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Government Power United States Technology

US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) 333

Posted by BeauHD from the zero-emissions-energy-sources dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last week, the House passed a bipartisan bill that originated in the Senate called the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (S. 97), which will allow the private sector to partner with U.S. National Laboratories to vet advanced nuclear technologies. The bill also directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to lay the ground work for establishing "a versatile, reactor-based fast neutron source." The Senate also introduced a second bill called the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (S. 3422) last Thursday, which would direct the DOE to actually establish that fast neutron reactor. That bill also directs the DOE to "make available high-assay, low-enriched uranium" for research purposes. The Nuclear Energy Leadership Act has not yet made it past a Senate vote. The report also mentions a recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling to keep older reactors online. "The court said that subsidies for nuclear energy proposed by Illinois don't cause any interference with federal control over interstate power markets, which is prohibited," reports Ars.

"In 2017 the state of Illinois agreed to offer a Zero Emissions Credit that included nuclear energy (PDF). The credit was opposed by fossil fuel generators and by the Electric Power Supply Association, who sued the director of the Illinois Power Agency. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Justice filed a joint brief in the case several months ago, saying those federal agencies had no problem with Illinois' credit system, according to Utility Dive."
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US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power More

US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power

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  • It's ironic that Trump is derided for leaving the Paris accord, when he's the only one taking actions to significantly improve the climate.

    The end game for truly low emissions is solar + nuclear. No way you can get there with solar alone - and Trump's government is helping to push nuclear in ways that Obama (being of that old green school) simply would not allow, no matter how much of the planet dies as a result.

    Eventually the world will come back around to nuclear once they see more modern nuclear designs

    • Re:U.S. only country really fighting climate chang (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @11:44PM (#57332032) Journal

      It's ironic that Trump is derided for leaving the Paris accord, when he's the only one taking actions to significantly improve the climate.

      There is nothing in this story that mentions or involves Donald Trump in any way. And none of the "incentives" to nuclear power discussed in this bill are new.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 )
        The White House [world-nuclear-news.org] wants to push advanced nuclear, and supports nuclear power legislation - unlike the previous Administration. That's all that's really needed here - Congress will actually pass nuclear power bills now there is a President who understands the benefits of nuclear power.

        • If Trump were serious about promoting nuclear, he would open Yucca Mountain. Explain that a fuel recycling facility fed from this storage buffer would provide high-quality jobs for Nevadans.

          • Re:U.S. only country really fighting climate chang (Score:4, Insightful)

            by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @12:52AM (#57332262)

            If Trump were serious about promoting nuclear, he would open Yucca Mountain.

            He is president, not dictator. YM is blocked by congress. Harry Reid is gone, so there is hope, but Donald can't do anything until congress acts.

            Explain that a fuel recycling facility fed from this storage buffer would provide high-quality jobs for Nevadans.

            That is logical, but nuclear policy isn't about logic.

            Anyway, continuing to store waste on-site is good enough for several more decades. YM is not a critical path problem.

          • He's put funding [reviewjournal.com] back in his budget proposal. He's doing what he can, from the White House.
          • The worst thing we can do is bury the supposed current waste. There is loads of energy in it and would be criminal to bury it.

        • Re: U.S. only country really fighting climate chan (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Nuclear is soo expensive due to the greenies throwing up ridiculous rules and regulations that paradoxically make nuclear energy less safe. Reactors use 1950s technology because the compasionate greens make it so hard to innovate. You can design reactors to be much much safer than they are now, but we dont ironically due to all the safety rules. If Solar and wind had to deal with the same requirments as nuclear it would cost 100 usd per KW h. Society is supposed to advance, but we are regressing. Rath

          • Actually, I'm good with the regs on nukes. So are the nuke companies. That is not the issue. It is lawsuit after lawsuit that causes the issues.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by sg_oneill ( 159032 )

          The previous administration struggled to push legislation, because the GOP openly had a policy of "We wont allow any bill that comes from the democrats" regardless of its merits. Even if it was completely apolitical (in the left/right sense) or whatever, it was blocked because a democrat raised it, or Obama proposed it (ESPECIALLY if Obama proposed it).

