America Makes a Big Investment In Next-Gen Nuclear Power (popularmechanics.com) 186
America's Department of Energy "has started a new Office of Nuclear Energy projects called the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program" (or ARDP) reports Popular Mechanics:
"The $230 million program will give $160 million to scientists working on two reactor designs that 'can be operational' in the very near future." The "Advanced" part of ARDP is an industry term for the generation of reactors we have today... Generation IV — the super advanced reactors? — are in the research phase, but the ARDP statements mention development into the mid 2030s and likely includes generation IV. So the technical difference may be arbitrary, but the advanced reactors are often safer, smaller in overall form factor, and more standardized in order to be easier to install and scale.
Most existing power plants are idiosyncratic, built on a case-by-case basis to suit individual communities or use cases. A more uniform process means plants that are easier to secure, support, and regulate. One of the leading projects the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) mentions may sound familiar: "NuScale Power LLC is expected to receive the first small modular reactor design certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year," the NEI reports. NuScale's tiny modular reactor is designed to be deployed for small communities with lower power needs and embodies advanced reactor values. (NuScale received previous funding and is not eligible for this program.)
"The $230 million program will give $160 million to scientists working on two reactor designs that 'can be operational' in the very near future." The "Advanced" part of ARDP is an industry term for the generation of reactors we have today... Generation IV — the super advanced reactors? — are in the research phase, but the ARDP statements mention development into the mid 2030s and likely includes generation IV. So the technical difference may be arbitrary, but the advanced reactors are often safer, smaller in overall form factor, and more standardized in order to be easier to install and scale.
Most existing power plants are idiosyncratic, built on a case-by-case basis to suit individual communities or use cases. A more uniform process means plants that are easier to secure, support, and regulate. One of the leading projects the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) mentions may sound familiar: "NuScale Power LLC is expected to receive the first small modular reactor design certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year," the NEI reports. NuScale's tiny modular reactor is designed to be deployed for small communities with lower power needs and embodies advanced reactor values. (NuScale received previous funding and is not eligible for this program.)
Now THIS is a CO2 buster (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to reduce the generation of CO2, there is simply no greater bang for the buck than nuclear reactors - not even close.
The newer reactor designs coming along are all better in terms of safety and waste than what we've had before, and could really push the dream of truly clean energy a long way forward.
Imagine if all industrial power generation was from nuclear/solar, how much lower U.S. CO2 emissions would be...
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There will be no impact on CO2, but released/used energy, which usually is thermal is affecting environment too.
Renewable energy sources are good for that i.e. when we intercept wind, hydro and solar energy - nothing changes, we just concentrate them on our needs.
Problem with renewables is that it needs a lot of time and other resources. Finally, we need some backup source, so we need to push both.
Isn't CANDU reactor design enough for now?
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Large-scale solar causes significant warming [phys.org] around the plant (by 3-4 deg C)
Wind farms affect rainfall and local climates [scientificamerican.com] as well.
Many States, including California, do not consider hydro to be renewable [governing.com], at least hydro plants of reasonable (more than 30 MW) size.
You can't change the system and not expect to see changes in the system.
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Isn't CANDU reactor design enough for now?
CANDU has a real problem in public relations. The problem is called "positive void coefficient". This is the same problem that RBMK reactors have. RBMK being the kind of reactors used at Chernobyl. The magnitude of this positive void coefficient is reportedly quite small, far smaller than that in RBMK, which leads its defenders to claim it is not a problem. The reason being that the growth in output from a positive void coefficient is sufficiently small that there are many measures that can be used to
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> and we want to stop producing nuclear waste which obligates many future generations of humans to take care of it.
Bullshit. We need to take care of it right now, not foist it off onto the unborn. It's sociopathic shit like that which has led us to today.
We have the technology to breed the 300,000 year waste down to 300 year waste in meltdown-proof reactors and we're irresponsible to not do so. Governments have conspired to prevent this from happening (the original goal was to have the last of them on
Re:Now THIS is a CO2 buster (Score:4, Interesting)
One advantage of the newer nuclear designs is that they run on the waste products of the old reactors. In effect nuclear power can be used to solve some of the waste problems of nuclear power.
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"Solve" is too strong a word. They can somewhat reduce the nuclear waste problem but also create waste of their own, and some of it is even harder to handle than what comes out of current generation reactors.
