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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

#961

Post by Retric »

katbyte wrote: post #959
Retric wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t need magic battery tech. Current PV + Batteries can already 24/7 power cheaper than nuclear. It’s only vs fossil fuels where batteries have trouble. China is building nuclear because they are building everything, but they are effectively building 3x as much solar and 7x as much wind because nuclear just costs more than any other option. From 2020-2022 China increased generation power by: 51,600 GWh/year Nucl…

umm that doesn't explain why they are building nuclear - could it be because they realize they need the ability to produce power at night and when the wind isn't blowing?

They are literally adding 18+X as much fossil fuel as nuclear over that time frame. That’s what’s proving nighttime power.

Adding more capacity is an all hands on deck situation for the China they are throwing everything at it. Nuclear is simply achieving the smallest gains because the ROI is low.

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

#962

Post by godelski »

c0llision wrote: post #952
belorn wrote: post #947

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let say a natural gas power plant has a life time expectancy of 20 years. If we say that in 20 years we can abandon natural gas with nuclear, then lets put that as a deadline for when the last natural gas power plant will be demolished. We need to stop building new natural gas power plants and existing ones need to have a planned obsolescence so that investors know when their investment will no longer be worth anythi…

gas power plant != natural gas power plant. Green hydrogen gas generated from excess renewables and biogas exist, and can often be used in existing power plants. Though they are expensive right now, we've no idea how the technology may evolve in the next few years. In Ireland they are actually building natural gas power plants with the assumption they will be stop operation as little as 5 years and only used for emer…

Fun fact. Nuclear power can technically load follow. It just generally isn't a good idea because it isn't very cost effective to not be running your nuclear power plant at all times. Also fun fact, nuclear power is really useful for high energy intensive operations such as splitting oxygen and hydrogen atoms from one another.

Side note: The France story is much more complicated. It doesn't sell narratives well, but what can I say, truth is complicated. It's not going to fit into this comment, but it has to do with regulations, covid, Ukraine, Germany, lack of European self-sufficiency, economics, and so much more. It's best to not bring up France's recent nuclear fiasco unless you're willing to get into the weeds, because otherwise you'll just start a fight by anyone who knows a bit more but still not the full story (which means multiple people will argue confidently and a clusterfuck ensues). With no doubt, France has blame to play. But to give just a push to find more info, remember that inspections and maintenance are scheduled quite far in advance. That many had been pushed off because of a global pandemic, and then war broke out. One could say this was quite a series of unfortunate events. Yes, blame France, but placing all blame on France is like destroying all farms except for one and then blaming that farm for famine when it got overrun by pests (even if it was entirely that farmer's fault, was it?)

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

#963

Post by _ph_ »

katbyte wrote: post #942
_ph_ wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Call it what you want you still need an always available always there source of power to ensure demand is met. In the PNW hydro fills this role, elsewhere you will need something else and only nuclear really can fulfil that need

You haven't gotten the point: nuclear is very bad for varying loads and that is why it is bad to fill the gaps in renewable production.

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

#964

Post by _ph_ »

pfdietz wrote: post #923
_ph_ wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we need a mix of technologies. But at the current state of things, nuclear shouldn't be something to invest into. Yes, existing reactors should be used for their full life time, but there is far too much speaking against building new ones.

I think it still makes sense to do R&D on nuclear, for example new reactor types, just as insurance. There's a low bar to justify R&D.

Sure, I am always strongly in favor of doing R&D on alternative technologies. But it also is important to understand that this takes a lot of time. But we need to get our grid quickly off fossil fuels and for that we need to use the thechnologies which can be rolled out now. Which would be the renewables.

But any R&D we do now could come handy for the last step, to get the grid fully carbon neutral.

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

#965

Post by credit_guy »

pfdietz wrote: post #898
credit_guy wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being a counterfactual, your statement is by definition opinion, not fact.

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

#966

Post by pfdietz »

_ph_ wrote: post #964
pfdietz wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it still makes sense to do R&D on nuclear, for example new reactor types, just as insurance. There's a low bar to justify R&D.

Sure, I am always strongly in favor of doing R&D on alternative technologies. But it also is important to understand that this takes a lot of time. But we need to get our grid quickly off fossil fuels and for that we need to use the thechnologies which can be rolled out now. Which would be the renewables. But any R&D we do now could come handy for the last step, to get the grid fully carbon neutral.

Or for niche uses, such as military naval propulsion, space, and actinide destruction.

Technologies with multiple uses beyond nuclear would also be worth looking at. A very interesting one is CO2 turbines, which could be much smaller (and cheaper) than steam turbines. These are available, but have not been pushed to their optimized limits like steam turbines have.

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

#967

Post by pfdietz »

lmm wrote: post #960
pfdietz wrote: post #899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

First google result: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... . (Most renewable production is still hydro, so yes, it really is over 10x more deaths from renewables).

You explicitly said wind turbines, which your own reference shows are not "orders of magnitude" more dangerous. Thanks for destroying your own claim.

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

#968

Post by pfdietz »

credit_guy wrote: post #965
pfdietz wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Being a counterfactual, your statement is by definition opinion, not fact.

One can look at the cost of the alternatives and see I'm speaking the truth. Also, demand didn't increase as much as the (likely fraudulent) projections used to justify Vogtle 3/4.

All the "nuclear renaissance" nuclear builds aside from Vogtle 3/4 were cancelled because the utilities realized the alternatives were much better economically. V. C. Summer was cancelled after dropping $9B on it. Even with that sunk cost, it still wasn't worth completing.

What happened between back then and now is two (well, three) things: fracking crashed the price of natural gas, demand didn't increase as much as utilities said it would, and then (later, after fracking) renewables also became much MUCH cheaper. One can excuse the nuclear industry for not seeing this would happen (or perhaps for not wanting to see that it would happen), but that doesn't change the fact that it did happen, and that the nuclear builds turned out to be economically unjustifiable.

Things got so bad for nuclear we were seeing already completed NPPs being shut down because they couldn't even make an operating profit! The other reactor at TMI had been cash flow negative for the last six years it was in operation, for example. In that sort of environment, building a new NPP (which would also have to amortized construction and financing costs) would be totally out of the question economically.

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

#969

Post by pfdietz »

billytetrud wrote: post #946
pfdietz wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pric…

I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor. The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all…

> I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor.

Who cares? That putative issue would be beating a dead horse. If it didn't make sense economically anyway, why worry about that?

> The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts.

Oil isn't in the picture (it's not used for any baseload power generation in the US, and precious little peaking). But gas is certainly an issue. There have been existing plants (not all of them, of course) that shut down because they could not make even an operating profit. TMI's other reactor was cash flow negative for six years before it was shut down, for example.

In any environment where existing plants are troubled, building new NPPs is obviously completely off the table economically. V. C. Summer was so out of the running it was better to write off the $9B spent so far on it than to complete it.

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

#970

Post by pfdietz »

ETH_start wrote: post #956
pfdietz wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter bullshit. It probably used obsolete cost numbers and assumed batteries are the only storage mode used.

On what basis do you assume it's bullshit? This is a very emotional/irrational reaction to a study.

It's in gross disagreement with figures and modeling I've seen elsewhere.
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