21–30 of 361 posts
If we want to mitigate the impact of climate change, we need to invest in decreasing Nuclear costs and building many more plants in the US.
Awesome! Nuclear is a fantastic and needed addition to the grid. The cost was high, but still quite cheap relative to the cost of continuing to build & run fossil fuel plants. It's a real shame we let 30+ years slip by, letting our ability to build projects like this wither. I hope there's lessons learned from this experience that will help get costs down for future plants. This should spur discussions on streamlinin…
Mostly agree... though I think Solar tech still needs to improve a bit. Nuclear power is definitely needed for the grid, though preferably more inland in places less likely to be affected by natural disaster. I get why the NY plant was closed. I also hope that the build and cost timelines can be shortened. I think the push for electric cars is a bit of a miss in this, only because the grid needs to improve dramatical…
Even more importantly we can shift most of that demand to cheaper times of the day or even day of the week.
So to power every home in the USA would roughly cost 3 trillion at these prices. if they reused the same teams and designs maybe they could get it somewhat cheaper. plus we have increasing renewable plus existing hydro and nuclear. for the price of a year or two of national debt we could go full renewable in this country.
So we could decarbonize the entire US power grid for what we spent on COVID relief/stimulus? That seems like a good deal, even without economies of scale...
“seven years late and $17 billion over budget. At its full output of 1,100 megawatts of electricity” Ignoring interest for those 7 years and all other costs just the overage is insane. 17 billion / ( 1,100,000 kW * 90% capacity factor * 24 hour * 365 days * 50 years) = 4 cents per kWh. Add interest etc and someone lost an incredible amount of money on this project.
Those are non-intermittent kilowatt hours, though (and the maintenance that does need to happen is known in advance). One energy demand at peak production is saturated, intermittent sources become a lot more expensive since storage needs to be provisioned. Some markets are fast approaching this scenario: https://reneweconomy.com.au/california-duck-curve-now-a-cany...
“seven years late and $17 billion over budget. At its full output of 1,100 megawatts of electricity” Ignoring interest for those 7 years and all other costs just the overage is insane. 17 billion / ( 1,100,000 kW * 90% capacity factor * 24 hour * 365 days * 50 years) = 4 cents per kWh. Add interest etc and someone lost an incredible amount of money on this project.
Those are non-intermittent kilowatt hours, though (and the maintenance that does need to happen is known in advance). One energy demand at peak production is saturated, intermittent sources become a lot more expensive since storage needs to be provisioned. Some markets are fast approaching this scenario: https://reneweconomy.com.au/california-duck-curve-now-a-cany...
Battery backed solar is becoming really popular with grid operators because you get the upsides of load following without the overhead of mostly idle production. The economics get interesting as more solar comes online, but things are only getting much worse for nuclear and coal. Which is why there is basically nothing in the pipeline for either one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 4 cents per kWh. For comparison: I live in SF Bay Area and pay 42 cents per kWh.
Just to make sure no one misunderstands (not saying you did, just that this is easy to misread): The 4 cent/kWh figure is the additional cost it would have to charge, over the life of the plant, to make up for the budget overage, and would go on top of whatever ratepayers would have to pay for its "regular" energy output. Further pedantry: you'd have to factor in time value, so that kind of understates it, as the ent…
My point is that while 4 cents per kWh for 50 years is a very big number in terms of cost overruns and the taxpayers in Georgia will have to eat it, I as a California resident, somehow pay through the nose despite abundant and cheap solar energy, especially during the daytime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So we could decarbonize the entire US power grid for what we spent on COVID relief/stimulus? That seems like a good deal, even without economies of scale...
Not just decarbonize, but become a major fossil fuel exporter and be all smug about like a certain Nordic country…
Wouldn't doing that undo a lot of the gains from this? If we export fossil fuels instead of burning them, we aren't really decarbonizing. We're just having the carbonization take place somewhere else.
Awesome! Nuclear is a fantastic and needed addition to the grid. The cost was high, but still quite cheap relative to the cost of continuing to build & run fossil fuel plants. It's a real shame we let 30+ years slip by, letting our ability to build projects like this wither. I hope there's lessons learned from this experience that will help get costs down for future plants. This should spur discussions on streamlinin…
Mostly agree... though I think Solar tech still needs to improve a bit. Nuclear power is definitely needed for the grid, though preferably more inland in places less likely to be affected by natural disaster. I get why the NY plant was closed. I also hope that the build and cost timelines can be shortened. I think the push for electric cars is a bit of a miss in this, only because the grid needs to improve dramatical…
The plant definitely had issues -- some due to age (construction started in 1956!), some due to mismanagement, and some due to dumb regulations [0]. My chem class went there on a field trip in high school, and the guy giving the tour definitely gave off "engineer who has been overruled by management in very dumb ways" vibes while explaining that their waste silos were almost full because they weren't allowed to transport the spent rods across state lines so that they could be recycled back into fissile materials.
As an aside, the control rooms had a real "retro-futurism" look. Lots of manual dials and brightly-colored plastics [1]. Gene Roddenberry eat your heart out, etc.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center#Saf...
[1]: https://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/2016/02/12/indian-point-...