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Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

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Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#101

Post by e_i_pi_2 »

woeirua wrote: post #21

How much solar could they have built for the same price? Just doing some very rough calculations, they could have built enough panels to output several times as much peak power as they can with the nuclear reactors. Even including storage costs, they still could have probably built a system with more productive capacity than the nuclear reactors. This project is almost certainly the last conventional fission reactor…

I think the problem is incentives - it would be way more effective to cover the cost of decentralized solar panels, but then you don't have to charge for the power and there's no way to "recover" the investment. I think we're going to keep seeing these dissonances until we can get over the idea that everything has to generate money

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#102

Post by adamsmith143 »

js2 wrote: post #85
kansface wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know the HN crowd loves big engineering, and that in theory all these problems could be solved with enough investment and practice building plants etc., Has the US successfully built anything big or hard in a generation or two? High speed rail? Subways? Tunnels? Mass transportation? Housing? Any infrastructure, really? We have a political problem and no amount of engineering or investment can fix it. If the US we…

[deleted]

Your examples are either Military projects or Buildings? FYI they're building Fighter Jets and Stadiums and Skyscrapers all over the world. Nothing majorly impressive about that.

Really complex things we completely fail at, Nuclear power plants take decades longer than intended. California's High Speed rail is billions of dollars over budget and many years behind schedule and may never finish.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#103

Post by jeffbee »

coryrc wrote: post #93
coldpie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that price include enough storage to heat the entire Twin Cities area (~4M people) for six continuous weeks of average -20C weather with overcast skies, where power failure means widespread death and property damage (broken pipes)? It might do, I don't know, but I'm skeptical. That's a lot of power! My gut feeling is a baseload solution is better for that kind of situation, though what I'm really advocating for…

We need a New Deal-type mobilization to build https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Communit... everywhere across the country. Like building the Hoover Dam, it will generate massive amounts of carbon-free energy for a long time and with a relatively short ROI. It's embarrassing parallelizable. We could be off fossil fuels for heating in fifteen years across all homes, saving thousands of dollars a house…

52 entire dwellings on 250 acres? Thanks but no. You would literally need to pave America to make this happen.

50 dwellings on one acre is at the low end of the urban density scale.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#104

Post by belorn »

Gwypaas wrote: post #60
belorn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe can not continue to rely on natural gas and fossil fuels for the next 20-30 years, nor will the climate goals be reached if power consumption and thus gas consumption are increased. Gas peaker plants are also not cheap. People think they are cheap when looking at the theoretical cost, but having energy plants in stand-by mode costs a lot of money. Generally those are paid by either taxes or as part of the grid…

So you propose having nuclear plants in standby? Then I have a bridge to sell you.

Of course not, but is that question even asked in good faith? Are you not aware that the European grid is made out of multiple different technologies each with a different benefits and drawbacks?

Right now the most important aspect of the grid is not price, it is the reduction of fossil fuel dependency. It is not sustainable to use fossil fuels in the short run and it is definitively not sustainable in the long run. Countries need to invest and start building replacement for existing fossil fuel power plants, and they also need at the same time increase capacity. On top of that we also need to start replace and remove part of the hydro energy production in order to prevent several extinctions.

It is also not morally or economically sensible to continue spend subsidizes on fossil fuel plants. A minimum requirement for government subsidizes should be zero green house emissions and geopolitical self-sufficient within the borders of EU.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#105

Post by Krasnol »

Manuel_D wrote: post #75
Krasnol wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "loss of nuclear engineering capability" doesn't hold up when you see reactors build by the French having the same problems: overdue and over budget. The French never stopped building reactors all over the world. "Base generation" is an outdated concept. It can be replaced by storage and grid size for example.

The French have the same problems of loss of engineering capability. They built many reactors of the same design during the Messmer plan, but haven't had to build new reactors in a long time. The fact that nuclear plants are so long-lived is a huge strength: they are among the cheapest forms of green energy if they are allowed to serve the entirety of their service life. But because they last so long, if you build a…

Weird that the French somehow missed all those basic facts some random person can come up on the internet when they presented their designs in recent years and started building those massively over budget and overdue projects, eh?