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 )
            Struggled, even when they had not just a majority for 4 of the 8 years, but a super-majority (filibuster-proof) for a good chunk of that, too. Easier to blame failures on the "other side" than the reality that even the President's own party thought much of what he offered was poor...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by sfcat ( 872532 )

              Struggled, even when they had not just a majority for 4 of the 8 years, but a super-majority (filibuster-proof) for a good chunk of that, too. Easier to blame failures on the "other side" than the reality that even the President's own party thought much of what he offered was poor...

              That's just not true. Obama had a simply majority Dem congress for only his first 2 years [wikipedia.org]. It was majority Rep for the rest of his terms. Obama never had a super majority Dem congress at any point.

              • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

                by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 )

                If Obama never had a filibuster proof majority in Congress during his term, then how did Obamacare pass with zero Republican votes?

                The fact is he had a filibuster proof 60 votes in the Senate until Massachusetts decided their proposals sucked so much they voted in a Republican to replace Kennedy, Scott Brown was sworn in on 2/4/10. Prior to that they had Democrat Paul Kirk replacing Kennedy.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by jbengt ( 874751 )
                  IRRC, it passed with 2 Republican votes, actually.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Kiuas ( 1084567 )

              You guys haven't started construction of new nuclear power plants since the 1980s, so saying this is somehow a partisan issue that's entirely to be blamed on one side or the other is completely nonsensical.

              Fact is, even though Chernobyl was the result of both defective reactor design as well as incredibly bad oversight (the plant was undergoing testing prior to the operation and some safety-measures were disabled etc, overall mismanagement), the accident (together with three mile island which was small in s

    • Virtually all of Europe as well as Australia have been moving to renewables as fast as they can. Hell, bloody South America is moving fast in that direction. It's mostly the US and China that are feet dragging. Of the two the US has the least excuses. China's still got huge swaths of abject poor. Outside of the Rust Belt and the South the US is pretty well off (relatively speaking).

      Our biggest problem is major projects like changing the primary source of energy used by a civilization aren't the kind of

    • Re:U.S. only country really fighting climate chang (Score:5, Informative)

      by tk77 ( 1774336 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @11:53PM (#57332054)

      It's ironic that Trump is derided for leaving the Paris accord, when he's the only one taking actions to significantly improve the climate.

      You mean like rolling back pollution rules to help coal plants? https://abcnews.go.com/Health/... [go.com]

      I'm all for advancing nuclear power technology, but I wouldn't give Trump any credit for it. The bill was passed by Congress. The Trump administration was only mentioned once in the article and even that was about nuclear being bundled with his attempts to save the coal plants.

      • I bet the fact the previous President was dead-set against nuclear meant that Congress wouldn't even address the bill or issue unless they had a 100% solid veto-proof supermajority. Sometimes just a change in Administration is all that's needed to give Congress the push to start addressing some issues.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The only bright spot on the coal industry in the US is that natural gas and other competing technologies are so cheap that coal just cannot compete. The only way that Trump can MCGA is by literally paying plants to burn it.

        And it's going to get worse for the coal industry as time goes by due to solar and wind power getting cheap enough that they don't require subsidies to compete.

      • The bill was passed by {the Republican controlled} Congress.

        FTFY.

    • Yeah. France's nuclear power doesn't count, cause it's French. I feel you, man.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

      It's ironic that Trump is derided for leaving the Paris accord, when he's the only one taking actions to significantly improve the climate.

      The end game for truly low emissions is solar + nuclear. No way you can get there with solar alone - and Trump's government is helping to push nuclear in ways that Obama (being of that old green school) simply would not allow, no matter how much of the planet dies as a result.

      What makes you think environmentalism has anything to do with saving the environment?

      Its all anti-corporatism pretending to care about a just cause.

    • Many are coming around. They compliment each other (Score:5, Interesting)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @12:22AM (#57332170) Journal

      It's no coincidence that Greenpeace has that name, Green Peace. The early environmental movement was very much intertwined with the anti-war, anti-military movement, at a time with nuclear weapons were one of the major issues of the day. The Peace side of Greenpeace was churning out information / propagada against nuclear research and facilities because of nuclear weapons. You couldn't have Greenpeace both promoting nuclear energy and using scare tactics about nuclear research such as creating confusion between the slow, long-lived elements vs the fast ones that release enough energy to be dangerous. That legacy lasted a long time.

