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US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

arstechnica.com

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Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#251

Post by root_axis »

stuffn wrote: post #188
bayindirh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overregulation. Americans love to remove regulation to make things cheaper (and to enable capitalistic monopolies, but that's a different matter), then cry when people die (or worse). Some things needs to be regulated, esp. if mistakes are costly to the planet and/or people on the said planet. So yes, nuclear should be regulated, and even overregulated to keep it safe. We have seen what Boeing has become when it's…

Regulation, I’d argue, is a far more efficient route to monopoly than “unchecked capitalism”. If you have enough money you can gain regulatory capture. If you pay close attention the majority of “evil capitalists” the far left bitches and whines about so much are masters at this. Last mile service, car manufactures, medicine, law, construction, power, water, technology, banking, housing, etc. Most of the world’s bill…

Regulatory capture is not an argument against regulation, it's an unavoidable externality that has to be managed.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#252

Post by triceratops »

coryrc wrote: post #226
gardncl wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not correct, and doesn't even pass the sniff test. Solar is deployed at ~$2/watt and you're saying batteries are increasing that cost 2.5x to 10x? So, someone installing a home battery system is paying up to 10x their solar install cost to also have battery backup? No way. Also, battery tech continues to improve rapidly, we're seeing breakthroughs like this rapidly reduce the price: https://spectrum.ieee.org/…

As usual, explain how you're going to power heat pumps in the Northern half of the country during a 3 week bomb cyclone. There are answers and they cost money. The only answer we're using is to build 1:1 natural gas capability for solar, which is roughly double the cost. That's a solution, but it needs to be accounted for when comparing options.

> a 3 week bomb cyclone

Sounds pretty windy to me.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#253

Post by simonsarris »

linuxhansl wrote: post #29

What the... It seems we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage. I'm reminded of threatening tariffs to successfully derail global carbon levy on ship emissions. Meanwhile China runs away with all the clean energy tech (solar, wind, batteries, etc, etc.) while we hold to fossil fuels to save less than 200,000 jobs.

I hope you realize that China's coal and oil use for electricity is at an all-time high and increasing. They have installed more coal capacity since 2020 than the US has total. US coal usage peaked circa 2000 and has decreased for the last 2 decades.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#254

Post by epistasis »

vablings wrote: post #121
gardncl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US deploys nuclear energy at over $10/watt meanwhile solar and wind are deployed around $2/watt (for levelized cost of electricity) including battery storage which means they are deployed for roughly the same cost as natural gas (so, direct competitors). Don't let comments like this fool you, nuclear is far from being competitive with natural gas. Even in countries like south korea that can deploy nuclear the cheapes…

Nuclear is insane levels of expensive likely due to overregulation. It is important for base load power and overnight power and should always be the backing of the grid frequency. Total loss of grid frequency is much more difficult to recover from with synthetic inertia. A healthy grid should have all of the following - Nuclear base load that keeps the grid stable and pick up from low solar - Gas plants for surge pow…

Nuclear is expensive because of the large amount of high-skill labor, including welding, that's required. For less economically advanced countries, that labor is cheap. For more economically advanced countries, that labor becomes more expensive. Regulation is a red-herring being pushed as an excuse, mostly by startups that are desperate to get the next round of funding, because it plays very well to the investor class, but it's not based in reality. I ask about this all the time and even if there are some half-baked critiques of things like ALARA, nobody has a path to actually making the Nth build of a reactor cheaper from changing regulations.

Even France, which is known for having far lower construction costs than the US on big projects, and for being very good at building out their nuclear fleet in the past, is at ~$12/W with their newest round of 6 reactors. And that's before they have even started construction:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-estimate...

This is roughly the cost of the latest US nuclear reactor at Vogtle, which is viewed as unrealistically expensive energy.

And even the most optimistic plans for reducing the cost of nuclear from the Liftoff report in 2023 from DOE doesn't place regulations as having much of a role in lowering costs:

https://gain.inl.gov/content/uploads/4/2024/11/DOE-Advanced-...

