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

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

#311

Post by dralley »

orangepurple wrote: post #237
_aavaa_ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that the dichotomy you set up isn’t quite right. The land use for solar and wind isn’t an exclusionary zone. The area around a wind turbine can be used same as before (most often as farmland) without a negative impact on its productivity. And the same is true for solar. In fact, a growing number of agro-voltaic projects are seeing a net positive on crop yields from solar panels due to the increased…

Is it possible for solar panels to be semi-transparent so crops can still thrive underneath?

The logistics of trying to plant, maintain and harvest crops underneath a bunch of solar panels while also needing to deal with the subsequent issues of uneven runoff of water from rain make it seem impractical. Just cover parking lots, malls and supermarkets with them, we have plenty of those, and they're closer to where the electricity is needed than agricultural land.

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

rajamaka wrote: post #309
keep_reading wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is renewable for the same reason geothermal is renewable, and you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it https://www.tiktok.com/@nuclearsciencelover/video/7092135813...

Why do people bother mining it?

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by credit_guy »

kragen wrote: post #226
credit_guy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants are currently too expensive to not be used at 100% all the time (except when you need to perform maintenance). Some nuclear power plants are designed to be able to load follow, but in practice they don't do it. Batteries will never be cheap enough to allow for seasonal storage. They are good for day-to-night storage. For seasonal fluctuations, the best you can do is natural gas. If we convert all…

i agree with almost everything in your cogent and well-informed comment, with only two exceptions: - forests can only increase in biomass up to some relatively low limit; you may be correct that in the usa they currently absorb more than gas plants emit, but that is not a sustainable situation, unless you start cutting them down and sequestering the carbon - you can get pretty far covering seasonal fluctuations with…

> unless you start cutting them down and sequestering the carbon

We actually do that all the time: we cut down trees and make houses. Here's a number from the US Forest Service [1] that as of 2009 the US was using 187 million m3 of solid wood products.

> you can get pretty far covering seasonal fluctuations with simple overprovisioning

Fully agree.

> likely advent of mass production of synfuel

I'm extremely pessimistic about that. The best hope is for hydrogen, but even that looks all but hopeless to me, if you don't count "blue hydrogen".

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/33882

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

#314

Post by tick_tock_tick »

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.

Batteries haven't gotten cheap; unless we get some crazy breakthrough total wind and solar power production will probably peak within the next 20 years.

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

#315

Post by apatheticonion »

est31 wrote: post #221
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. That's missing the huge and expensive nuclear power plant around that kilogram of uranium. If you don't account for the conversion device (for which solar is cheaper per GJ than nuclear power plants), then light is a much better medium: assuming 15% efficiency, which is a conservative estimate, solar panels can convert on…

I'm curious how the numbers stack up of completed plants - but I am not very good at math and don't have a great understanding of electricity units, especially at the grid scale and big numbers.

Any chance you could help compare the construction cost of this nuclear plant to another recently constructed solar or wind farm measured against... I guess capacity?

Given the intermittent nature of solar/wind, does capacity even make sense to compare in a context without supporting batteries?

I'll give it a shot but I am probably super wrong.

** Nuclear:

I'll use the plant from the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

Construction costs 18b USD (does that include loans?)

Nameplate capacity of 2302MW

Used capacity is 91% so 2094MW

$18b / nameplate capacity = $7.8 USD per rated W

$18b / used capacity = $8.60 per realized W

** Solar (excluding batteries):

I picked a relatively large, recent, US based solar farm from the list of plants in wikipedia

Agua Caliente Solar Project (2016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agua_Caliente_Solar_Project

Construction costs 1.8b USD

Nameplate capacity of 290 MW

Used capacity is 28% so 81 MW

$1.8b / nameplate capacity = $6.2 USD per rated W

$1.8b / used capacity = $22 USD per realized W (that can't be right?)

** Note:

I don't know if my math is right, I don't know if the costs factor in loans, also the nameplate capacity for the nuclear plant is MWe and the solar plant is MWac so I am unsure how that works out.

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

#316

Post by edent »

jodrellblank wrote: post #285
ggm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a line of reasoning that baseload is a billing and profit construction, an artifice of the needs of coal-fired and nuclear power. There is nothing innately wrong with over building renewable and storage, and a transmission network. It's an argument about economics, not physics.

Can you realistically overbuild solar and wind in a way that works in winter? Here's Terence Eden in the UK, and his graph of rooftop solar[1] showing peak around 400kWh/month in summer and trough around 50kWh/month in darkest December - that's a difference of ~8x which might be possible... But that's averaged over the month, what about a run of December days with heavy cloud cover, misty foggy atmosphere, still air,…

FWIW I have updated stats at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/04/3-years-of-domestic-solar-s...

They're also published as open data.

The dark and dreary days tend to be the ones with the most wind power. The tides around our coast are in constant motion.

But, the big challenge is still storage. Domestic solar panels provide 100% of our yearly electricity use. At the moment I can only store 4.8kWh of excess.

So we need to over provision and over store - hopefully both at the same time.

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

#317

Post by mpweiher »

rajamaka wrote: post #309
keep_reading wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is renewable for the same reason geothermal is renewable, and you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it https://www.tiktok.com/@nuclearsciencelover/video/7092135813...

Why do people bother mining it?

Because mining it is relatively cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it is economical to throw away >95% of the fuel rather than try to burn it all or recycle it.

Fuel costs are 10% of the cost of nuclear electricity. The vast majority is financing.

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

est31 wrote: post #221
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. That's missing the huge and expensive nuclear power plant around that kilogram of uranium. If you don't account for the conversion device (for which solar is cheaper per GJ than nuclear power plants), then light is a much better medium: assuming 15% efficiency, which is a conservative estimate, solar panels can convert on…

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by ggm »

jodrellblank wrote: post #285
ggm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a line of reasoning that baseload is a billing and profit construction, an artifice of the needs of coal-fired and nuclear power. There is nothing innately wrong with over building renewable and storage, and a transmission network. It's an argument about economics, not physics.

Can you realistically overbuild solar and wind in a way that works in winter? Here's Terence Eden in the UK, and his graph of rooftop solar[1] showing peak around 400kWh/month in summer and trough around 50kWh/month in darkest December - that's a difference of ~8x which might be possible... But that's averaged over the month, what about a run of December days with heavy cloud cover, misty foggy atmosphere, still air,…

Same author: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/12/electricity-thats-too-cheap...

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

#320

Post by Manuel_D »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #206
DerSaidin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are other options for ships if fossil fuels were phased out? Big batteries? https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-28/making-waves-e... Hydrogen fuel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_ship Yeah, those options seem simpler.

Sustainable fuels. It's the solution long haul aviation is coalescing around.

Synthetic fuel has a lot of difficulties. One, it requires hydrogen as an input which is typically produced through steam reformation [1], a process that emits CO2. Electrolysis is less efficient and hard to scale as equipment is subject to intense corrosion.

Second, CO2 is at very low concentrations in the atmosphere. Direct atmospheric carbon sequestration is expensive and slow. The biggest startup in the synthetic fuel business is behind schedule and is struggling to solve these two main challenges [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming

2. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/25/1050899/promethe...

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