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However, keep in mind that nuclear waste is a problem that goes away by itself within a few thousand years.
On the other hand, climate change is also a problem that goes away by itself, it just takes a few dozen million years longer.
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Re: Now THIS is a CO2 buster (Score:2)
There was nothing wrong with the plant design, it was people running it getting lazy and not placing the generators above the flood wall.
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Re: Now THIS is a CO2 buster (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to contemplate the difference between joules of energy per units of time and half-life. Because honestly, you are conflating them either through deliberate misinformation or simple ignorance.
Short half-life = lots of energy being released and very dangerous for a SHORT amount of time.
Long half-life = little energy, little danger, lasts a long time.
All too often, those who are against nuclear power, describe some kind of fantasy waste where it gives off a lot of energy, is very dangerous, and lasts a long time. But I have to tell you, if such a waste actually existed, energy producers would be extremely happy since they would use that "waste" as a primary power source. Nope, pick one of the two actual options; lots of energy for a short time, or a little energy for a long time. Claiming lots of energy for a long time is something only an ignorant fool will say.
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If you want to reduce the generation of CO2, there is simply no greater bang for the buck than nuclear reactors - not even close.
The newer reactor designs coming along are all better in terms of safety and waste than what we've had before, and could really push the dream of truly clean energy a long way forward.
Imagine if all industrial power generation was from nuclear/solar, how much lower U.S. CO2 emissions would be...
While Iagreeceith you, I've heard this song before. The AP100, ABWR and SBWR Were supposed to bring about a new generation of cost effective plants, but that did not happen in the US. The AP 1000 being builtvat Votgle has been plagued by cost over runs. So much for learning from the past.
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So much for learning from the past.
You know what the past taught us? That economy of scale is a thing.
We will continue to see nuclear power plant construction costs rise unless we introduce economy of scale. That can apply to the AP-1000 by giving companies contracts to build more than one or two of them. Let them build five or six. Each time they complete an AP-1000 reactor the people involved build up experience. It's with experience that people learn not to repeat past mistakes.
Because we stopped building nuclear power plants for dec
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Now we have solar PV cells to power pocket calculators and sidewalk lights. It took decades of failures for that to happen.
Ah, but economy of scale is a thing. If a pocket calculator's PV cells die you throw it away and get a new one. No one is harmed. A nuclear plant fails and it's international news, with large areas left uninhabitable for generations and thousands of people left with medical issues and shortened lifespans.
The other reason economy of scale is a thing is that we can build thousands of solar and wind farms by the time one nuclear power plant constructed by the lowest bidder cutting corners comes on line year
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1986 called, they want their ignorant anti-nuclear fear mongering talking points back.
We know enough now not to build a reactor like the RBMK at Chernobyl, or repeat the mistake of putting backup generators to run coolant pumps in basements that can flood like at Fukushima. Even with the disasters at Fukushima and Chernobyl the rate of deaths and injuries per unit of energy produced from nuclear power is far lower than that from wind, solar, hydro, or anything else you can think of.
We will not improve nucl
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"We made all the big mistakes already and learned from them. These will not be repeated" - how can you guarantee that? Companies like Westinghouse who designs/builds these plants has just come out of administration so can you guarantee they won't take short cuts t
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ok, lets put all the nuclear advocates in houses around each plant with schools/shopping in the same area while the mistakes happen - might focus their minds.
You mean like where I live RIGHT NOW?
There are nearly 100 operating civilian nuclear power plants in the USA today. If we include US Navy reactors then that number doubles. These people already have their minds focused. These people work at the power plants, their families live nearby. When it comes to the US Navy these people live, work, eat, and sleep inside a big steel tub that contains one or two operating nuclear reactors. Just how much more "focused" can you get?
Mistakes with nuclear have nasty consequences. They've had since 1954 to get it right.
You think that other energy source
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Actually renewable is at least as cheap and is faster to deploy, but the advantage of nuclear is density - renewable requires lots of land in specific places, nuclear can packed tightly into any place that isn't a natural disaster hotspot.
Technology is not an obstacle to cutting CO2 output anymore, neither is economics. These days, it's just politics.
