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Power Government United States

America's Nuclear Reactors Can't Survive Without Government Handouts (fivethirtyeight.com) 464

Posted by EditorDavid from the powering-down dept.
Slashdot reader Socguy shares an article from FiveThirtyEight: There are 99 nuclear reactors producing electricity in the United States today. Collectively, they're responsible for producing about 20% of the electricity we use each year. But those reactors are, to put it delicately, of a certain age. The average age of a nuclear power plant in this country is 38 years old (compared with 24 years old for a natural gas power plant). Some are shutting down. New ones aren't being built. And the ones still operational can't compete with other sources of power on price... without some type of public assistance, the nuclear industry is likely headed toward oblivion....

[I]t's the cost of upkeep that's prohibitive. Things do fall apart -- especially things exposed to radiation on a daily basis. Maintenance and repair, upgrades and rejuvenation all take a lot of capital investment. And right now, that means spending lots of money on power plants that aren't especially profitable... Combine age and economic misfortune, and you get shuttered power plants. Twelve nuclear reactors have closed in the past 22 years. Another dozen have formally announced plans to close by 2025.
A professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University points out that nuclear power is America's single largest source of carbon emissions-free electricity -- though since 1996, only one new plant has opened in America, and at least 10 other new reactor projects have been canceled in the past decade.

The article also describes two more Illinois reactors that avoided closure only after the state legislature offered new subsidies. "But as long as natural gas is cheap, the industry can't do without the handouts."
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America's Nuclear Reactors Can't Survive Without Government Handouts More

America's Nuclear Reactors Can't Survive Without Government Handouts

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  • I don't have much of a problem with this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:38PM (#56796706)
    though I'd rather they were just gov't operated instead of letting a private citizen skim 10-20% off the top. Anyway, if we're gonna run nuke plants I want them run without a profit motive. Otherwise there's too much incentive to cut corners on safety. And if we're gonna have the gov't run every aspect to prevent that from happen then what's the bloody point of letting private companies run them? If we want to hand out free money we can do that with food stamps and then at least poor people are fed.
    • Not only that, if those people had any kind of sense, they would have standardized on a single reasonably modern design ten of fifteen years ago and built at least a few dozens of them by now. Nuclear power is "go big or go home" kind of stuff. No wonder it can't survive in the US when things have been done in a piecemeal fashion in the past.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There STILL is no long-term waste storage or reprocessing program in place. Nuclear is no-go until this problem is dealt with on a Federal level, period. Thousands of pools around the country waiting to explode is not acceptable.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by beachmike ( 724754 )
          We HAD a very long term nuclear waste storage solution at Yucca Mountain until Senator Harry Reid killed it with the help of Barry 0bama after over $10 billion was spent developing it.

      • Re:I don't have much of a problem with this (Score:5, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @09:23PM (#56796878)

        they would have standardized on a single reasonably modern design ten of fifteen years ago

        They did. It is the AP1000 [wikipedia.org]. It didn't solve any of the problems that you claim it magically would.

        The future of nuclear power is still happening ... in China, where government subsidies are less controversial.

        • Re:I don't have much of a problem with this (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Notabadguy ( 961343 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @11:58PM (#56797416)

          they would have standardized on a single reasonably modern design ten of fifteen years ago

          They did. It is the AP1000 [wikipedia.org]. It didn't solve any of the problems that you claim it magically would.

          The future of nuclear power is still happening ... in China, where government subsidies are less controversial.

          I was a project manager for the AP1000 projects Sumner and Vogtle. I've told this story before, but these projects failed - along with the rest of the failed nuclear renaissance in America because of NIMBY and a conjoined abomination of regulation and oversight. For example: In ~2011(ish) ASME redefined SA316 Stainless Steel to change the tensile strength and allowable radius of forged material, which in turn affected the sourced materials and design plans for already purchased / designed / built components in stage 2 containment. These designs required congressional approval, which ASME is not beholden to.

          The changed definition of SA316 required congressional approval....but congress wasn't in session. Tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns not withstanding, this tiny little thing caused a two year delay. Add together dozens of these type of issues happening across a myriad of issues, and that's why we can't have nice things.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            In other words nuclear power is brittle and the very high safety standards needed to keep it safe can massively increase costs.

            Compared with the alternatives it's not very attractive.

            • Re:I don't have much of a problem with this (Score:5, Insightful)

              by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday June 17, 2018 @07:37AM (#56798350) Journal

              In other words nuclear power is brittle and the very high safety standards needed to keep it safe can massively increase costs.

              Except it's really not clear that the insanely high safety standards are actually required. The regulations have created an industry that is orders of magnitude safer than any other large scale power generation industry. That indicates significant over-engineering. And given that regulatory-based engineering is never efficient in the sense of minimizing cost for a given level of effectiveness, looking only at the safety record almost certainly underestimates the excess.

