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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

#371
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

That's absolutely true, but the economic argument still carries weight. How many acres of land, how many rare earth minerals, etc. are required to produce the load profile you need with batteries and renewables vs including baseload flat generation from nuclear? This is still an economic question but very relevant.

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

#372
post #369

As exciting as this should be, the soaring cost overruns on this project means we Georgians have been left holding the bag. There’s now a “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” line item on my bill, so electricity costs more rather than less.

"Cost overruns" is underselling it - according to what I can find online it seems like the cost nearly doubled from 14B to 27B.

I've never seen a public/private setup like this actually yield benefit for the consumer.

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even imagine how you'd get the parts, and they probably can't change the plans either. Ok so I decided to look into it a bit more, and here are some interesting details from documents on the nrc.gov and EIA.gov: Here's some context for what was happening in 1985, from the eia: >"As a consequence of the identification of a large number of deficiencies shortly before the WBN Unit 1 license was expected to be is…

TVA - Not the Time Variance Authority I take it? I was wondering how that was powered.

Tennessee Valley Authority - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

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

#374
post #369

As exciting as this should be, the soaring cost overruns on this project means we Georgians have been left holding the bag. There’s now a “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” line item on my bill, so electricity costs more rather than less.

Unfortunately, this more the rule than the exception. Same thing happened on Long Island, NY with Lilco's Shoreham reactor that took years to build (construction was riddled with all sorts of problems, theft, etc.)and when finally finished, people realized if something went wrong, the narrow, 128 mile island would be impossible to evacuate. After completion, it was never put online and despite the mass incompetence, no one was fired. In fact, management bonuses were as big as ever. Rate payers on LI are still paying for this debacle 40 years later thanks to then Gov. Mario Cuomo. LI utilities, like many utilities, are so poorly managed.

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

#375
post #369

As exciting as this should be, the soaring cost overruns on this project means we Georgians have been left holding the bag. There’s now a “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” line item on my bill, so electricity costs more rather than less.

Try and imagine how much solar/wind and grid-scale energy storage that money could have bought …

I don’t think nuclear power is the future. In my country, 7% of the time electricity prices are like 1 cent or even negative. Try to run your nuclear reactor at a profit in this environment.

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

#376

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. 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]…

40 million acres are used to grow corn for ethanol. This is 162,000 square kilometers. This can produce 3.24 exajoules of energy. Also, solar panels don't need any land. There are so many places we can install solar without 'consuming' land. They can be roofs, floating on tops of lakes and reservoirs with the added benefit of preventing evaporation, agrivoltaics combined with farmland, vertical panels, superfund site…

For all the concern about land use for renewables, it really feels like subsidized ethanol has got to be the most wasteful use of energy investment dollars in terms of farmland used and every other possible metric. It's very interesting to think about using that money and land for other energy generation uses.

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

#377
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Using Solar Star as another datapoint [1]. 579 MWac x 32.8% capacity factor ≈ 190.

I found mention of a bond issuance and someone purchasing the project here [2]. If it’s $1b, then it’s $5.26. If $2b then $10.53.

So they’re in the same ballpark. But one type of plant runs 20-30 years and the other for 50-80 years @ 90% capacity factor. The CANDU reactors are especially cool in that they can use natural uranium and refueled without a shutdown [3].

—- [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star [2] - https://www.sustainablebusiness.com/2013/06/1-billion-bond-o... [3] - https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/On-line_refueling_of...

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

#378
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your projection that human world marketed energy consumption will increase by a factor of 1000× within a century may be correct, but it is far outside the range of mainstream predictions, and far faster than current growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum... shows total energy supply (excluding agriculture) growing from 8700 million toe in 01990 to 14500 million toe in 02021, a 67% increas…

> projection that human world marketed energy consumption will increase by a factor of 1000× within a century may be correct We currently produce about 2% [1] of the Earth’s insolation, or 6% of that which hits land. So you’re talking factors of 16 to 50, which at 2% growth means 140 years to the former. Again, assuming perfect efficiency and no clouds, et cetera . If we assume 50% efficiency (still with no clouds) a…

14500 million toe per year is 19 terawatts, roughly world marketed energy consumption; 1000 watts per m² (nominal solar constant below the atmosphere) times 1.28 × 10¹⁴ m² (area of a circle with radius 6371km) is 128000 terawatts. 19 is 0.015% of 128000, not 2%. so why do your calculations differ? let's see

possibly by '510mm sqkm' you mean 510 million square kilometers, as opposed to, say, 510 millimeter square kilometers (which would work out to 510'000 m³). 510 million square kilometers is a good value for the surface area of earth (4πr² ≈ 510066 km²) and 340 watts per square meter is a reasonable estimate for 24-hour mean insolation, disregarding clouds. but 340 watts per square meter times 510 million square kilometers gives 173000 terawatts, higher than my estimate. in terawatt hours per year, that's 1.52 billion terawatt hours per year, which is definitely a lot more than 50 times 26936 terawatt hours

i think maybe your error there is that you were trying to convert from square kilometers to square meters by multiplying by 1000. but actually a square kilometer contains a million square meters, not a thousand. so you ended up calculating about 2% instead of about 0.002%, which is what your inputs give if calculated correctly

using the units(1) program from unix is a good way to avoid errors like this; in this case you can do the calculation as follows:

    You have: 26936 TWh / (340W/m^2 * 4 pi earthradius^2 * 1 year)
    You want: %
            * 0.0017718851
            / 564.37068
however, you also made a smaller error in the opposite direction. the 26936 terawatt hours per year figure is only a small fraction of the total energy supply; as the paper you linked explains:

> Considering electrical energy, while 6,131 TWh of energy was produced in 1973, 26,936 TWh of electrical energy was produced in 2019 (IEA, 2021c).

that's only about 3 terawatts, not 19, because it excludes virtually the entire transport sector, coal consumption by steel mills, climate-control heat and process heat provided directly by fossil fuels, inefficiencies in the electrical generation process, etc. using the correct figure of 19 terawatts, we derive that world marketed energy consumption is currently 0.01% of global terrestrial insolation, including light that hits clouds and oceans but not including light absorbed or reflected by the atmosphere

growing energy consumption by this factor of 6700 at 1.66% per year would take 535 years, but in fact now that pv has dropped the cost of energy so dramatically, i expect energy production growth to speed up. also presumably there will be power-production satellites in solar orbit within decades, permitting progress past kardashev type 1

hope this helps!

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

#379
post #214
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

> 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. Or overbuild by a factor of 6x or whatever relative to summer loads, which is probably less expensive than long term battery storage.

There can still be periods of several weeks with very little sunlight. And energy demands will be massive if we switch all heating to heat pumps instead of natural gas which we mostly now use.

What actually helps us during winter is hydro and wind power. And Krško nuclear power plant.

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TVA - Not the Time Variance Authority I take it? I was wondering how that was powered.

Tennessee Valley Authority - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

Which I believe was the inspiration for the Time Variance Authority in the Loki TV Series.
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