California's Governor Proposes Extending the Life of Its Last Nuclear Plant (apnews.com) 176
"California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed extending the life of the state's last operating nuclear power plant by five to 10 years," reports the Associated Press, "to maintain reliable power supplies in the climate change era."
Newsom's draft proposal includes a potential forgivable loan for PG&E for up to $1.4 billion and would require state agencies to act quickly to clear the way for the reactors to continue running. The seaside plant located midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco produces 9% of the state's electricity. The proposal says its continued operation beyond 2025 is "critical to ensure statewide energy system reliability" as climate change stresses the energy system....
Newsom clearly wants to avoid a repeat of August 2020, when a record heat wave caused a surge in power use for air conditioning that overtaxed California's electrical grid. That caused two consecutive nights of rolling blackouts for the state, affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers. The Newsom administration is pushing to expand clean energy, as the state aims to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Nuclear power doesn't produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.
The California Legislature has less than three weeks to determine if it will endorse the plan and attempt to extend the life of the plant — a decision that would be made amid looming questions over the costs and earthquake safety risks.... The Democratic governor, who is seen as a possible future White House candidate, has urged PG&E for months to pursue a longer run beyond a scheduled closing by 2025, warning that the plant's power is needed as the state transitions to solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy.
One concerned Democratic state Senator (from the district housing the plant) argued that another earthquake fault was discovered near the plant in 2008, and reminded the Associated Press that "seismic upgrades were never totally completed. Will they address that?"
Newsom clearly wants to avoid a repeat of August 2020, when a record heat wave caused a surge in power use for air conditioning that overtaxed California's electrical grid. That caused two consecutive nights of rolling blackouts for the state, affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers. The Newsom administration is pushing to expand clean energy, as the state aims to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Nuclear power doesn't produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.
The California Legislature has less than three weeks to determine if it will endorse the plan and attempt to extend the life of the plant — a decision that would be made amid looming questions over the costs and earthquake safety risks.... The Democratic governor, who is seen as a possible future White House candidate, has urged PG&E for months to pursue a longer run beyond a scheduled closing by 2025, warning that the plant's power is needed as the state transitions to solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy.
One concerned Democratic state Senator (from the district housing the plant) argued that another earthquake fault was discovered near the plant in 2008, and reminded the Associated Press that "seismic upgrades were never totally completed. Will they address that?"
This is what worries me about nuke (Score:5, Interesting)
Fun fact: The CEOs responsible for the Fukashima disaster suffered no repercussions and the Japanese people blamed the engineers who stayed behind to fight the meltdown. If I was an engineer you couldn't pay me enough to work on a nuke plant.
New designs may be easier to maintain (Score:2, Interesting)
it's too expensive to maintain. So the plants get run well past their intended lifecycle.
You're not wrong, but there's a move afoot to make smaller reactors that are assembled remotely and installed where needed. When maintenance is required, or when they reach end of life, they are pulled up and returned to the original factory.
These new designs are largely automated and can't melt down and cause an accident, and they can't be used to make weapons-grade material either.
The theory is that once the design is finalized, a new power gen station only needs to meet a minimum level of standards to ac
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If we can get over the bureaucratic issues, nuclear might prove to be a viable stop-gap solution for power until the time when we have enough solar, wind, and grid-scale storage to run the entire system.
Stop-gap for what? You would not be able to build a single reactor in the time needed to reach climate goals even if it were green lit today. It simply cannot be built.
You don't stand on a train track looking at an oncoming train and hope to god that a construction crew will come and change the path of the railway. That's suicide in the most literal sense.
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I neither said or thought anything like that. Are you having a conversation with an imaginary person?
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There are two obvious flaws in your logic.
1. Nuclear takes too long to be built, at least if you want to do it safely. So it's not going to be ready in time to help us meet our goals.
2. Nuclear is so insanely expensive that it drags everything else down with it. Think of how many windmills the French could build if they weren't wasting countless billions of Euros on nuclear. We can't bankrupt ourselves doing this, it has to be affordable for us and for the developing world.
