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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

#151

Post by bryanlarsen »

Manuel_D wrote: post #114
toomuchtodo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 storag…

The paper assumes CO2 energy capture at $200/ton. That's "scale up existing technologies" pricing, not "engineering breakthrough" pricing.

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

#152

Post by cycomanic »

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.

Large infrastructure projects (and nuclear is certainly one) don't benefit from economies of scale. Half of a nuclear power plant is essentially the same as a coal plant and they have not gone down in price either.

The reality is even assuming that we can not overcome shortages in solar and wind by overprovisioning and storage (and studies say otherwise), it does not make any sense to build nuclear instead of solar/wind as long as we are still running coal. We get much bigger CO2 reduction bang for our buck with solar and wind. Building nuclear would therefore effectively increase our CO2 over alternatives. This is especially true as nuclear plants have a relatively long ROI (in terms of CO2.

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

#153

Post by chickenchicken »

chroma wrote: post #149
pfdietz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NRC was established just about when the first nuclear buildout collapsed under the weight of its own foolishness. Massive cost overruns did nuclear no favors whatsoever, clearly inadequate safety (especially on those first generation BWRs; hello Fukushima), and (most devastatingly) the deregulation of the US electricity grid, with PURPA (in 1978) and later steps opening grids to non-utility providers. Nuclear pro…

Fukushima shows that even early nuclear reactors are incredibly safe. You take an aging plant based on an outdated design, construct it in an unsafe location, then hit it with the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, then hit it with a 20 foot high tsunami, and then it explodes ... and what were the casualties? One worker and maybe 50 early deaths due to cancers. A typical coal power plant kills more people every…

It shows that the people who considered the location and plant to be safe enough to be wrong.

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

#154

Post by Kon5ole »

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…

>>Nuclear power is the safest form of power production we've ever produced.

This is a common claim but it abuses statistics. By looking only at the one metric (deaths) it ignores the enormous enterprise required to keep nuclear as safe as it has been. No other power source needs anything like it.

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

#155

Post by d_sem »

chroma wrote: post #149
pfdietz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NRC was established just about when the first nuclear buildout collapsed under the weight of its own foolishness. Massive cost overruns did nuclear no favors whatsoever, clearly inadequate safety (especially on those first generation BWRs; hello Fukushima), and (most devastatingly) the deregulation of the US electricity grid, with PURPA (in 1978) and later steps opening grids to non-utility providers. Nuclear pro…

Fukushima shows that even early nuclear reactors are incredibly safe. You take an aging plant based on an outdated design, construct it in an unsafe location, then hit it with the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, then hit it with a 20 foot high tsunami, and then it explodes ... and what were the casualties? One worker and maybe 50 early deaths due to cancers. A typical coal power plant kills more people every…

People often fail to compare the opportunity cost of alternative methods to nuclear power. At that time the alternative to nuclear was coal power plants. Radioactive carbon isotopes have harmed many times more people than Nuclear.

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

#156

Post by zamalek »

photochemsyn wrote: post #118
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…

We've effectively forgotten how to build (specifically engineer) nuclear reactors. This is very similar to problems faced by the space program somewhat recently. During the 3 decade pause people retired and memories faded, there were no apprentices to carry the wisdom forward.

> How can costs be reduced?

Build more reactors, and re-learn how to build them. Note that this doesn't touch on economies of scale, which will likely never really apply to nuclear power. Nuclear is likely to always have immense up-front costs, but it shouldn't cost this much.

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

#157

Post by tmn »

gh02t wrote: post #7
gottorf wrote: post #2

About time! > "This hadn’t been done in this country from start to finish in some 30-plus years," Chris Womack, CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said Monday in a telephone interview. IIRC, scientists are working on Gen 4 reactors, and there are a number of Gen 3 reactors operating in commercial capacities around the world; but the US is still stuck on Gen 2 due to regulation.

That's a major oversimplification. The reason the US is mostly (entirely) running Gen 2 reactors is because we simply lost interest in building new reactors for a long time. There were regulatory hurdles that caused this, but there were tons and tons of other factors that were (IMO) more important. Especially economic factors related to the cost and mismanagement of large nuclear projects, public opinions shifting ov…

Are costs and mismanagement directly related to regulations? Genuine question. This is impression I get from nuclear advocates like Mark Nelson and doomberg.

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

#158

Post by ImaCake »

chroma wrote: post #149
pfdietz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NRC was established just about when the first nuclear buildout collapsed under the weight of its own foolishness. Massive cost overruns did nuclear no favors whatsoever, clearly inadequate safety (especially on those first generation BWRs; hello Fukushima), and (most devastatingly) the deregulation of the US electricity grid, with PURPA (in 1978) and later steps opening grids to non-utility providers. Nuclear pro…

Fukushima shows that even early nuclear reactors are incredibly safe. You take an aging plant based on an outdated design, construct it in an unsafe location, then hit it with the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, then hit it with a 20 foot high tsunami, and then it explodes ... and what were the casualties? One worker and maybe 50 early deaths due to cancers. A typical coal power plant kills more people every…

Absolutely agree with this take. Coal power plants are a public health disaster on the scale of leaded petrol and no one talks about it. Even wind turbines have a terrible impact on birdlife. The arguments against nuclear are irrational; future generations will wonder what was wrong with people in the late 20th century.

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

#159

Post by blibble »

XorNot wrote: post #131
pfdietz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is the only hope we have to do to make up for the gaps in generation for solar and wind. Nuclear would be entirely unsuited for this task. Nuclear provides baseload, it doesn't fill in gaps. If you try to run the reactor intermittently to counterbalance an intermittent source the cost of its output increases massively.

This is such an incredible misrepresentation. The only thing nuclear can't do is respond to sudden demand surges. But that's what batteries can do (it's also the only thing they can do well). This[1] is the Australian energy market operator dashboard. Note the demand curve. It is not sudden in anyway - it is highly, highly predictable. Nuclear reactors can handle that sort of curve just fine - you roll the control ro…

you can nuclear in load following mode (France does)

but it hurts the economic efficiency massively, as costs for nuclear are almost entirely fixed at construction time

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

#160

Post by ImaCake »

d_sem wrote: post #155
chroma wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima shows that even early nuclear reactors are incredibly safe. You take an aging plant based on an outdated design, construct it in an unsafe location, then hit it with the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, then hit it with a 20 foot high tsunami, and then it explodes ... and what were the casualties? One worker and maybe 50 early deaths due to cancers. A typical coal power plant kills more people every…

People often fail to compare the opportunity cost of alternative methods to nuclear power. At that time the alternative to nuclear was coal power plants. Radioactive carbon isotopes have harmed many times more people than Nuclear.

Coal dust, sans radioactive stuff, and coal burning emissions also exact a terrible toll on respiratory health. A lot of people have died, or had much worse lives, thanks to the widespread use of coal.
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