First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by bondarchuk » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

altairTF wrote: post #703

bondarchuk wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in fact, for example, wildlife around Chernobyl has flourished This can't be serious...

Why not? Take a look at this https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/out-of-th... https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-are-worse-rad...

Well, I believe the factual content of what you said, I'm just surprised you'd seriously use this as an argument in favour of nuclear power, because the fact that wildlife thrived is so intimately connected with the fact that a nuclear meltdown happened.

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

#712

Post by mixdup » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #653

ano-ther wrote: post #2

See also: "Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost" https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

It seems like up-front monetary 'cost' is continually used to bash nuclear. And 100% from the perspective of human beings. To put it into context, nuclear * total human deaths due to nuclear since its inception is in the low thousands at worst, for the entire industry. * total animal deaths due to nuclear since its inception is minimal, in fact, for example, wildlife around Chernobyl has flourished * damage to the en…

>It seems like up-front monetary 'cost' is continually used to bash nuclear.

We certainly still need to get a handle on the cost of deploying nuclear because it is not sustainable the way we do it today

In 2022 Georgia Power got 23% of its power from nuclear, 1.9 gigawatts of capacity.

Since construction started, Georgia Power customers have been paying the construction costs (about 6%) and now that construction is complete the rest of the costs are now being added to customer bills. These are surcharges in addition to the actual cost of fuel and operations at the plant, so they're going to be paying per kWh as well.

At the same time Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) shareholders are now receiving profits from the operations of Vogtle 3 while capital costs are recovered--IE they are not paying for the asset that they will own

This 10% increase in customer bills will result in the nuclear percentage as pat of GPC's mix increasing just a few percent. It would still be lower than either Gas/Oil or Coal as of 2022's numbers (in 2023 I believe it will be higher than coal, but that is because GPC is replacing coal with gas at a rapid rate)

If you replaced all fossil fuels with nuclear at the same cost structure, power bills in Georgia would increase many fold

I'm completely on board with nuclear, but we have to absolutely and totally rethink the designs we build, how we manage the projects, who owns them (private vs. public) and more

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

#713

Post by Fatnino » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #657

radicalbyte wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal cause more cancer and pumps a huge amount of radioactive material into the sky but I've not seen anyone closing coal power stations to stop that. The fear of nuclear power is just one of those irrational fears..

This is pure whataboutism.

So is bitching about nuclear while ignoring the much worse coal.

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

#714

Post by smegger001 » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

otherme123 wrote: post #574

smegger001 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about recognizing that externalities of letting corporations do whats best for their own short term profits are costly to society, and that having safe cheap constant power is a social good that makes having government run nuclear power be a good idea. how about we not let the same people that have spent the last 50 years knowingly destroy the environment and hide their culpability be the ones to make the decisio…

Nuclear has a lot of externalities (residues, security, financing... usually paid and supported by others). You talk about nuclear like it was a small enterprise, when it's the very definition of "greedy corporation". It's funny-and-sad to see the old behemoth of nuclear power begging for government support as they last chance to be alive.

On the contary i dont think businesses big or small should do it I think the government should do it as a public good. Free carbonless energy for the people.

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

#715

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #686

hef19898 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

I ment nuclear accidents and disasters, both Chernobyl and Fukushima can be traced back to ignoring safety rules and regulations.

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

#716

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

midasuni wrote: post #689

hef19898 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It would never occur to me to defend coal...

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

#717

Post by mixdup » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #616

phendrenad2 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> costly on-site last minute design changes I clicked through to the actual study ( https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r... ) and I couldn't find a single sentence mentioning on-site last-minute design changes. I searched for "change" and tabbed through all of the results. The closest thing was mention of Westinghouse changing construction standards halfway through an ongoing project, which re…

From the article's own summary: Our results point to a gap between expected and realized costs stemming from low resilience to time- and site-dependent construction conditions. Guess that's where they took it from. Skimming the paper it seems a large part of the issue is that it's difficult to mass produce something which needs to be integrated into a variable environment, and attempting to do so is detrimental compa…

There's got to be some middle ground between every reactor in the country being absolutely bespoke and on the other hand trying to build them in a factory like modular housing.

IIRC one of the big differences/problems is that every one of them have completely different control rooms and control systems. To the point that you cannot train on one reactor and walk into another and operate it. If we at least standardized that side of things, the cost of operations would surely come down

I also question (and happy to be enlightened about) how much the local project needs some massive change. That a pipe might need to be a few hundred yards longer to reach the river surely isn't so consequential that you can't reuse designs

These things are built on huge sites that could be completely leveled and turned into identical square clean pieces of dirt with massive empty land around them How much variation can there possibly be that can't be handled outside of the critical reactor design area

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

#718

Post by mixdup » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

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…

>That's missing the huge and expensive nuclear power plant around that kilogram of uranium.

Whereas I think you are missing the huge and expensive battery array for solar to be useful outside of peak times? And the fact that the best sites for solar are far away from the transmission network?

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

#719

Post by grecy » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

altairTF wrote: post #703

bondarchuk wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in fact, for example, wildlife around Chernobyl has flourished This can't be serious...

Why not? Take a look at this https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/out-of-th... https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-are-worse-rad...

Is it the kind of wildlife we want to be reproducing?

Is it the kind of wildlife you want as a pet?

Is it the kind of wildlife you want to eat?

No, this is not actually a good thing.

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

#720

Post by MichaelNolan » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #539

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.

I agree with the spirit of your post, but I would say 10s of GW per year, instead of 1 TW per year. Currently, the US is adding about 10 GW of new solar capacity per year. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000-_Clean_power_install...

The 1TW prediction was for the whole world. I’d expect the US to settle somewhere in the high 10s to low 100s by 2030. The US added 23GW in 2023, and is expected to add 37GW in 2024.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf