US Nuclear Comeback Stalls As Two Reactors Are Abandoned (theaustralian.com.au) 389
Brad Plumer reports via The New York Times (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source): In a major blow to the future of nuclear power in the United States, two South Carolina utilities said on Monday that they would abandon two unfinished nuclear reactors in the state, putting an end to a project that was once expected to showcase advanced nuclear technology but has since been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The two reactors, which have cost the utilities roughly $9 billion, remain less than 40 percent built. The cancellation means there are just two new nuclear units being built in the country -- both in Georgia -- while more than a dozen older nuclear plants are being retired in the face of low natural gas prices. Originally scheduled to come online by 2018, the V.C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina had been plagued by disputes with regulators and numerous construction problems. This year, utility officials estimated that the reactors would not begin generating electricity before 2021 and could cost as much as $25 billion -- more than twice the initial $11.5 billion estimate. The utilities also struggled with an energy landscape that had changed dramatically since the large reactors were proposed in 2007. Demand for electricity has plateaued nationwide as a result of major improvements in energy efficiency, weakening the case for massive new power plants. And a glut of cheap natural gas from the hydraulic fracturing boom has given states a low-cost energy alternative. Facing those pressures, the two owners of the project, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper, announced they would halt construction rather than saddle customers with additional costs.
Lost 2 out of three here as well - 1980 (Score:5, Informative)
"At the beginning of the 1980s, only one of the five WPPSS plants was nearing completion. By this time, nuclear power had been reexamined and was found to not be as clean as was originally thought. Some cities boycotted nuclear power from the plants before the facilities were even up and running. The cost overruns reached the point where more than $24 billion would be required to complete the work, but recouping funds would be a tricky matter because of less-than-promising sales. Construction halted on all but the near-completed second plant; the first plant was once again being redesigned. WPPSS was forced to default on $2.25 billion worth of municipal bonds."
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/0... [cnn.com]
Re:Lost 2 out of three here as well - 1980 (Score:5, Informative)
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/0... [cnn.com]
Man talk of the wrong link, the first paste tried to take one to facebook Correct link: http://www.investopedia.com/as... [investopedia.com]
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There were also many plants built for much less, and on schedule. They have been running reliably for 40 years and have produced more clean power than solar and wind will for a long, long time. Areas of the US with a lot of nuclear have historically also had the lowest rates. Unfortunately for nuclear, natural gas has become too cheap to compete with and there is no value in the market place on the reliability and emission free characteristics of nuclear.
Our failure to build new nuclear come from a lack of
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There were also many plants built for much less, and on schedule. They have been running reliably for 40 years and have produced more clean power than solar and wind will for a long, long time. Areas of the US with a lot of nuclear have historically also had the lowest rates. Unfortunately for nuclear, natural gas has become too cheap to compete with and there is no value in the market place on the reliability and emission free characteristics of nuclear.
Our failure to build new nuclear come from a lack of commitment. Yes, huge first of a kind projects will have budget and schedule problems. But even the more expensive existing plants have paid for themselves several times over, and many are still running and can run for another 20+ years. Unfortunately the general public has been fed a steady diet of FUD from the O&G industry for so long that they have an army of followers to help spread it. Meanwhile, the average person is completely ignorant of the real risks in comparison to stuff they accept every day.
So, like Germany, we will spend a shitload of money on the partial solution of solar and wind, and our overall CO2 emissions will not be significantly reduced. we will suffer a failure of will, insight, and commitment.
This. And meanwhile China is kicking our ass and build a lot of nuclear;
http://world-nuclear-news.org/... [world-nuclear-news.org]
There is plenty of proof out there that plants can be built on time and on scedule if they are not parsed and strangled.
Re:Lost 2 out of three here as well - 1980 (Score:5, Informative)
Not in my experience. Illinois has had some of the largest percent of electrical power as nuclear, but has had above average rates, for residential customers like me, at least.
state-by-state rates [eia.gov]
state-by-state fuel types [nei.org]
Re:Lost 2 out of three here as well - 1980 (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately for nuclear, natural gas has become too cheap to compete with and there is no value in the market place on the reliability and emission free characteristics of nuclear.
