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

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

#41

Post by chris222 »

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.

I’m not so sure with overprovisioning, batteries and controllable load. Also pumped hydro and other gravity batteries. We barely have any storage on the grid right now.

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

#42

Post by mlsu »

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…

I would argue that ratepayers would lose significantly more, in the form of

iq decreases, cancer, early death from air pollution, and ongoing, worsening weather damage from climate change

were this plant not constructed and the grid powered from natgas or coal instead.

I hate these discussions about power, because in every case the quoted price of alternatives does not factor in the huge and obvious externalities.

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

#43

Post by bryanlarsen »

coldpie wrote: post #31
justrealist wrote: post #19

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...

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

$30B is more than half of $44B.

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

#44

Post by Manuel_D »

Retric wrote: post #26
Manuel_D wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Non-interment kilowatt hours are actually less valuable. Demand dips at night, the weekend, spring and fall etc. So when negotiating power purchase agreements grid operators are pricing most of that production when it’s least valuable. 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 inte…

Incorrect, demand peaks right as night starts and the sun goes down. See that peak [1] at 9pm? Battery backed solar is not even remotely feasible. To put this in perspective, the USA alone uses ~11.5 TWh of electricty each day. A battery to last through the night is over 5,000 GWh.

1. https://b698061.smushcdn.com/698061/wp-content/uploads/2023/...

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

#45

Post by toomuchtodo »

mlsu wrote: post #42
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I would argue that ratepayers would lose significantly more, in the form of iq decreases, cancer, early death from air pollution, and ongoing, worsening weather damage from climate change were this plant not constructed and the grid powered from natgas or coal instead. I hate these discussions about power, because in every case the quoted price of alternatives does not factor in the huge and obvious externalities.

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/01/2024-... (By 2024, one-fourth of U.S. electricity will come from renewables: EIA)

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-power-regulator-we... (US moves to link more wind and solar projects to electric grid) ("Today there is more than 2,000 gigawatts of renewable power waiting to be connected to the grid -- nearly double the amount of current U.S. generation capacity, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Acting (FERC) Chairman Willie Phillips said at a press conference following the unanimous vote.")

https://www.energy-storage.news/us-utility-scale-battery-sto... (US utility-scale battery storage industry deployed 4GW/12GWh in record-breaking 2022)

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/03/31/turning-america-into-a-... (Turning America Into A Solar Manufacturing Powerhouse)

Low carbon power from Vogtle is welcome, because it's here and what is done is done, but there is no point in throwing good money after bad on commercial fission.

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

#46

Post by slt2021 »

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.

you are right, oil extraction is literally producing carbon (which is then processed and burned at later stage somewhere else)

so we need to separate: carbon production and carbon emissions.

a lot of so called decarbonized industries are decarbonized simply because they outsourced carbon intensive parts to third world, but carbon is still being produced and emitted.

I think this is why some people are supporting De-Growth movement, that just by reducing consumption of nonessential stuff, we would decrease carbon production and emissions globally

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

#47

Post by aschearer »

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.

What if climage change is a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?[1]

[1]: 2009 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/What_if_it%27...

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

#48

Post by FrustratedMonky »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #39
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“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.

I didn't dig into details on specific of this project.

But any large fixed price project I've been on, it all hinged on verbose specifications. And then any change resulted in change orders. And it becomes a pissing match of who will pay. It is rarely cut and dry.

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

#49

Post by forrestthewoods »

jakewins wrote: post #40
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…

Hydro isn’t clean (extreme ecosystem damage, both up and down stream); and if we dammed every river it’s a drop in the bucket of what we need.

I don’t know how far solar/wind can get us. But hydro sucks more than most people realize.

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

#50

Post by chroma »

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was established in 1975. Since then, no plant license that was initially submitted to the NRC has started operations.

Plant Vogtle was approved by the Atomic Energy Commission (the predecessor to the NRC). Their license was grandfathered in. Building this reactor required a new reactor license (not plant license). Shortly after the reactor design was approved and construction started, the federal government added new rules about containment vessels being resilient to passenger aircraft impact. The NRC applied these rules retroactively, causing the containment vessel to be redesigned and construction to be halted.[1] The companies working with the NRC are reluctant to criticize regulators, as they fear retaliation from the NRC. The NRC supervises and approves each step of nuclear reactor construction, making it very difficult to schedule work with contractors and suppliers. Honestly, it's amazing this plant was built at all.

1. https://www.ans.org/news/article-1646/root-cause-of-vogtle-a...

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