> they are among the cheapest forms of green energy

The only interpretation of "cheap" which makes nuclear "cheapest" in something is the one where you ignore everything related to nuclear waste. From reprocessing over storage to decommissioning. Making it a lie, basically. Just like the "green" in this greenwashing.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#106

Post by preisschild »

hefferbub wrote: post #46
coldpie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only half of a Twitter. That sounds like a joke, but honestly, it's not. $20B is absolutely nothing compared to the costs of not taking immediate action on climate change.

13 years is immediate? Let’s please not have our future depend on building giant, fragile things that are obsolete technologically and financially before they are even completed. Wind and PV have some challenges, but they get online fast. Plus they are both riding down a steep cost S-curve, so (for the foreseeable future) the more you build, the cheaper the next one gets. No one could say that about Nuclear with a st…

> the more you build, the cheaper the next one gets

Same as for Nuclear, but not building any new ones for decades and then only 2 reactors will not help.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#107

Post by Gwypaas »

ackfoobar wrote: post #49
sesuximo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to read about this - can you point me towards some reputable articles

Not an article, but I find the summary from Sabine Hossenfelder neutral and trustworthy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo

That video is missing demand response enabling sector coupling.

Take green steel using hydrogen as a chemical feedstock. Oversize the electrolyzers and add some storage and the plant is now able to utilize low prices and leave the firm 10% to more important consumers, while enabling more producers to exist.

This without paying the round-trip cost.

Almost all studies looking into 100% renewable systems finds them easily possible globally but a holistic approach is required. Simply shifting the current electricity sector to renewables won't cut it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#108

Post by Gwypaas »

coryrc wrote: post #96
Gwypaas wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not that I mind nuclear.. just not sure where it'll fit in in the future. Just used in some key industrial areas maybe? Nuclear submarines, and that is about it.

Process heat for industrial use? Desalinization?

Compared to heat pumps and renewables? I see it as very unlikely.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#109

Post by Manuel_D »

Krasnol wrote: post #105
Manuel_D wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French have the same problems of loss of engineering capability. They built many reactors of the same design during the Messmer plan, but haven't had to build new reactors in a long time. The fact that nuclear plants are so long-lived is a huge strength: they are among the cheapest forms of green energy if they are allowed to serve the entirety of their service life. But because they last so long, if you build a…

Weird that the French somehow missed all those basic facts some random person can come up on the internet when they presented their designs in recent years and started building those massively over budget and overdue projects, eh? > they are among the cheapest forms of green energy The only interpretation of "cheap" which makes nuclear "cheapest" in something is the one where you ignore everything related to nuclear…

What facts are the French missing? The point is that building 48 reactors of the same design (like in the Messmer plan) is cheaper on a per-unit basis than building 2 reactors of a new design. The learnings from the first few builds inform subsequent iterations, and these learnings decay over time as plants haven't been built in decades. I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

Nuclear waste disposal is not a huge portion of nuclear power's cost, it accounts for about 10% [1]. Nuclear plant builders have to finance the cost of disposal upfront. Decommissioning is even less - less than one percent if the plant serves its full service life.

1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec....

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#110

Post by Gwypaas »

belorn wrote: post #104
Gwypaas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you propose having nuclear plants in standby? Then I have a bridge to sell you.

Of course not, but is that question even asked in good faith? Are you not aware that the European grid is made out of multiple different technologies each with a different benefits and drawbacks? Right now the most important aspect of the grid is not price, it is the reduction of fossil fuel dependency. It is not sustainable to use fossil fuels in the short run and it is definitively not sustainable in the long run.…

The problem with nuclear is that every dollar spent on nuclear could have displaced more fossil energy if invested in renewables. Any investment in nuclear prolongs the climate crisis.

The next problem nuclear faces is that the CAPEX heavy economic model requires them to run at 100% all the time, they used to be able to do that but renewables undercut them wildly.

Now you start to lower the capacity factor of the nuclear plants, which has now gone from $0.15/kWh to ~$0.3/kWh when operating at 50% capacity factor.

Who even wants electricity for that price? It's beyond what we today call an "energy crisis". This is locked in until that nuclear plant has paid of its initial investment after 40 years.

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