just like the ones sold to small nations in the 60s and 70s. Even Egypt was angling for the bom
Re: (Score:2)
But the Russian's would never do that! They're the good guys, not like those sneaky Canadians that sold India the reactor they used to produce their bomb materials!
They're hardly similar.
India and Canada are both commonwealth countries. India has a stable, democratic government and doesn't go around starting wars. China (a nuclear power) and Pakistan were both threatening India.
Also, India isn't well off as far as natural resources go, and has a large population, so nuclear power is the obvious choice for their electricity needs. Giving them the capability to make their own fuel wasn't nearly as much of a risk.
And they made nukes from it. The world watched, and le
Cooling (Score:3)
Seems to me cooling might be an issue in an already water poor area of the world.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems to me cooling might be an issue in an already water poor area of the world.
Jordan has access to enough water. Just because it's in the middle east doesn't mean it's a desert. Power plants go near population centers, and population centers exist near water. Even more importantly, there's a difference between "drinking water," with all of its sanitation, distribution, and monitoring needs, and just plain "water," which can be found in any lake. Heck, lots of power plants have man-made lakes to supply that water.
But you're missing the real point. Modern nuclear plants don't need
Re: (Score:2)
Go one further, they do a great job of providing the heat for desalination. They do have a small amount of coastline on the Gulf of Aqaba and the city of Aqaba is reasonably large.
Re:Cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
There is not a lot of water available anywhere in Jordan, and precious little in Zarqa Governate (where Amra is located,) and it is far, far away from Aqaba. We do need power, we need water too (the aquifers are running out rapidly.) We could also do with more coastline (in 1965, Jordan traded some desert for more coast from the Saudis.)
Personally, I need tourists who want to go diving (some excellent dives right here 15km south of town, and I happen to be an instructor) and talk tech/programming/music/movies etc. Oh, yes, there are 'problems' in the neighbouring states, but they don't impact here, except that the tourism trade has slowed down.
Re: (Score:2)
Hi neighbor! I've been to Aqaba though I haven't dived there. You should know that as an Israeli, I'm very happy to see Jordan building a nuclear power plant. We (humans) need _clean_ energy, even if it is more expensive than burning carbon. And anything that advances the Jordanian standard of living is good for the entire area, especially considering what is happening on Jordan's northern and eastern borders right now.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you know why they switched the site from Aqaba? They could have used the waste heat from the plant to desalinate the seawater.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do people chime in while knowing so little about their pet topic? Large nuclear plants need access to vast amounts of water purely due to the way the loop of steam through the turbines work - the bigger the heat source the more cooling water you need. The water is not consumed, tied up for that use only or irradiated in any way, but you do need it to be there. It's an issue in choosing a site but after that the water
Re: Cooling (Score:2)
The Arizona design, which has been cranking out 6 GW steadily for years, uses desert air as the heat sink. This is the design Jordan should be using.
FFS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other plants use cooling towers to fill in a part of the temperature differential down to the heat sink temperature, but their heat sink is still water from a lake, river or the ocean.
The above poster is literally talking shit (Score:2)
Sorry kids - no magic to see here. Just a LOT of water from wherever you can get i
Re: (Score:2)
Being able to use treated sewage to assist in cooling is the same as the bump that other plants get from using water in cooling towers. The desert air still replaces the standard large body of water as the primary heat sink.
Re: (Score:2)
What is your game? I state the equivalent of "water is wet" and you go off with something like "as a rabid fanboy of water sports I strongly object, water is more like a very tasty chocolate milkshake only crunchy". It's not even a criticism yet I get an ignorant fanboy kneejerk response with made up "facts".
Evaporative cooling to remove a lot of heat requires access to a lot of water that's a "real" fact as distinct from silly deliberate
What is that blue stuff in the picture then? (Score:2)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org]
That's from the article about the station he's writing about which is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Note the line "20 billion US gallons (76,000,000 m) of treated water are evaporated each year.
So yes, the Jordan plant is going to need a LOT of water but nobody said it has to be d
Re: (Score:2)
Passive cooling towers don't work so well in hot countries where the differential with ambient is lower. France found that even modern supposedly passive reactors ended up needing a lot of water to cool them during heat waves, and the ended up dumping hot water into rivers and killing all the fish.
The Cost of Security (Score:2)
It would be a prime target for ISIS/DASH or your flavor of retard islamic extremists of the week.
Re: (Score:2)
In case you didn't notice, they're already in a state of pretty much all out war versus ISIS. Wasn't the King of Jordan personally flying combat missions against them a few weeks ago? (Even if you do think it's just PR, they are seriously invested there.)
2022? (Score:2)
Am I the only one who thinks seven years to build a nuclear power plant from scratch sounds too optimistic a timetable?
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's possible. But it's a trade off with safety.
