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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

#551

Post by api »

jerry1979 wrote: post #479
api wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSRs look nice on paper but we don’t have any experience building them. It would take a gigantic up front investment to work out the real world issues and commercialize a technology that has a lot of novel aspects like handling radioactive molten salt. Meanwhile that same money would buy loads more power in solar/wind and batteries, which are proven technologies that are getting progressively cheaper. An alternate ti…

It looks like people recently got permission in the United States to build an MSR: https://fortune.com/2023/12/13/nuclear-reactor-approval-molt... I have not seen any evidence that solar+wind will provide a proper base load of electricity, and it looks like MSR and its variants will give people the electricity they need.

Solar and wind require storage. Nuclear needs batteries too because nuclear reactors are very slow to throttle and not good at load following.

Every non fossil source except hydro requires a large build out of grid scale storage.

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

#552

Post by huytersd »

simonw wrote: post #147

This caught my eye: "Prior to Vogtle Unit 3, the last nuclear reactor to start in the United States was Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee. Construction on Watts Bar 2 began in 1973 but was suspended in 1985. Work resumed in 2007, and the reactor came online in 2016." More on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant#Unit_2

Meanwhile India is building 8 reactors right now with 10 more planned over the next decade. China is actively building 23 right now.

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

#553

Post by jnsaff2 »

avar wrote: post #417
smegger001 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People will learn to forego "bathing" in electricity at night endlessly. For decades we've been spoiled with ridiculous "energy on a tap" that just gives us oodles at the flick of a switch, and we just need to take that away." I take it you live somewhere warm in the winter. We are already looking at removing other heating options like propane and natural gas furnaces, coal and oil heating is mostly phased out, and…

It's normal in many very cold places to entirely switch off your heating overnight. You heat your home up during the day and evening, and as you retire for the night it's switched off. With sufficient insulation and warm bedding you don't need active heating overnight. So it's absolutely compatible with an electric supply that's heavily biased towards the daytime.

The cold places are usually extreme latitudes.

I live around 60 latitude and here during the winter it might not be even that cold (tho it can be -20 or -30C).

It’s that the amount of sunshine hours and the angle it shines at means that for about 3 months the PV production is essentially zero.

This is during the time the demand is highest.

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

#554

Post by mpweiher »

angiosperm wrote: post #467
mpweiher wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's currently changing. The catastrophe of Germany's "Energiewende" has made a lot of countries re-evaluate their nuclear strategy, culminating in the COP28 nuclear pledge.

Evidently you missed the news that it turned out to be no catastrophe at all, but just a lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over a clearly hoped-for catastrophe.

Yeah, evidently I missed the news that after 20 years of Energiewende, Germany has the 2nd most expensive AND the 2nd dirtiest electricity in Europe and that the old plan of "we'll use wind and solar when the wind blows and the sun shines, and when they do not " really worked out perfectly, particularly when the miracle turned out to be "Russian gas" and exploded in our face, causing us to have to buy up essentially all the gas available on the open market at horrible expense after Russia started blackmailing us.

Note that "buying up all the gas on the open market" is not a strategy that too many countries can follow at once, hence other countries started to look elsewhere. For example, Japan, who were going to exit nuclear, and are now turning more and more of their old plants back on and have announced they will be building more (!), very specifically to replace reliance on LNG shipments.

And yeah, we got really, really lucky with the mild winter of 2022. Apparently not too many other countries think that "luck" is sound energy policy, but YMMV. Also slightly unpopular in the world is our tried and true method of "we'll lower emissions by pushing our economy into recession due to high energy costs". And the constitutional court also took a dim view of trying to hide all the extra costs off the main budget, so the real costs are only now starting to emerge. The farmer demos were probably just the start of the unrest when the pain gets passed onto the population. A population that already now thinks the getting out of nuclear was a mistake:

"Sechs von zehn Befragten (59 Prozent) im aktuellen DeutschlandTrend für das ARD-Morgenmagazin halten die Entscheidung der Politik für falsch,"

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan...

Meanwhile, the coalition that is pushing this through against the voters is now down to 32% in the polls.

But you're right, I really should have followed the news more!

The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-ger...