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The new reactor designs are unproven. They're great for research, but I don't know that they can be trusted enough to aim them at ANY widespread use. The lab at Los Alamos has started researching how to make them work, and that sounds about right, though I'd have two or three separate projects. E.g. I've been told that Molten Salt has huge corrosion problems that need to be solved.
That said, solar isn't sufficient for baseload. You need a huge battery backup (of some sort, including pumping water uphill
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there's a move afoot to make smaller reactors that are assembled remotely and installed where needed.
They just got regulatory approval to build the first one. There's a move afoot to prototype a smaller reactor that blah blah blah.
I've seen them but I'm skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is you can never trust corporations because it's a lot of people making small, mildly evil decisions that can and will eventually add up to major evil. Regulation is meant to control that while netting us the benefits of competition. If CEOs were held criminally accountable (like engineers are) that might not be the case, but we give CEOs so much power it's not possible to do that, and it's useless to pretend it is.
You're welcome to open my mind (Score:3)
Absolutely yes (Score:3)
A better analogy would be if you had the option to buy a house built with substandard wiring and breakers that couldn't handle the load. The home builder would know perfectly well that allowing you to do this even if they gave you the option to pay extra for proper wiring is irresponsible and negligent
Re: Absolutely yes (Score:2)
Are you really that dense? Literally every car in existence is prone to collisions. Why the hell do you think car insurance is mandated by law?
Re: Absolutely yes (Score:2)
And notice it's called collision avoidance, not collision prevention.
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A manufacturer knowingly sells a product with a potential for a deadly malfunction.
It is clear they are aware of this potential because they design an alarm to warn of that malfunction, but offer it only as as an optional add-on.
The product is purchased and operated by another company without that optional add-on.
That deadly malfunction occurs.
People are injured and/or killed by the malfunction.
The alarm would have allowe
Re:New designs may be easier to maintain (Score:5, Informative)
The modular reactors made by NuScale need refuelling every 2 years. They are going to be swapping them out regularly for refurbishment. I'm sceptical that it will work out any cheaper.
And when you say they can't melt down, but there's no reason why they can't. They claim that the reactors will passively cool themselves safely in "most" accidents, but that very much depends on their cooling systems not getting damaged. Say there is a big earthquake of the kind California is due for, the lateral forces could easily cause the plumbing to fail or the reaction control system to get jammed. They require a pool of water for cooling too, which could crack and drain away.
Stanford reviewed their design and said it produces more nuclear waste than convention designs. That will either need to be stored on site (another hazard that can cause explosions) or kept somewhere else, maybe their refuelling facility.
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(another hazard that can cause explosions)
What !?
Neither nuclear fuel nor nuclear waste can explode.
Re:New designs may be easier to maintain (Score:4, Informative)
Tell that to the Fukushima and Chernobyl plant operators.
In NuScale's case the risk is that due to coolant failure there is production of hydrogen gas. NuScale, like Fukushima Dai Ichi, use Zirconium cladding. It can react with air when heated by steam and produce hydrogen, which can then explode. That's exactly what happened at Fukushima.
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Neither Fukushima nor Tchernobyl were explosions of the fuel itself. It was the dissociation of water in hydrogen and oxygen and the reaction between said hydrogen and oxygen that went explosive.
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Besides you were talking of nuclear waste, not the fuel itself.
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Re:This is what worries me about nuke (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear in California is not priced higher because of cost of generation, but literally because California asks them to do so.
https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
How can you stay profitable if your fixed costs don't change, but your only customer decides to buy only half of your stock?
They can easily keep costs low by just buying more nuclear power, or rather buying the old amount. Newsom is basically throwing $1.4 billion not to generate any electricity
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Or they could get creative and use that excess energy for things like desalination. Or they could invest in infrastructure to make exporting it possible.
Sounds like they just want to get paid, rather than adapting to the needs of climate change. They made plenty of money from fossil fuels, time to pay some of it back as profitable infrastructure upgrades.
