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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

#61

Post by ethbr0 »

mywittyname wrote: post #56
forrestthewoods wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But hydro sucks more than most people realize. There's a reason Russia blew up the Kakhovka hydro dam. The down-stream impacts of the flooding were more devastating than what they could reasonably accomplish with conventional weapons.

No.

It killed They blew up the dam because it was also a bridge and removing it allowed them to redeploy troops to the east.

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

#62

Post by bryanlarsen »

Manuel_D wrote: post #51
bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

3 MWh is a trivial amount of storage. That's less than 10 seconds of this plant's output. To put this in perspective, the USA uses 11.5 TWh of electricity each day. That's just under 500 GWh per hour. You'd need a lot of megapacks to provision 8 hours of storage. The Eland project you mention has 4 hours of storage, it's not a 24 hour production system. The reality is that renewables are currently only viable to supp…

It's a trivial amount of storage for a trivial amount of money. Do the math, don't hand wave.

The Eland project provides 24 hour power with only 4hr of storage. That's the demand curve in action.

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

#63

Post by KerrAvon »

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.

Counterpoint just because someone has to go against the pro-nuclear orthodoxy here: economy of scale won't fix nuclear power. You will never get the cost (or risk) down far enough with existing technology, and none of the advanced technologies have panned out so far. And large scale renewables + battery storage are good enough.

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

#64

Post by toomuchtodo »

Manuel_D wrote: post #51
bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

3 MWh is a trivial amount of storage. That's less than 10 seconds of this plant's output. To put this in perspective, the USA uses 11.5 TWh of electricity each day. That's just under 500 GWh per hour. You'd need a lot of megapacks to provision 8 hours of storage. The Eland project you mention has 4 hours of storage, it's not a 24 hour production system. The reality is that renewables are currently only viable to supp…

The problem isn't intractable. It just requires time, effort, and capital.

https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf

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

#65

Post by coldpie »

laiewjrliawej wrote: post #32
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…

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…

Interesting to hear an inside perspective! While they definitely aren't cheap, do you feel they're not worth the price, given the urgency and rapidly rising costs of climate change? It seems like they'd be competitive with, or even cheaper than, fossil fuel plants if we priced in their externalities, and nuclear can shore up the areas where renewables have difficult to solve gaps. Any thoughts?

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

#66

Post by switchbak »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #49
jakewins wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Canada's energy mix is roughly 60% hydro, and some provinces are well past 90%. You ought to check your numbers.

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

#67

Post by thatswrong0 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #49
jakewins wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My assumption is that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere pose a much greater existential threat to humanity than localized ecosystem damage resulting from river blockages. But maybe I'm wrong.

Speaking of hydro, I do think pumped hydro-storage ought to be looked at a lot more for energy storage (esp. versus giant lithium-ion battery banks), especially as we transition to inconsistent renewable sources like solar and wind. I'd assume that creating new, isolated bodies of water wouldn't incur as much ecological damage as blocking off existing rivers or greatly increasing our mining of rare earth minerals)

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

#68

Post by topspin »

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.

> 3 trillion

The US federal budget deficit was 2.8 trillion in 2021. One year. I can't remember any US leader of any party even mentioning it.

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

#69

Post by epistasis »

This project is what killed nuclear in the US. Not regulations, not the NRC, just plain old incompetence, bad planning, bad EPC, bad design.

The AP1000 was supposed to be a "modular" design, where most of the difficult welding could be done off site and delivered complete, with paperwork. And failure in this modularity is what caused the project to be such a flop, and essentially kill all new large nuclear in the US (people are trying "small" modular, but their target costs are still far too high to be economically feasible).

See, for example, this 2017 report on just one aspect of what went wrong:

https://www.enr.com/articles/43325-witness-to-the-origins-of...

> To build the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in three decades—South Carolina’s V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 and Georgia’s Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4—the design and construction team would face a steep learning curve. However, says Hartz, learning wasn’t much of a priority in the rush to start work at Lake Charles. “They were clueless” about the complex geometry of nuclear welds, the nuclear supply chain and the need for a nuclear safety culture, he notes, adding, “I wasn’t a whistle-blower. I was just a senior procurement manager who was concerned.”

> Westinghouse would issue drawings to Shaw Nuclear in Charlotte. When Shaw reviewed the drawings and asked Westinghouse to correct a detail, problems ensued. The work processes were unnecessarily complicated by the separation of the team members. Giving an example of how the process got out of hand, Hartz says that, if a design called for a 3⁄8-in.-wide, 12-in.-long fillet weld, the welder might make it 14 in. long. “Instead of having Westinghouse right there saying, ‘That’s no problem,’ ” recalls Hartz, “we had to write a nonconformance report that was processed and reviewed by Shaw and then sent to Westinghouse for disposition. It was insane. From Lake Charles to Pittsburgh to Charlotte then back to Shaw Modular before the red nonconformance tag could be taken off, saying it’s OK now.” He adds, “Each change went through the same tortuous path, taking months and months.”

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