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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#41

Post by jmyeet »

This is a solid write-up. I particularly like this part:

> Most fusion concepts are just a more complicated way to heat water.

It's kind of wild that our means of power production do ultimately mostly boil down (pun intended) to turning a turbine with steam and, as the article notes, this is an inherent cost problem whereas solar is a direct form of energy. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but it's true.

It's also kind of wild to consider that we want to heat up hydrogen to a 100 million degrees... to boil water and turn a turbine.

I'll also highlight this:

> As we've seen, traditional LWRs have a cost problem. That is why the PR ignores costs or focuses only on operating costs.

My own view:

1. There are several hundred nuclear power plants in the world. Not one of them has been built without government assistance. This goes to the capital cost issue;

2. Nuclear power plants take too long to plan, build and bring online. IIRC it's at least 11 years;

3. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with processing waste at scale;

4. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with fuel waste at scale; and

5. I just don't trust humans, particularly within the corporate structure, to build and operate nuclear power plants safely. The temptation is simply too high to increase profits by cutting costs.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#42

Post by ncmncm »

PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Energy crises are caused by cheap energy. When energy is cheap people use a lot and stop investing in new sources. The resulting crisis causes high energy prices which causes people to be more efficient and to invest in new energy sources. It takes 20 or 30 years for this to play out. (mid 1970s, early 2000s, current 2022) Each cycle leaves behind a tranche of books that reprise the last crisis, with the interesting…

This is why geothermal has not taken off. Anything that needs a steam turbine needs very expensive periodic maintenance.

All the other nuke expenses just add to that.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#43

Post by Krasnol »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #27

Russophobia aside, the next-gen russian nuclear model (first exporter in the world, of nuclear plants) is built in 3.5 years, which is state of the art. And at the same time has a high throughput (1300MWe) (much higher than the billion dollar mini-reactor fad) and state of the art longevity. It's very difficult for me to find the actual prices, of the different nuclear plants models competitors, but since most of the…

Don't need any Russophobia to see that Russia will have troubles to maintain it's fleet pretty soon if those sanctions keep on running. They are already missing significant parts which came from the West for all kinds of manufacturing and it will get worse and worse. While China can provide basic parts at a high price, they can't provide it all.

I wonder how long it will take until the nuclear fan club starts recognising the risks which will result from this development. Not only in Russia but also in countries which bought into a nuclear/energy dependency from Russia.

Same considerations should go for countries which buy into nuclear dependencies from China.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#44

Post by Tao332 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #25
evolve2k wrote: post #3

Storing nuclear waste for 10,000+ years is also unpopular and no-one wants it stored in their backyard and further does it add up to put aside proper funds to steward waste for 10,000 years.

Most of the waste is Uranium which can be put back into reactors, the most dangerous long-lived element in the waste is Plutonium which is also a good nuclear fuel. Remove those elements plus the higher actinides (Neptunium, Americium, Curium, ...) and almost all of the radioactivity in the fission products has decayed by 500 years... It's less radioactive at that point than the Uranium ore was when it was mined. Bur…

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#45

Post by sb057 »

ncmncm wrote: post #40
sb057 wrote: post #31

The fact that nuclear power regulators are routinely anti-nuclear power probably isn't helping things. https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-... >Dr. Greg Jaczko, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Prof. Wolfgang Renneberg, former Head of the Reactor Safety, Radiation Protection and Nuclear Waste, Federal Environment Ministry, Germany Dr. Bernard Laponche, former Director…

I.e., the more you know about nukes, the less you like them.

I'm not sure about the other regulators, but Jaczko is hardly liked by his colleagues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Jaczko

>A report by Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General Hubert T. Bell accused Jaczko of "strategically" withholding information from his colleagues in an effort to keep plans for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository from advancing.

>In October 2011, all the other four NRC commissioners—two Democrats and two Republicans—sent a letter to the White House expressing "grave concern" about Jaczko's actions at the NRC. On December 14, 2011, Commissioner William Ostendorff, a Republican, told a House oversight committee that Jaczko's "bullying and intimidation... should not and cannot be tolerated."