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Re: This is what worries me about nuke (Score:2)
I donâ(TM)t think you understand how investment and profit works. Profits are distributed and companies donâ(TM)t keep profits unless they have a good use for them. What should PG&E do - demand historical dividends back so that it can invest in some âoeunprofitableâ venture?
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Does PG&E have any profits after settling the lawsuits over the wildfires they supposedly started?
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Sounds like they just want to get paid, rather than adapting to the needs of climate change. They made plenty of money from fossil fuels, time to pay some of it back as profitable infrastructure upgrades.
Seriously?
Who are the "they" that just want to get paid? The nuclear plant operators? And when you say "they" should "(adapt) to the needs of climate change" are "they" the nuclear plant operators? I thought nuclear power was considered "green"...
Now, when you say "They made plenty of money from fossil fuels, time to pay some of it back as profitable infrastructure upgrades." are you talking about the nuclear plant operators (who haven't profited off fossil fuels), or the state that collects untold billions
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Nuclear in California is not priced higher because of cost of generation, but literally because California asks them to do so.
https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
How can you stay profitable if your fixed costs don't change, but your only customer decides to buy only half of your stock?
First, PG&E is part of a national grid, and can sell that power to Nevada, Arizona, etc.
Second, PG&E has the option of shutting down the fossil fuel plants that provide 16.4% of their power. After all, nuclear power is only about 42.8% of PG&E's delivered power on average. Add to that the 10.1% of power that comes from large hydroelectric plants (which California doesn't consider renewable), and you're only at 52.9%. If at 92% you're producing 42.8% and you need to shave off 2.9%, you could r
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Or... they could build more renewable sources to bring the mix up to 50/50.
Nah... better to cut output of cheap, existing nuclear as that justifies increasing rates.
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Second, PG&E has the option of shutting down the fossil fuel plants that provide 16.4% of their power. After all, nuclear power is only about 42.8% of PG&E's delivered power on average. Add to that the 10.1% of power that comes from large hydroelectric plants (which California doesn't consider renewable), and you're only at 52.9%. If at 92% you're producing 42.8% and you need to shave off 2.9%, you could reduce the nuclear plant's output to 85.7%, so long as you stop using coal, diesel, and natural gas generation. :-)
What the hell? You imagine shutting down 16.4% of their "on-demand" power generation capacity (fossil fuels) is an actual option? You can't just switch a nuclear plant on and off-line to accommodate your dynamic power load, that isn't how they work.
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Second, PG&E has the option of shutting down the fossil fuel plants that provide 16.4% of their power. After all, nuclear power is only about 42.8% of PG&E's delivered power on average. Add to that the 10.1% of power that comes from large hydroelectric plants (which California doesn't consider renewable), and you're only at 52.9%. If at 92% you're producing 42.8% and you need to shave off 2.9%, you could reduce the nuclear plant's output to 85.7%, so long as you stop using coal, diesel, and natural gas generation. :-)
What the hell? You imagine shutting down 16.4% of their "on-demand" power generation capacity (fossil fuels) is an actual option? You can't just switch a nuclear plant on and off-line to accommodate your dynamic power load, that isn't how they work.
You can bet some of those plants are running continuously. So for every plant that is, you can shut it down immediately and replace that base load with nuclear. You can also predict a lot of the load changes and adjust nuclear capacity over the course of the day. Nuclear can't handle fast changes, but gradual changes over an hour or two are entirely possible [powermag.com]. And remember, if you overshoot, you can always curtail solar. :-D
This is why PG&E is the PROBLEM (Score:2)
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You seem to think PG&E has the option of doubling their renewable power generation capacity in a couple years? I find that option, doubtful.
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Yes.
If they start now (or better yet, if they had started in 2015 when the law requiring this was passed) they will have 7 years to increase their supply to the 50% required by 2030.
It is simply a choice of whether or not to invest in increasing their renewable energy supply.
You seem to be advocating for not.
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They can easily keep costs low by just buying more nuclear power, or rather buying the old amount. Newsom is basically throwing $1.4 billion not to generate any electricity
Wait, are you accusing a Democrat politician of supporting nonsensical policies and regulations regarding energy? Inconceivable!
