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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

#891

Post by pfdietz »

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.

How unfair of us, to use the egregious flaw of nuclear to criticize it.

Pointing at fossil fuels would have made sense in the past, but that's a useless argument against renewables.

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

#892

Post by pfdietz »

DrBazza wrote: post #853
mixdup wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 c…

I've wanted to see whether thorium reactors actually work or not. I suspect the lack of interest from western governments is because it isn't very useful for making bombs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

No, it's because thorium doesn't solve any of the actual problems that are holding back nuclear.

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

#893

Post by pfdietz »

billytetrud wrote: post #779
Joeri wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT found that reusing a design made plants more expensive to build, not less, because of costly on-site last minute design changes. Taking your point more charitably, it is indeed the lack of a sustainable nuclear energy industry that routinely builds plants that causes costs to skyrocket. There is a chicken and egg situation: nuclear projects don’t get funded because they’re too expensive, so there is no chance to…

Nuclear projects don't get funded because of regulatory risk, not because they're "too expensive".

Let's hear what the then-President of Exelon, at the time one of the largest nuclear operators in the US, had to say about that.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088

“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.

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

#894

Post by Jabrov »

tills13 wrote: post #697
acchow wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a Generation II reactor (like the Chernobyl and Fukushima reactors)

Is this supposed to scare people? I'm not sure I understand the point you're making.

It sounds scary to me. But then again, I don't know much about nuclear power.

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

#895

Post by Retric »

tjoff wrote: post #880
pfdietz wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a good handle on how experience curves and exponential growth work. Solar and storage were coming forever, because they cost too much and were rolled out too little. But eventually a tipping point is reached and suddenly prices collapse and deployment explodes. It's not that nothing was happening the long incubation period; the technology was working its way down the experience curve. Solar has already…

Solar has had exponential growth for 40 years. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/... ( https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christ... ) How do you compare storage to that? What storage btw? Because all we have kind of suck for the grid usecase. So there is of course a ton of research for better suited batteries. But we haven't even started production on those. Are you not un…

We already have enough battery manufacturing capacity to build hours worth of grid storage over the next 5 years and more is coming online at double digit growth rates. What’s missing is the demand for grid batteries which is still relatively low.

Right now California only wastes ~5% of its solar output per year but most days don’t have a surplus. That’s not enough capacity for nighttime storage to be worth it, you need consistent daily oversupply before charging becomes “free”.

However, because of the demand curve batteries are viable for peaking power. Which is why some farms are built with “4h” aka 50% of daily output worth of battery storage. Thus we are past the initial tipping point of occasional viability where sometimes it’s a good idea. The big one is at roughly 5c/kWh where natural gas is no longer economically viable and the grid isn’t dependent on fossil fuels.

5c/kWh * 3,000 full discharge cycles ~= 150$/kWh total instillation cost including labor etc. Increase or decrease based on specific battery technology and it’s lifespan.

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

#896

Post by pfdietz »

hef19898 wrote: post #40
RandallBrown wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes imagine how cool it would be if some of the worlds biggest billionaires got together and just did some crazy mega project and didn't care about profits. This nuclear plant cost ~$34 billion USD. What if Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and a few others just got together and built 10 or so nuclear power plants? I wonder if that could actually bring down the price to build them.

Money, at that scale at least, is pretty good at calculating business cases. And the money is on renewables, especially solar. And the solar Wp cost for modules is, with some special cause exceptions, following Moores law. Nuclear not so much, all those plants have is delays and cost over-runs.

The Money can see where renewables and storage are likely to be when any nuclear plant that could start to be built today would become available.

Nuclear plants have only ever been built where the customers can be forced to buy the power. No merchant nuclear plant, selling into a competitive market, has ever been built anywhere.

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

#897

Post by jgalt212 »

Not actually both "robust passive safety systems", but the original safety systems in Fermi's reactor were certainly robust.

> In case of emergency, such as Weil becoming incapacitated or failure of the automatic control rod, Norman Hilberry stood on the balcony with an improbable nuclear safety device: an axe. In an emergency, he would cut a rope that ran up to the balcony, releasing another emergency control rod into the pile. The last line of defense consisted of a "liquid-control squad" that stood on a platform, ready to flood the pile with a cadmium-salt solution. Taken together, these safety precautions were a strange combination of the high-tech and the ad hoc.

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...

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

#898

Post by pfdietz »

credit_guy wrote: post #788
bobthepanda wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, all that data is also from when California and New York both had operational reactors. In 2013, CA generated 17 out of 200 GW from nuclear. GA generated 32/120 GW. NY generated 44/136GW. So at least in the case of New York, it generated more power from nuclear as a percentage than GA, and had higher electricity prices, so there doesn't seem to be a correlation. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/ It p…

Ok, you are right. But the thing still remains: the supposed Vogtle 3/4 boondoggle of gazzilions of dollars of cost overruns did not result in consumers paying more for electricity. Sure, historically they used to pay less than the national average, but they continue to pay less than the national average, and by about the same amount. The cause could be regulation or deregulation, or better geographic position, or wh…

It resulted in the consumers there paying more than they would have had Vogtle 3/4 not been built.

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

#899

Post by pfdietz »

lmm wrote: post #760
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, if only we didn't have to build them safely we could make them so cheaply.

Renewables kill orders of magnitude more people (just look at how many die from falling when installing wind turbines, it's not pretty) and render orders of magnitude more land uninhabitable. We have ludicrous double standards when it comes to safety.

I think these are baldfaced lies, especially the first claim. Justify, please.

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

#900

Post by mlindner »

pydry wrote: post #890
mlindner wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at the price of a powerwall. That's for the energy needs of a residential home. What happens to your AWS bill if us-east-1 was to buy a powerwall? Let alone steel, chemical, paper, mineral processing industries. What would happen to our economy if capacity for every one of those was cut by 1/3rd (or more depending on local climate)? Never mind your power bill. Using powerwall as the price of stationary battery…

If they used snowy 2 instead of a powerwall the comparison would look way too favorable and it would invert the point. Powerwalls are expensive even by battery standards.

> Powerwalls are expensive even by battery standards.

Well of course. Look at the cost of a home generator unit versus how much power it generates.

The more apt battery comparison would be something like megapacks, and megapacks bought in bulk.

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