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Nuclear is the most expensive form of electricity generation. Look at Hinkley C in the UK, the cost is astronomical and the energy it generates is guaranteed to cost multiple times as much as renewables. By the time it's finished it won't be needed and will only be operated to get those sweet subsidies that it has locked in.
It also takes a very, very long time to build. We can't wait, we need to get on with building capacity now. Especially with C19 trashing the economy we need a big, widely spread boost. F
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Imagine if all industrial power generation was from nuclear/solar, how much lower U.S. CO2 emissions would be...
I can imagine that the CO2 emissions from nuclear and solar would be higher than if we used nuclear, wind, hydro, and geothermal. We'd also see higher energy costs, and more deaths from energy related industrial accidents. We'd also see far more environmental damage from the raw material and land use needed for solar power.
Industrial scale solar power is just a bad idea. If you want solar power on the roof of your home to live off grid or as a backup in case of a power outage then I don't much care. The
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If you want to reduce the generation of CO2, there is simply no greater bang for the buck than nuclear reactors - not even close.
Errr except for basically every renewable energy source, you'd be right.
Now if you want base load power included then you're getting close to having a point, but as it stands you're laughably out of touch with the "bang for the buck" analysis of power generation.
Oh what am I saying, you're not out of touch at all. You're our most favourite and revered troll, I'm sure you know fully well what you said was just utter bullshit but posted it anyway for the lulz.
Re:Now THIS is a CO2 buster" (Score:2)
there is simply no greater bang for the buck than nuclear reactors - not even close
This simply has never been true - not even close. Nuclear power, strictly by the numbers, has always been the single most expensive way to generate electricity. Solar power is currently cheaper than nuclear power, and of course nuclear can not compete with natural gas, hydrothermal or even wind power. If there was a practical solution for the waste, then we could talk. But for all the waste proposals, none of them seem to be universally adoptable - if any were, it would have been universally adopted. Today
Re:Now THIS is a CO2 buster (Score:4, Interesting)
Wind and water are good in a few places, as is thermo, but for the most part not so much. Solar is fine at some latitudes and weather patterns, but it's always a large footprint. Current gen nuclear reactors don't seem to be profitable to build (which I know wasn't the question you're addressing, but it matters), and don't seem very resilient against bad maintenance and bad management.
Everything's a trade-off. Personally I want orbital solar (followed by moving heavy industry to orbit), but that's certainly not happening at scale before 2030.
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But this is not what is needed now.
We need to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions quickly.
Contradiction, as I stated THE quickest way to reduce CO2 rapidly is nuclear reactors.
Indeed, we have bought quite a bit of time to do so from the lockdown, which has dramatically reduced CO2 already. Time we can use to stand up reactors.
No other solution can provide so much power, so quickly, that can really take out coal plants around the world.
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By "this" I meant developing another generation of reactors before staring to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
The only way to deploy nuclear "quickly" (it is still much slower than wind and solar, as anywhere on earth building a nuclear reactor takes many, many years now) is to use an existing reactor design. That would be third-gen (including so-called third-gen+) nuclear.
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A serious program of carbon emissions reduction might have to take an "all of the above" approach.
A nuclear plant takes an average of 7.5 years to build from the time ground is broken. Standardizing the design of plants could help a lot with that,but it will take years before we can arrive at such a design. So any way we look at it we're about a decade out from getting reductions from the nuclear option.
So in the first step we might might take replacing the 24% of electricity we generate with a mixture o
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A nuclear plant takes an average of 7.5 years to build from the time ground is broken.
Vogtle, the latest nuke project in America, started in 2006 and is scheduled for completion in 2021. That is 15 years, double your estimate.
Costs went from $14B to an estimated $25B. The 80% cost overrun is modest by nuclear industry standards.
Standardizing the design of plants could help a lot with that
Vogtle is a standardized design, the AP1000 [wikipedia.org].
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7.5 is the global average.
And while the AP1000, is a standard design, it is large so it must be individually hand-built rather than manufactured. The idea of these new small modular designs is to manufacture self-contained units in a factory. These would be transmportable, highly automated, and scaled so that passive safety measures are sufficient.
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7.5 is the global average.
Most certainly not.
Never heard about a single plant that was done in that time.
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Kawasaki unit 6 was finished in 39 months.
