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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

#111

Post by pfdietz »

coldpie wrote: post #6

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…

Nuclear is not a needed addition to the grid, unless you have a compulsion to waste money.

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

#112

Post by Manuel_D »

Retric wrote: post #87
Manuel_D wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/...

There are several battery backed solar power plants in the US already built. Collocated Solar with batteries increases efficiency as DC from solar is used to directly charge batteries without the cost or losses associated with DC>AC>DC you would see if these where separate. LCOE is already below 60$/MWh because you only need batteries for a fraction of total production. https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2022/utility-s…

Sure, but those battery backed solar plants usually only have 2-4 hours worth of storage. They're not actually producing full output throughout the night.

The cost of batteries would skyrocket if countries actually tried to provision 12 hours of battery storage. Because the US alone uses 500 GWh of electricity each hour. This is greater than the global battery production figures in 2022 [1].

1. https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/growt...

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

#113

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Manuel_D wrote: post #54
Scoundreller wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t solar, as an intermittent source, be well correlated with demand in Georgia? Sun’s out = heavy AC load? Doing any grid 100% solar needs a lot of storage, but there’s gotta be a perfect point that mostly shaves peaks really nicely. (Yeah yeah, it can be cloudy and hot+humid, but still)

Demand typically peaks in the evening, around 9pm. This is right as the sun sets, where solar is tapering off. It's not "shaving peaks" about half your electricity consumption (including peak consumption) is going to happen during periods of non-production.

And yet their on-peak times in the summer ends at 7pm:

> Shift some of your summer energy usage away from the on-peak time periods (2-7 p.m., Monday–Friday, June–September, excluding holidays).

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

#114

Post by Manuel_D »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #64
Manuel_D wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The paper also assumes we'll make have feasible CO2 energy capture and hydrogen electrolysis and storage. It required time, effort, capital, and and multiple engineering breakthroughs. If your plan is contingent on technologies that aren't available... it's just a long winded way of saying you don't have a plan.

Actually, we just need improvements in fusion power and then we don't need solar, wind, or battery storage!

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

#115

Post by flaburgan »

coldpie wrote: post #65
laiewjrliawej wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's because of the urgency that nuclear is not the solution. You need more than a dozen of years to build one. By that time it will be too late for the climate.

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

#116

Post by arh68 »

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.

2 units, both 1,100 MW each. So 2 cents / kWh.

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

#117

Post by Manuel_D »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #113
Manuel_D wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand typically peaks in the evening, around 9pm. This is right as the sun sets, where solar is tapering off. It's not "shaving peaks" about half your electricity consumption (including peak consumption) is going to happen during periods of non-production.

And yet their on-peak times in the summer ends at 7pm: > Shift some of your summer energy usage away from the on-peak time periods (2-7 p.m., Monday–Friday, June–September, excluding holidays).

Demand shifting is just a long winded way of saying, "we can't generate enough electricity, you just need to stop using power at certain times of day." And it's easier said than done. Residential demand shifting, and some forms of industry (e.g. arc furnaces) can shift demand. But others cannot: the pumps powering your sewage system needs to work all day around. Same with data centers, and plenty of other industries.

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

#118

Post by photochemsyn »

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.

How can costs be reduced? You can't skimp on over-engineering nuclear reactors because they have to be designed and built to deal with rare 'black swan' events, such as jetliners crashing into the reactor core. E.g.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/18nuke.html

> "The rule, approved by the commission in a 4-to-0 vote, requires that new reactors be designed so their containment structure would remain intact after a plane crash, cooling systems would continue to operate and spent fuel pools would be protected."

You can't risk a failure in the primary cooling system, and since reactors need active cooling in the event of a regional grid power failure just to avoid core meltdown, you need onsight power generation capable of running the cooling loop 24-7 (failure in this system led to the Fukushima explosions). These systems (from cooling loops to steam generators) are under constant stress and have relatively high maintenance costs (a major factor in the closure of California's San Onofre reactor).

Then you have to add in the cost of the uranium fuel rods, which is a complex supply chain issue in many countries (the recent coup in Niger has shut down 1/3 of France's uranium ore supply chain for their reactors, say news reports). Uranium supplies are limited and historically uranium prices get volatile when it seems a reactor boom is coming (look at right before Fukushima). Then you have the long-term costs of spent fuel treatment and secure storage, and eventual reactor decommissioning.

I really don't see anyway to reduce these costs such that nuclear will be anywhere near cost-competitive with today's solar/wind/storage complexes, that are entirely capable of producing reliable 24/7 grid power at costs well below that of a comparable nuclear power plant in most locations.

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

#119

Post by legulere »

glimshe wrote: post #98
KerrAvon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that you are comparing a hypothetical with a proven system. Nuclear works, and works in large scale in a lot of places - heavy users include France, Lithuania, Sweden and Belgium. One can argue about costs, but costs are at least low enough to be viable, otherwise these countries couldn't exist as they do. You can say that the costs are being externalized to taxes or some other place, but these societi…

France has massive problems with their reactors and leads the world with only 62.6% from nuclear. A comparable number to Denmark that has almost no hydro power. There are several countries with higher percentage of renewables up to 100%.

Costs aren't the only problem, new nuclear reactors simply cannot be build fast enough to counteract the climate crisis.

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

#120

Post by dale_glass »

mywittyname wrote: post #60
laiewjrliawej wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The sad part is, this is a solvable problem. If the nation really wanted to build a large number of safe, effective nuclear power plant, we could, and probably in a time frame of months, not years. But entrenched interest from natural gas and coal producers combined with anti-nuclear sentiment practically guarantee that will never happen. Nuclear power is held to too high of a standard to really be a viable source of…

Doubtful.

Nuclear is very specific tech. I don't think there's a whole bunch of companies out there sitting on their hands just waiting for a bunch of contracts to show up.

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