The major problem is our shortsightedness. Nuclear plants take a long time to construct and operate for a long time as well. Natural gas prices can fluctuate a lot in the time it takes to plan, get approvals, and build a nuclear power plant, not to mention during it's operational time. Natural gas has traded for as low as $1.02 (1992) and as high as $15.39 (2005).
The mean construction time for the 441 operational reactors from this time last year was 7.5 years. To be fair, 18 of those reactors were completed in 3 years, included 3 in the US. Argentina did it's best of offset this by taking 33 years to complete it's Atucha-2 reactor though. But this also doesn't take into account planning, zoning, approvals, etc. So ten plus years would not be an unreasonable estimate.
If a company saw natural gas prices peak at $15 in 2005 and peak at $13 in 2008/09 they may have started planning to build a reactor. by the time they started construction, prices would have dropped to $4 for natural gas. So they panic and worry that prices will stay low as it's been below $4 since 2015. I would guess it's unlikely to stay that low, but we don't think long term in the US any longer. Everything seems to be what's happening this quarter.
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It's not unfortunate that natural gas is cheap, since it has also displaced a ton of oil and coal power. That has netted us a major reduction in carbon emissions.
It's unfortunate that it is also displacing nuclear, especially since natural gas prices may rise again but nuclear will remain stable for decades. And yes, agreed about the FUD and the unfortunate result. But still, cheap natural gas is an environmental win.
Re:Lost 2 out of three here as well - 1980 (Score:5, Informative)
They have been running reliably for 40 years and have produced more clean power than solar and wind will for a long, long time.
It is a horse barn truism that you cannot call the stable clean if for the last forty years you've been shovelling the manure into a stall rather than hauling it away. In the US spent fuel rods, the hottest type of nuclear waste, are stored in pools on site because so far there is no place to haul them to. Any knowledgeable prospective buyer of a horse ranch would want to see the costs of manure disposal show up in the accounting books and would turn away if told that there are no costs. But the nuclear industry doesn't track the costs of disposing of its waste, arguing that those costs belong to the future so we ain't going to account for them today.
To come to the point, parent post is so much horse shit. It perpetuates the myths that nuclear power is clean and cheap, when in reality it is "clean" only in the sense that the industry is not yet doing the cleanup that has to be done sometime. Putting off costs until tomorrow is a cute accounting trick, but it doesn't reduce the total cost.
In summary, to use the technical language of nuclear industry marketeers, the argument presented in parent post is so much horse shit.
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A molten salt reactor has never been operated commercially. Only a couple of research reactors were built and this won't change any time soon - the required engineering is seriously difficult and expensive. Back in the 1970ies when Germany had to make a decision whether to build a molten salt reactor or a pebble bed reactor, the horrendous difficulty of engineering (NB! We are talking about West Germany - the engineering heart of the world) was the reason why the Juelich Nuclear Research Center decided to b
so soon? (Score:2)
come on, olkiluoto 3 is neeeaaarly ready. maybe. possibly.
start of construction was 2005. fixed price contract with areva was 3 billion. estimated actual cost somewhere between 8.5 and 9 billion, with it open who pays the bill(Areva doesn't want to pay it and got smacked into pieces already anyways. Siemens was part of the original contract too).
the lesson there is that don't buy construction from the french since their pricing assumes government handouts in both quality control and purely financial manners
We used to be able to make nuclear plants (Score:2, Insightful)
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You remember back in the day, when they were predicting that nuclear plants would make electricity free? Do you remember why that was? It wasn't because nuclear plants were free, it was because the bombs were supposed to pay for the plants and the electricity was just a bonus.
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We used to be able to make nuclear plants, now we can't. Either we forgot how, or something else happened. Place your bets.
Let me rephrase this for you : it used to be cost efficient to generate electricity with nuclear plants, now it isn't.
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We used to be able to make stuff, now we can't.
There's nothing out of the ordinary in nuclear power. We have lost the ability to make most things with a reasonable cost.