      A lot of leading environmentalists are coming around, though, such as one of the founders of Greenpeace:

      http://ecosense.me/2017/01/17/... [ecosense.me]
      http://ecosense.me/2017/01/18/... [ecosense.me]

      As the parent mentioned, solar and wind compliment nuclear very nicely. Both solar and wind are great - when the weather is right at the moment. When the weather isn't right, at night for example, nuclear is the very best, cleanest way to have your base.

      For 70 years now we've been trying to find ways solar electric work on a nationwide scale, particularly working on the storage problem. All the while we've been running
      oal burning plants while hoping for a revolutionary discovery in energy storage. It can work fine for a hunting cabin (just a little expensive), but after seventy years of burning coal while waiting for solar, we're still nowhere near the kind of revolutionary discoveries needed for something on the scale of powering the United States or Japan. The amount of energy is just so vast. As an example, pumped hydro storage sufficient to get the US through a large winter storm system would require flooding from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, nearly half the country.

      If we want to not only replace the existing uses of electricity, but also power all of our cars and trucks from electricity, and industry such as steel and aluminum, we're going to need a lot more electricity. Dependable power for transportation can come from either fossil fuels or nuclear, because you can't have the entire state shut down due it's cloudy this week. You can use solar electric during sunny weeks, but food needs to be delivered to stores during storm season too, and Seattle's cloudy season.

      People are starting to come around. I don't think we'll have to keep using mostly fossil fuels for another seventy years while hoping fot a miracle. We can wait for the miracle while drastically cutting CO2 emissions with nuclear.

      PS -
      Before you reply, be warned I know the gimmicks of dividing *electricity* usage (not vehicles or any other use of energy) by energy usage. Apple divided by orange is a useless number. I'll call you out on it, so don't bother trying to post a BS stat that conflates energy and electricity.

      I'll also call you out on it if you try the propaganda of conflating long half-life elements which release energy slowly, over a long time, like a candle, vs short half-life elements that release it quickly like a firecracker. Energy released quickly is dangerous - for a short time, then it's done.

      I was going to list two more propaganda techniques I'll call you out on, but let's just summarize with this:
      I've studied for 30 years. I've written a comprehensive energy plan for the United States. I know the tricks, and I'll call you put if you try to use them.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        For 70 years now we've been trying to find ways solar electric work on a nationwide scale, particularly working on the storage problem.

        No, we have been waiting for the cost to fall to where widespread solar and storage solutions make economic sense. We are at that point now.

        • According the Government Accountability Office, you the taxpayer spend about $40 billion / year on 345 different federal initiatives supporting solar energy research and deployment. Total spent over the years is more than a TRILLION dollars. You're saying this trillion dollars actually has NOT been spent on trying to get it to work, everyone has just been sitting on their hands waiting for a miracle? Maybe the trillion dollars went from the taxpayer to the corporations and then back to the politicians who

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by amorsen ( 7485 )

        As the parent mentioned, solar and wind compliment nuclear very nicely. Both solar and wind are great - when the weather is right at the moment. When the weather isn't right, at night for example, nuclear is the very best, cleanest way to have your base.

        Nuclear, solar, and wind are all zero-marginal-cost technologies. If you decide not to use the power they make, you save approximately nothing -- a little wear and tear on the wind turbines, a bit of essentially free nuclear fuel for nuclear. Therefore they complement each other atrociously. If you have enough nuclear power to handle peak demand, any build-out of solar and wind is throwing money away for no gain, and if you don't have enough nuclear, you are scuppered on a cloudy quiet day.

        If you have energ

    • Trump is pushing coal, not nuclear. Energy policy is a contentious subject, but the one policy that all activists agree on is that coal sucks the most.

      When it comes to advanced nuclear, our nose is flattened on China's store window. Nothing will happen here until factory-built nukes start rolling off Chinese assembly lines. Then we will accuse them of stealing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      How is defunding Government oversight of a high risk industry and replacing it with for-profit rubber stamping by private companies "taking actions to significantly improve the climate"?

