Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

eia.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 1001 posts

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#121

Post by margalabargala »

internetter wrote: post #55
MichaelNolan wrote: post #14

If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for nuclear to compete. The world will be installing a terawatt of solar capacity per year soon. *excluding research or military reactors of course.

One kilogram of uranium-235 (50 cm^3) can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy. One square kilometer of solar panels can theoretically produce the same amount (as 50cm^3 U235) in a day. I'll take this bet. Edit: Tried to edit the edit but somehow deleted the rest of the edit. It was something to the tune of how a big problem with renewables is the fact that peak solar production does not match peak ene…

> One kilogram of uranium-235 (50 cm^3) can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy. One square kilometer of solar panels can theoretically produce the same amount (as 50cm^3 U235) in a day.

Does the US have more 50cm^3 sized blocks of U235, or more square kilometers of land with low land values and high annual insolation?

There's an estimated 6 million tonnes of mineable uranium reserves in the world [0]. Of which 0.72% is U-235, so we have a worldwide reserve of 43200 tonnes, or 43.2 million Kg U-235.

Arizona is about 300k square kilometers. If we covered an area 10% the size of Arizona in solar panels, then they would have produced more energy than all the world's known U-235 in just four years. And would continue producing after those four years are up.

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

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#122

Post by cool_dude85 »

tonyhb wrote: post #119
cool_dude85 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is baseload and is the exact opposite of "instantly fired up". Best tech for that is gas or battery.

Cant control rods can be lifted or inserted to meet demand?

There's typically a range of operation, so you can adjust a hundred MW but you can't drop to 0 or spin up from standstill without a time consuming process.

Edit: also, the economics are such that you rarely want to drop load from a nuclear plant unless it's offline or for system reasons. The fuel cost is negligible so you'd rather turn off your gas plant or lower the coal plant and save on those fuels.

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#123

Post by Wytwwww »

slashdev wrote: post #74
klipklop wrote: post #63

Seems to me the people saying solar and battery only future do not live in areas that can be cloudy for multiple weeks. I didn’t run the math but I’m guessing it’s not feasible to build a battery pack large enough to ride out winter in some areas. The SF Bay Area, sure, but I suspect blackouts will be common in solar+battery only areas. A preferred solution would be a mix of both with nuclear handling disruptions due…

Batteries are not for riding out winter, they're for evening out the daily load. You have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation, as well as make long-distance interconnects. Pumped hydro is also extremely interesting for obvious reasons. Nuclear as it exists today is not cost competitive. But that's mostly an artificial problem caused by regulation. Can we solve that without sacrificing safety? Can we…

> You have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation

Not at all feasible with solar throughout much of Europe. Of course wind is a much better option there.

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#124

Post by viraptor »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105
viraptor wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a kneejerk response. Got a source for it? It's not like we didn't know about it all the time, yet the large solar systems were built.

> sounds like a kneejerk response. Got a source for it If you have 120% solar capacity in the summer so you have 100% in the winter, that’s obviously going to be more expensive than just building 100%. This is basic utilisation. Also, diminishing returns: the most-productive spots for solar will be built out first.

That wasn't your claim. You said it stops being cheap - does it? Compared to alternatives?

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#125

Post by chockablock »

klipklop wrote: post #63

Seems to me the people saying solar and battery only future do not live in areas that can be cloudy for multiple weeks. I didn’t run the math but I’m guessing it’s not feasible to build a battery pack large enough to ride out winter in some areas. The SF Bay Area, sure, but I suspect blackouts will be common in solar+battery only areas. A preferred solution would be a mix of both with nuclear handling disruptions due…

You don't need to 'ride out winter'; there's a sweet spot around 100-hour storage where you can unlock a huge amount of grid resiliency and decarbonization (you can keep as many dispatchable gas plants sitting nearly-always-idle to address risk of any freak long-tail events.)

https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#126

Post by hutzlibu »

klipklop wrote: post #63

Seems to me the people saying solar and battery only future do not live in areas that can be cloudy for multiple weeks. I didn’t run the math but I’m guessing it’s not feasible to build a battery pack large enough to ride out winter in some areas. The SF Bay Area, sure, but I suspect blackouts will be common in solar+battery only areas. A preferred solution would be a mix of both with nuclear handling disruptions due…

"the people saying solar and battery only future"

I think I never, ever heard or read anyone saying this, and I think I follow/participate in the debates, before it was cool and everywhere.

Renewable people rather sound like this:

"Employing a variety of power generation methods will give you the most stable power grid."

Where of course quite many "green" people don't want nuclear at all in the mix. Rather more of long distance energy transport (HVDC). And otherwise any option that works and does not pollute, or pollutes less.

(And personally I am not antinuclear as long as the alternative are fossil fuels, so they should be used as a transition technology and long term rather reserved for other application, like powering things in space and remote important sites)

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#127

Post by Wytwwww »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #98
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation At which point it ceases to be as cheap.

That’s not automatically true. As the price continues to drop even over building renewables can be cheaper than other options. Nuclear is very expensive so there’s a lot of wiggle room.

I find it hard to imagine solar could ever be cheaper than nuclear during winter in Northern Europe.

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#128

Post by bumby »

corethree wrote: post #15
rjbwork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that we don't build the damn things anymore, so each one is bespoke and expensive. Ideally we'd keep building them and develop the expertise and make it a more repeatable scalable process. I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".

We don't really build anything anymore. The "expertise" has transferred to Asia. Anything we build we'll build worse, slower and more expensive. Except for airplanes that's one of the few things we still do better. My overall point is I highly doubt nuclear powerplants will be built here in any major way. Will it happen in Asia? Far more likely.

"Machinery" (not including airplanes) is still one of the largest exports of the US. The list [1] of exports by size is:

Mineral fuels including oil: US$378.6 billion

Machinery including computers: $229.6 billion

Electrical machinery, equipment: $197.7 billion

Vehicles: $134.9 billion

Aircraft, spacecraft: $102.8 billion

Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $99.1 billion

Gems, precious metals: $92.5 billion

Pharmaceuticals: $83.5 billion

So the top 3 "non-aircraft" machinery categories are still exported at 5x the amount of aerospace. It seems like people [2] are still interested in the stuff the US manufactures.

[1] https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-states-top-10-export...

[2] https://www.usitc.gov/research_and_analysis/tradeshifts/2020...

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#129

Post by Turing_Machine »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #117
jdewerd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When nuclear takes off in China but not the USA, we'll figure it out. But not until then.

Why hasn't nuclear taken off in China? I keep hearing that it's not cost effective anymore, to slow etc. but if it's actually mostly regulation that's hindering the built out (regardless of the risks) shouldn't China with their impressive portfolio of warpspeed megaprojects have been an ideal example of scaling the next generation of this tech?

China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country.

At the moment, they have 21 new reactors under construction.

Re: First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

#130

Post by Wytwwww »

viraptor wrote: post #95
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation At which point it ceases to be as cheap.

That sounds like a kneejerk response. Got a source for it? It's not like we didn't know about it all the time, yet the large solar systems were built.

Depends on the latitude and weather patterns. For instance you might need 25 (or much more) higher capacity to generate as much power in December as you would in May in most of Northern Europe (that should be pretty obvious though).
Post reply on HN