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

eia.gov

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

#161

Post by evilos »

sanxiyn wrote: post #116
evilos wrote: post #35

We paid the first-of-a-kind costs, we should reap the Nth-of-a-kind rewards. Replace all the coal capacity with AP1000s.

"In 1989, Korea began construction on their first domestically developed OPR-1000 design... Twelve reactors of this standard design began construction between 1989 and 2008, and their costs declined in a stable manner... representing a 13% cost decline (1% annualized)." (Lovering 2016) The problem is, even after reaping this cost decline, totaling 50%, nuclear power is still noncompetitive in South Korea. They were b…

Same source as you (Lovering 2016), the Koreans built several 1 GW plants for an overnight cost of 2 Billion USD per plant or less in many cases. A seriously impressive feat. The graph seems to show a far greater cost decline than 13%.

https://i.imgur.com/J90HtWm.png

The Koreans just recently ousted an administration that was overtly hostile to nuclear energy and had declared a phase out. Now they are planning on increasing the share of nuclear electricity to 35%. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/South-Korea-incr...

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

#162

Post by marcosdumay »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
slashdev wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Yeah, of course. If you take the first answer to the GP, that is a bit outdated, it's as expensive as 1/4 of the nuclear costs.

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

#163

Post by bumby »

credit_guy wrote: post #68
bobthepanda wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This cost premium has always existed. https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_state_electricity_prices

Good point. Could it be that Georgia already generates a lot of power from its existing nuclear reactors, and has been doing that for a few decades?

Your same source has information on the relative proportion of generation [1]. Nuclear is at about 26.5%, while coal is about half that

[1] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=GA

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

#164

Post by Gare »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #143
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. Or we've researched it and understand the basics of solar technology. In sunny California solar has a capacity factor of around 25%. In Germany, which is prone to many cloudy days this drops to around 10%. So yes cloudy days have an impact but do not entirely eliminate solar from contention and ce…

You both raise good points. Yes solar is getting cheaper but economical and environmentally friendly long term storage (order of several days or even a month worth of energy for a hundred million people) is far from a solved problem.

> In sunny California solar has as capacity factor of around 25%. In Germany, which is prone to many cloudy days this drops to around 10%. So yes cloudy days have an impact but do not entirely eliminate solar from contention and certainly don't require enough battery capacity to last all winter.

In Croatia yearly capacity factor is around 15%, but the problem is it varies wildly throughout the year. In summer we get up to 300 hours of sunlight per month, in winter less than 50. So yes, on paper the capacity might be enough, but one needs to have the ability to store the massive amount of energy inter-seasonally.

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

#165

Post by cm2187 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #143
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. Or we've researched it and understand the basics of solar technology. In sunny California solar has a capacity factor of around 25%. In Germany, which is prone to many cloudy days this drops to around 10%. So yes cloudy days have an impact but do not entirely eliminate solar from contention and ce…

Cost of solar in isolation is meaningless. You need to factor in the cost of dealing with its intermittency, i.e. no power at night, variable power during daylight.

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

#166

Post by [deleted] »

chockablock wrote: post #125
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/

[deleted]

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

#167

Post by avidphantasm »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #144
slashdev wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nuclear as it exists today is not cost competitive. At the risk of stating the obvious, this notion entirely depends upon your definition of costs, and the definition of what is competitive. It's vastly more costly to society to have unreliable power (e.g., blackouts, brownouts, or weeks on end of lowered usage restrictions) than it is to have slightly more expensive electricity. There is no rich country in the wor…

Yes, I always want to scream “what about the quality of the power?” when people make claims about cost-competitiveness. Electricity is a commodity on the surface, but, as with many technologies, depending on the use case, differences in the qualities of the underlying source matter a great deal. Reduction of all costs to currency can be a damaging abstraction to impose on systems that inherently involve trade-offs between qualities.

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

#168

Post by kragen »

belorn wrote: post #131
slashdev wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

grid-scale storage becomes more profitable when your primary energy production is more intermittent. current pv is something like 10× cheaper than nuclear before you factor in intermittency, and that opens up a huge market for grid-scale storage that didn't exist in the 01970s. pumped hydro was replaced by dispatchable gas, but gas is more expensive now, and batteries are cheaper

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

#169

Post by internetter »

tiffanyg wrote: post #99
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…

Not unreasonable, but I would point out two options (not the only): 1) "Water batteries" - highly efficient (far more than the 'chemical' you are apparently referring to) & responsive 2) Methods for using 'renewables' to produce &/ support production of chemical fuels - with the added draw / potential goal of 'closing' the 'carbon cycle' As to #2, one of the ideals that has been kicked around for decades is to do som…

> use 'renewables' to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into something like butanol, for example.

are you referring to P2X? I think P2X is an awesome solution for existing infrastructure, but it's obviously not particularly efficient. I am excited about pumped storage as well, but my fear there is we'll run out of sites, and obviously the 80% efficiency is still not ideal.

By no means am I arguing nuclear is a one size fits all solution.

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

#170

Post by wolverine876 »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #65
stetrain wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear does not seem to be on the mass production curve that solar and batteries are. Even if you could design a reactor that itself can be mass produced at that scale, you still need to do the same with selecting and getting environmental and public safety approval for installation sites and production, transportation, and disposal of the fuel and waste. I'm not against nuclear from a technological perspective, but…

Nuclear might not be able to compete in the U.S. and Europe, but that’s largely because of a ridiculous regulatory regime and has very little to do with the actual tech.

People love to say it, but is there evidence? I've never seen it - which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but that this claim needs it.
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