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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

#241

Post by Retric »

Manuel_D wrote: post #214
Retric wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again batteries smooth over instantaneous demand. If you really want to model things you need to consider the vast drop off between midnight and 5 am in which that steady state I talked about would be wasted. Batteries don’t really care about when the peak is just the total demand minus power production. And again steady state like nuclear looks terrible by comparison. Running summer numbers you see an extension in t…

And yet again: batteries are not available at a scale where they can even remotely smooth over demand. Even just provisioning 1 hour of storage for the USA requires 500 GWh of storage. A steady state like nuclear works just fine for the grid: it's only a problem for intermittent sources that are made redundant by a source of decarbonized energy that works 24/7. The disparity between peak and trough energy demand is n…

We don’t need batteries on that scale any time soon. Let’s project out 25 years and we might need 3-5 hours of 100% grid electricity storage nationwide depending on your assumptions but that’s about it. It’s not like hydroelectricity is going away anytime soon and that’s extremely flexible not just in terms of time of day but also days of the week, and wind doesn’t care when the sun is shining, and solar can shift east to west to cover more of peak evening demand on the east coast and peak etc etc. We can quibble about the numbers but it’s just not important.

As to storage we’re talking 4h * 500 GWh +/- whatever that’s only 2,000 GWh ish, but the specifics aren’t important. By comparison we’re talking a nearly 100% EV cars so 75 kWh per car * 282 million, that’s ~ 21,150 GWh. Those numbers are so huge we could bump things to 16 hours of electricity and it’s still fairly trivial by comparison. Build enough generation and storage could actually be even lower, it’s just a cost tradeoff and renewables are really cheap. (Edit: There’s been a lot of research into it and there’s plenty of raw materials for a 100% EV transition and on this timescale ramping battery manufacturing isn’t an issue.)

Also, that 30% number is wildly incorrect. Even just over a week the CA demand is expected to go from a low of 24,867 to a high of 42,007 in a single day, but you can’t design a grid for a single day. https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx#secti... Things look similar nationally, we don’t have enough interconnects to really smooth things out and even if you did the daily variation is quite significant.

However, the actual disparity between peak annual demand and minimal annual is vastly higher and you can’t smooth it out. That delta is why idling a grid of mostly nuclear power would be so wildly expensive. Without France style exporting and importing from non nuclear countries cost go insane. The only way it’s even vaguely viable in the US is with similarly vast amounts of storage. But at that point adding just a little cheap solar + wind saves money, and that keeps being true as you use less and less nuclear.

TLDR; Cost effective mostly nuclear grid needs even more storage due to capacity factor issues when you can’t follow France’s model of importing and exporting a large fraction of your power to non nuclear countries.

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

#242

Post by DennisP »

pfdietz wrote: post #210
DennisP wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the nuclear fuel is carefully contained during and after use. Not so much for coal.

The decay products of uranium are not well contained at uranium mines. They are in massive tailing piles, just as the radioactive elements in coal end up in ash. Less gets said about these mine-related radioactive elements because they are typically in other countries, often countries where the people have darker skins.

Well that depends. 57% of the world's uranium is mined with in situ leaching:

> In situ leaching (ISL), also known as solution mining, or in situ recovery (ISR) in North America, involves leaving the ore where it is in the ground, and recovering the minerals from it by dissolving them and pumping the pregnant solution to the surface where the minerals can be recovered. Consequently there is little surface disturbance and no tailings or waste rock generated.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

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

#243

Post by Manuel_D »

pfdietz wrote: post #238
Manuel_D wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also assumes a vast hydrogen electric grid storage network - this is only theoretical, nobody has actually deployed a facility that converts electricity to hydrogen, and back to electricity. At best this is, "scale up heretofore unproven technologies", not "existing technologies".

In the same sense that commercial breeder reactors are theoretical (which is conservative, as you can't actually buy a breeder reactor). But nuclear advocates don't talk about those much, even though they'd be needed for a nuclear powered world.

But we don't need commerical breeder reactors. The USA just needs to build 4 PWRs for each reactor it presently has to generate electricity entirely from hydro and nuclear. This is vastly more feasible than provisioning terawatt hours of energy storage.

"Just scale up" is a good summary of how to decarbonize through nuclear power. We have decades of experience building nuclear plants. Not so with hydrogen based electricity storage. Plans for renewable grids call for the use of novel electricity storage systems because none of the existing storage mechanisms are feasible. Until we've built the storage mechanisms proposed, any plan involving it's use is effectively hand-waving a big part of its implementation.