We do know how to make nuclear plants.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, no.
What happened is the NIMBYs and 'Green' movement (intentional use of quotes since they are usually clueless knee-jerkers who know sweet F.A about the actual environment) made the whole thing a political football resulting in 300-400% cost increases pushing it to the borderline of economic.
'We' could quite happily produce them for a sensible price - and the Chinese are. All that needs to be done is not intentionally pushing the costs through the roof for no actual gain in safety, efficiency, or
Re:We do know how to make nuclear plants.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no.
You can tell that this narrative about the Left ruining everything is nonsense by how it only ever applies to things that failed. If they were really that powerful we wouldn't be burning oil in our cars or scrapping Obamacare. And if it really worked the right wing NIMBYs would have blocked every wind farm from ever being built.
The Chinese cancelled most of their new reactors, just finishing the ones they have already started, shortly after Fukushima. Not entirely due to safety concerns either, but because they realized that the market for nuclear power was failing and renewable energy was the smart investment. Look at China now, leading the world in wind, in electric vehicles, even giving the Tesla/Panasonic gigafactory a run for battery production.
Hippies. (Score:2)
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We used to be able to make nuclear plants, now we can't.
Wrong. We never knew how to make nuclear plants worth building, and we still don't. The difference is that today, people are aware enough of that fact to stop new construction. At the time we built those plants, people were still dazzled by lies like "safe", "clean", or "too cheap to meter". Now that all of those claims have been shown to be false, nobody wants a nuke plant anywhere near them, and many of us don't want them to exist at all.
I have high hopes for the Stellarator, but fission power is garbage.
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We used to use Radium to gauge shoe size, then we realized there were easier and better ways and that was stupid, pointless and costly. Research your shit.
Follow your own advice. Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were powered by X-ray tubes [wikipedia.org], not radium.
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Something I wish we had done. Our air would be much cleaner now.
Watch Pandora's Promise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Watch Pandora's Promise (Score:5, Insightful)
The NRC needs an overhaul. Modern designs are very safe and emit less radioactivity than burning coal. People are needlessly scared. People perceive threat wrong. They fear terrorist attacks and nuclear meltdowns but don't even know that smoking, heart disease and driving are considerably more likely to kill them.
It's a control issue. With second hand smoke banned almost everywhere you're not very likely to die from it unless you're a smoker. And if you are a smoker, the consequences have been explained to you in great detail. Same with heart disease, the leading cause is obesity and it's no secret. People worry about being hit by drunk drivers, not so much their own mistakes. Terrorists and meltdowns are risks we can't easily manage or mitigate, they just exist. And I'm not sure I can fully rationally explain this, but stopping a murderer seems more important than stopping an accident even though they'll both cost a life. Maybe even if it's more than one. Something to do with everyone getting their fair chance at life, if lightning strikes so be it. But to have someone else take it away from you offends me on a whole other level.
We can't manage meltdowns? Wtf? (Score:3)
Meltdowns are almost always a combination of bad reactor design + human error. Both of these can be mitigated.
People seem to conveniently forget that france has generated > 50% of its grid electricity from nuclear for over 50 years without a single major incident.
Re:We can't manage meltdowns? Wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meltdowns are almost always a combination of bad reactor design + human error. Both of these can be mitigated.
In theory yes, but in practice there are budgets and profitability to think about. Part of the reason why nuclear is now so expensive is because we realized that those "bordering on impossible" scenarios are actually not that unlikely and need to be addressed.
People seem to conveniently forget that france has generated > 50% of its grid electricity from nuclear for over 50 years without a single major incident.
Yes, it was a great welfare programme for the energy companies. The French electorate has got fed up giving them money though, which is why they are struggling to raise the funds to build plants in other countries like Hinkley C, and having to rely on Chinese investment.
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People worry about being hit by drunk drivers, not so much their own mistakes....
And this mentality is exactly why I fear being killed by a distracted driver far more than any drunk driver. Every idiot behind the wheel holds a capability to become distracted, and a lot of them abuse it, particularly the younger generation of drivers who are addicted to social media.