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In July of 2022, a court in Tokyo found Masataka Shimizu and four other TEPCO executives liable for ¥13 trillion of damages in a lawsuit filed by 48 TEPCO shareholders.
They won't be able to pay it all of course, but whatever they can pay they are now obliged to.
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Why are they not behind bars?
There's a criminal prosecution that should be happening, not just civil action by TEPCO shareholders. And what happened to the civil suits by everyone who was affected by the disaster?
How broken is democracy in Japan?
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The problem is that the bar for criminal conviction is quite high, basically beyond a reasonable doubt like most countries. So while a civil suit that only needs to prove negligence on a balance of probabilities might have a decent chance of succeeding (11 years after the accident!), that doesn't mean a criminal prosecution would.
The civil suits by the victims of the disaster have been hampered by lack of money and the slow progress they have made. This year a court ruled that the government wasn't liable,
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What specific Japanese law do you think the TEPCO executives (and, perhaps, even reactor "line workers") should have been charged with?
Something bad happened, and unless the responsible parties are put behind bars then justice is not served! (You can't ask about anything specific, its an emotional argument.)
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it's too expensive to maintain. So the plants get run well past their intended lifecycle.
You misspelled "replace". Running them past their intended lifecycle is because they're not too expensive to maintain, but they are too expensive to replace.
In a country that tends to privatize everything and with the people making the maintenance decisions living hundreds of miles away from a potential disaster site the incentives are too risky. Especially since wind and solar can provide baseload power [skepticalscience.com].
Solar cannot, by definition, provide base load unless you supplement it with pumped storage, giant batteries, molten salt, or some other means of energy storage, and then you're talking about something very different than most people think about when they say "solar", both in terms of cost and space requirements.
Fun fact: The CEOs responsible for the Fukashima disaster suffered no repercussions and the Japanese people blamed the engineers who stayed behind to fight the meltdown. If I was an engineer you couldn't pay me enough to work on a nuke plant.
The CEOs weren't responsible for the des
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The seaside plant located midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco produces 9% of the state's electricity.
A seaside nuclear plant, what could possibly go wrong? [bbc.com]
Joke website (Score:2)
Sorry, baseload power has to be available 365 days a year. For the UK at least real world data suggests that the cheapest wind/solar/battery system would cost around $30 billion to supply 1 GW of baseload power (it would also provide 1.5 GW of random power, on average). That is 3 times the cost of even USA nuclear, and something like 15 times the capital cost of a coal powered power station. It needs 60 GWh of batteries, which is about 10% of the annual global battery production.
Re: This is what worries me about nuke (Score:2)
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It does require a lot of regulations though. We can tweak that to be better fors ure and the NRC today is functionally broken and needs some shakeup but there isn't a universe where where most reactors don't require a large amount of oversight because the failure modes, while very rare, are catastrophic on a level of few other things that exist on earth. Even on passively safe reactors the entire waste cycle requires oversight and regulation.
If it is the cheapest and greenest and safest but the regulation
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Sure, the movie combined with the Three Mile Incident (which happened in like, 10 days of eachother) definitely hurt but I agree the NRC is basically stonewalling new development and not entirely just due to envionmenals but the way the NRC and the private companies handled the situation was just bad all around. None of this addresses the point that we can complain about regs all day but at the end of the day these reactors need a lot of regulation because we actually got pretty lucky TMI didn't turn into
Re: This is what worries me about nuke (Score:2)
Yes, wind and solar are great. Are there replacement facilities up and running today?
Right now the plant provides 9% of the state's energy. If there were wind and solar ready to turn on today that replaced the 9% the plant provides, then I would agree.
Turning it off today in the hope that maybe someone will build a replacement, get it built and installed and tested and integrated into the grid immediately, that's just stupid. Yes, let's transition more to renewables, but don't burn the bridges until after
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It is interesting to note that he directed all regulatory agencies to expedite any needed reviews and approvals - has he ever done that for any wind or solar plants?