There's significant political interest in having regulation be the reason that nuclear is expensive, but I find almost zero people in the nuclear industry that are able to articulate where regulations increase the cost of builds or whether there's anything that could or should be changed about the regulations.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#255

Post by epistasis »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #230
sdenton4 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it's expensive because it doesn't scale. The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them. And if we /do/ hit economies of scale, uranium availability is likely to become a problem...

> per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high Unless you are the US Navy. It probably helps that they churn out dozens of the same few cookie-cutter designs without needing permission from NIMBYs.

Those reactors were also very expensive, though, weren't they? I've heard lots of people look to them as a reason that SMRs might work, but not because the naval reactors were cheap. Plus they use uranium enriched to levels that we typically don't allow in civilian reactors...

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#256

Post by pclmulqdq »

tony_cannistra wrote: post #21

I looked into this a little because I was curious. I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. This is particularly relevant for low-altitude incursions and drones. Now, other large governments (UK) have resolved this in several ways, including the deployment of additiona…

These things are also probably really loud if you happen to have a sensitive set of sonar buoys. I'm not entirely sure how you solve that one, because putting them in deeper water would also make them less effective.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#257

Post by vablings »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #230
sdenton4 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it's expensive because it doesn't scale. The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them. And if we /do/ hit economies of scale, uranium availability is likely to become a problem...

> per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high Unless you are the US Navy. It probably helps that they churn out dozens of the same few cookie-cutter designs without needing permission from NIMBYs.

Honestly not a terrible idea. Just have your reactor on a huge barge and if it goes meltdown just drag it out into international waters and let the fish deal with it /s

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#258

Post by triceratops »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #99
tony_cannistra wrote: post #21

I looked into this a little because I was curious. I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. This is particularly relevant for low-altitude incursions and drones. Now, other large governments (UK) have resolved this in several ways, including the deployment of additiona…

> I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. Could it be that they just feel that offshore wind infra is difficult to defend militarily?

Are they shutting down offshore oil drilling too?

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#259

Post by laurencerowe »

fasterik wrote: post #229
gardncl wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment is not misleading, you're just using outdated data from 2022. Sure, happy to quibble over units. The most recent mid-2025 data is from lazard here, it echos exactly what I'm saying. Website: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... PDF of report: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... Go to page 8 of that PDF and you will see these ranges for LCOE: * Solar $3…

I didn't disagree that there is price parity for the levelized cost. There is still not price parity for levelized full system cost. If we used wind and solar for 95-100% of generation, the price would be much higher. My point is not that we can or should replace wind and solar with nuclear. It's that it is far cheaper to use a combination of nuclear, wind, and solar than it is to use 100% wind and solar.

I think it’s quite conceivable that nuclear would be cheaper for a 100% carbon free grid.

But I don’t understand how the combination of nuclear, wind and solar would be low cost. Wouldn’t you effectively have to build out enough nuclear to cover still cloudy days at which point your wind and solar is not very useful? That sounds expensive.

I suspect we won’t end up building much nuclear because we will already have built out so much wind and solar. Nuclear is a poor fit for filling gaps in generation by intermittent renewables because fuel costs are negligible so it costs the same whether you run at 50% or 100% of rated output.

To eliminate carbon emissions entirely we will need some green hydrogen for turning into aviation fuel and as chemical feedstocks. Perhaps the gas backup will eventually burn that.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#260

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

gardncl wrote: post #106
gregbot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BPA is a federal agency. The Trump administration has been very supportive of zero carbon nuclear i believe they have promised $80 billion dollars to build new nuclear plants. Staff cuts dont mean they oppose using those energy sources.

US deploys nuclear energy at over $10/watt meanwhile solar and wind are deployed around $2/watt (for levelized cost of electricity) including battery storage which means they are deployed for roughly the same cost as natural gas (so, direct competitors). Don't let comments like this fool you, nuclear is far from being competitive with natural gas. Even in countries like south korea that can deploy nuclear the cheapes…

South Korea which famously had an enormous corruption scandal coupled to their nuclear industry. Leading to jail time and a complete regulatory retake.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...

The proposed costs for the Westinghouse reactors in Poland and EPR2s in France are pretty much in line with the unthinkably expensive Vogtle costs. They haven’t even started building.

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