Terrorists and meltdowns are risks we can't easily manage or mitigate, they just exist.
Terrorism is caused by many things, and can be defined many ways. A nuclear meltdown is caused by one thing, and an entire growing industry of power alternatives exist that fully mitigate the risk of a meltdown by essential
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A nuclear meltdown is caused by one thing, and an entire growing industry of power alternatives exist that fully mitigate the risk of a meltdown by essentially removing the risk altogether. Let's not try and compare these two risks as equal; they are clearly not.
While it's true wind and solar don't have meltdown risks like nuclear plants, they are not risk-free. It's just the risks are more distributed. Solar requires rare earth mining which involves lots of heavy equipment and dangerous work environments. Wind turbine construction has killed workers from falls and other actions associated with working in and around heavy machinery. I think that's more in line with the risks the OP was referring to.
A distributed risk essentially dissolves into the background noise that is the risk of being a human on this planet.
A heavy equipment operator stands a far greater chance being killed in their personal vehicle driving to a "dangerous" work environment, and sadly suicide is what often kills humans in high places, not accidents.
It's a control issue alright (Score:2)
I worry about my own mistakes. Lots of folks do. But lots of folks have so much on their plate it's all they can do to make it through another day.
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Except that burning coal does not emit radioactivity.
If at all (depending on the source of the coal), the ash can contain trace amounts of uranium and/or thorium. And that ash still can be (and is) used as building material or safely be deposited.
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If flyash is that radioactive, why isn't it mined for nuclear fuel?
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In the article the GP linked to it says that the exposure to the general public from coal flyash is 10 times more radioactive than from a similar generating capacity nuclear power plant, but also is much less than the background radiation you would get anyway by being alive on earth.
Too bad that's not how radiation works. It's not the coal ash radiation or the background radiation. It's the coal ash radiation and the background radiation. Further, that complete bullshit is based on averages, but radioactive material comes in discrete particles, it doesn't arrive in the real world as an average. If you suck down a hot particle and wind up with lung cancer, it's no comfort that the average increase in radioactivity is negligible. And finally, the radioactive waste is not uniformly distri
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Modern designs are very safe and emit less radioactivity than burning coal.
Correct. The primary environmental issue isn't with the safety of the reactor. That's pretty well under control and unless someone severely screws up (which also happens), a modern reactor is reasonable safe. The real issue is with the nuclear waste for which we have still no proper solution. The best solution with can think of is to dig somewhere deep in a rock, dump it in there, poor concrete over it and pray for the best.
We have no clue at all what will geologically happen in 100,000 years. We can predic
Re: Watch Pandora's Promise (Score:2)
Nuclear meltdowns remove all life from an area and poisons it for many years. The weather then helpfully carries it elsewhere to kill more life. The idea that it's clean and safe is only the case if you pretend that it doesn't produce highly toxic waste and that accidents aren't highly damaging.
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Nuclear meltdowns remove all life from an area and poisons it for many years.
Really? I guess you better tell the scientists who are studying the Chernobyl area where wildlife has seen an incredible resurgence, surpassing pre-meltdown levels. You might also want to inform those studying the Fukushima meltdown who have categorically shown absolutely ZERO deaths due to radioactivity.
This kind of claptrap is exactly the useless, factless fearmongering ignorance that keeps the US and other countries from developing safe, cheap nuclear power.
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Hmmm. They mention Westinghouse, but very late... (Score:5, Insightful)
And they took Toshiba down with them (Score:2)
Something like $10B in loses.
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The prime factor in this decision, the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, isn't mentioned in the article until you get halfway through. I guess factors such as these don't really fit the narrative of "nuclear bad".
No, but it does fit the narrative of 'nuclear unprofitable and uneconomic, even with government backed insurance and no paying for cleanup at end of life'.
Hmm, where have I heard that before? (Score:2, Funny)
This is by design. The left has seized this approach above all others to kill nuclear power plants.