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A nuclear plant takes an average of 7.5 years to build from the time ground is broken.
Vogtle, the latest nuke project in America, started in 2006 and is scheduled for completion in 2021. That is 15 years, double your estimate.
How much of that time was spent by people in hard hats using power tools and how much was spent by people in suits working in courts and law offices?
If you plug two cities in Europe into Google maps to get a driving time estimate between them the estimate accurate may not accurately represent the time it would take if you were driving a tank or a Jeep during WW1 or WW2. Active hostile opposition makes a big difference.
Costs went from $14B to an estimated $25B. The 80% cost overrun is modest by nuclear industry standards.
Similarly, how much of that cost overrun is due to incorrect estimates of the cost of conc
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What is needed NOW is to stop shutting down nuclear plants for feel-good activism, then. Diablo Canyon reactor in CA provides about 9-10% of all electricity in the State, is good for several more decades, but is being shut down in the next 3-4 years because NUCLEAR!
Fast track nuclear plant approvals, build a few dozen, and most of the West Coast is powered. Reliably, and continuously. And excess power can be used for desalination to solve water-table issues all through the West.
Re: Now THIS is a CO2 buster (Score:3)
Diablo Canyon sits right on top of a fault line that wasnâ(TM)t known to exist at the time it was built. Itâ(TM)s a Fukushima waiting to happen.
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While true plants in Japan have been shut down for less. The problem is that the plant can only survive so much lateral force before vital parts of it break, e.g. the reactor cooling system or the emergency backup cooling system or the control rod control system.
You see this kind of flaw a lot with nuclear designs. They think they are being clever by using gravity to insert control rods and scram the reactor in the event of a catastrophe, but fail to account for lateral forces jamming the mechanism.
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So, the original premise I responded to is busted, but then you swoop in and talk about something completely different. Here's one for you:
Why don't you count the cost of dispatchable power plants REQUIRED to keep your grid stable, when talking about renewables? Or do you contend your entire grid can consist of ONLY renewables, being an intermittent source?
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Or do you contend your entire grid can consist of ONLY renewables
Yes I do.
There's a whole Wikipedia article on it which lays out the details (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy) so I won't get into it here, but it's entirely possible and not even particularly difficult from an engineering perspective. Check out the LOADMATCH modelling to see how it would work, that was using real weather data and conservative renewable technology (wind, water, solar).
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As that article explains it's just a matter of economics. Lots of money invested in fossil and nuclear, some cost associated with accelerating the transition.
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So you are not only a nuclear expert but suddenly also a geologist expert? ...
Sounds fishy
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Where did the rest go? (Score:2)
Where did the 70 million dollars difference go? Administrative fees, shipping fees? What?
Re:Where did the rest go? (Score:4, Informative)
A new Department of Energy (DoE) program promises $160 million for two advanced nuclear reactor designs and $70 million for further development.
It does link to an article (press release) on the DOE website [energy.gov] that seems to suggest that the remaining funding would go towards development in the future as opposed to immediately funding projects that are expected to be completed in the next five to seven years. Whether or not that money disappears up the ass of someone who contributed to someone else's campaign remains to be seen.
$230 million isn't a big investment (Score:2)
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Ah, nuclear energy! (Score:3, Insightful)
A future technology whose time has passed.
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Not only cost is prohibitive, but risk as well: Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Can you explain how the failures of Chernobyl and Fukushima relate to Hinkley Point C? I believe you cannot. If you understood why and how Chernobyl and Fukushima failed then you would not have made such an ignorant claim.
Re: Ah, nuclear energy! (Score:2)
To be fair, nuclear, and other renewables fill different needs. Nuclear provides base load. Other renewables canâ(TM)t due to their lack of predictable output.
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$230 million? Is this for coffee? (Score:3)
Right now pretty much the only country interested in serious nuclear power development is Russia. Which is not really a good situation to be in.
Even more important is waste disposal (Score:3, Informative)
In the long run nuclear energy may be a very good replacement for fossil fuels, but we still haven't solved the problem of waste disposal, at least to some extent more because of politics rather than science. But until that's solved, it won't matter how much cheaper and more efficient fission reactors can be made because we're going to end up with more and more waste that will cause bigger and bigger storage problems.