Re:2022? (Score:4, Informative)
It depends if there's a production line for large components and a guaranteed market for future orders. The Chinese are rolling out 1GW reactors from breaking ground to grid connection over a period of about five years or so but they've got predictable orders of the large components needed for a reactor and teams of engineers who move from one site to the next as their particular tasks (pouring the basemat, building the containment, installing the reactor vessel etc.) on a given construction site are completed, they don't have to learn how to do it again from scratch every time. Rosatom is in the same position, building a number of reactors of similar design in Russia and around the world but also leveraging a turnkey operation capability, supplying fuel and taking away spent fuel for reprocessing and waste disposal which is very attractive to countries like Vietnam, Jordan and other Arab nations.
Ningde 3, a 1GW reactor on the central coast of China started construction with first concrete in January 2010 and achieved grid connection a couple of days ago, about 63 months later. Two more Chinese reactors of similar capacity are expected to come on line this year.
Re: (Score:2)
The AP1000 reactors in China seem to be taking a while though and that's probably a better comparison, as is that reactor in Sweden that's been taking a while.
Re: (Score:2)
Ã-h? We're not currently building any reactors and haven't for a long time... The one in Finland isn't an AP1000, so which one do you mean?
There is a comma (Score:2)
Try reading it as:
The AP1000 reactors in China seem to be taking a while.
That reactor in Sweden (Forsmark upgrade) is taking a while (since 2004).
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, OK. It was more the "building" a reactor in Sweden that caught me off guard. We're not allowed to build any new reactors by law. We weren't even allowed to do research into building a new reactor, or technologies that could be applied to such, but that law was fortunately stricken a few years back.
But yes, we do "upgrade" our reactors to the extent that if they're reported as "building" in foreign sources that's arguably more correct than our current doublespeak.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not if they're willing, like many middle-east countries, to shoot protestors. Protests by environmental groups was, for years, one of the biggest reasons for slowdowns in plant construction here in the USA.
Explain this to me. (Score:3)
Why is it okay for Jordan to build a Nuclear Power Plant but not okay for Iran?
Re: (Score:3)
A couple of possibilities spring to mind. I'm just speculating, mind you.
1) Because Jordon aren't insisting on enriching the uranium themselves, or aren't planning to use enriched uranium in the first place?
2) Because their government has a reputation for trustworthiness rather than a reputation for being batshit crazy?
("Trustworthiness" is of course a relative term for governments. But still, there's a pretty big gap between Jordon and Iran.)
Re: (Score:2)
Because that's not the worst case of projection in history? Iran hasn't attacked another country in hundreds of years. It hasn't overthrown democracies around the world to satisfy it's thirst for empire and capitalism - it was the recipient of such a 'regime change' courtesy of the CIA. Iran hasn't had a worldwide kidnapping and torture program, isn't sending robot planes to blow up teenagers
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure that Jordan has blown up any teenagers in Mexico recently. We're comparing Jordan and Iran, remember, not Iran and anybody else.
I'm not claiming, mind you, that Jordan is necessarily really any more trustworthy or any less batshit crazy than Iran. I know little about Jordan, so it's entirely plausible that the difference is entirely PR.
Re: (Score:2)
You're quite sure who setup the Iran-Iraq war?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, let's forget the Hezbollah in Lebanon who started the last Lebanon-Israeli war, the Shi'ite stooges of Iran in Iraq who are helping turn the country into a continuous civil war, the Houthis in Yemen who decided their neck of the woods wasn't enough that they needed to try to take all of Yemen which will probably spark the next Yemen civil war, the help the Iranians gave to al Qaeda when all those nice al Qaedians wanted was a safe place to hide after attacking the U.S., the bombing of the Jewish center
Re: (Score:2)
For more than 10 years now, both the CIA and Mossad will tell you flat-out that Iran has no nuclear weapons program
Boy, I would love a trustworthy source for such a claim.
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you get this crap about Iran being "crazy"? Fox News? Israeli and U.S. government propaganda? Iran is not "crazy" and U.S. intelligence analysts have said that there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Even IF Iran had a weapons program, they are not "crazy" enough to use a nuke against the USA or Israel and doom themselves to complete annihilation in the inevitable counterattack.
If oil was my only major export, I wouldn't want to burn it for domestic power production eit
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you get this crap about Iran being "crazy"? Fox News? Israeli and U.S. government propaganda?
General knowledge.
To be fair, upon going back over my collection of news reports I was surprised how few of them were about Iran as opposed to other Islamic nations. On the other hand I specifically claimed that Iran has a reputation for being batshit crazy rather than that it actually is batshit crazy. Scott Adams once pointed out that if you analyzed Iran's actions rather than their words they didn't seem nearly as insane.
Even so, there were some relevant items about Iran - and none about Jordon, though
Re: (Score:2)
The US and Isreal don't really care if Iran builds nuclear plants. They could make dirty bombs with them, but that's about it. Most reactors don't produce plutonium, and even Russia isn't crazy enough to build them one that would.
We don't like them enriching uranium to fuel their reactors. Russia and France have both offered to provide them with fuel (at a very low cost, IIRC), and the Iranians have refused.
The same process that makes nuclear fuel can make weapons-grade materials. If you can get weapons
Re: (Score:2)
Not wanting the fuel you need to keep the lights on to be at the mercy of an antagonistic country (France) or a single powerful patron which could easily turn against you if the geopolitical situation made that profitable (Russia) is an extremely good reason to want to enrich locally.