They have networks of friendly lawyers who file bogus suits before amenable judges. They have friendly regulators that change the rules midstream. The effect is delay, delay, delay. And that means cost, cost, cost. While tthe constru
Re:Hmm, where have I heard that before? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same left that hasn't gotten a single policy past since Medicare/Medicaid since the 60's? Tthat couldn't get a Public Option through congress much less single payer? You're a complete idiot if you think the left has any power.
This is under the same government that DGAF about mass poisonings in leaded drinking water or DuPond runoff, that exports fracking to the world, and lets BP go on incompetently drilling of the coast after trying their best to run the Gulf of Mexico?
Nuclear power is expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile in Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, but it's not all. Russia has the world's only power-generating fast-neutron reactor (BN-800) and is preparing to build the second generation (BN-1200) of this reactor type. All the while pursuing the revolutionary project of lead-cooled reactor (i.e. reactor cooled with molten lead as coolant) that will allow to achieve almost 100% closed loop within the territory of a power plant, including fuel reprocessing.
Yep, US is way behind in nuclear technology, and it's entirely self-inflicted.
Re:Meanwhile in Russia... (Score:5, Informative)
Russia has the world's only power-generating fast-neutron reactor (BN-800) and is preparing to build the second generation (BN-1200) of this reactor type.
From Wikipedia:
"In 2015, after several minor delays, problems at the recently completed BN-800 indicated a redesign was needed. Construction of the BN-1200 was put on "indefinite hold",[1] and Rosenergoatom has stated that no decision to continue will be made before 2019."
That's why people aren't rushing to build these things. They are wonderful until someone notices that some unforeseen design flaw needs to be rectified, or some unforeseen stupidity mode comes to light, and suddenly it's delayed for a decade and billions are added to the price.
Re:Meanwhile in Russia... (Score:4)
No, but it makes people think twice when the project could cost billions more than expected or be cancelled entirely.
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Soviet construction quality was bad already [mywebs.su], current Russian construction quality is even worse [pikabu.ru]. I wouldn't bet on a speedy completion.
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And no amount of solar panels on roofs can replace it, you can masturbate on your solar panels as much as you can, but right now there's no credible path for them
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will have two reactors for the total power output of 2.4GWe
So those nuclear reactors each produce 1.21 Jigawatts? Great Scott!
you can masturbate on your solar panels as much as you can
That would reduce their efficiency.
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There's nothing inherently different about nuclear power - it's just that the US has lost necessary technologies and experience to build power plants, so this leads to predictable
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Leningrad 2 was already delayed twice actually... and the russian commission in 2015 basically acknowledegd nuclear power incurs regularly in construction delay and increased costs, often one leading to the other.
On top of that, it's not only the US: France nuclear power industry is in pretty bad shape too with huge debt, underfunded decommissioning plans and new constructions incurring huge delays and budget overruns.
Actually, of the 55 nuclear power plants under constuctions in the World, 35 are behind
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Meanwhile, behind the facade of an innocent looking bookstore...
Russia builds the SATAN-2 missile which can obliterate France or Texas. Priorities... Mobile reactors sure are popular even if we haven't gotten the landings just right.
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There's nothing inherently different about nuclear power
Congratulations, that's the dumbest thing I've seen yet this morning. I can usually find some spectacularly idiotic statement about nuclear power on Slashdot before noon, and it has not disappointed today.
If there's nothing inherently different about nuclear power, why do you want it? Oh, so there is something inherently different about it? Then why can't you accept that it comes with its own inherent risks?
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Or the USA is just better at making risk management decisions, and decided that given current developments in technology, it makes a lot more sense to do something else. It's too bad we're not a lot better or we would have been smart enough to spend all the money we started spending on nuke plants back in the 1970s on solar plants. Most of the panels would still be working today, they would have paid back their energy investment in seven years, and we could have actually been enjoying electrical output inst
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Repeat after me: "solar panels are not replacement for the baseload generation".
Repeat after me: "pretending storage doesn't exist or isn't getting better is douchey"
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Pretending that grid-level storage exists now (never mind 70-s) is not just stupid, it's total assholery.