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"Yeah, weird. I mean since wind and solar are so much cheaper than nuclear (and are not expensive to maintain), why would the Governor of California propose extending nuclear?"
It's called baseload generation. Learn how power systems work, sockpuppet.
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Why can't everyone in California just use 9% less energy all the time (24x7), that would remove the need for the nuclear power plant entirely.
Re: This is what worries me about nuke (Score:2)
Re: This is what worries me about nuke (Score:2)
Especially when it comes to software development. I've seen some of the so called experts here say really dumb shit.
Nuke plants wear out. (Score:4)
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There's no good place to put a nuclear reactor in California. There's literally nowhere that both has water and also is located in an area which isn't highly seismic, and isn't smack dab in the middle of a population center, and isn't on a flood plain (probably a coastal one) and isn't a wildlife preserve critical to multiple species and ecosystems.
On the other hand, there's lots and lots of good places to put both wind and solar in this state.
Re:Nuke plants wear out. (Score:5, Informative)
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Well that's a lie. Sun Desert near Blyth is a perfect spot.
in the quake hazard zone [usgs.gov]
Rancho Seco is still a perfect spot
In a quake hazard zone, and on the floodplain of the sacramento river delta.
There are several spots in the valley that also are perfect.
In quake hazard zone.
When you learn to read, maybe you'll get past some of these nuclear industry lies.
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atomicalgebra claimed:
Well that's a lie. Sun Desert near Blyth [wikipedia.org] is a perfect spot.
Except it's not. Your "perfect spot" would depend on the Colorado River to supply the plant with water to cool the plant - and the flow of the Colorado (upon which many other arid states have claims) has diminished to the point where the level of Lake Mead has dropped so far that it will soon fall below the level of the Hoover Dam's turbine intakes.
And, yes, that's an artifact of climate change (surprise!) that is rapidly making the American southwest unsustainable for human habitation
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Sun Desert near Blyth [wikipedia.org] is a perfect spot.
With current tech, rivers are a second-rate heat sink because nuclear reactors run cooler than other thermal technologies. Build Sun Desert when MSRs are available that run hot enough that desert air can be used as a heat sink, rather than bodies of water. Then build it on the Arizona side, where we get to use our open-carry firepower to run the hippies off. California is going to need that power to desalinate.
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That literally makes no sense - you seem to conflate "good place" with "perfect place" - you demand that every conceivable concern ("critical to multiple species and ecosystems") be addressed, then blithely ignore those same concerns and state that wind and solar can be put in those otherwise troublesome areas (wind turbines and solar farms don't generate electricity when they are flodded, they are fairly intrusive to fragile ecosystems, and will disrupt population centers)
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You've just described every form of power generation.
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You've just described every form of power generation.
Completely false. Solar and Wind don't need to be sold with lies. The output is lower than the maximum capacity, but we can make very good estimates of what the actual capacity will be because we know reasonably well what the conditions will be, and those numbers are well-understood before ground is broken. Solar panels actually tend to last considerably longer than they are guaranteed to last, at considerably higher output than we expected when they were constructed.
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It's almost like there's two drinkypoos. The one in the GP post which makes a sensible comment, followed by one who spews nothing but bullshit like the Parent's post. Maybe you need to change your password, and then realise that nuclear in many parts of the world (not California) wasn't sold on a lie, delivered exactly on its promise, and despite what your crazy personality asserts it has the highest capacity factor of any power generation system we have.
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realise that nuclear in many parts of the world (not California) wasn't sold on a lie
O RLY? [mainstreamweekly.net] name one besides China, where it's like it or lump it.
and despite what your crazy personality asserts it has the highest capacity factor of any power generation system we have.
That is wholly irrelevant. The only things we care about are time of construction, cost per MWh, and emissions (which include nuclear waste — the period is long, but eventually the whole reactor becomes waste, not to mention that waste fuel is removed from it.) The waste sits around in various haphazard conditions, with time spans varying from longer than a human lifespan to effectively forever.
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O RLY? [mainstreamweekly.net] name one besides China, where it's like it or lump it.