              The fact that Congress has to approve any design changes is mind-boggling. In any reasonably-regulated industry, Congress creates an agency and directs it to do the job of rulemaking and enforcement, then lets it do its job. There is absolutely no reason for Congress to get involved beyond that... it's not like the politicians can evaluate the design changes in any meaningful way. The only reason for that requirement is to place arbitrary bureaucratic and political obstacles in the way of construction.

              • If it's not clear (Score:4, Insightful)

                by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @07:06PM (#56800708)
                than I can honestly say I want to err on the side of caution. Nuclear disasters can't be cleaned up easily if at all. [slashdot.org]

                I keep saying this, but I won't trust nuclear in America until we can run a safe plant cheaper than a dangerous one. Americans have a long history of privatizing crap that shouldn't be privatized. Hell, look at our response to Flint, MI's water crisis or the PR hurricane. I don't trust Americans with anything dangerous (and yes, I'm an American). We're cheapskates who like to tell ourselves God will take care of it. And in 2018 the rich don't have to live near the damage they cause.

              • But there is a reason - Congress socialized the insurance of nuclear reactors and it's the underwriter and actuary. It's completely stupid and causes almost all of our problems but it's not like it's inexplicable.

            • Fallout is also not very attractive. (Score:5, Insightful)

              by emil ( 695 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @08:43AM (#56798500)

              Fukushima has shown us that a loss of power for 36 hours at any of these facilities will cause them to boil off all their coolant, melt their containment vessels, and poison the surrounding environment for thousands of years. This includes both the reactor vessels and the waste/spent fuel rods in the local storage ponds.

              The exact same GE model that failed in Fukushima runs 30 miles upstream from me on the Mississippi. Should it lose power as Fukushima did, the Mississippi river will be lost to our country. This reactor was scheduled for closure and was saved by my state legislature, and it should not be running.

    • Anyway, if we're gonna run nuke plants I want them run without a profit motive. Otherwise there's too much incentive to cut corners on safety.

      One does not follow the other. You can have a non-profit, but you still need contractors to do the actual work. And the contractors are naturally included to cut corners to make a bigger buck.

      And if we're gonna have the gov't run every aspect to prevent that from happen then what's the bloody point of letting private companies run them?

      Nobody in a government position has the expertise to run a nuclear reactor. They always end up hiring people to do the actual job for them. And every time a new government is elected, there's a chance that the work will be moved to a different group. Just look at other projects that the government has managed, and see

    • Chernobyl had government owned and operated nuclear reactors. Fukushima was a privately owned and operated nuclear power plant. Which one resulted in more death and destruction?

      Governments do not care about you. A private entity might not care about you either, that is until you stop paying your electric bill. Dead people don't pay their bills. Dead people don't vote either but then the survivors just get substandard services and get to bury their dead family and friends.

      I'll take a greedy capitalist o

  • Blame the lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:39PM (#56796710)
    Doesn't matter if its safe or not, the lawyers can tie things up in court for decades. When you;re looking at $x for building the plant, and $x * 100, for legal fees, it's kinda hard to keep going. Doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, when you're outspent you lose.

  • Sorry, can't resist... (Score:5, Funny)

    by R3d M3rcury ( 871886 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:47PM (#56796736) Journal

    There are 99 nuclear reactors producing electricity in the United States today.

    99 nuclear reactors.
    If one of those reactors should happen to fail,
    98 nuclear reactors producing electricity in the United States.

    Sing it with me!

  • We can't keep burning fossil fuels forever! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:59PM (#56796784) Journal
    Unless you're a Dominionist and actually believe that the Earth is going to end soon anyway, you can't defend saying that it's okay to keep burning fossil fuels, even so-called 'clean burning' natural gas. It's just plain stupid. Meanwhile I'm not going to defend the long-in-the-tooth nuclear reactors that are still operating; they're outdated designs, they're flawed designs to start with, and should be retired -- after being replaced, that is. There are better designs, and better fuels than what they're using. We can't keep relying on fossil fuels, we can't run everything off solar, wind, and hydroelectric, and if anyone thinks that there's ever going to be less of a demand for electricity, then they're dreaming, there will only ever be more demand, unless there is a die-back of homo sapiens sapiens around the world. So come on you NIMBYs and nuclear power-haters, it's time to bite the bullet and admit that there aren't any other alternatives at the moment , and nuclear power in one form or another is what the situation calls for. Stop being irrational about it and accept the logic. The alternative is an energy crisis.
    • There's plenty of solar, wind, hydro and geothermal. Most places seem to manage using less electricity than you do, so you could easily cut back a bit.
  • High up front capital costs have been a primary problem for nuclear power generation for most of its existence. The Washington Public Power Supply System [historylink.org] lead to a massive multibillion dollar municipal bond default in the 1980s.

