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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

#21

Post by threeseed »

gravitronic wrote: post #18
scythe wrote: post #2

>With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened, and backers started pulling out of the project. I would expect this to continue limiting investment in nuclear, since the outlook for renewables just keeps getting better, and the stumbling blocks are increasingly jejune, like we can't build powerlines fast enough.

A harder stumbling block compared to nuclear is land mass requirements per Mwh: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source

There are many parts of the world that are uninhabitable because it is too hot.

The perfect location for solar installations.

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

#22

Post by kagakuninja »

jmclnx wrote: post #16

>The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project no longer had enough additional utility partners I cannot help but to think the Fossil Fuel Industry had their hands in this.

No, it turns out that SMRs are not yet economically viable, just as us skeptics have been claiming. SMRs are continually hyped by the pro-nuclear crowd online. They aren't cost efficient vs renewables.

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

#23

Post by kagakuninja »

vlovich123 wrote: post #14
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…

It’s important to remember that research and commercial funding for nuclear reactors has basically frozen for the better part of 60 years, which means that fission tech hasn’t been following Wright’s law and we’re still stuck with designs from 60 years ago. Things have heated up a bit more recently but this stuff has a long lead time (+ think of all the people who didn’t go into nuclear because of the lack of funding…

All the major world powers dumped tons of money into researching light water fission, precisely because it is dual use technology for making weapons.

What has not had billions of government dollars in finding were renewables.

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

#24

Post by baybal2 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8
bradbot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to transport wind / solar energy across the country via high powered transmission lines?

No, because of physics you lose more power the longer distance it travels. It is also very expensive and difficult to build a network that can move power great distances to where it's needed given how dense the areas that need it are (major cities).

[dead]

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

#25

Post by cesarb »

monero-xmr wrote: post #4
scythe wrote: post #2

>With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened, and backers started pulling out of the project. I would expect this to continue limiting investment in nuclear, since the outlook for renewables just keeps getting better, and the stumbling blocks are increasingly jejune, like we can't build powerlines fast enough.

I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. I am hopeful that hydrogen can be generated in the desert and moved by hydrogen-truck. Or grid-scale batteries actually exist someday. But if we write off nuclear, a lot of coal and natural gas will be burned.

> I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind.

You are making it harder by adding that "cleanly" requirement, because the simple answer is going to be "natural gas". Unlike coal or nuclear, natural gas power plants are fast to start and stop (hydroelectric is even faster, but depends on favorable geography), so they can be left powered down (using no fuel) until they're necessary; and both overbuilding wind and solar, and spreading them over a wider area, can reduce the amount of time where that natural gas (or hydroelectric) backup is necessary.

By requiring a perfect solution (100% clean), you are excluding the 90% solution which is already possible, and which can be incrementally enhanced to get closer and closer to that 100% goal (by adding more wind and solar, by strengthening the interconnections so the generation is spread over a wider area, by sprinkling a bit of storage like batteries or reversible hydroelectric, and even by dynamically reducing consumption when there's a generation shortage).

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

#26

Post by [deleted] »

jmclnx wrote: post #16

>The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project no longer had enough additional utility partners I cannot help but to think the Fossil Fuel Industry had their hands in this.

[deleted]

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

#27

Post by [deleted] »

pfdietz wrote: post #3

This was entirely foreseeable. Notes from the Feb. 2023 meeting of the Idaho Falls Power Board (one of the utilities in UAMPS, and the place where the reactors would have been built.) https://www.idahofallsidaho.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minute ... NuScale still needed to get costs down by $700 M to reach the promised $89/MWh. Without that, it would be $105/MWh. This is also after federal subsidies. "GM Prairie said…

[deleted]

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by p_l »

kagakuninja wrote: post #23
vlovich123 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s important to remember that research and commercial funding for nuclear reactors has basically frozen for the better part of 60 years, which means that fission tech hasn’t been following Wright’s law and we’re still stuck with designs from 60 years ago. Things have heated up a bit more recently but this stuff has a long lead time (+ think of all the people who didn’t go into nuclear because of the lack of funding…

All the major world powers dumped tons of money into researching light water fission, precisely because it is dual use technology for making weapons. What has not had billions of government dollars in finding were renewables.

Lots was dumped into known low-effectiveness light water fission precisely because it is not a viable path for making weapons.

There are many more efficient ways of running nuclear power, especially ones that do not involve either needing enrichement of fuel nor throwing away majority of still usable fuel - but despite NPT, they are blocked politically by nuclear-haves.

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

#30

Post by bobthepanda »

cesarb wrote: post #25
monero-xmr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. I am hopeful that hydrogen can be generated in the desert and moved by hydrogen-truck. Or grid-scale batteries actually exist someday. But if we write off nuclear, a lot of coal and natural gas will be burned.

> I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. You are making it harder by adding that "cleanly" requirement, because the simple answer is going to be "natural gas". Unlike coal or nuclear, natural gas power plants are fast to start and stop (hydroelectric is even faster, but depends on favorable geography), so they can be left powered down (using no fuel)…

Reversible hydro is actually pretty possible in much of the world, particularly the US, because all you need is something bowl-shaped at a high elevation. Pumped hydro for the most part needs storage measured in hours or days, and something like the size of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam is overkill.

It's also more advantageous than regular hydro, because it does not need to be in the path of flowing water, so you avoid issues with silting up, lack of suitable locations, it's much less environmentally destructive, etc.

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