Lump what? You make a nebulous claim of lies and then ask me to name a reactor. Your link is great. It shows that you either didn't read or understand the material or just flat out lied yourself. Nothing in it says nuclear is "sold with lies". At best the article can make a claim that it is "operated with lies", but even then the article is completely devoid of any evidence making pointless unreferenced assertions.
And even then the point seems to be that information isn't shared with the public? NO FUCKING
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If we had be smart enough to ignore them back then, global warming would be much less of a problem today.
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If you were smart, you wouldn't be wasting time supporting a form of power generation which corporations only want to engage in because it's profitable — in most cases in the US, generation project profits are capped to a percentage of capital costs. The more of our money they waste, the more they get paid.
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How else do you convince a company to make electricity other than by making a profit?
If the government just pays people to make power then how do they decide who isn't just taking them for fools on how much they are paid? Would not this be done on showing they are profitable? Maybe "profit" isn't the precise term to use but it's something close to that. The government would be deciding on who gets their money based on value for their dollar just like the private market would. Maybe the terms on how "pro
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I nicked named the three worse the 3 stooges a year ago. I see two of them are currently active in this thread.
Of these two of them will come in and spread FUD about nuclear power. One of them uses nothing but out of date data that has been proven wrong again and again. The other one seems to do nothing more make shit up as he goes along. Probably just trolling people. I do see he is currently getting his ass handed to him in open debate
The third one isn't here yet but I'm sure he will be along s
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There are plenty of nuke fans here too. Many of them do what you accuse us of, like using out of date data. Unless of course you mean the fact that we refuse to rely on theoretical future data about unproven new designs based in ideas that have failed repeatedly in the past.
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There are plenty of nuke fans here too.
I'd expect that on a site ostensibly dedicated to people who are into technology.
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I'd expect that on a site ostensibly dedicated to people who are into technology.
There are but the problem with the pro nuclear side is we have manners and are willing to debate the pros and cons of nuclear power. We will say something pro or negative about nuclear power. Another one of us will have a counter point, and explain their position. Then we will exchange points and counter points to we ether reach a consensus, or politely agree to disagree.
The anti-nuclear crowed, like the 3 I mentioned here, there is never a consensus. You are ether on their side or you are a moron
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Some of them are worse than the pro Trump crowd.
Zealotry knows no political boundaries.
If we want to get this climate issue under control, we need to start ignoring these people and get the job done.
Should have started decades ago, they have held us back greatly and done a huge disservice to humanity, but better late than never.
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In my experience you are unwilling to accept any argument that undermines your cause. The two main areas this affects are safety and cost.
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Should have started decades ago, they have held us back greatly and done a huge disservice to humanity, but better late than never.
There are places that ignore the anti nuke nonsense. China and India come to mind. It's only a matter of time before these nations develop and market small modular reactor designs.
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The thing is you can go green without being stupid about it. I'm actually pretty pro green myself. I believe we need to convert to wind and solar as much as we can. I'm just not stupid about it.
Wind and solar are not reliable all the time, plus these systems are very fragile . The sun doesn't shine 24/7 and the wind doesn't blow 2/7. The grid will need something reliable and proven to step in during those times. An that 'something' will be a nuclear power plant or a fossil fuel one.
An on that n
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Why? By the time it's built it won't be needed if we are going to meet our climate goals. Just keep the existing one going long enough to build up more renewable capacity. Renewable energy is much cheaper anyway.
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One of the reasons that wind and PV pro
Moving to electric motors are fine, but (Score:2)
I don't mind moving to electric motors, not for any "green" reasons but because I think electricity is a genuine advancement in motive power. Just the difference in maintenance costs alone is enough to make a believer out of me. Electrical power has a future. Liquid fuel power is a legacy technology.
BUT obviously the US will need some major infrastructure upgrades to handle anything like the demand for liquid-fueled motors. So please spare me your green initiatives and your tax credits, just build out the g
Generally agree... but... (Score:3)
The price is too high IMO. They are subsidizing $20/MWh at that cost for 5 years of continued operation. It might be the only way to replace the capacity, but I would think that grants for solar and batteries would be money much better spent.