Re: (Score:2)
Iran doesn't need nuclear power to keep the lights on.
They've got... what was it? On the tip of my tounge... oh yeah - FUCKLOADS of oil.
Good news! (Score:2)
I already knew about this, but glad to see it posted here. I am sad that it has to be a Russian one instead of a US/Japan or French one, and wish it could be Thorium instead of Uranium, but those aren't available yet. They originally were going to build it at Aqaba, their only sea access, to make use of the seawater for cooling and also desalinate it with waste plant heat. I wonder why they moved it.
Re:SOLAR (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, they are. Target of 500MW renewable energy, about 14% of total capacity, by the end of 2015.
Re: (Score:3)
Why ... dont they just put up a load of solar panels... $10 Billion will buy you a LOT of them.
because solar panels dont generate weapons-grade plutonium?
Re: (Score:3)
>> because solar panels dont generate weapons-grade plutonium?
Yep, that's an argument.
Although, nuke plants don't generate weapon grade Pu. They just generate Pu.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Price per watt for solar is in the $5 range, not counting discounts for massive purchases.
But without moderately massive amounts of energy storage, a 2GW solar facility won't really do you all that much good.
Ultimately, this is about baseload as opposed to peak load. Solar can supply peak load, it doesn't do baseload nearly so well. Nuclear is the reverse.***
***caveat: it IS possible to design a nuclear
Re: (Score:3)
GenIIa reactors like the Russian VVER-1200 and the uprated French M310 designs can swing their output by 30% in fifteen minutes or so, given modern control systems and a few decades of experience in running such PWRs and BWRs. It doesn't happen often because nuclear fuel is so cheap and reducing power output doesn't save much money.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think it's the cost.
Can't just dump extra power into the grid; you'll over volt it. Tallahatchie Valley burned out my dryer timer doing that. (I'm still bitter.) And I don't think you can let a generator that size, already connected to the grid, freewheel and not take power off of it.
They must have a way to dump power spikes; fifteen minutes is too slow when Jordainian Idol goes off, and everybody goes to bed.
Somebody here must know; how do they avoid voltage spikes if everybody turns their shit off
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, without mentioning numbers, I'll offer that a nuclear submarine can do larger transients faster.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear propulsion reactors are quite a bit smaller than the current generation (no pun intended but I'll take what I can get) of PWRs and BWRs which typically start at 3GWt and can go up to as much as 5GWt (assuming the EPRs ever get finished and/or anyone commissions a full-scale ESBWR from Hitachi). Even the largest propulsion reactors like the Ford class CVNs at ca. 1GWt can be swung a lot faster as there's less fuel and heat to deal with. The very high fuel enrichment levels (RN Astute-class submersibl
Re: (Score:2)
> Price per watt for solar is in the $5 range, not counting discounts for massive purchases.
Yeah, in 2011. Today, small residential installs are around $4.00 a watt, commissioned. Large industrial installs are $1.50.
Page 11 of this: http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Cost, perhaps? Particularly when compared to solar polar, etc.?
Re: (Score:2)
There's not much polar solar, but you make a good point. I hope they'll invest a decent amount of $$$ in solar PV while they're at it.
As someone upthread pointed out, it's a lot of money to invest in a single facility - it makes sense to invest some money in decentralised facilities, too.
Re: (Score:2)
They can also start with this, and expand to more reactors if this goes well.
Why not 100%? Monocultures suck (Score:2)
So without going into the viability of whatever the Russians are selling or that generation of nuclear in general it's a bad id
Re: (Score:3)
That means the uranium is mined in Jordan, but it can be shipped elsewhere for enriching (France, US, Russia or other)
Re:What is the over/under on Israel's attack (Score:4, Informative)
Not all plant designs [wikipedia.org] require enriched Uranium. No idea if they're using it.
Re: (Score:2)
Just CANDU? What about RBMK? I don't recall ever hearing anything bad about one of those...
Re: (Score:2)
CANDU is the only plant design that I'm aware of that doesn't require enrichment. I should have said 'No idea if they're using one', IE a design that doesn't require enrichment.
They should, of course, avoid the problematic RBMK design.
Re: (Score:2)
This is Jordan we're talking about. A country whose Beduin rulers have as much of an interest in keeping Palestinians down as Israel if not more so. They probably cleared the plans with Israel beforehand.
So when are we invading Israel for possessing WMDs (Score:2)
Israel is the only member of the nuke club in the region, and the only nation likely to use them.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, a fact not lost on its neighbors who periodically have a go at getting the U.N. to pressure on Israel to give up its nukes. That way the neighbors can conduct a full jihad against Israel without worrying about losing their capital cities.
Re: (Score:2)
> That way the neighbors can conduct a full jihad against Israel without worrying about losing their capital cities.
Considering that three of its neighbours lost parts of their capital cities, and two others were under serious threat, Israel doesn't need nukes to do that.
And now that we're 50 years in the future, the neighbors have a lot more to worry between each other than Israel. There will be no repeat of '67.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry but Jordan has sand storms, they're hell on wind turbines.