You seem to be somehow unaware that there are numerous storage facilities of various sorts online already, and that there are many more coming online soon, and that there will be even more of them as the costs continue to fall. Also, nuclear base load is a myth, so you're way off in the land of the crazies anyway.
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Let's ditch nuclear and switch to modern coal burning like Germany
It would be foolish to ditch existingnuclear plants if they can be operated at an acceptable level of safety.
Just as it is foolish to build new nuclear plants, as they are economically not profitable anymore (without even talking about safety/risks).
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It's clearly the evil NRC's fault that new-gen reactors are so expensive, like in the UK, Finland etc....
Re:Nuclear power is expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it certainly is SAFE and CLEAN - but you're right that it's not cheap. Not until you take into account the cost of the CO2 emitted by LNG-burning plants which are what you get if you don't choose nuclear. Then suddenly they look real cheap.
But no-one is taking that into account...
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Natural gas is killing both coal and nuclear.
Blindseer? (Score:2)
Where is Blindseer when you need him to debunk that article?
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You seem to have forgotten that batteries exist.
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RBMK != current reactor technology
Just because building nukes on a faultline is a bad idea doesn't mean nukes are a bad idea.
Re:Terrible news (Score:4, Funny)
I'm so glad that we abandoned air travel after early deadly crashes [wikipedia.org] showed how unsafe the technology was (really? people flying in heavier than air vehicles - absurd and obviously stupid).
I'm sure some people who continued to dream of air transport claimed that the technology would only get better and safer. Perhaps some even made absurd claims such as "In less than one hundred years, we may see more than a five year span where no one died in a crash of a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world" which, of course, would have been an absurd prediction [forbes.com]. Fortunately, we largely ignored such idiots.
Re:Terrible news (Score:4, Informative)
To follow the analogy, today we have the added issue of many people preferring cheap sustainable clean safe beautiful air balloons.
And some people questioning this saying, but how will you move 2 million passengers a year in air balloons?
And other people saying, we'll make efficiency savings, so it isn't a problem.
Re:Terrible news (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, but 2,000 square miles is a tiny percentage of the planet Earth.
And, that is the hard lesson learned by the Japanese and the world -- own up immediately so the world (the US and western Europe to lessor degree) can deploy resources (generators, cables, helicopters, et al) can within an hour initiate deployment of resources. rather than being too proud to ask for help.
If asked immediately, the world could have helped, and possibly prevented meltdown, but the Japanese for cultural reason et al waited to
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A thin slice of your spinal column is but a tiny percentage of your body - by your logic it'd be fine to remove it.
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Considering how many lives were saved having nuclear power over the alternatives at the time (oil, coal), it could be a very reasonable tradeoff.
Deaths from Energy Accidents (Score:4, Informative)
You can check the number of deaths from energy accidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Below are some entries, in deaths per PWh:
Coal (China): 170,000
Coal (US): 10,000
Oil: 36,000
Natural Gas: 4,000
Solar: 440
Wind: 150
Hydro (non-US): 1,400
Hydro (US): 5
Nuclear(non-US): 90
Nuclear(US): 0.01
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And since fluctuating wind cannot be a baseload power source,
Any power source can be a baseload power source, provided you pair it with enough storage capacity to smooth out the fluctuations.
(Whether supplying sufficient storage capacity is practical using today's technology is a separate argument, but there's nothing fundamental preventing it, only the usual engineering problems, which are in the process of being solved)
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Sure, let's add to the list of hopeful assumptions: ...
2. Magic batteries will be developed, holding utility-scale amounts of power. This might involve Trump annexing Bolivia, but if it benefits wind, Greenpeace will be okay with that.
3. We will never run out of natural gas.
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And that's what's unfair. One lot are happy to invoke magic in the service of their favourite technology, but not allow it for other technologies.
So nuclear is always the real world nitty gritty pessimistic accident prone can never work nor be safe, whilst alternative energies are assessed by the optimistic future looking wizards and magicians who can deliver the utopia vision.
And meanwhile people have to get up in the morning and go to work, so they are going to be burning something, which will be natural
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The problem with nuclear right now is that the US "picked a winner" in nuclear by going with solid fuel fast reactors.