If we can't find the will to solve that problem, we need to bring renewables onboard as fast as possible and dump most of our research money into fusion.
Re:Even more important is waste disposal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even more important is waste disposal (Score:4, Interesting)
So why don't we do this? Because breeder reactors also produce weapons-grade plutonium. In the 1970s, President Carter decided that in the interest of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the U.S. would not allow processing of commercial spent fuel through breeder reactors. In other words, the nuclear waste problem is not a technical problem, it's a political creation. We chose it as "better" than the alternative. France and Russia use breeder reactors, so they do not have a long-term waste storage problem like the U.S. does. (Other countries like Japan typically contract with countries like France to accept their spent fuel for reprocessing in a breeder reactor. A typical reactor only produces about 20 tons of spent fuel per year, which by volume is a little more than a bathtub-full, though you don't want to store it that densely. From a technical standpoint, it's relatively easy to transport.)
Now here's the thing. The only reason we're not using breeder reactors is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, right? So fast-forward, say, 100-150 years, when most countries and maybe a few terrorist organizations have already developed nuclear weapons capability. Suddenly there's no more reason to avoid using breeder reactors. These countries and organizations have already developed their own source of weapons-grade plutonium or uranium, no need to steal yours. And so all that "nuclear waste" we've been fretting about storing for tens of thousands of years, suddenly becomes a valuable fuel source. It's already been concentrated so obtaining it is much cheaper than mining and refining fresh uranium. You get energy from processing it. Processing it reduces the total amount of nuclear waste. And it creates more fuel you can use in light water reactors. Win, win, win, win. The problem solves itself as more countries develop nuclear weapons capability.
Re:Even more important is waste disposal (Score:4, Interesting)
Proliferation is not the issue, cost is. Breeder reactors have all been expensive failures. Nobody has managed to come up with a commercial scale design that is proven and economical.
That's why we only get 10% of the energy out, it's just not worth extracting the other 90%. Cheaper to make more fuel and put the waste in long term storage.
In the longer term the goal is not to simply accept that "most countries and maybe a few terrorist organizations" will have developed nuclear weapons, it's to provide better alternatives for energy and keep supply of material for weapons difficult to come by. The existence of breeder reactors has nothing to do with that though, the assumption would be that countries with them would be subject to the same non-proliferation rules as now and not be using them to make weapons.
Economically it's much easier to sell and export non-nuclear energy sources. Most countries don't even have the infrastructure or institutions to use nuclear power anyway.
Re: Even more important is waste disposal (Score:2)
None of these things though caused the land to become uninhabitable for hundreds of years.
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but we still haven't solved the problem of waste disposal
Bullshit.
We solved the problem a long time ago. The only thing holding this up has been a segment of Democrat politicians doing everything in their power to prevent anyone from implementing these solutions.
One part of this solution is to build more nuclear power plants. This is part of the solution because for many of the materials we wish to dispose of there is nothing better then neutron bombardment. The only device that can bombard materials with neutrons efficiently is a nuclear fission reactor.
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>One part of this solution is to build more nuclear power plants.
They'd better be a different design then - because if existing power plants don't supply enough neutron bombardment to dispose of their own waste, building more of them is only going to make the problem worse.
And unfortunately breeder reactors mostly have a pretty severe risk of nuclear weapon proliferation, though I seem to recall that thorium doesn't have that issue due to its more stable reaction chain.
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They'd better be a different design then -
Of course, that's why the DOE is funding Gen III+ and Gen IV nuclear, to get a different design than the Gen II that dominate nuclear power today.
because if existing power plants don't supply enough neutron bombardment to dispose of their own waste, building more of them is only going to make the problem worse.
Let's consider the problem of nuclear waste. We can continue to sit on the tons of waste we have now for hundreds of years until it decays away. Or, we can try several new nuclear reactor designs. If all of them fail to reduce the problem then we've added a few more tons of waste to the waste we have to deal with now. If just one of these designs work to destr
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We are building gen III and they are an economic disaster, so obviously the thing to do is throw more money at gen III+ and gen IV. 3rd, no wait 4th time's the charm. Or maybe 5th time.
Meanwhile all the commercial money is going into viable investments.