    It takes a lot of time and money to build traditional nuclear power plants, so if the financial and political system shifts underneath a potential plant builder then they can go bust with a partially built plant and nothing to show for it. The financial risk is huge and has alread

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re: "High up front capital costs have been a primary problem for nuclear power generation for most of its existence."

      Have to design good foundations. Found out whats below the site.
      Have to find workers who can do the foundations. That wont fail over the initial span of the design.
      Bring in the experts to do the design and welding.
      People who understand the metal, long term radiation design work.
      Build the reactor. Build the rest of the plant and support services.
      Pay the locals to work at the site f

  • If you haven't noticed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @10:05PM (#56797026)

    Government handouts are A-Ok as long as they are given to the rich, large corporations, or defense contractors. Just like Jesus taught.

  • If Only We Had A National Policy to Reduce CO2 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by careysub ( 976506 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @10:38PM (#56797150)

    Handing money over to private businesses to achieve some public policy goal should be on the table as policy option, but only if it is a cost-effective way to achieve that goal. But before that discussion can even begin here we need to have a government that recognizes that reducing CO2 emissions is extremely important as a public policy goal. Only then can actual goals be set, and the cost of policy options drawn up to meet them.

    Subsidizing existing nuclear power plants may be a cost effective way of reducing CO2 emissions. I am not saying it is (or isn't) but it should be evaluated along with all of the other options. Even building new nuclear power plants should be considered - but cost-effectiveness should be the ruling criterion.

    The current administration's scheme to subsidize both coal and nuclear power is incoherent and obviously a case of political corruption -- transferring money to a private company from the public purse simply as pay-off for support. That one part of it, nuclear power, reduces carbon release is merely accidental.

    One could imagine what an optimal plan (most cost effective) for nuclear power to contribute to CO2 emissions would look like. In addition to simply keeping current plants operating, building new ones would break from past practice by building a single standardized design that has passed all design approvals (siting approvals will always be necessary), and would build them on a regular schedule so that the production infrastructure can be built, and efficient production techniques instituted, and replacement parts kept available at reasonable cost.

    Each nuclear power plant unit produces 0.2% of the nation's annual electricity consumption, 66% of which is supplied from a carbon releasing source. If you build 5 units a year, that would knock 1% off of that 66%, and after 25 years, would have made a major contribution toward getting it down to zero.

    A long term public-private partnership to accomplish a public policy goal is a pipe dream in the U.S. for the forseeable future, but it isn't impossible. U.S. governments can carry out expensive long term plans. New York City's Water Tunnel No. 3 [wikipedia.org] is a very costly and complex engineering project to dig a 24 foot wide tunnel, deep underground, 60 miles long, running the length of New York City, that has been under construction for 50 years (almost completed now). A national plan to build nuclear reactors could be created - Republicans have always been nuclear power enthusiasts, and Democrats support CO2 reduction - so the basis for the broad support required exists.

  • How much of that is the anti nuclear lobby? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @11:20PM (#56797276)

    Literally how much of the cost inflation is the effect of political activism?

    We have the same problem with the death penality where interference with the logistics is so heavy that they are having a hard time getting their hands on the drugs required to perform a lethal injection.

    Some of the drugs have dual uses for other medical proceedures... and the shortages are so heavy that patients that need those drugs to treat them can't get access to the drugs.

    Here is another point on that, look at countries outside of the US regulatory system... say in China etc... they're clearly highly econonical absent anti nuclear activism inflating costs. We can see that very clearly in nations where it is not politically relevant.

    You can also talk to nuclear engineers that have designed newer reactor designs and they'll validate this position.

    Here is what we need to fix the situation:
    1. We need a reasonable place to store spent fuel.
    2. Life time of reactor regulations that don't change after the fact. An investment problem is that you can sink billions into a reactor and then the regulations change which make a good financial move a bad one. This ex post facto legislation makes nuclear more risky than other systems that don't suffer from that pattern. You fix this by locking relevant regulation to what it was when the reactor was built. New reactors would follow new rules but older reactors would be shielded from changes because it impacts costs dramatically sometimes. Subsidizing reactors that follow new rules is a good compromise. So old reactors follow new rules but you make the situation whole by paying for the cost of new regulation.
    3. Smaller new reactors instead of the giant old reactors. They're safer, less conspicuous, and a much smaller investment.
    4. The Not In My Back Yard ism (NIMYism) is out of control with nuclear. No one wants to live next to an airport or a water treatment facility, but we need them. If we place it 10 miles away from you, then that should be good enough. Often people complain about reactors that are 400 miles from them. Its fucking stupid.

    Naturally none of this is going to happen. The environmental lobby wants to reduce CO2 but doesn't want to use the only technology that will actually do it.

    its a giant stupid shit show. Cue lots of ignorant people saying wind and solar. Which is just a vote for natural gas and coal. Which means the CO2 argument is at best inconsistent.

