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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

#931

Post by grecy »

qwebfdzsh wrote: post #845
grecy wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For starters, you took near the bottom range from your source, and omitted the 25% labor fee. Here's the National Renewable Energy Laboratory site saying large solar farms are $1.06 per watt, fully installed and operational. [1] Also the 2,245 mW solar farm of Bhadla Solar Park cost $2.175 billion [2]. Less that $1/watt. Let's just build three of those and we're good for our 7mW of solar, proven very doable. > Also…

You do have a point, but directly comparing costs is somewhat dishonest until solar plans start working 24 hours a day.

I already divided the nameplate capacity of solar by 6 to account for night and seasonality.

So 7mW of solar is "equal" to 1,114 mW of nuke.

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

#932

Post by beanjuiceII »

seb1204 wrote: post #274
beanjuiceII wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet you will be very wrong

I think you are wrong for the reason parent stated. Safety and regulations for nuclear are just too high to be competitive with modular solar that can scale and has no nuclear waste issue that is still unsolved.

do you have any info on the chemicals used in creating and disposing solar and batteries that would be involved in comparison?

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

#933

Post by p1mrx »

pfdietz wrote: post #928
Georgelemental wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has worked since over 13 billion BC, just not on Earth.

The fusion reactions in stars are different than the ones to be used in fusion reactors (or used in bombs).

I'm sure stars have smashed together all the isotopes we've considered, at some point or another.

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

#934

Post by pfdietz »

p1mrx wrote: post #933
pfdietz wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fusion reactions in stars are different than the ones to be used in fusion reactors (or used in bombs).

I'm sure stars have smashed together all the isotopes we've considered, at some point or another.

In small (sometimes very small) amounts. But the energy producing reactions that power the stars are disjoint from the ones we'd exploit on Earth.

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

#935

Post by Lendal »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #546
Lendal wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, actually Florida (FPL) along I-10 is right now constructing new solar farms where there used to be forests. I'm not sure if what they did with the trees constitutes "clear cutting" but the solar panels are there now, and the trees are not. I've driven the route for many years. It was all forested.

Do you know if those forests were professionally managed for paper production? It might be private land, and it very likely legal.

True. There isn't any actual untouched forest land in north Florida. It's all been harvested and replanted many times. Almost certainly it was private sale or leased land. But those farm trees still produced more oxygen and stored more carbon than the solar panels will.

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

#936

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pydry wrote: post #883
andsoitis wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the idea that renewables have to be paired with large amounts of energy storage is not correct. In Ireland dispatchable power is used when wind is low. Natural gas, hydroelectric, HVDC, pumped storage. Natural gas is neither renewable nor emission-free when burning, albeit less than burning coal, for instance. About 117 pounds of CO2 are produced per million British thermal units (MMBtu) equivalent of natur…

We cant switch overnight. It takes about 1/10 or 1/20th the amount of time and 1/5th the cost to build equivalent solar production. It's better to start with that and let pumped storage, batteries and hydrogen play catch up than pay 5x more and wait 10-20x longer for equivalent levels of nuclear power production. Right now we use so much natural gas that a GWh of solar or nuclear produced energy is essentially just a…

> That GWh can be produced in two years less consistently or twenty years more consistently. Which do you choose?

Both.

Intermittent generation methods are more problematic the more of the grid you try to replace with them. You have solar generation during the day, you run your natural gas plants less during the day but still run them at night, great. Keep building solar until you can stop running them during the day at all. Installing that much capacity could take 20 years.

At that point you'd have to contend with what to do at night. But hey, by then the nuclear plants you started building today are online. You might also look into ways of speeding up the process, because it shouldn't take 20 years to do that.

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

#937

Post by internetter »

pydry wrote: post #887
internetter wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they were saying solar is useless, but you underestimate how difficult it is to change peak load. Well a good start is actually smart systems within homes, for instance to avoid heating said home when nobody is present, or timing loads like car charging and dishwashers to be on that beat. That's great, but it's been proven these smart systems are very hard to roll out, no matter how much you try to say…

>That's great, but it's been proven these smart systems are very hard to roll out, no matter how much you try to say it's cheaper I thought the opposite was proven. E.g. When Germany produced a lot of variable output electricity they varied aluminum smelting rates accordingly. That was highly effective and not generally expected. There's tons of low hanging fruit like that but if you listen to carbon or nuclear lobby…

I'm talking specifically on an individual level. I'm not as versed in the industrial side of things as I should be, and sure, if we as a nation (I live in the US) came together and said "let's fix the overconsumption issues" we could do it practically overnight, but the reality is that to fix every home requires an absurd upfront investment very little people are willing to fund. Systematic change is hard. We're working on it, but it's hard.

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

#938

Post by AnthonyMouse »

_ph_ wrote: post #868
katbyte wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still burning O&G - the goal is to not which means you need that base load which means nuclear where hydro/pumped storage is not an option.

Base load is a term from the fossil/nuclear time. It is a pure statistical amount which designated how much "slow" sources (coal, nuclear) could be used because there is never less demand than the base load. And everything was done to push the base load up. But it never meant that it was sufficient to deliver the "base load". The power generation still hat to match any demand at any time. So everything else was done…

> This refers to the load at a point of time which cannot be delivered by renewables at that time. This can also vary between 0 and 100%.

If you had a predominantly renewable grid, this would generally be 80-100%, because low generation could coincide with peak load. Which is extremely bad, because then you have to duplicate that proportion of generation capacity via some alternative even though it's only rarely needed. Or worse, it's needed a lot but it's fossil fuels.

Meanwhile you want some degree of energy storage, because if you have times when renewable generation is more than 100% of the load, you want to be able to use that power later and not just throw it away.

But then you're back to base load sources making sense. They reduce the amount of storage or peaker plants you need at night and the amount of renewable generation you need during the day.

They just don't make sense as more of the grid than there is "base load" for the same reason as always. Otherwise you'd have times where there is surplus "base load" generation and have to put that into energy storage, when it'd have been cheaper for that part of generation capacity to be renewables.

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

#939

Post by arrosenberg »

angiosperm wrote: post #743
arrosenberg wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right now little is spent on storage because dollars are overwhelmingly better spent building out generating capacity, even in places where noontime generation exceeds demand. When there is a strict excess of renewable generation, it will be time to begin building out storage. We have myriad viable storage options. Costs for storage are still falling fast.

That doesn't make sense, do you have data for that? Best I can find is that we (the US) has the ability to store somewhere around 1% of our generation capacity, rounding up. Here in California we spend absurd amounts maintaining gas plants that only run during high demand periods, despite only having 6.6GW worth of storage for a state using 300 TWh per year. We are only 13% to our 2045 goal, so if it was cost-effective to do, we would already be doing it.

Without the storage, all of that day time generation is pointless, we need either gas or nuclear at night anyways, so the cost isn't really affected.

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

#940

Post by dang »

goodpoint wrote: post #696
goodpoint wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure whataboutism.

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