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

#244

Post by HackOfAllTrades »

zamalek wrote: post #156
photochemsyn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

Wrong answer. > How can costs be reduced?

Stop building nuclear reactors.

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

#245

Post by credit_guy »

epistasis wrote: post #180
chroma wrote: post #50

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…

If the NRC is the problem, then why do we see identical cost overruns and schedule delays for France, Finland, and the UK? I don't think we can blame the NRC for this. There's something deeper.

That's fair. But what about South Korea, China, India, Turkey?

In China you can't probably trust the official cost numbers (I'm not even trying to google for them). But you can't deny the astonishing pace they've built in the last decade: in 2012 they had 12 GW of nuclear capacity, in 2022 this went to 52 GW. 40 GW in one decade. France built 41 GW of capacity between 1980 and 1990, and the US 44 GW between 1970 and 1980, so this is not unprecedented, but it'd darn impressive in post-Fukushima era.

[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

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

#246

Post by pfdietz »

Manuel_D wrote: post #243
pfdietz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same sense that commercial breeder reactors are theoretical (which is conservative, as you can't actually buy a breeder reactor). But nuclear advocates don't talk about those much, even though they'd be needed for a nuclear powered world.

But we don't need commerical breeder reactors. The USA just needs to build 4 PWRs for each reactor it presently has to generate electricity entirely from hydro and nuclear. This is vastly more feasible than provisioning terawatt hours of energy storage. "Just scale up" is a good summary of how to decarbonize through nuclear power. We have decades of experience building nuclear plants. Not so with hydrogen based elect…

Powering the world (all energy, not just the grid, and not just the grid in the US) with PWRs won't work, because we run out of cheap uranium too quickly. Breeding is needed for sustainable use of nuclear.

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

#247

Post by _hypx »

pfdietz wrote: post #80
coldpie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And large scale renewables + battery storage are good enough. I wish this were true, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that it is. Up here in Minnesota, we heat our homes with natural gas. Once that's converted to electric, that's a _lot_ of energy to generate and store, and it has to be absolutely reliable for six straight months or you're talking mass death. Nuclear seems like a perfect fit for this scenario…

Generating green hydrogen with renewables and then burning it in combined cycle plants would be cheaper than Vogtle-level nuclear.

Maybe. The thing about nuclear reactors is that the fuel cost is nearly zero on account of how little of it you need. Even with reprocessing, it is still So having a stable source of cheap electricity that can be built in nearly any location is still a good idea. Even in a world with super cheap green hydrogen.

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

#248

Post by shrimp_emoji »

HackOfAllTrades wrote: post #244
zamalek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

Wrong answer. > How can costs be reduced? Stop building nuclear reactors.

But you're delusional if you think wind/solar are a serious alternative to fossil fuels. Nuclear energy actually is.

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

#249

Post by Manuel_D »

pfdietz wrote: post #246
Manuel_D wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we don't need commerical breeder reactors. The USA just needs to build 4 PWRs for each reactor it presently has to generate electricity entirely from hydro and nuclear. This is vastly more feasible than provisioning terawatt hours of energy storage. "Just scale up" is a good summary of how to decarbonize through nuclear power. We have decades of experience building nuclear plants. Not so with hydrogen based elect…

Powering the world (all energy, not just the grid, and not just the grid in the US) with PWRs won't work, because we run out of cheap uranium too quickly. Breeding is needed for sustainable use of nuclear.

Incorrect, we have plenty of uranium both terrestrially and through seawater extraction: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...

Sure seawater extraction is more expensive. But procuring raw uranium is a tiny fraction of nuclear's cost. You'll see statistics saying nuclear fuel is a significant cost, but most of that expense is from enrichment not extracting raw uranium.

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

#250

Post by Manuel_D »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #236
Manuel_D wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is only source of renewable power that generates >50% of any country's electricity grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable... Wind caps out at 42% with Denmark, solar at 15% in Australia. Many countries have nearly 100% of their electricity coming from hydroelectricity. Besides nuclear power, hydroelectricity is one of the few non-intermittent sources of renewable energy - sure, rainf…

That’s a non sequitur. I never said hydro wasn’t renewable. I said it wasn’t clean. Most people think of hydro as renewable and low carbon and clean. Two are true, one is false. Hydro is dirty and, imho, we should phase it out the same way we should phase coal out. Nuclear isn’t renewable by most definitions. But it is low carbon and clean. Nuclear was good 40 years ago. Solar is getting good. Wind I don’t know much…

Hydro is indeed clean in that it does not emit greenhouse gases. Sure, it disrupts life around the dammed waterway. But that's way less of an impact than climate change.
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