      I thought he was going to drain the swamp, instead all I am seeing is increased opportunities for politically connected individuals to profit off the system.

      • How is defunding Government oversight of a high risk industry and replacing it with for-profit rubber stamping by private companies "taking actions to significantly improve the climate"?

        I thought he was going to drain the swamp, instead all I am seeing is increased opportunities for politically connected individuals to profit off the system.

        He did drain the swamp, all of it, straight into his administration. You may also want to feast your eyes on this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj... [twimg.com]

  • Huzzah (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 )

    It's been something like 40 years since Jimmy Carter stopped this dead. Long over due that we pursue power technologies that are here and actually work.

    Oh and prediction, there will be lots of cheesed off solar zealots that aren't engineers couldn't tell you a thing about electricity or even properly identify the metals used in transmission lines coming on thread bitching and moaning, because they thought solar was magic that would let them stick it to the man.

    • until you can convince me that it's cheaper to run a safe nuke plant than an unsafe one I'm not sold on nuclear. Fukushima was a completely pointless and preventable disaster that happened because the guys running TEP wanted to save a buck. Here in America we just poisoned Flint, Mi because nobody wanted to pay to treat their water properly for the type of pipes they had. You'll see the same damn thing with nuclear. Want me to drop the NIMBYism? Show me that a safe plant is cheaper to run. And I don't mean

      • SMR (Score:5, Informative)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @12:18AM (#57332156)

        So what you are looking for is a Small Modular Reactor. These are relatively small reactors that can be produced on an assembly line and shipped to the installation site, so they are cheaper than conventional nuclear designs. Most don't require active cooling, which means you don't get meltdowns. Also, you can bury them in a vault for protection from attack or sabotage. They require no maintenance. You run them until their fuel is spent, then you pull one out of service and recycle it. You end up with a few pounds of waste material per unit over the course of it's lifespan, which is a couple of decades.

        Russia has been actively developing these things for decades, and are piloting several models.

        NuScale has an interesting design ready for licensing, and TerraPower has a design that uses liquid sodium cooling and depleted uranium fuel, which makes it essentially impossible to melt down.

        Think of it this way. The expensive part of old water-cooled nuclear reactors is maintaining the elaborate water cooling system. It's also the primary point of failure. Getting rid of active cooling makes reactors cheaper to build and maintain, AND makes them safer.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Daemonik ( 171801 )

          Problem with SMRs is that battery banks ala Tesla's project in Australia, are cheaper, safer and have a quicker ROI. As battery technology advances they only get better.

          So you can drop a few billion on a white whale hoping that it's still useful in 50 years, or you can put that into wind/solar/batteries and get immediate benefits.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Uberbah ( 647458 )

          So why are they more or less still vaporware. If they aren't more cost effective than other renewables - why bother.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The Wikipedia page is enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            - Mostly paper only designs, very few prototypes have been built.

            - Economies of scale only kick in at 70+ units because the factory needs to be built, and economists think 70 orders is unlikely.

            - Licencing is still in the early stages, needs to be sorted out with governments first.

            - Most are still water cooled anyway.

            - Many of the designs only realize a small reduction in staff numbers, the idea of sealed self managing unit is pie in the s

        • Re:SMR (Score:5, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @04:10AM (#57332756) Homepage Journal

          You run them until their fuel is spent, then you pull one out of service and recycle it. You end up with a few pounds of waste material per unit over the course of it's lifespan, which is a couple of decades.

          That is untrue. You end up with tonnes of high level waste that needs to be stored for extended periods of time. The rector case degrades and is the main limit on the lifetime of most designs. It can't be recycled.

          This kind of hand-waving "we can just recycle it (with currently non-existent techniques that we hope to develop later, maybe)" is why investors aren't interested.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          >> These are relatively small reactors that can be produced on an assembly line and shipped to the installation site
          Yeah sure.
          Ship a nuclear reactor.
          Small generators when you need 500 GW.
          That's really bullshit.

        • Think of it this way. The expensive part of old water-cooled nuclear reactors is maintaining the elaborate water cooling system. It's also the primary point of failure. Getting rid of active cooling makes reactors cheaper to build and maintain, AND makes them safer.