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#46

Post by hammock »

nimbius wrote: post #8

investment cost and payoff. a gas turbine plant can deliver returns in as little as six years and requires minimal oversight. a nuclear plant may take as long as 30 years before it returns a profit, and it lives under a government regulatory and security magnifying glass. personal opinion but the modern american investor has no patience for anything but instant profits. nuclear could be great but the executives you h…

This rings true and I'd like to see a comparison of interest rates or curve steepness vs energy supply/construction

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#47

Post by spfzero »

Retric wrote: post #16
version_five wrote: post #6

I don't think it's stagnant. I continue to see stuff like small modular reactors making progress. The obvious reason why it doesn't get more play is because it doesn't serve anybody's political goals. Renewables and carbon taxes or other measures to try and reduce quality of life (or opposition to those) get attention because they have good political value. Actually spending money and generating sustainable power, no…

Small modular reactors don’t actually solve any significant issues for the nuclear industry. Construction costs are dwarfed by operating costs and the idea that N small reactors with N times as many parts will somehow require less maintenance is wishful thinking. They very well could be slightly cheaper over the first 15 years, but nuclear reactors are designed for ~50 year lifespans and are really expensive to decom…

> the idea that N small reactors with N times as many parts will somehow require less maintenance is wishful thinking.

Not sure that's necessarily true. Building a lot of something allows you to learn fast and update designs for higher reliability/maintainability. Building smaller units could also free up costs that go into current designs, just because of their size. Certainly designing for zero-staff, eliminates one big source of unreliability.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#48

Post by SemanticStrengh »

PaulHoule wrote: post #34
Retric wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheap to run 2000 staff represents well over 10 billion dollars in just salary over 50 years. Add in replaced equipment, fuel, insurance, etc and it’s a long way from cheap. The assumption they are cheap to operate simply doesn’t hold up even the most basic investigation.

4 GW * 50 years is about $100 billion worth of electricity.

That's not the point, construction costs should be ~requiring about 35% fewer operational personnel than the VVER-1000

This was for VVER 1200 however the new VVER TOI will be the first to use software? > United information space is a multi-platform software and hardware complex intended for control of the engineering data for engineering, designing, as well as arranging communication between territorially-distanced project participants.

edit: can someone help me calculate the construction costs of a VVER 1200 ? it output ~1200MWe of energy Specifications include a $1,200 per kW overnight construction cost if 1 MWe is 1000Kwh (don't know if we're talking per hour..) then total construction cost would be 1200 * 1000 == 1200000 dollars 1200000 is a mere million, that doesn't make any sense, how to calculate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#:~:text=Specifications%20... edit I was dumb the equation is 1200 * 1000 * 1200 == 1440000000. Therefore, if that is to be believed, a VVER 1200 produce 1200MWe and only cost 1.4 billion in construction costs (without the small interest rate and the operating cost) That is extremely cheap, the pathetic and hyped small reactors from rolls royce cost 1 Billion per unit and produce < 200 MWe... That makes the VVER 1200 6 times cheaper and probably the cheapest energy source on earth (again assuming those numbers are true), and the VVER TOI successor should be even cheaper given it is constructed in 17 months less.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#49

Post by Krasnol »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #23

Nuclear is not popular because the fossil fuel industry co-opt the environmentalist to fight on their behalf. We should have better developed nuclear for the last few decades and we would be in a much better energy posture. Especially for an EV future.

Do you have any serious sources on this ridiculous conspiracy theory bread in Shellenbergers bubble reactor?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#50

Post by ncmncm »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #23

Nuclear is not popular because the fossil fuel industry co-opt the environmentalist to fight on their behalf. We should have better developed nuclear for the last few decades and we would be in a much better energy posture. Especially for an EV future.

You mean environmentalists have been ceded total control over all utility decisions?

They can't even stop government sponsored mass wolf kills.

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