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We are building gen III and they are an economic disaster
That's what happens when people stop building them for 40 years. Most of the people that learned how to build a nuclear power plant on time and on budget likely died of old age by now. The few that are still alive are likely retired, and possibly senile.
so obviously the thing to do is throw more money at gen III+ and gen IV. 3rd, no wait 4th time's the charm. Or maybe 5th time.
Yep. That's how we got solar and wind power costs down, we threw money at them until people learned how to do it right.
Meanwhile all the commercial money is going into viable investments.
Viable? You mean like coal and natural gas? There's no commercial money in nuclear power because the US federal government has a habit
Re: Even more important is waste disposal (Score:2)
Bullshit.
Yes, breeder reactors produce plutonium and plutonium is used in nuclear weapons. But the isotope is important.
We have U-238 absorbing neutrons, and through a short decay chain, becoming Pu-239 which is extremely useful for atomic weapons. But as that Pu-239 sits around in the core, it gradually absorbs neutrons over time and is changed to Pu-239, which is still useful for power generation, but worthless for bomb manufacturing. That's why in reactors that are used for weapons grade plutonium have t
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The only thing holding this up has been a segment of Democrat politicians doing everything in their power to prevent anyone from implementing these solutions.
This Democrat happens to agree with you when it comes to nuclear power. If you want to be persuasive, though, you should avoid politicizing the issue. Nuclear cannot succeed if it becomes a partisan issue. Unfortunately, the big problem seems to be that nobody cares enough to really push for strong subsidies to go toward nuclear and the type of reactors you're talking about. Yang is the only person I can think of who really prioritized it and he's currently not even a politician.
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This Democrat happens to agree with you when it comes to nuclear power.
Did I say all Democrats are holding back nuclear power? No, I did not. I believe that most Democrats are either supportive of nuclear power or don't think about it all that much. The problem is in the small segment of Democrats that are so openly and vocally opposing nuclear power that are holding up nuclear power. These are the Democrats that have been in elected office for decades and are willfully ignorant of how nuclear power compares to other energy sources on matters of monetary costs, the costs o
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What I said about not solving the waste problem wasn't "bullshit".
Your proposed solution is certainly bullshit.
It doesn't matter how many ways scientists identify to solve a problem if they are all blocked by short-sighted politicians. The problem is that we haven't found the political will to implement any of the waste disposal methods that have been identified.
So you propose that we dump more money into wind and solar, and into research into fusion energy? Where is this money supposed to come from? Let me guess. My guess is that you propose this money comes from the same politicians that are holding up building nuclear fission power plants and radioactive waste facilities.
Here's an important detail you seem to miss. If these politicians were serious about solving our energy problems then they'd stop holding up proj
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Perhaps those aren't the most cost-effective alternatives, but more importantly they are things that might actually get done in the current political climate.
No, they won't get done. That's because the politicians do not want to solve the nation's energy problems. If they wanted to solve the problems then they could have done that 40 or 50 years ago. They have other motives. There is no solution to our energy problems that excludes nuclear power. Without nuclear power the lights go out. These politicians have to know this by now. We can try to change their minds on nuclear power, we can try to get new politicians, or we can go around them. Again, it's nu
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"Fears Grow That 'Nuclear Coffin' Is Leaking Waste Into The Pacific" - plenty of reports on this one. https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... [forbes.com]
Radioactive fluid leaking from silo" "https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/18052479.radioactive-fluid-leaking-silo/
"Radioactive leaks found at 75% of US nuke sites" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/r... [cbsnews.com]
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Gen IV reactors come in six general designs, three of which are breeder reactors [wikipedia.org] that are inherently able to burn spent nuclear fuel:
* Gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR)
* Lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR)
* Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR)
Two of the other ones are theoretically able to do it as well, accounting for it in their initial design:
* Molten-salt reactor (MSR)
* Supercritical-water-cooled reactor (SCWR)
Note however that the design mentioned in the article doesn't appear to be a Gen IV reactor [ref, see [energiforsk.se]
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In the long run nuclear energy may be a very good replacement for fossil fuels, but we still haven't solved the problem of waste disposal
A fusion reactor the size of ITER will produce enough fast neutrons to transmute dangerous waste, using D+D reaction. It doesn't even need to be energy-positive for that.
New reactors, solve CO2 and old waste stockpiles (Score:2)
Even more important is waste disposal
Note that some of the new reactor designs can consume existing waste as fuel. Such reactors help us address two critical problems, CO2 and existing waste stockpiles.
What they really want is enriched U235 & Pu239 (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear power currently costs about $150 / MWh, with solar about $40 / MWh. Solar cells and battery technology will make huge advances in the next decade, and the renewable technologies don't need government funding for this to happen.
One "advantage" of nuclear power is that the US can always have fissile material on hand for building nuclear weapons. If this weren't important, there'd be more research into traveling wave reactors / thorium cycles / other technologies that can use more of the fissile material and have less bomb-potential material around.
Just my $0.02 worth...
Re:What they really want is enriched U235 & Pu (Score:4, Insightful)
One "advantage" of nuclear power is that the US can always have fissile material on hand for building nuclear weapons. If this weren't important, there'd be more research into traveling wave reactors / thorium cycles / other technologies that can use more of the fissile material and have less bomb-potential material around.
This DOE funding is for research into things like thorium cycles and other technologies. Therefore the need for more fissile material on hand is no longer a priority.
Under the Obama Administration we saw billions of dollars wasted and a failure to dispose of weapon grade plutonium as part of a treaty with Russia. Because the Democrats have such a deep hatred for anything nuclear the US federal government failed to convert this stockpile of plutonium into fuel for civil nuclear power reactors. This gave Russia the excuse to not hold up their end of the treaty and they also did not reduce their stockpile of plutonium.
The US has so much weapon grade plutonium right now that they are looking for ways to get rid of it. The most logical means to do this is to use it as fuel in a nuclear fission reactor in a civil power plant. But Obama and friends sat on their hands on this, opening the door for Putin and friends to keep their stockpile of weapon grade plutonium.
Nuclear power currently costs about $150 / MWh, with solar about $40 / MWh.
No, it doesn't cost that much for nuclear power. How can I say that? Because nobody knows how much it will cost until we try, and we haven't put any serious effort into this for at least four decades. The rules have changed. The past costs on nuclear power no longer apply. We will have to find out how much nuclear power actually costs. To do that means actually building new nuclear power plants.
We used to be able to build a nuclear power plant, capable of producing one gigawatt of power, in less than four years. With standardized designs, some sane and logical regulations, and applying new technology from the last 40 years since we built nuclear power plants with any regularity, I suspect we can go from breaking ground to synchronizing with the grid in 18 months.
Solar cells and battery technology will make huge advances in the next decade, and the renewable technologies don't need government funding for this to happen.
More bullshit.
I've been watching the development of solar PV and batteries for a long time. We've hit some very real physical limits on this. There will not be another leap in lowering costs or raising efficiency.
As it is now solar power is only cheap if put close to the ground, and that means displacing crops for food and fiber, or it means disrupting natural habitat in wild areas. Putting solar on rooftops raises the costs to the point that it cannot compete with other energy sources. People will still put solar panels on their roof because the government pays them to do this or mandates they do this. I've been waiting for solar power to be cheap enough that it can survive without government subsidies for a very long time. I'm convinced that day may never come and we will need to consider alternatives.
You want to believe that solar power will save us? That's fine, just don't get in the way of people that believe otherwise.
Re:What they really want is enriched U235 & Pu (Score:4)
This problem spans way more than just Obama's time as POTUS (both before and after his terms), and isn't a one-party root cause. Found an interesting article https://www.postandcourier.com... [postandcourier.com] that calls out mistakes by congress, the energy department, the South Carolina state government, and specific politicians (eg, Lindsey Graham, perhaps you've heard of him?). So why are you limiting your view to Obama?
Ohh, now I see.
Tell you what, elect a great negotiator like DT for POTUS, give him a couple years with a republican house, republican senate, and a favorable South Carolina government, he'll have this thing worked out by the time he hits year 3 in his presidency.
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So why are you limiting your view to Obama?
I'm not. I consider the energy problems we've seen for the last 40 or 50 years to be a creation of the Democrat Party. Obama was merely one prominent member of the party during this time, and he had the ability to mitigate many of the problems his fellow Democrats created. The timeline on the article you gave shows that the fit really hit the shan when Obama was in office. It was his problem to fix and he only made it worse.