Germany’s Energiewende: A Disaster In The Making

https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a...

Germany’s Energy Disaster 20 Years Later

https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-...

Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germany...

"Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy."

You are right, I really should follow the news more!

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

#555

Post by jansan »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #460
mcmoor wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh imagine finally finishing work that your father had started before you're born.

This is how castles and cathedrals often were. But ofc after seeing public works built quickly and efficiently it’s a tragedy when they’re not.

One example is St. Barbara's Church in Kutná Hora (Czech Republic). Construction began in 1305, and it was finished in 1905:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Barbara%27s_Church,_Kutn%C...

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

#556

Post by lawn »

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…

> All the nuclear supporters I know deal heavily in magical thinking, completely ignoring the factual reality of the industry.

All the solar and wind proponents I know deal heavily in magical thinking, completely ignoring the factual reality of the industry.

We need a mix of low-carbon energy sources, where nuclear is an important piece (otherwise we'll have to resort to oil/gas/coal).

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

#557

Post by mpweiher »

stephenr wrote: post #448
mpweiher wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it > Why do people bother mining it? > Because mining it is relatively cheap. Something does not add up here.

Mining exists and is cheap enough that there is no incentive to invest in something new, even if it might just as good. Particularly because "just as good" is rarely a good reason for changing and investing, it would have to be significantly better.

(Though I have no real opinion on whether seawater extraction really is just as good...somewhat dubios)

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

#558

Post by _ph_ »

Fatnino wrote: post #470
Projectiboga wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown. It wasn't just a fender bender.

And the safety systems worked so everything was (mostly) contained and no one got hurt. Like a car crash where the seat belts and airbags lead to no injuries. And then all driving was banned.

No one banned nuclear. But of course it is the only sensible reaction to such an incident to check your designs for faults and review all reactors under construction. And then decide whether it is prudent to continue with the construction and which changes would be required.

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

#559

Post by lawn »

epistasis wrote: post #156
lawn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always the case when you build large one-off projects. If you continue to build reactors non-stop you'll learn how to make the process more efficient and be able to make better estimates. Surely we software developers should appreciate how hard making accurate estimates is? And this isn't a 2 week sprint we're talking about, but a gigantic engineering project.

These were not one-off reactors, it's just that the first ones went so poorly that everything else was cancelled. There were four that were started at roughly the same time. There were many other sites getting order ready. Westinghouse used a new regulatory process that had been created specifically at the request of industry to speed the design and build of AP1000s. Despite this, Westinghouse did not deliver constru…

So you're saying that instead of learning from a single project we made the same mistakes four times at once?

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

#560

Post by mpweiher »

epistasis wrote: post #495
mpweiher wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"China has 55 plants with 57GW in operation, 22 under construction with 24 GW and more than 70 planned with 88GW." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China So the current plans are for roughly tripling installed capacity.

50GW, 88GW, it's all small potatoes compared to the hundreds of GW of annual additions for other technologies. If nuclear could compete, China would be building the hell out of it, and selling it internationally. Getting other countries to use your nuclear supply chain for their electrical infrastructure is such a huge geopolitical win that if it were possible, it would be one of the key political and economic strate…

Those "hundreds" are nameplate capacities. For wind/solar you need to divide them by factor of 6 to even get to actual average production, as the capacity factor of wind/solar is below 15%, whereas for nuclear plants it is greater than 90%.

And of course average is not good enough for an electric grid, the variance is highly relevant. As my statistics professor used to quiet: if your left leg is standing in liquid nitrogen and your right leg is standing in boiling oil, you are enjoying a perfectly comfortable mean temperature.

Variance matters. A lot. In an electric grid, you need to be able to cover minimum requirements even when solar and wind are having a bad day or night.

China got their solar industry financed by German subsidies, and they have plentiful deserts with lots of sunshine. The Gobi desert is the place on earth with the most sunshine hours, apparently more than the Sahara(!). It would be insane for them to not take advantage of that to reduce their use of coal, now at what, 65%?

But they also apparently think that safe, reliable and cheap nuclear energy is an important part of their energy mix, otherwise they wouldn't be planning on tripling their generating capacity, would they now?

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