Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 332 posts

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

#201

Post by angiosperm »

proee wrote: post #152

Musk claims we can run the entire US off a 100 square mile solar arry + battery storage. Does it make economic sense to just start working on this as a country, or is this still too cost prohibitive? Seems like a system that you could upgrade over time as the tech gets better. What are the downsides of such a concept?

The right place to stop reading is right after "Musk claims".

Somebody told him a 100-mile-square array, i.e. 10,000 square miles, would suffice. Of course you build much smaller farms close to where the power is needed, instead.

And, of course, solar farms are being built today. We should build them faster.

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

#202

Post by iso8859-1 »

BasilPH wrote: post #107

David Roberts from Volts talked about why he thinks SRMs are overhyped last week. Here's the transcript[^0], but his main points are _(I fed the whole transcript to GPT-4-turbo model for this)_: - SMRs are not yet delivering on their promised benefits and cost savings due to challenges in scaling and production. - The SMR concept is yet to prove itself with efficient and cost-effective factory-made parts and repeatab…

Similar points were raised on the Decouple podcast by James Krellenstein . https://www.decouplemedia.org/podcast/episode/3195740d/small...

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

#203

Post by p_l »

p_l wrote: post #29
kagakuninja wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can't edit anymore, but for reference for those who probably downvote out of misunderstanding.

Light water moderated reactors aren't a pathway to making nuclear weapons, because they require that you have the ability to enrich uranium separately just to start.

I.e. a light-water moderated reactor is dependant either on capability to enrich fuel and/or use unenriched fuel (for enrichment or plutonium production) - which are core capabilities for making fission weapons.

This is why they have been favoured on non-proliferation (and often "control") grounds - they are dependant on fuel from groups that do have fission weapon production pipeline or at least parts of it.

To work from natural uranium, without artificial enrichment, you need to use either heavy-water moderation or graphite moderation, or more exotic designs - but then you can both use unenriched uranium to produce power as well as produce plutonium or other useful things, and a distillation pipeline provides for both light-water reactor fuel and weapon fissile material.

Details of how subsidies went are way more complex, and both renewables and nuclear and fossil fuels had areas heavily subsidized.

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

#204

Post by petre »

danbruc wrote: post #138
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?

And why six? Why not build one and then see?

One still needs to build the structures with the water pools and everything else. If one bothers to buy the land, contract construction workers, lease heavy machinery, they could as well build 6x as big and spread the fixed costs over that. NuScale was designed to work with up to 12 modules.

It's too bad it didn't work out commercially. Their other projects will probably get cancelled as well if they face the same price increases.

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

#205

Post by petre »

briffle wrote: post #154
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…

These are to be mass produced, and shipped to the site. So really, the first few will have cost overruns and delays, but then they should be able to re-use all the tooling, processes, transportation equipment, etc, to get the rest going.

Only the reactor vessel which is probably one of the most expensive parts of the entire project (21%), along with the turbine (18%). Construction, engineering services, structures are probably where the bulk of cost overruns are happening.

https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/

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

#206

Post by Gravityloss »

cinntaile wrote: post #183
Gravityloss wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true, there have been successes.

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

#207

Post by petre »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #178
bitter_old_man_ wrote: post #123

I'm so glad I left the nuclear industry thirteen years ago! I worked in nuclear power for about eight years. I felt like I was taking crazy pills. There's a strong vein of cognitive dissonance running through the industry relating to its economic viability. Nuclear power has always been the most expensive available energy production method. So every time I hear talking heads say "nuclear power is the only power produ…

"It's like listening to silicon valley people rave about AI or humanoid robots or driverless cars." That's a very interesting statement to make, given what's happening right now with AI, humanoid robots and driverless cars.

Sure it is. When reality sets in, the dissapointment is still going to be a lot less worse than with SMRs being a viable solution for climate change.

It's really sad to see this project being cancelled and I'm highly skeptical that the one in Romania is going to materialize.

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

#208

Post by ibejoeb »

hotpotamus wrote: post #108
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?

> How is it that we've become so bad at building? What industry would you prefer your children to go into? Construction or just about anything else?

Why wouldn't you want your children to go into construction? I can't imagine what the prejudice against building things would be, especially essential things like energy infrastructure.

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

#209

Post by smt88 »

lamontcg wrote: post #177
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?

> How is it that we've become so bad at building? MBAs. Same ones infecting the company that you most likely work for. Something smaller like stamping out PV panels or windmills for farms of them is much more manageable. Anything big and complex invites too much graft. And while you can complain about expensive regulations, that's just another graft called regulatory capture. And they let you blame it on the hippies,…

As a software developer, I can tell you that MBAs aren't necessary for massive cost overruns.

People are bad as estimating the cost of technical work when unknown-unknowns are involved, and the problem becomes worse when there's a massive incentive to underestimate to win the contract when you know the government will pay for all of your overruns.

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

#210

Post by hotpotamus »

ibejoeb wrote: post #208
hotpotamus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it that we've become so bad at building? What industry would you prefer your children to go into? Construction or just about anything else?

Why wouldn't you want your children to go into construction? I can't imagine what the prejudice against building things would be, especially essential things like energy infrastructure.

Because of my direct experience in both construction and software development jobs.
Post reply on HN