    And yes, I know you're angry and about to post about how great wind and solar is and how wrong it is for me to call you ignorant. But what you've probably failed to do is address the natural gas and coal issue. If you can't answer why every solar and wind project has to be backstopped by as much coal and natural gas... and really everything is just an emotional sputter of mindless outrage... it just validates my point.

    So seriously, if you think I'm wrong... natural gas and coal... why are they rolled out to back stop the solar and wind?

    • Literally how much of the cost inflation is the effect of political activism?

      None, because the USG doesn't give the tiniest, greenest little shit about people or activists when there is corporate money involved. See DAPL or Occupy Wallstreet for two recent examples. Or the FBI charging people with terrorism for protesting factory farms. Or leaving BP in charge of cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico they worked hard to destroy.

      We have the same problem with the death penality where interference with the logistics

    • Re:How much of that is the anti nuclear lobby? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @04:12AM (#56797970) Homepage Journal

      China put all new nuclear that wasn't already under construction on hold after the Fukushima disaster, and eventually cancelled it.

      They hit peak coal years ago too. They are concentrating on renewables now, which is both good for the environment and makes economic sense because that's where the growth is.

      So even absent NIMBYism they decided nuclear was inferior.

    • the wealthy don't like the wind farms messing with their view of ocean though.
      They NIMBY's have a point. America has a poor track record of safety, especially in poor counties. Sooner or later some politician gets bought off, privatizes the thing and looks like other way while a plant that should have been shut down decades ago keeps running. You're a couple of elections away from disaster.

      If you want nuke plants make one that's cheaper to run safely than not. Either that or fundamentally change Ame

  • And yet we fly... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @11:24PM (#56797296)

    The basic argument against the nuclear industry boils down to the idea that nuclear is a complex, unforgiving technology whose safety depends on constant monitoring.

    I have an even better example of this kind of industry for you - aviation. Today, because of the elaborate precautions we take with air safety, most people feel perfectly safe on commercial aircraft. Yet we all know that somewhere in the world, about once a year, a planeload of people is lost. That's 200 or more at once each time, yet we generally feel that such numbers are not significant enough to worry about, even though most air accidents occur near airports, and can involve urban ground fatalities.

    What would happen if a nuclear accident killed 200 people - just one? Now look at the converse: 6.5% of Americans are afraid to fly and opt to never get on a plane. When was the last time you saw even one of them protesting at an airport?

    The difference between these industries is all in the politics.

    • I have an even better example of this kind of industry for you - aviation.

      Except:

      Airlines offer the fastest travel available - nuclear doesn't offer anything you can't get from other renewable energy sources for a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time.

      Airlines aren't setting the world up with a hazardous waste problem that will last thousands of years.

      The difference between these industries is all in the politics.

      The difference is that nuclear power cannot be justified based on cost alone. It cost

  • We could replace them (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    But nuclear plants can't compete with the subsidies that wind and solar receive in the form of exemptions from onerous environmental regulations.

  • Focus on smaller/cleaner reactors and Solar (Score:3)

    by millertym ( 1946872 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @10:32AM (#56798864)

    We are at a technological point that we should actively work on phasing out these old/large reactor installations. If nuclear is used, make much smaller, less radioactive, Thorium based, localized installations that power suburbs. And of course keep expanding solar/wind power because of it's obvious benefits.

  • Nuclear Power is the long term answer (Score:3)

    by TomGreenhaw ( 929233 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @10:53AM (#56798918)
    Unfortunately the designs that are actively used are really dual use, civilian and military for weapons programs. Breeder reactors and thorium reactors don't have strong military significance, so their designs and fuels are not subsidized by the iceberg of the economy that is our military budget. Most effective political support for nuclear power is generated by the military contractor lobby.

    Fusion reactors are right around the corner and are a far better long term choice. Solar and wind with natural gas backup for peak loads are the right choice for today. This is also the opinion of the invisible hand of capitalism because that where the money is invested.

    Fission reactors based upon today's designs are a bad idea at this point because the waste issue is intractable.

  • Meanwhile in China... (Score:3)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:47AM (#56801788) Journal

    Meanwhile, China [world-nuclear.org] has 20 new nuclear power plants under construction, and more about to start construction.

    Of Chinese nuclear plants, almost 70% (865 GWe) was built within the last decade, whereas in the United States half of the fleet (580 GWe) was over 30 years old.

    Longer-term, fast neutron reactors (FNRs) are seen as the main technology for China, and CNNC expects the FNR to become predominant by mid-century. A 65 MWt fast neutron reactor - the Chinese Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) - near Beijing achieved criticality in July 2010. Based on this, a 600 MWe pre-conceptual design was developed, the CFR600 began construction in December 2017 at Xiapu in Fujian province, and commissioning is expected in 2023.

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