          Mind you, in a properly designed [wikipedia.org] water cooled reactor, the loss of water actually shuts it down, because the water was slowing down the neutrons and made the chain reaction possible in the first place.

        • So what you are looking for is a Small Modular Reactor. These are relatively small reactors that can be produced on an assembly line and shipped to the installation site, so they are cheaper than conventional nuclear designs.

          Being cheaper than current reactor designs is kind of damning with faint praise. And these are proposed reactor designs, not actual products that can be bought today. The DOE is claiming that we might see them in 10-15 years which is how researches talk when they mean probably never [xkcd.com].

          Most don't require active cooling, which means you don't get meltdowns.

          Meltdowns are just one of many failure modes for fission reactors to worry about and not anywhere near the most likely. And your use of the word "most" is not comforting since it means the number is not zero.

          Also, you can bury them in a vault for protection from attack or sabotage.

          The very fact that

      • Ever been to France ? The entire electric grid is nuke and they have the lowest rates in the EU.

        • Ever been to France ? The entire electric grid is nuke and they have the lowest rates in the EU.

          ... but still much higher than American electricity rates. Also, most French reactors were built many years ago, back when they were much cheaper than modern reactors. For the cost of a modern reactor, look at Hinkley Point, in the UK, but built by the French. After all the delays and cost overruns, the power produced will cost three times the UK average.

        • Re:I say this on every nuke thread (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @02:25AM (#57332516)

          Ever been to France ? The entire electric grid is nuke and they have the lowest rates in the EU.

          With gargantuan subsidies from taxpayers to construct, run, insure and then decommission that just aren't counted by nuke fans. Same as every other nuclear power plant in existence.

          • With gargantuan subsidies from taxpayers to construct, run, insure and then decommission that just aren't counted by nuke fans.

            Nice try, but France standardised reactor designs massivly driving down const of construction. Insurance is not as insane. ... stupid... arse backwards.... I'm trying to find words for the American process of insuring any risk but really the english languge doesn't quite have the necessary expressiveness. Decommissioning in general is only an issue if you expect on doing so. Why would you be crazy enough to actually attempt to completely dismantle something on site other than because law makers want to make

        • France at the moment produces 68% of its electricity with nukes.
          The rest is mostly renewables. They are replacing nukes constantly with renewables.
          And the electricity price is low, because the state is subsidizing it ...

          If you ever had been in France, you would know that ;D

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      "Actually work"? You mean like Windscale, TMI, Tchernobyl, Fuckushima? Yes, all cheap to clean up, nobody injured, and who cares about the waste that stays dangerous for millions of years. On top of that, the TCO of nuclear (if nothing blows up and you disregard the waste problem) makes it one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity.

      • "You mean like Windscale"

        All someone has to do to prove they don't care about actually generating power is say something like that.

        Power generation tech to be viable has to have one of two characteristics. It either has to provide power when you say so, or it has to never stop. Solar and wind have neither of those properties.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jzanu ( 668651 )
          No, actually the opposite is true. The oft-tauted claims of advantage from "constant" power don't exist, and having larger percentages of fixed generation actually increase costs and increase prices on the exchange markets rendering them less useful than flexible solar and wind sourced electricity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You seem to be unaware of a concept called "storing power". That basically means you are living under a rock.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      It's been something like 40 years since Jimmy Carter stopped this dead.

      Carter stopped fuel reprocessing in relation to breeder nuclear reactors and a plutonium economy. All the new MSR type reactors this bill is targeting are burner type reactors, that much is written into the bill.

      The thing that you are referring to was re-implemented by Reagan. Carter wasn't stupid, Reagan was dumb.

  • nope. (Score:2)

    by jtgd ( 807477 )
    (*hangs up phone*) "Nah, we're not going to do any of that."
  • Is that really worth it. That, and if the wind weren't going out to sea, thousands, now would be dead.

  • Does any sane person doubt that when you read the fine print, this bill will prove to be yet another way for corporations to loot taxpayer-funded research for their own profit?

    It's called selling us stuff we've already paid for.

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