While the reactors themselves aren't terribly huge, the bulk of a plant are the water cooling towers and all the plumbing for the safety systems.
And, contrary to popular belief, REACTORS do NOT "blow up". What you're seeing in these cases are STEAM explosions from the cooling systems.
In an MSR style reactor, most of that crap is done away with. Because you don't need it and aren't using wa
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Baseload, that is fixed amount of power, never varying, e.g. 50% of peak.
That can be provided with any power plant, it does not matter if it is varying, or not.
Because you have load following plants to balance any variation out, regardless if demand or supply.
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No. A variable power source (wind/solar/etc) CANNOT be baseload.
Because baseload is the minimum required 24x7x365.
Wind is not 24x7x365.
Solar is not 24x7x365.
Maybe tacking in battery. But then you have to factor in replacing batteries every 7-10 years.
Or you're talking about a plant that's solar-PLUS-something else (natural gas, oil, etc) or wind-PLUS-something else.
And that's a completely different animal.
Coal is a baseload power source (hence the term "brown power").
Oil is a baseload power source.
Natural
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Nuclear energy is really only good for one thing.
I think the Russkies once had a plan to power turbines with hydrogen bombs or something like that.
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People are more than willing to pay more for energy sources that don't produce CO2. Where have you been for the last decade?
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You mean the rich progressive hypocrites who pretend to care about the little guy? I'm all for weaning off fossil fuels but the economics have to work too.
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I'm not a progressive at all (I'm mostly far right), I don't hesitate to claim that I don't care about the little guy, but the same way I buy "free range" eggs, even if those eggs cost between 150% and 200% more than regular eggs for the exact same product, I would pay more for electricity coming from energy sources that produce less pollution.
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Actually no. Most of it is stored in open air casks.
And most of it is only very mildly radioactive. Hell, you could hold it in a rubber-gloved hand. The issue is that it's like this for millions of years.
The main problem is the way the US government "picked a winner" with solid fuel reactors and solid fuels that are "done" after only giving up a tiny percentage of energy in "fast" reactors.
It makes far more sense to go with MSR reactors where the fuel is kept in until it and most of the byproducts cook d
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You came from the soil, is there anything wrong with putting you back?
Local concentrations often matter.
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Then why not invest in MSR setups?
They're smaller, denser and far less complicated to set up than solid fuel reactors. Therefore, cheaper in the long run.
They don't require vast quantities of water because they don't use water to cool the reactor or run the turbine.
They can burn existing nuclear waste and they can burn existing mine tailings that had to be stored because they're high in thorium.
They can even be built in such a way that an entire reactor, dump tank and turbine header can be built as a singl
Re: (Score:2)
You can shove economics up your ass
"Mrs. Clinton, what you do in your private life for sexual satisfaction, be it a Russian Urine Romp with eastern European prostitutes of dubious age . . .
. . . oh, wait . . . that was the other guy . . .
OK, so Bernie Sanders walks into a bar, and Donald Trump is working there, and asks Sanders,
What would you like to drink? What can I do for you . . ."
. . . and then Sanders says . . . .
Re: Boom (Score:5, Interesting)
People are more than willing to pay more for energy sources that don't produce CO2.
1. Many people are NOT willing to pay more, hence the election of our current president.
2. The people that are willing to pay more don't have to, since wind is already cost-competitive with FF and solar will be soon.
"Standardized" nukes like the AP1000 were supposed to lower construction costs and reduce maintenance. But so far they have NOT lowered costs, and appear to be worse in every way. There is no path forward for nukes in America, but to go with a complete redesign, and no one wants to pay the NRE for that.
My prediction: Hinkley Point will also be cancelled before it goes live.
Here is an alternative link [nytimes.com] since TFA is paywalled (at least for me).
