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Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

nytimes.com

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Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#121

Post by hansjorg »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #83
bgentry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is not an argument against nuclear power, but an argument against the very complicated reactor designs that are in widespread use. Because they start with an inherently unsafe design, they can only be made safe with many layers of protective measures. Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. On a personal note, I grew up about 10-15 miles north of San Onofre, and I don't think many folks had an idea…

> Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. I have a fundamental mistrust of the industry and our government's ability to properly regulate it. That mistrust is based on historical facts. Even with newer designs, I think human error and regulatory capture is too dangerous to make nuclear viable.

I share your mistrust, but why not let nuclear reactors be run as non-profits by e.g. energy institutes at universities?

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#122

Post by LordKano »

ptero wrote: post #62
LordKano wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year, I interviewed with one of the companies that was born by Westinghouse shedding units a couple of decades ago and they still do this kind of thing. If a Naval unit has an issue, they'll attempt to reproduce it and develop a solution at a remote location. If they can't, they'll send an engineer across the planet to evaluate and fix it. They do this even for not "critical" systems. I was impressed at that lev…

I may be misreading your message, but this approach seems to be an example of rational, good engineering. If a system is broken in a faraway place it is best to analyze it and develop a fix in a well equipped lab convenient for experts to work in. Once the solution is known, deploy and validate it, ideally remotely or by shipping components, not by sending your experts on site. Sending an expert to a remote site or a…

I can see how my statement was unclear. I'm going to go back and edit it for clarity.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#123

Post by smsm42 »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #83
bgentry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is not an argument against nuclear power, but an argument against the very complicated reactor designs that are in widespread use. Because they start with an inherently unsafe design, they can only be made safe with many layers of protective measures. Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. On a personal note, I grew up about 10-15 miles north of San Onofre, and I don't think many folks had an idea…

> Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. I have a fundamental mistrust of the industry and our government's ability to properly regulate it. That mistrust is based on historical facts. Even with newer designs, I think human error and regulatory capture is too dangerous to make nuclear viable.

Every technology is subject to human error and inherently dangerous. In fact we have many technologies that are way more dangerous to humans than nuclear - cars, chemical plants, pharmaceuticals, etc. There is no rational reason to single out nuclear technologies as being in need of unachievable absolute perfection when we are fine (not ideal, but also not so bad that it's not worth it) with many dangerous ones the way they are. I think it has more to do with irrational fears than rational risk assessments.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#124

Post by tonyedgecombe »

nabla9 wrote: post #60

Westinghouse had severe technical problems with AP1000 and it's not alone. French nuclear reactor builder Areva was restructured after they could not get their new EPR reactors ready on time. Their flagship project Olkiluoto 3 is nine years late and several billions of euros over budget. Chinese are building reactors as fast as they can. They are buying reactors designs from all main manufacturers. There are 21 react…

Calder Hall in the UK was only three weeks late, opening in 1956. I wonder why we find it more difficult now, is it more thorough standards perhaps?

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#125

Post by killjoywashere »

cmdrfred wrote: post #107
sqeaky wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is shame, because it could just fix so many of our energy problems.

It's the only viable fix we have currently, and if I were elected god king of a nation I would push initiatives to build not only enough capacity with atomic power to meet demand but excess to keep costs very low. People are worried about automation, the nation that can cheaply power automated factories and server farms in the future will prosper.

Solar and wind have no catastrophic downside, and storage is a tractable problem. A chronically small, grey-haired workforce that the population depends on both to power their lives and prevent catastrophe makes that workforce too powerful. It becomes a governance problem. I highly recommend The Dictator's Handbook for more insight on this.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#126

Post by seanmcdirmid »

barkingcat wrote: post #2

There was massive financial fraud at Westinghouse. Even though the nuclear industry is in a downturn, the troubles at Westinghouse are self inflicted - Toshiba bought them, but found out almost all of the unit's profits are misreported, leading to them spending money on "nothing" basically. The unit earned no money and was threatening to sink Toshiba the entire keiretsu. This is Toshiba trying to save itself by closi…

It was the acquisition of an acquisition, really meta if you ask me. On its own, Toshiba acquiring Westinghouse was fine, but when Westinghouse acquired CB&I, it all went to hell.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#127

Post by jandrese »

hackuser wrote: post #16
freehunter wrote: post #4

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry. Westinghouse has made some bad deals, sure, but the real "blow to nuclear power" has been the massive refusal by both citizens and governments to build new plants, and the few nota…

> nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry It's interesting that the fossil fuels do far more harm, but nuclear is what everyone fears. (In fairness, nuclear problems do far more harm locally to the plant.)

Nuclear disasters are far more spectacular than the slow choking death from coal.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#128

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #83
bgentry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is not an argument against nuclear power, but an argument against the very complicated reactor designs that are in widespread use. Because they start with an inherently unsafe design, they can only be made safe with many layers of protective measures. Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. On a personal note, I grew up about 10-15 miles north of San Onofre, and I don't think many folks had an idea…

> Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. I have a fundamental mistrust of the industry and our government's ability to properly regulate it. That mistrust is based on historical facts. Even with newer designs, I think human error and regulatory capture is too dangerous to make nuclear viable.

[deleted]

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#129

Post by derefr »

ptero wrote: post #62
LordKano wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year, I interviewed with one of the companies that was born by Westinghouse shedding units a couple of decades ago and they still do this kind of thing. If a Naval unit has an issue, they'll attempt to reproduce it and develop a solution at a remote location. If they can't, they'll send an engineer across the planet to evaluate and fix it. They do this even for not "critical" systems. I was impressed at that lev…

I may be misreading your message, but this approach seems to be an example of rational, good engineering. If a system is broken in a faraway place it is best to analyze it and develop a fix in a well equipped lab convenient for experts to work in. Once the solution is known, deploy and validate it, ideally remotely or by shipping components, not by sending your experts on site. Sending an expert to a remote site or a…

I think you are misreading; my reading of the parent post is that their last paragraph has the meaning "the push to lower military spending will remove the ability to afford the current process, which is bad, because the current process works great."

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#130

Post by opo »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #83
bgentry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is not an argument against nuclear power, but an argument against the very complicated reactor designs that are in widespread use. Because they start with an inherently unsafe design, they can only be made safe with many layers of protective measures. Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. On a personal note, I grew up about 10-15 miles north of San Onofre, and I don't think many folks had an idea…

> Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues. I have a fundamental mistrust of the industry and our government's ability to properly regulate it. That mistrust is based on historical facts. Even with newer designs, I think human error and regulatory capture is too dangerous to make nuclear viable.

>...That mistrust is based on historical facts

What historical facts would those be? Historically nuclear has been about the safest form of mass power when looking at accidents:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

Anything at all related to nuclear is covered by the media orders of magnitude more than other power sources so people have an understandable perception that it is much more dangerous than the reality. A recent example would be the evacuation at the Oroville dam - almost 200,000 people were forcibly evacuated since the worst case failure scenario would have have been a tidal wave of water 30 feet high rushing down stream. This made the news for maybe a day. Can you imagine the type of coverage the media would have given if 200,000 people had to be evacuated near a nuclear power plant?

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/12/us/california-oroville-dam-fai...

NASA has estimated that using nuclear power has saved an estimated 1.8 million lives that would have been lost if the power has been replaced by coal/gas: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

(And yes, I know the people who oppose nuclear power usually will say they don't like coal and natural gas either, but we are going to need a predictable, reliable form of base load power for a long time. One of these three ways of generating electricity has much less health consequences than the other.)

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