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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#251

Post by Joeri »

pdonis wrote: post #157
EarthMephit wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the points that the article brings up is that a nuclear power plant takes around ten years to build, and that's ignoring the political red tape that you mentioned which would add on another 5+ years, plus the huge upfront capex costs. With the energy industry changing so rapidly at the moment, that's a huge risk for anyone wanting to invest. In that ten years for construction its likely that battery, solar, an…

> the only future for nuclear is going to be small, cheaper reactors that are quick to construct But even those will be nonstarters unless the regulatory environment is fixed. Nuclear has always been held to much, much stricter standards than any other energy source, for no good reason.

As far as I understand the regulation that exists was added to prevent disasters of the kind that occurred previously. You seem to be arguing some of the added regulations were unnecessary for safety? Which ones are they, and how much money can be saved by getting rid of them?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#252

Post by jillesvangurp »

oceanplexian wrote: post #229
jillesvangurp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease. Coal has been in a slow but steady decline in Germany (mainly due to cost); which is on track to decline all the way to 0 as Germany is committing to getting rid of coal based production completely by 2035 or so. Gas production did grow but mainly to offset decli…

> Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas This is not the impression I have gotten from recent events. The reason Germany hasn’t experienced blackouts is because they are funding the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine in exchange for energy. Germany has advocated for the continued purchase of Russian gas and has pushed back against the EU admitting Ukraine to the union.…

Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to be a lot more expensive. Hence hundreds of billions to cut their dependence on the stuff entirely.

Regarding nuclear in Germany, I think you are a bit short on the facts. Nuclear in Germany was always pretty minor. What little they had is now nearly gone. During the same time, they cut coal generation from 47% to about 25%. Gas grew a bit during that time but is still smaller than their remaining coal generation and even the amount of coal capacity they got rid off. Coal is going to be gone by 2030 according to the latest plans. Indeed cheap Russian gas was part of this plan until recently. But those plans are shifting rapidly now for obvious reasons.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#253

Post by stkdump »

varajelle wrote: post #206
stkdump wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, by how much did Germany increase its carbon output during the nuclear shutdown? Hint: it didn't. It went from 14.8 to 7.7 tons/capita. You can always argue that it could have decreased faster by keeping nuclear plants online. But please don't believe the headlines of opinion makers without looking at the actual data.

In the same period, France went from 10 to 4.2 t/capita (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~F... )

So?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#254

Post by cycomanic »

replygirl wrote: post #169
jeffbee wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These statements do not seem factual. Didn't the NRC issue a construction license for Virgil C. Summer units 2 and 3 in 2012? Which subsequently failed to be built despite spending 9 billion dollars, because companies like Westinghouse are structured solely for the purpose of robbing the American public blind.

$10 billion for a gigawatt of the cleanest, safest, most energy-dense, most thermally efficient, and most reliable power you can find vs $4 billion for a gigawatt wind farm that takes up 100-1000x the land, always has a few % of its installed capacity down for maintenance, and doesn't provide predictable output unless you mine about half a million pounds of lithium

Dfunny how the article directly mentions that because the economics don't work out, nuclear proponents try to shift the discussion to misleading metric such as space occupied. At least consider the size of the nofly zone and the safety zone around your nuclear power plant.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#255

Post by webmaven »

jhgb wrote: post #204
replygirl wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10 billion for a gigawatt of the cleanest, safest, most energy-dense, most thermally efficient, and most reliable power you can find vs $4 billion for a gigawatt wind farm that takes up 100-1000x the land, always has a few % of its installed capacity down for maintenance, and doesn't provide predictable output unless you mine about half a million pounds of lithium

> that takes up 100-1000x the land Practically irrelevant unless you're Singapore or the like. > always has a few % of its installed capacity down for maintenance That's true for a nuclear power plant fleet as well. There's always some downtime for maintenance and/or refueling (although usually you prefer to do both at the same time, sometimes unplanned outages are still a thing). > and doesn't provide predictable ou…

> Nonsense. Why would wind power plants require any lithium?

I think the idea is to ameliorate the unpredictability of wind capacity by storing excess off-peak power for low-generation periods.

There are better solutions, but they are mostly less generic and often better implemented close to the point of use.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#256

Post by [deleted] »

systemvoltage wrote: post #103
acidburnNSA wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some recent news: China's announced that they're building 4 more Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs. They'll use the Chinese supply chain, but it's still a big win for W. https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-... I really wish we could get a few more orders in the USA so that we could leverage the learning and supply chain being so painfully built in Georgia for the AP1000s there.

We need to build hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants. Electricity should be so cheap, it’s not worth monitoring usage for homes. The fact that this hasn’t happened is a testament and an indictment of dysfunction in our society. I’ll turn into a single issue voter if any candidate for the President is pro-nuclear in a big way.

[deleted]

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#257

Post by FooBarWidget »

jayd16 wrote: post #250
JoeyBananas wrote: post #122

It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov: Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States: The last construction permit for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1978 for Progress Energy Inc.'s Shearon Harris plant, near Raleigh, North Carolina. The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the T…

If it's just about regulation why hasn't China (or anyone) broken the stagnation? It's unwarranted regulations in every country?

Actually China seems to be the only country where nuclear is alive and thriving. There were some hiccups for some years due to lack of experience with 3G designs, as well as US sanctions (forcing some companies to drop France's AP-1000 design and to design their own), but they have now solved those problems and are ramping up nuclear fast because they are serious about 2030 peak carbon target. Source: David Fishman, who's an expert on the energy sector in China. You can find a lot of info on his Twitter, for example https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/12939610958922792...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#258

Post by emteycz »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #209
uranium wrote: post #66

"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. "The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease. Coal has been in a slow but steady decline in Germany (mainly due to cost); which is on track to decline all the way to 0 as Germany is committing to getting rid of coal based production completely by 2035 or so. Gas production did grow but mainly to offset decli…

Germany doesn't have blackouts only thanks to Czech and French nuclear energy ;-)

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#259

Post by cycomanic »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #29

Nuclear engineer here. If you want a deep dive into US reactor development history, I wrote this up on a vacation. https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html My take on the more modern economics is here https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html And waste here https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

So the previous poster talked about how nuclear is so much more space efficient and the first picture I see on your waste page is a large field of temporary dry cask storage. So what is the size of the facility (including safety zones), is there a no fly zone around it and if yes how large is it?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#260

Post by sharikous »

mdp2021 wrote: post #210
neilwilson wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear" Germany outsourced their nuclear to France. Remember that Germany and France are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone within the wider European Union. It's the same effect as, say, New Mexico exporting nuclear power to California and California then calling itself 'nuclear free'.

> no longer countries Well, no. The entities united in the European Union are still Countries - Sovereign States, "governments over permanent populations in defined territories enabled to relate with peers, entering as part of the international community after recognition from at least one peer". They have embassies and deal with embassies. The distinction you are trying to convey, allegedly changing the scenario in…

EU law arguably has a greater weight than individual constitutions now. There are some countries like Poland which claim to not accept that, but the principle of EU law supremacy has become generally accepted (even without a referendum in that sense...)
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