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First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

arstechnica.com

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Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#181

Post by hotpotamus »

theultdev wrote: post #143
hotpotamus wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Plumber-Salary-per-Mon... A basketball player can make quite a bit of money playing basketball if they're exceptional. Looks like the national average for a plumber is about $60K/year. Most people on this forum would scoff at that if someone offered them that. It's actually about as much as my uncle, a heavy diesel mechanic, made before his untimely death. It's about what my fath…

60k/yr can support a family in a lot of areas. Most people in my area make around that. SWE is a bubble and can't really be applied to the rest of the workforce. A SWE would scoff at any other job because of this. We do have builders, there is overregulation that stops us from building. It's not the lack of workers.

My brother was a contractor too and could barely make it on that with no kids. He fairly recently became an engineer (not the software kind) and was stunned to learn that he could take days off and still get paid. He was also quite happy to have health insurance. There may not be a lack of workers, but there's one less who will ever go back because of the nature of the job.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#182

Post by Gravityloss »

pradn wrote: post #131

It looks like the biggest problem with nuclear is not the safety or whatnot, it's just that as a civilization, we just can't build them without cost overruns and massive delays. And this is a loss, because we need non-variable energy sources to augment wind/solar/tidal. Perhaps the other way to solve the energy transition is to lean heavily into mass storage of variable energy sources. If you have enough energy stora…

As a civilization we have been capable of that multiple times in multiple places. Those technologies are not lost. In fact there are now new reactor projects that are simplified from older ones that could be built potentially fast.

People generalize a lot! There are a large variety of nuclear reactors. Even construction projects of the same design vary somewhat.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#183

Post by cinntaile »

Gravityloss wrote: post #182
pradn wrote: post #131

It looks like the biggest problem with nuclear is not the safety or whatnot, it's just that as a civilization, we just can't build them without cost overruns and massive delays. And this is a loss, because we need non-variable energy sources to augment wind/solar/tidal. Perhaps the other way to solve the energy transition is to lean heavily into mass storage of variable energy sources. If you have enough energy stora…

As a civilization we have been capable of that multiple times in multiple places. Those technologies are not lost. In fact there are now new reactor projects that are simplified from older ones that could be built potentially fast. People generalize a lot! There are a large variety of nuclear reactors. Even construction projects of the same design vary somewhat.

Potentially being the key word here. They don't seem to succeed when going from theory to reality so far.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#184

Post by ZeroGravitas »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #137
pradn wrote: post #131

It looks like the biggest problem with nuclear is not the safety or whatnot, it's just that as a civilization, we just can't build them without cost overruns and massive delays. And this is a loss, because we need non-variable energy sources to augment wind/solar/tidal. Perhaps the other way to solve the energy transition is to lean heavily into mass storage of variable energy sources. If you have enough energy stora…

Just a point of clarity, we need demand resources, which means variable at our command vs not variable or variable based on wind/solar input out of our control. The economically viable mass storage options (i.e pumped storage) are basically all deployed. Batteries are getting there but they still need some shenanigans in the ancillary market where they get paid for not running for complex reasons to make the economic…

A bit more clarity: right now, and for the rest of this decade just rolling out a lot more renewables will be the cheapest way to replace carbon generating sources which are right now burning and spewing carbon into the atmosphere to generate electricity around the globe.

So, there is a long term need, in order to reach a goal of 100% carbon free electricity (generally set for about 2035) for more on-demand resources (including responsive demand), but it is not the most pressing concern right now. And even when it is, it'll account for a small fraction of the total, like 10% or so.

(Luckily, batteries are gettting rolled out already because they have positive economic value in various niches, like in cars, frequency response, avoiding congestion and network upgrades so the ramp up is looking good)

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#185

Post by philipkglass »

8bitsrule wrote: post #5

Nothing has changed since the early days. A helluva complicated and expensive way to boil water. "At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy … This is expensive power, not cheap power as the public has been led to believe." — C. G. Suits, Director of Research, General Electric, who was operating the Hanford reactors, 1951. ( Ref: Power from the Atom - An Appra…

The Internet Archive has many old issues of Nucleonics available. Here's the full article you reference:

"Power from the Atom - An Appraisal"

https://archive.org/details/sim_nucleonics_1951-02_8_2/page/...

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#186

Post by 6510 »

cma wrote: post #173
6510 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've used wind for 5000 years when it was available. It just takes a bit more time to wear out the machines if they sit there waiting most of the time. Someone in Iran told me these are about 3500 years old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H48TV-Wb9NQ

Wrong link?

thats so weird, the link is from the previous video in the same tab. spa's are a terrible idea :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugw7-BwsmI

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#187

Post by sumtechguy »

hotpotamus wrote: post #180
sumtechguy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with one of the major HVAC companies in that area. There was not one dude under 50 in that building. 'we can not even get people to apply and we are throwing money at them'. That was 10 years ago. That may have changed by now. But probably not much.

How much money were they throwing? Enough to make you consider HVAC work?

Me personally no. I have 20+ years doing what I do. I am paid decently for that. But fresh out of high school and willing to do the apprentice/mentor thing I probably would have considered it very compelling. It was 2-3x what I made starting what I do now.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#188

Post by Tanoc »

Laaas wrote: post #103

> The decision to cancel the project followed an update from NuScale this year regarding the cost of building the reactors, which had soared to $9.3 billion from $5.3 billion because of rising interest rates and inflation. Even $5.3B seems very expensive. For reference, (the new Finnish) Olkiluoto-3 was €11 billion, for 1600 MW. The article says 6 * 77 MW = 539 MW! How is it that we've become so bad at building?

Investment has become a fast guaranteed returns at all costs kind of thing. That means that while it would cost nine years to build a nuclear reactor and twenty five to break even, the reactor could operate for a century because they're required to maintain it due to how dangerous it is. Meanwhile a gas plant can be built in two, break even in five, and operates for twenty years before falling apart from neglect because a gas explosion doesn't create nuclear fallout. This is also why coal fired plants are still running despite external pressures to render them extinct; the owners know the ROI and like the short term projections.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#189

Post by tomatocracy »

Retric wrote: post #174
tomatocracy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that's for already built solar PV, though it still seems extremely low to me so I'm curious where you are seeing this. For reference on new build, at the UK government's most recently completed CfD auction (which happened in September), the solar PV bids accepted were at £47/MWh, CPI indexed and specified in 2012 prices: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-dif...

Not bad considering the UK is a dark rainy hellhole for solar. NYC is 40.7’ North, Toronto Canada is North 43.7’, London is 51.5’ North and that’s the southern part of the UK. Edit: To be clear I don’t think battery backed solar is a good fit for the UK today, I’m just surprised how close it is.

Yes, though the fact that it's 2012 prices and indexed to CPI does a lot - that's roughly £65/MWh in current prices. And despite all that it's still cheaper than offshore wind.

You can also look at Spain - the CfDs aren't really comparable since the way CfDs are used there is different but LCOE is probably in the 40s-50s EUR/MWh for new build solar PV. But there are now meaningful curtailment issues in some places due to grid capacity there so developers will probably be working to higher numbers.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#190

Post by Retric »

konschubert wrote: post #175
Retric wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are already viable paired with solar. You see solar power purchase agreements in the 1.5 to 2c / kWh range and you can directly use that energy around 1/2 the time. Recharging and discharging batteries isn’t 100% efficient but it’s close. Current numbers are lower, but in 2022 you could use LFP for ~5,000 discharge cycles and pay ~480$/kWh of capacity or ~9.6 c/kWh. Inverters etc last longer than the batter…

I think your math is realistic. We have to keep in mind that 6.9 isn’t yet the end user rate after grid fees, but still. There is also a ton of potential in demand shaping by offering hourly prices to customers. The place where batteries fail is long-term, seasonal storage. The price per charge is still low, but an asset that takes 5000 years to amortise (one charge cycle per year) is not a competitive investment. So…

I’m not convinced we want significant seasonal storage as a separate system because depth of discharge impacts battery lifespan.

So rather than having a singe battery doing nothing for 364 days a year and getting used one day you have a battery bank which gets discharged slightly more 1 day a year and recovers that deficit over some time period.

For redundancy reasons you want excess generation capacity should something happen which would most of the time allow for a full charge soon afterwards.

PS: individual wind locations also tend to get more power on specific time of the year which can offset seasonal issues.

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