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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

#721

Post by kjkjadksj »

corethree wrote: post #458
bumby wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term. If you mean building infrastructure, that's true, but also partly because the US invested heavily in the same type of infrastructure a generation or two prior. I would disagree with the pharmaceuticals because that is a manufacturing-intensive industry. Throwing out gems (because that probably isn't a good case, like you said), it still amounts t…

Gems isn't good also because it's mostly aesthetic. No intrinsic utility other then being rare and pretty. You won't actually "improve" society with gems. It's hard to distill this in technical terms but I hope you're able to understand without the need to get pedantic. Gemstones therefore are more of a reflection of countries with the ability to purchase the gemstones as an import and less of a reflection of the cou…

China is a paper tiger. It is amazing the credit the media gives them, but no surprise given the medias purpose is to create narratives rather than put light on truth. If China were as dominant as the media alleges Taiwan would have been invaded decades ago. The reality is big mighty China has one aircraft carrier that entered service just 5 years ago, and another one that is a renovated old soviet carrier. The vast bulk of their air force is a half century behind ours. Most other industries are similarly toothless when you dig into how they are actually comprised beyond their raw numbers.

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

#722

Post by dexwiz »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #136
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is extremely dependent on long distance power transmission. Nobody wants a reactor in the middle of a city, and 1-5 GW of power needs to be sent long distances before it’s used. Solar on the other hand scales down to 50MW instillations just fine so you can put it near substations etc. Huge solar parks make sense in locations with lots of sunlight and cheap land, but they aren’t the only option just a trade of…

Chicago is mostly on nuclear and the reactor is quite close to the city, just over the Indiana border.

There are no active nuclear power plants in Indiana. It had two planned plants that were cancelled in the 80s. Purdue has a very small power plant for research.

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

#723

Post by jeffbee »

aftbit wrote: post #687
jeffbee wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The Peace and Justice Commission finds that it would violate the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act (NFBA) to approve a waiver of the law and contract with 3M Corporation for maintenance of the Library’s RFID system."

"Pursuant to B.M.C. Section 12.90.070, the City of Berkeley shall grant no contract to any person or business, which knowingly engages in work for nuclear weapons."

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

#724

Post by arrosenberg »

angiosperm wrote: post #456
arrosenberg wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

When people want 10-100x our current power production, they will build 10-100x solar and wind, because they are massively cheaper. Nukes have only ever got more expensive. Nukes might make sense on the moon.

Ignores context, diminishing returns, the lack of viable storage options at that scale (or even the current one). Gonna still put my money on the proven tech for 10-100x projects - its a social choice to make it expensive.

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

#725

Post by KerrAvon »

zeristor wrote: post #693
danans wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A Quora link going into a bit more detail: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-TVA-in-Loki-somehow-related-to-...

Tangent, but I find it illustrative that ChatGPT’s answer is strictly true but doesn’t actually answer the question.

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

#726

Post by adrianN »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #690
adrianN wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I have worked in a highly regulated industry before. I found the regulations that concerned me (safety critical software) to be quite good and rather too lax than too strict. I would be surprised if you could streamline nuclear power plant regulations by a lot without using losing safety.

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

#727

Post by adrianN »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #695
adrianN wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The growth of renewables is still on a nice exponential curve. We build solar literally add fast as we can scale production.

I work for an energy company that builds renewables. No we do not. I mean Jesus that's ridiculous. There's literally not capital for that, and the debt would be astronomical, to say nothing of legal, land access, problems with construction, contacts. But besides that there's different kinds of solar, and all kinds of specific issues with it, battery capacity being just one. Wind is a bigger opportunity and more commo…

Lack of capital is one of the limiting factors of scaling production...

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

#728

Post by champtar »

_ph_ wrote: post #562
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 :)

Nuclear would be the worst technology for filling temporary gaps in the production of renewables. The ramping speed of nuclear reactors is limited, and they cannot be throttled below 40% output without shutting them down entirely for quite some time. On top of that, the main expense of nuclear reactors is building and maintaining them, so throttling a reactor is not reducing the costs. You really want to run a nuclea…

French NPP can vary their power output 80% up or down in 30 min (https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_pilotable_d%27%C3...)

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

#729

Post by Kon5ole »

Wytwwww wrote: post #127
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not automatically true. As the price continues to drop even over building renewables can be cheaper than other options. Nuclear is very expensive so there’s a lot of wiggle room.

I find it hard to imagine solar could ever be cheaper than nuclear during winter in Northern Europe.

It's easy if you add electrolysers to your imagination. :)

There are solar plants that deliver electricity for around 2 cents per kwh and the price is dropping. Hydrogen can be generated from electricity at 80% efficiency, and gas can be converted back to electricity at 40% efficiency. This gives about 6-7 cents per kwh for solar even after conversion to a 24/365 stable baseload energy source.

This is cheaper than nuclear and works fine everywhere, even in northern europe.

(If you actually place the solar panels in northern europe as well - which you don't need to - most of the gas will be produced during summertime when the sun is up 18+ hours per day).

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