Tell you what, elect a great negotiator like DT for POTUS, give him a couple years with a republican house, republican senate, and a favorable South Carolina government, he'll have this thing worked out by the time he hits year 3 in his presidency.
Or, and here's a better idea, let's get rid of these Democrats that are more int
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Because nobody knows how much it will cost until we try, and we haven't put any serious effort into this for at least four decades.
You'd think as our resident nuclear shill you'd know that just because the USA hasn't built a reactor in 4 decades doesn't mean they haven't popped up elsewhere in the world...
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Nuclear power currently costs about $150 / MWh, with solar about $40 / MWh.
Is that by capacity, or generation?
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Your numbers do represent a 2019 average [lazard.com] of the unsubsidized levelized cost of solar PV and nuclear, but they're framed in a misleadingly simple cost comparison, without even accounting for the cost of the additional battery storage necessary, which currently adds [lazard.com] around $100 to $300 per MWh. Assuming the grid consisted only of a mix of solar PV, wind and batteries, half the electricity [youtube.com] may need to pass through batteries.
Another way to look at the limitation of comparing the cost of an intermittent source a
The Nuclear Bingo (Score:2)
To quote from the article:
... The reactor technology itself isn’t completely different than before ... ... Each NuScale reactor rates 60 MWe, which sounds small because the reactor is small by design. Plants can install dozens at a time. ... ... our army of about 100 nuclear plants around the U.S. can be turned into 1,000 small plants ...
The good news here is, and math will tell you this, that the smaller you make a reactor the smaller the fallout will be. The bad news is, math also says, the more reactors you install the more likely it gets for one to blow up! So when the technology isn't completely different from before (the schematics do show a core, water-cooling system and a 3-5ft thick concrete wall), then this seems to be a pretty good way for small communities in the US to play Nuclear Bingo and who ever w
Good. We need this. (Score:2)
Big Investment? (Score:3)
This appears to be a one-time contract award of $230 million - not a continuing budget item. Significant, but is not big money in this space. It is similar to the level of funding that NuScale received 7 years ago, and has announced plants to have one unit operation in 2026, with a total of 12 units in 2027 (720 MWe total) - a 14 year process. This award seeks to have a demonstration unit in 2027 also.
With the failure of Westinghouse, unable to complete 6 AP1000 plant starts in the past 12 years - though two are staggering to the finish line - there is no commercial nuclear power construction industry in the U.S. right now. Any new nuclear plants will have to be a restart from scratch. These small modular units look like a better bet than the efforts to update old design patterns.
We will see how well they do, when built, and what kind of economy of scale they can get. These 60 MW units could be bundled together to have the same output as current power reactor in a single plant.
But to put this in perspective - the NuScale plant will produce 6 TWh a year. Wind and solar are expected to produce 480 TWh this year and are growing at about 10% a year, so about 480 TWh of annaul production (not capacity) will be added while these NuScale units are readied. The rate of annual wind and solar production addition in 2027 will equal 1400 NuScale units.
NuScale actually projects that the power from these plants will be more expensive that gas or renewables, so some sort of subsidy will be needed to make them commercially viable. A carbon tax on gas power would help a lot.
I am fine with public subsidies to decarbonize our energy system - but the use of that money should not be siloed - there should be an open investigation of how public subsidy is more effectively spent in reducing carbon release.
Re: What about radioactive waste? (Score:2)
On some days being the key. Nuclear provides something that none of the other renewables can - stable, constant base load production that can be gaurenteed for decades.
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Some countries (Germany, UK Denmark) on many days produce 100% or more of their needed electricity using wind, solar, or hydro methods
And on other days they buy nuclear power from France.
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The comment doesn't appear to have been modded down to -1. It looks like it started at -1 and was modded up (+1 underrated) to 0. I don't know anything about this account but I assume it's because of past trolling that it starts at -1. So no, it wasn't the "nuclear power haters" but at least you got to feel like a victim for a while.
Re: (Score:3)
No it is not the only way. Solar, hydro, wind exist and can be deployed quickly.
Also nuclear it is not really quick either. Even building an existing third-gen design takes many years.
In particular, there is no time for researching another generation of reactors before starting to do anything about climate change.
Though nuclear has the advantage of being able to replace coal-fired plants without requiring many changes to the grid or requiring much additional storage capacity. But that would have to be exist