Re: (Score:3)
I've been following the AP1000 project for quite a long time. The delays are due to several reasons. The projects started later than planned. Also the design was done before Fukushima. In China, where the first units are being constructed, there was a moratorium and construction stopped for like one year and a half to reevaluate the design taking into account what happened at Fukushima and changes were made to the design in the middle of construction which caused further delays. In the USA what also happene
Re: Boom (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll give you one example of issues that happened in the US. Some of the metal alloys in the original specification weren't being manufactured anymore. So newer alloys had to be qualified, tested, and certified, this impact the schedule by months.
It's a new construction so of course there are delays.
Re: Boom (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll give you one example of issues that happened in the US.
Why was none of this foreseeable? Why wasn't it in the original quoted price? With nuclear you get massive overruns to double or triple the original cost, you get decades of delay, but you also get lots of GREAT excuses that somehow make it all okay, and won't happen next time ....
Re: (Score:3)
For one thing, if projects take years and years, specialty alloys that were once available from manufacturer A may have been discontinued because the market was too small to justify keeping certain production processes running.
And by the time the project actually goes ahead, years and years after the original quote was requested, you find out that instead of buying alloy A off the shelf for the quoted price, you now need to pay a manufacturer to a) design an alterative alloy b) implement the production proc
Re: Boom (Score:4, Interesting)
I've actually worked in the nuclear fuel industry. So I know a little bit about dealing with that sector. Thanks to many factors, nuclear is a politically very sensitive topic. Even fairly innocent projects can take years of political maneuvering before anything gets actually off the ground. So what typically happens is that an initial study is done to figure out what the project will cost.
These numbers are then put into a budget request and made part of a political agenda. At that point you get the usual cow trading, political posturing and dealing with environmental action committees. Keep in mind that at this point, there are still no vendor contracts because nothing is set in stone and the future of the project is still unclear. For the building of a nuclear reactor which noone wants in their beack yard, this stage can take many years. Eventually the deal is struck and X billion dollars are allocated in the overall budget.
And that is when the actual work starts and actual contracts are to be signed. And that is when the project team discovers things like alloys no longer being manufactured.
I have been lucky enough to work on software to perform data logging for the compression of nuclear fuel powder into MOX tablets. I say lucky, because I've always been interested in nuclear physics. And I can tell you that for projects that do not have to be part of a political agenda (such as mine), things can be pretty efficient and well controlled in terms of cost. Because the project is usually decided by the site board of leadership. Even pretty expensive projects can be done efficiently if the budget falls within the overal site budget.
Re: (Score:3)
Some of the metal alloys in the original specification weren't being manufactured anymore. So newer alloys had to be qualified, tested, and certified,
So, why not just make the specified alloy again instead of coming up with a whole new one?
Re: Boom (Score:5, Insightful)
But once the reactors enter operation they'll pay for themselves in just a couple of years.
This is the most ridiculous sentence I have read so far today. Do you have the foggiest notion of how much these reactors cost and the value of their annual production? "A couple of years"???
Find out about topic before posting (Score:2)
Now that's a bit of a strange thing to write. Not even the salesfolk trying to get governments and power utilities to build these things make claims that wild.
There's nothing wrong with something with an expected life of three decades or more taking quite a few years to show a return so there is no need for such wild claims.
All you are achieving by making such a claim is the impression that either you are holding all
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking in energy terms. In terms of cost of construction sure it takes a lot longer. It uses so much goddamn concrete and steel and takes so long to build the money payback time is similar to hydropower dam like 18 years.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Playing devils advocate here - the first one has only just gone live in China (or is about to) despite them being a 1970s style design so those reduced costs are not expected for a while until the rough edges of the design are sorted out. It was only the utterly clueless nuke fanboys (of which there are a few on this site) who claimed that cost savings would be showing up already.
Whatever people think about
Re: (Score:2)
whoever was paid the money so far in wages and the construction companies that skimmed that money prior to having paid said wages.
also whoever was providing the cement etc.
if the workforce wasn't imported then local whoevers got the money, really.
Re: (Score:2)
New QB and only second year coach... they will need it.
None the less... Go Big Red!
Coder vs engineer writ large (Score:3)
Yes, just like it's not too difficult to convert a motorbike into a steam locomotive.
Come on guys - at least THINK before posting.
Re: (Score:2)