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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

#331

Post by arrosenberg »

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.

You are probably right, but only in the short term. Long term, there will be the political will for projects that require 10-100x our current power production, and nuclear will look attractive again. Alternatively, the renewables curve may flatten before we are fully decarbonized simply because the maintenance and materials don't scale well. Nuclear is expensive up front, but maintenance requires far fewer (albeit more specialized) personnel and way less material per kwh.

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

#332

Post by mpweiher »

danans wrote: post #44
briandear wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we’re worried about cost overruns, then perhaps cancel the California high speed rail boondoggle. That project could buy several nuclear reactors.

The difference is that there are many cheaper viable alternatives to the firm power that nuclear provides, including renewables+batteries ($60/MWh and dropping) and enhanced geothermal ($80/MWh and dropping). Heck, even natural gas combined-cycle + carbon capture/storage is cheaper on an LCOE basis (~$60/MWh) than nuclear ($180/MWh and rising) [1]. It would be great if nuclear could be cost competitive for equivalent…

Oh good grief, not that Lazard "study" again.

They took the cost to build Vogtle, which is one of the most or even the most expensive outlier in terms of time/cost overruns of all time, and decided to make that the baseline for "the cost of nuclear power".

When the average time to build a nuclear reactor in the world has consistently been around 7.5 years. For the last 50 years, and also for the ones that came online in 2022, lest you think these were just the bygone good old days.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...

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

#333

Post by gridspy »

dralley wrote: post #311
orangepurple wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We absolutely should cover those, but there is a lot of farmland. There may not be enough "mall-land"

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

#334

Post by xorcist »

belorn wrote: post #183
cool_dude85 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That assume we still allow coal, oil or gas power plant to exist in the power grid. We should probably not assume that to be the case, especially after the temperatures rises to a break point and some of the major climate change crisis occurs.

None of the commercially available (Western) reactor designs today are fast load followers, so you are dependent on having gas or hydro when you project for new nuclear power plants. That's one part of the reason why this stuff is politically charged.

From what I understand it's not a theoretical constraint, but mostly a lack of enough commercial interest for any other design. But it is what it is.

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

#335

Post by p1mrx »

OliverJones wrote: post #27

It would be great to get a straightforward assessment of the improvements in reactor tech in this new plant. "Passive safety features" sound pretty good to my untrained ear. But how much of this is marketing bullshytt?

AP1000 has a water tank above the reactor, and can cool itself for 72 hours without electrical power or human action. This design probably would've prevented the Fukushima meltdowns.

Ideally, reactors should be designed to transition all the way to air cooling without any help. The high temperature designs (e.g. TRISO and molten salt) should be able to do this, if we ever build them.

After Fukushima, the FLEX program was created to protect existing US reactors from a similar scenario: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...

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

#336

Post by xorcist »

Manuel_D wrote: post #320
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ammonia?

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

#337

Post by lallysingh »

HankB99 wrote: post #234
arcfour wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez. Imagine walking into a construction site from 2 decades ago.

Makes me wonder how much effort went into mothballing partial construction and then unwinding all of that to get it going again. Seems like it would have cost a lot.

You don't have to worry about disposing of any copper pipe!

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

#338

Post by mpweiher »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #38
FredPret wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course. Power demand increases. Technology improves. Installed capacity ages out. There will always be a need to build new plants, might as well lean into it and be proactive.

I found this list which shows "under construction", "planned" and "proposed". It does not look like the US is planning to build a lot of reactors. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

The US is one of the 22 signatories of the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.

With the failure of Germany's Energiewende, countries have drastically re-evaluated their nuclear stances.

France just did an about-face and cancelled their plans to drastically reduce nuclear capacity or even get out of nuclear entirely. Instead they are now investing into a nuclear renaissance.

Poland is getting into nuclear power big time, they are buying reactors from South Korea (and possibly also the US).

The Finnish Green Party has recently come out to endorse nuclear power.

Japan, who was also getting out of nuclear power after Fukushima has also made an about face and is now going to reactivate more plants and even build new ones.

etc.

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

#339

Post by redandblack »

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.

adding this story as well = https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/26/solar-panel-prices-down...

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

#340

Post by wkat4242 »

tzs wrote: post #230
internetter wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to make clear that I am not arguing against solar. My belief is that nuclear is an important piece of a much larger puzzle. Wind is not reliable, and for solar to match the figures you provided, we would need to figure out storage, so lets diversify our portfolio :)

> Wind is not reliable Surface wind is not reliable. I've seen proposals to put turbines on large kites or gliders tethered to the ground. There's pretty much always strong winds over most of the United States somewhere between the surface and 10000 feet.

Hmm what to do with the torque from the windmill though. Perhaps it could have counter rotating propellers to cancel it out. Otherwise it would entangle itself in the anchoring cable.

Also, a failure scenario would mean tonnes of windmill crashing down from high altitude. Hmmmmm

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