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And will that necessary capacity be in place in time?
If not...
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One of the problems with those kind of calculations is that *ALL* power generation in the US is heavily subsidized.
If you add up all the implicit and explicit subsidy on gas and oil burning power plants for example, you'll get a very very different picture than what most politicians want you to believe.
The same goes for wind and solar.
Good! Now build some more nuclear power plants. (Score:2)
It looks like politicians are learning some lessons from what is happening in Europe. If the natural gas supply gets disrupted somehow then things can go bad real quick if we keep ignoring nuclear power.
I'm seeing more news about growing support for nuclear power, and not just from the nerd and political sources. I'm also seeing less panic about nuclear power safety. It seems that people are finally learning the facts than just believe the fiction.
Keeping existing power plants open isn't enough. In ten
Politicians learning - surely not (Score:2)
Are you feeling all right suggesting that politicians are capable of learning lessons and rational thought?
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Are you feeling all right suggesting that politicians are capable of learning lessons and rational thought?
Can I assume the politicians are human? That they breathe air? Drink water? And go home at night to sleep, then wake up the next morning to turn on a light to see? If these politicians want clean air to breathe, fresh water to drink, and the lights to come on when they turn a switch then they need to do something about our energy problems. If not then there's an election coming up soon (and these days it appears that there's always an election coming up real soon) to clear some of them out and see if t
Your optimism is showing (Score:2)
'Either they learn from what is going on in the world or the voters will learn some lessons and remove them from office'
The voters vote their own interests, as influenced by the ads they see. Your assumption otherwise is touching...
If the major source of employment in your constituency is a polluting institution, you will vote to keep it going. If your voters are hunters, you will oppose gun control (think Bernie's opposition to gun control otherwise he would have lost his seat in Vermont). If you get contr
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The voters vote their own interests
I know that, and that's why I'm optimistic.
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Look at this chart (Score:3)
translation: no progress toward reducing CO2
Nukes' hidden subsidy (Score:2)
Because no insurance company want to cover the potential cost of a Chernobyl type disaster, it is usual for nuclear power station operators to get their government to cover the possible costs of a major event. This is a hidden, seldom discussed, subsidy because it is not visible, doesn't appear in state expenditures etc. And, of course, most of the time it doesn't cost anything...
Zero credibility to nuclear stop-loss rationale. (Score:2)
The whole industry is a corrupt gimmick and "dir
Everybody who doesn't live in California pls note (Score:2)
Gavin Newsom is not a scientist. He is not a nuclear, civic, or any other kind of engineer. He is a politician and this is a decision that a politician must make. Read: It's about how California moves the money around. It's a long story, but it's ultimately about the economic trade-offs between shutting it down and doing the opposite. It's not about the Reds versus the Blues, it's about somebody needing to make a decision and Newsom called it. As a California resident, I agree with his decision, but nobody
Re: (Score:3)
Conservatives believe in austerity and responsibility until a corporation has a chance to get a handout. Then they go all-in. PG&E has willfully and negligently avoided doing maintenance which they are contractually obligated to perform, and not only spent customers' money on it but also taxpayers' money as the state has handed them big piles of cash to fix the problems the customers already paid them to fix by paying for maintenance in their bills. Now Newsom wants to hand PG&E more money.
Re: (Score:2)
Whoops
I mean it should be Nationalized, obviously, not privatized. What it is now is not only private, but relatively deregulated compared to what it has been in the past (which also wasn't working well, but was cheaper.)
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There's no reason why it should be forgivable, no matter what private corporation is getting the loan from the state.
Sure there is. It should be forgivable because otherwise Diablo Canyon could close as scheduled. They could spend a billion dollars on fuel and maintenance then see the government in a couple years tell them they changed their minds and don't want nuclear power any more. It was wise to demand a forgivable loan, and the government to offer it. If the Government isn't on the hook for the money then they might just change the deal on staying open in the next election, leaving the plant owners holding the b