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

131–140 of 1001 posts

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

#131

Post by belorn »

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…

Pumped hydro used to exist here in Sweden during the 1970s. They were phased out because they are not cost competitive. They built nuclear power plants instead because those were cost competitive at that time.

It would be funny if the cost has switched between pumped hydro and nuclear, but I suspect they haven't. What really pushed out both were cheap natural gas and oil. Even now, new gas powered plants are being planned to be built within the next 5 years. I don't see a solutions to this without new regulation putting a clamp on the fossil fuels.

The one hope I have for pumped hydro is that our current hydropower fleet are outdated and far outside of minimum environmental standards. Combined they have managed to drive species to the brink of extinction, basically being large meat grinders for migrating fish. The solution of catching the offspring and fly them to Sweden to be implanted back into lakes is a terrible solution that have little to no scientific support. With the required investments into modernization, reverse hydro might not be too expensive to include, assuming again that the economics of the concept start to make sense.

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

#132

Post by hackerlight »

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…

> Seems to me the people saying solar and battery only future do not live in areas that can be cloudy for multiple weeks.

This isn't a big problem. Wind is negatively correlated with solar, and electricity can be sent across long distances (intra- or inter-country) with minimal loss, and overbuilding eliminates a lot of the variability issues. Variability across geographies and across modes cancels out.

Nuclear is pretty good, but solar and wind is simply better. Way cheaper and quicker to implement, less resistance from NIMBYs who have an irrational fear of leaks, less valid concerns of enabling nuclear weapons proliferation, less technical know-how requirement. It's the most brain-dead obvious calculus if you know the actual facts, costs and trade-offs.

And time is of the essence. Eliminating 80-90% of emissions in 4 years (with only solar and wind and without batteries, yes this is possible whilst being cheaper than nuclear) means less emissions than eliminating 100% of emissions in 20 years with nuclear.

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

#133

Post by cableshaft »

kranke155 wrote: post #59
erngkejr wrote: post #54

I was a nuclear engineer for eight years and I left the industry because I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Every time someone says "nuclear is the only practical solution for climate change, it's not possible to build solar or wind fast enough or cheaply enough", you can point them to this press release. All the nuclear supporters I know deal heavily in magical thinking, completely ignoring the factual reality of…

Could you elaborate? Having read the press release I’m not sure what you mean

From the linked article, we get how much power it generates 1,114 MW (or 1.114 Gigawatts), how long it took to build that reactor (started in 2009, so 14 years), and how much it cost (planned $14 billion, final $30 billion):

> The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor

> Construction at the two new reactor sites began in 2009. Originally expected to cost $14 billion and begin commercial operation in 2016 (Vogtle 3) and 2017 (Vogtle 4), the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns. The total cost of the project is now estimated at more than $30 billion.

Meanwhile:

"Utility-scale solar capacity in the U.S. electric power sector increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to data from our Electricity Power Monthly. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022."[1]

So solar increased 10 Gigawatts last year and wind grew 8 Gigawatts. About 18x that one nuclear reactor we've managed to complete since 2016. In a single year.

Also wind and solar is cheaper than the cost of nuclear energy now:

"Nuclear energy is generally more expensive than wind and solar energy. The IEA report estimates the cost of electricity from new nuclear plants to be between $60 and $70 per MWh (megawatt-hour), while the cost of electricity from onshore wind and solar PV is estimated to be between $30 and $60 per MWh."[2]

So wind and solar is faster and cheaper. The only main benefit is a nuclear plant can still keep generating power in inclement weather (which is still important, but doesn't make it cheaper or faster than wind and solar).

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960

[2]: https://medium.com/@liam.m.obrien/nuclear-vs-wind-and-solar-...

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

#134

Post by HDThoreaun »

UberFly wrote: post #23
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.

I would take that bet. Nuclear tech will also continue to improve.

Nuclear has only ever gotten more cost inefficient. What makes you think that will change?

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

#135

Post by epistasis »

nradov wrote: post #64
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.

Perhaps, but so far in the US we still don't have any really large battery storage facilities connected to the grid. These will be necessary if want to have reliable base load capacity without building more nuclear or fossil fuel power plants. The largest battery storage facility being built right now only has 2165 MWh of capacity, which is a drop in the bucket relative to demand. https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/pro…

There's little reason to build massive batteries at one spot, unless you are repurposing an only transmission line.

Instead, a good chunk of grid storage is getting deployed right at the generation site of solar (and some wind), which allows more efficient use of that transmission line.

Instead, we should be looking for large amounts of total install. However, this still won't happen much until it's actually needed by the grid, which starts to happen at much higher amounts of renewable generation than most states are using.

The tech is there, it's being deployed at massive scale where needed, and it's dropping in cost as fast or faster than predicted.

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

#136

Post by HDThoreaun »

Retric wrote: post #48
gustavus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that having a couple of nuclear reactors as base load spread throughout the country would be more useful than having a massive spread out battery & solar infrastructure. I mean as an example many companies, especially PG&E can't maintain adequate powerlines, who is banking on the fact that they'll do an even better job when we quintuple the amount of infrastructure and they have to develop a whole new…

Nuclear is extremely dependent on long distance power transmission. Nobody wants a reactor in the middle of a city, and 1-5 GW of power needs to be sent long distances before it’s used. Solar on the other hand scales down to 50MW instillations just fine so you can put it near substations etc. Huge solar parks make sense in locations with lots of sunlight and cheap land, but they aren’t the only option just a trade of…

Chicago is mostly on nuclear and the reactor is quite close to the city, just over the Indiana border.

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

#137

Post by hedora »

jdewerd wrote: post #83
erngkejr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Studying history. The cost of nuclear was low until we stopped building 50 years ago. https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u... It's a pity -- if we had kept up the pace, we'd already have completely decarbonized our grid, but instead we are barely starting. Ah well. At least solar and wind finally became economical. Any path forward is a good path, even if it's 50 years late.

At the moment, coal and probably gas is more expensive than solar, purely due to the turbines and generators.

Nuclear relies on the same subsystems, and it’s unlikely they’ll get significantly cheaper any time soon.

Having said that, I think nuclear could be made cost-competitive with coal and natural gas, at least in theory. Also, it’s unclear that we’ll be able to build a reliable, net carbon negative power grid without a large number of nuclear plants.

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

#138

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> not automatically true

It very obviously is. Solar power (and wind) are constrained by the planet’s insolation. Even assuming perfect efficiency, we start approaching diminishing returns based on power input within a century.

Now assume imperfect efficiency and resource constraints, and you see that cliff approach within decades. This is fine. It’s the law of diminishing marginal returns. It’s why a diversity of sources almost always beats monosourcing.

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

#139

Post by hef19898 »

Wytwwww wrote: post #127
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No need to imagine, because it is. At least if you believe electricity market prices reflect reality.

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

#140

Post by Turing_Machine »

margalabargala wrote: post #121
internetter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

> If we covered an area 10% the size of Arizona in solar panels

And what are the various Friends of Rare Bugs and Small Furry Animals groups doing in the meantime?

I joke, but even I would balk at the environmental impact of that. Certainly it's going to be greater than any equivalent nuclear installation.

> Of which 0.72% is U-235

Fortunately we're not limited to U-235. With breeder reactors, there's enough nuclear fuel to run human civilization for billions-with-a-b of years.

Post reply on HN