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The Nuclear Option

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Re: The Nuclear Option

#121

Post by DennisP »

heyjudy wrote: post #82

Worked in nuclear industry in the late 90's. Most *WR designs are inherently not fail-safe, complex, require dedicated teams, are nearly impossible to insure and require a massive capex investment. This isn't necessary. Modern MSR/LFTR designs tend to get around most of these problems by being smaller, simpler and most robus, similar to what some startups, Taylor Wilson proposed and partially what ANP/ASTR/MSRE/DMSR…

There's nothing to keep us from putting lots of small reactors at the same site, if that's what we want. We'd still get the economy of scale from factory-built reactors.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#122

Post by PavlikPaja »

I'm going to attack nuclear from an entirely new point of view: What if thorium or uranium have other, yet unknown uses? We could be burning potentially invaluable resources for relatively unimportant amounts of energy.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#123

Post by pfdietz »

jabl wrote: post #97
niftich wrote: post #42

Some of nuclear energy's challenges get a good amount of coverage: politicians unwilling to support it, citizen opposition, and cost overruns and delays at plant currently under construction. Others, less so. And if we discount politics for a moment, the day-to-day economics of new nuclear barely pencil out. Nuclear needs immense capital expenditure vs. other types of generation. Solar gets generous subsidies and doe…

Existing nuclear plants got as big as they are because of economies of scale. Turns out that a plant twice as big costs less than twice as much as two smaller ones. But, due to nuclear expansion faltering we build too few of these plants, and thus all of them become essentially first-of-a-kind, which tends to mean a lot of (very expensive!) delays. I also think SMR's are very promising, trying to break the cycle of e…

They also got big because of economies of scale of operation. Making a reactor smaller doesn't proportionally scale down the staff you need to operate it. This is relevant when as many as a third of reactors in the US are not even making an operating profit.

SMRs will require changes to operational regulation if they are to compete.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#124

Post by audunw »

rurounijones wrote: post #22
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Safer, modern” plants in the US, the UK, and China are being scrapped because they’re not affordable. Solar, wind, and storage are already cheaper than nuclear. So why build nuclear?

As far as I know scalable storage for base-load is not a solved problem. Has that changed? Personally I find it hard to believe that we can live on renewabls until a european country goes 1 year completely on renewables (I guess Germany is probably the best candidate for that since they are going all-in).

This touches on an issue, that renewables don't need to be paired with base-load plants (which nuclear has traditionally been), but with load-following and peaker plants.

Traditional nuclear power plants are base load plants, but any development in new nuclear plants should focus on designs that are better at load following, in order to complement rather than compete with renewables.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#125

Post by DennisP »

victorp13 wrote: post #87
intopieces wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not "rightfully scared." Even if you take the highest number of death estimates -- all the way from the initial incident through the people who died in evacuation all the way those who will die of cancer in 20 years -- the death toll is staggeringly low compared to carbon emissions. It just so happens that radiation is scary and deaths happen all at once.

Don't just count deaths: Nuclear fallout has profound long-term negative effects that coal accidents do not. At Fukushima, nearly 80.000 people are still displaced, almost eight years later. Source: http://www.reconstruction.go.jp/english/

Right, with coal it's not the accidents, it's just their normal operation. About 13,000 Americans die every year from coal emissions. A lot more than that die worldwide.

https://www.catf.us/resource/the-toll-from-coal/

Re: The Nuclear Option

#126

Post by pfdietz »

trimbo wrote: post #5

Sigh. I've been arguing this for so long, and gave up about 5 years ago. I can't think of a more scalable way than fission to combat carbon, yet it won't happen for so many reasons. * There are too many solar and wind success stories to point to. "Why can't NYC be like Scotland with wind power?!" You start to list the reasons and the response is "we can accomplish it if we put our minds to it!". It's an endless cycle…

Very little of what you're talking about there matters.

What matters is that new nuclear reactors have come in grossly over budget. Who is going to buy a reactor when the vendor's promises about cost are demonstrably untrustworthy?

In contrast, new utility scale solar and wind installs typically come in within 10% of estimate.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#127

Post by pfdietz »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #39
MapleWalnut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is cost prohibitive. Additionally, it's hard to predict and account for that one-in-a-million catastrophe that creates a nuclear wasteland. The sample size is too small.

This won't be the case with modern reactor designs. Previous designs were based on an approach that is fundamentally unstable and thus requires a huge investment in safety critical systems to keep things in line. Newer designs are fundamentally stable and fail in an inherently safe manner. Much, much less surrounding infrastructure and a greatly reduced need for system level fixes to problems since the catastrophic i…

The new designs are not going to be available for many years. They have to be proved in operation, particularly if they involve new chemistry like MSRs.

By the time they're proven, renewables will have expanded to global dominance and likely run down their experience curves to cost points that even Gen IV nuclear will find very hard to beat.

New nuclear designs are a hedge against renewables suddenly stopping getting cheaper. An insurance policy, but hopefully one that won't be needed.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#128

Post by tomohawk »

This highlights the foolishness of relying on magical government solutions. Nuclear power has plenty of promise, if the waste is magically taken care of by an as yet to be implemented solution from the government. Since this solution never arrived, the waste gets stored at each nuclear plant, where it needs to be actively cooled for some period of time.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#129

Post by olau »

Maakuth wrote: post #103
pdonis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this has anything to do with technical problems with building nuclear reactors. The US Navy has been hiring private contractors to build them for decades with no such issues. (And Naval reactors have more stringent requirements than commercial ones, because of the widely varying loads they have to deal with.) The so-called "cost savings" in France are due to unrealistically optimistic assumptions about renewa…

It depends how you defined technical issue. For example the French Areva power plant projects in Europe have been met with all sorts of issues ranging from subcontractors that are inexperienced with NPP level of quality and documentation requirements all the way to challenge of proving automation system reliability to the regulatory body. These happen in the plant vendor's native France as well, so shouldn't be cultu…

Also, we've seen more things go wrong.

When you design a nuclear plant, you need to do a really careful risk analysis. That's why they are so safe.

But as time progresses, and actual designs meet reality and Murphy's law kicks it, it turns out some of the assumptions are factually incorrect. More elaborate safety requirements are needed to compensate, increasing cost.

You can't build a car the way you could 50 years ago, and the same is true for nuclear plants.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#130

Post by pfdietz »

michaelt wrote: post #116
205guy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sense some cognitive dissonance here. You want that great carbon-free energy provided by nuclear, and you lament all the reasons it won't happen. Except you have no rebuttal to those reasons and almost sound convinced by their soundness yourself. - Politicians won't back nuclear because of the risk of accident, thus giving legitimacy to the risk and the public's fears. - There hasn't been adequate research and adva…

The reason politicians don't back nuclear is because of the way our political system operates. A politician might believe our nation will need more power plants within the next 20 years. But they're incentivised to do the thing that, relatively, will be best for their near-term re-election prospects. And just think of all the things that are better for their re-election prospects than a nuclear power plant in their c…

No, the reason nuclear is shunned is largely one of cost. Rate payers don't want higher rates. Nuclear has led to huge financial risk displaced to the rate payers, and they don't like it. And they let their politicians know they don't like it.
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