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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

#681

Post by _aavaa_ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #350
gridspy wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, when i see solar panels atop every mall and commercial building, when every home has a solar roof, then i'll entertain chopping down wilderness or sacrificing farmland to the cause. I still see plent of bare rooftop to address first.

The home roofs are going to be done off the more expensive solar installations ($/kW) that we can build because they’re so small.

It’s also fascinating how quickly the Nirvana fallacy shows up when it’s time to talk about renewables. Supposedly chopping down forests for solar (which isn’t the main way of getting land) or the farmers choosing to put something on their land is top of mind. But chop those forests to make something else, or have the farmers grow super subsidized corn and there isn’t a peep.

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

#682

Post by klysm »

apexalpha wrote: post #561

1.1GW for 30 BILLION dollars? Jeez, that's an insane amount of money for this little power. Probably pretty high cost per kWh, too, which has to be guaranteed by the government I guess. For comparison in my country they built a 1,6GW off-shore windfarm in 2 years with 0 government subsidy. I understand that a nuclear plant provides power 24/7, so it's not an entirely fair comparison. But the cost of nuclear power is…

It’s hard to compare given the intermittency, but I do agree the cost is a bit absurd. It’s painful because it doesn’t have to be this way but we’ve cornered ourselves via regulation into bad designs

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

#683

Post by kortilla »

margalabargala wrote: post #121
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. 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]…

And what happens when it gets dark? Solar is cheap, storage is not.

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

#684

Post by polski-g »

arcfour wrote: post #202
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

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

Many churches in England took 100 years to build

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

#685

Post by mpweiher »

lamontcg wrote: post #367
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.

China built out 180-230 GW of solar last year. They deployed more in one year than the total installed base of nuclear that China is expected to have by 2030.

Nameplate capacity. Divide by 6 to get average capacity. And then you need something to cover the variance at the low end, which tends to be zero.

Preferably something that's also CO2 free.

Ideas?

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

#686

Post by aftbit »

hef19898 wrote: post #601
pas wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In effect they did through overzealous safety requirements (which made it more expensive compared to other forms of electricity generation) this regulatory inconsistency is mostly irrational, because it's clear through other policies that society values safety much less in other policies (eg. driving, all the emissions from other sources, gun safety, etc) of course regulations are not perfect mirrors of society's pre…

Considering the potential damage, nuclear is right up there with aviation, medical and life science when it comes to safety standards. Because each and every incident can be traced back to ignoring whatever safety standards and practices where applicable at the time these accidents happened. Someone would have to pay for those 1000 NPPs, and in the current market conditions no one is willing to, because the ROI isn't…

>Because each and every incident can be traced back to ignoring whatever safety standards and practices where applicable at the time these accidents happened.

No they absolutely cannot. Many incidents happened due to yet unimagined failures. For example, KLM Flight 867, which lost all four engines due to a common mode failure (flying through ash clouds). The plane landed safely and safety standards were updated to provide guidance on avoiding, detecting, and reacting to ash ingestion.

TMI was a similar situation. At that point, nobody had really considered human factors engineering for nuclear plants. Nobody considered the risk of having a lamp that indicated that a valve had been asked to close instead of that it actually was closed.

One major challenge that aviation has handled better than nuclear and much better than chemical production is ensuring that issues get reported promptly and treated seriously. Aviation calls it "just culture", where mistakes and accidents are treated with retraining and lenience, but covering up issues is treated very harshly. This is absolutely necessary, otherwise you end up with major communications issues like we saw with MetEd during TMI or Tepco during Fukishima.

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

#687

Post by aftbit »

jeffbee wrote: post #665
xw3089 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not no one https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/12.90.050

The funny thing is these effing boomers still protest against nuclear power at the end of University Avenue every month, as if this was somehow a relevant concern in 2023.

I remember when I lived there, they had to get a special exemption to use self-checkout machines made by 3M in the Berkeley library. I don't remember why 3M ended up on the bad boy list, probably something related to nuclear weapons though.

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

#688

Post by mpweiher »

adrianN wrote: post #679
mpweiher wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Construction time is misleading. Please support your claim. We were talking about cost, and cost is directly proportional to construction time because financing (interest) is the primary cost of nuclear power plant construction.

It’sa lot harder to find investors for a project that takes 20+ years from planning to first income than for a project that takes seven and a half years. I’m still waiting for better cost estimates than what Lazard gives.

Simple:

Take the Vogtle-3 time, divide by average time to construct a nuclear reactor.

Apply factor to Lazard "estimate".

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

#689

Post by midasuni »

hef19898 wrote: post #601
pas wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In effect they did through overzealous safety requirements (which made it more expensive compared to other forms of electricity generation) this regulatory inconsistency is mostly irrational, because it's clear through other policies that society values safety much less in other policies (eg. driving, all the emissions from other sources, gun safety, etc) of course regulations are not perfect mirrors of society's pre…

Considering the potential damage, nuclear is right up there with aviation, medical and life science when it comes to safety standards. Because each and every incident can be traced back to ignoring whatever safety standards and practices where applicable at the time these accidents happened. Someone would have to pay for those 1000 NPPs, and in the current market conditions no one is willing to, because the ROI isn't…

Potential damage is one thing, but for actual deaths coal is 1000 times more deadly per TWh than nuclear, so surely coal requires far more rigourous safety standards

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

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

#690

Post by kjkjadksj »

adrianN wrote: post #632
willis936 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're betraying your bias by insinuating I suggested throwing out risk mitigation. I advocated for streamlined risk mitigation by highlighting the risk of unnecessary complexity.

Now you only need to get expert consensus on which parts of the complexity are unnecessary.

A true expert can streamline their industry every time. Simply because most people who make decisions on process are not experts in the relevant field, but expert administrators who often lazily apply existing policies to new concepts that they never got the training to understand or put into context.

Just look at any institutional review board: the breadth their expertise is always smaller than the relevant topics they will have to rule upon at the institution, and often that leads to a certain level of consternation, misplaced understanding of risk, and overall higher levels of inefficiency.

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