Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 361 posts

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#31

Post by coldpie »

justrealist wrote: post #19
ryan93 wrote: post #18

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...

Yup. The Georgia plant seems expensive until you remember it cost half of what Twitter did.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#32

Post by laiewjrliawej »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
Retric wrote: post #4

“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.

> someone lost an incredible amount of money on this project. All roads lead to Ratepayers (electrical customers). > Georgia Power’s residential customers are projected to pay more than $926 apiece as part of an ongoing finance charge and elected public service commissioners have approved a rate increase. Residential customers will pay $4 more per month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. That could hi…

And that's why I left the nuclear industry. Nuclear power is the safest form of power production we've ever produced (more people are killed per MWh installing and repairing wind turbines than in the nuclear industry) but it has never been anywhere near cost effective and no nuclear project has ever been completed anywhere near on-schedule. Every time I hear someone talk about how the world needs tons of new nuclear plants and solar and wind can't possibly meet the demand quickly enough, that person seems to imagine that none of the next wave of nuclear plants magically will not have any of the problems that every previous nuclear plant had. Meanwhile solar and wind are beating estimates year after year. I still love nuclear physics (and I am excited about several up-and-coming fusion projects) but I just don't believe in the nuclear (fission) power industry anymore.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#33

Post by FrustratedMonky »

Retric wrote: post #4

“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.

>“seven years late and $17 billion over budget. At its full output of 1,100 megawatts of electricity”

It's all projects. This just happens to be a big one.

Everyone likes to point to over-runs, over-budget, late projects.

Nobody goes back and asks "who did the original estimate that we eventually went over?".

Many projects start with /s 'everyone knowing it will go over budget, but if we give a real estimate it wont get off the ground'/s.

Then later someone has to get blamed. If everyone is (quietly)honest they kind of spread around the blame and the success. If it is a contentious project, everyone is playing tag at the end.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#34

Post by bigbillheck »

Retric wrote: post #22
tracker1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

EV’s have a fairly trivial impact on the grid. Cars last 25+ years so even if everyone all new cars where EV’s we are talking less than 1% increase in total electricity demand per year. The grid has expanded dramatically faster at several points. Even more importantly we can shift most of that demand to cheaper times of the day or even day of the week.

> Cars last 25+ years

This is not a truth universally acknowledged.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#35

Post by bryanlarsen »

Manuel_D wrote: post #10
Retric wrote: post #4

“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...

A Tesla megapack holds 3MWh and is warranted for 15years. If you use the entire capacity daily for duck curve shifting and it dies the day after its warranty runs out, (3MWh * 365 * 15), that's 16 TWh. A megapack costs $1.8M, for a cost of 11 cents per kWh. That's cheaper than the fully loaded cost of Vogtle.

But of course you don't have store every kWh used. Peak demand in the summer is caused by A/C and corresponds closely with peak solar generation and can be used directly. New solar farms have a cost of about 0.5cents per kWh, but we'll use 1cent per kWh to be generous. So if you use 3/4 of your power directly and shift 1/4 you end up with an average cost of 0.751c + 0.25(11+1) = 2.75 cents.

And those costs aren't theoretical. For a concrete example, the 8minute energy Eland project proves 24h battery+solar energy for under 4 cents per kWh.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#36

Post by justrealist »

JohnFen wrote: post #29
Scoundreller wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just decarbonize, but become a major fossil fuel exporter and be all smug about like a certain Nordic country…

> become a major fossil fuel exporter 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.

It offsets significant carbon production elsewhere (especially if we only export natgas), and defunds from some of the worst governments on earth.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#37

Post by bryanlarsen »

bigbillheck wrote: post #34
Retric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EV’s have a fairly trivial impact on the grid. Cars last 25+ years so even if everyone all new cars where EV’s we are talking less than 1% increase in total electricity demand per year. The grid has expanded dramatically faster at several points. Even more importantly we can shift most of that demand to cheaper times of the day or even day of the week.

> Cars last 25+ years This is not a truth universally acknowledged.

The average age of cars on the road in the US is 12 years. There aren't many 100 year old cars skewing the average, so that implies that most cars last over 24 years.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#38

Post by aputsiak »

Retric wrote: post #4

“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.

On the news page, there is a link til an article on India purchasing 1,200 MW facility from China for 3,5 billions. Edit: https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-china-nuclear-power-plan...

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#39

Post by bryanlarsen »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #33
Retric wrote: post #4

“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.

>“seven years late and $17 billion over budget. At its full output of 1,100 megawatts of electricity” It's all projects. This just happens to be a big one. Everyone likes to point to over-runs, over-budget, late projects. Nobody goes back and asks "who did the original estimate that we eventually went over?". Many projects start with /s 'everyone knowing it will go over budget, but if we give a real estimate it wont…

Every other kind of power project is built using fixed price bids. If a company bids $3B for a natural gas plant or solar plant and the project costs more than $3B to build the company is on the hook, not the ratepayer.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#40

Post by jakewins »

glimshe wrote: post #21

One project in 30 years doesn't benefit from economies of scale. Nuclear is the only hope we have to make up for the gaps in generation for solar and wind. Solar and Wind should be used whenever possible, but they are not 100% of our solution mix, even if they are the majority. 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.

Nuclear is dope and we should build tons of it, but it ain’t our only hope; plenty of other alternatives to build at the same time.

Eg hydro, overprovisioning solar or wind, transmission to remove local weather variations, coupling wind and solar, demand flexibility.

Fervo just started its first full-scale new-gen geothermal plant, for instance; 24/7 firm power. You might like David Roberts interview with Tim Latimer about it: https://www.volts.wtf/p/enhanced-geothermal-power-is-finally...

Post reply on HN