The two new Westinghouse Vogtle pants are too expensive, at $14 billion for 2.5GW of power. If you purchased $14 billion of Tesla powerpacks, you could get 35GWh of storage--enough storage to supply 2.5GW of power for 14 hours....
Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
221–230 of 398 posts
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
There most be an increasing amount of hardware/software with egregious business value (hundred million+) with a decreasing number of surviving/available designers etc. Rationally if these people were required to fix or maintain such systems their yearly value would be in the millions wouldn't it? For some reason I get the feeling that such people are not paid in the millions. Maybe double or triple a traditional sala…
Sounds like an opportunity for some enterprising Valley folk to disrupt nuclear! I can't wait for Nucly, the only reactor control panel for iOS and Android.
AirIMBY lets you rent out your back yard as a nuclear waste disposal site.
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a relevant metric. If there's one thing the world has plenty of, it's area.
It's very relevant, because a) we need to reserve enough area for people to live, and for growing the food we need, and hopefully for a few parks as well, and b) transmission and storage of electricity across long distances is not trivial. It isn't feasible to, for example, cover the entire surface area of Africa with solar panels and use that energy to power the rest of the world.
That entire thinking is flat out wrong - even if we were 100% solar the idea we won't have any land left to live on is insane [1]. Solar will get more efficient and more dense, to what peak we don't know but even at current efficiency we could more than power the world in unused and unlivable land.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/map-shows-solar-panels-to-pow...
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We've had not one but several nuclear disasters in the past several decades and in each case the sky hasn't come crashing down. Unless of course you're one of the people who lived in the nuclear exclusion zones created by Chernobyl and Fukushima, in which case, yes, everything you own and possess, very potentially including your long-term health, were destroyed in a matter of hours. Those residents can never go back…
I would argue that if you compared the risk profiles of fossil fuels vs nuclear power you'd come to the conclusion that nuclear has and continues to have, by a wide margin, the safest profile of ANY energy source except maybe wind and solar. I'm only excluding solar because I don't think we fully understand all of the safety impact of the construction of large windmills all over the windiest parts of the planet nor d…
>if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it.
Ding ding ding. This is always the caveat tucked away in nuclear discussions. "It will be fine, as long as everything is going fine." Things don't always go fine. When they don't go fine at a coal plant, things are bad, but they are recoverable; they can be cleaned up, and that land can be repurposed, even if its prior purpose is no longer feasible due to structural changes or pollution. There is no permanent, decades-long exclusion zone.
>I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on)
Not going to nitpick your made-up numbers, but the difference is that this is a bigger thing "than I want to take this risk". This is taking the risk that the area become a nuclear wasteland (from radiation, not explosion) for the next 100 years, an area that no person can enter without risking their immediate health just by being present. If you get too close to the hotspots without the right gear and monitoring, you will die quickly.
Are other things dirty? Do other things have tradeoffs and downsides? Is there even some risk that nearby property will be damaged or destroyed? Sure. I'm not trying to say that other industrial accidents are no big deal. But nuclear is the only thing that can, almost instantly, take a big chunk of land and permanently and irrevocably irradiate it for 100 years (and, that's just the most severe risk with nuclear power generation; there are others that haven't been discussed).
You can say that greenhouse gasses have the same potential non-local impact, which is fine, but quite the inverse of nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions take decades to effect this impact and are measurable and controllable. We know it's coming and can do things to stop it.
As far as I know, the most catastrophic failure at a conventional plant would impact local air quality temporarily. The most catastrophic failure at a nuclear plant can impact everything about the surrounding area (for loose values of "surrounding"; Chernobyl created a 1000 sq mile no-go zone) for generations. Those failures can and do happen overnight.
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> E.g. Germany's rush towards decommissioning after Fukushima has had a massively detrimental effect in Europe for this reason. This says that German emissions from electricity generation were down, but that was offset by heating increases from a cold winter and emissions from increased good transportation: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-reiterates-g20-...
Two problems with this: 1) you can not look at Germany in isolation. You need to take into account the import/export market. Decommissioning nuclear plants at a faster schedule substantially altered that, which affected other countries dependency on fossil fuels. 2) Germany is to their credit aggressively trying to get rid of its fossil fuel dependency, but the decommissioning of nuclear meant they needed to offset a…
This seems to indicate that German electricity exports are actually up:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germa...
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a little dishonest to state a casualty rate when the spent, toxic fuel going to be deadly for a few hundred thousand years yet. That problem is so very far from solved, and it's a massive problem.
> That problem is so very far from solved, and it's a massive problem. I thought the problem was solved: 1. Dig hole. 2. Put it in hole. 3. Guard hole.
There's a fourth dimension to it - remembering why the hole needs to be guarded for 10000 years. And if you imagine trying to have a conversation with a human from 10000 years ago, you'll realize how non-trivial that is - no language, culture or knowledge capture system would survive for this long intact. There is a fascinating body of research about how to solve this problem (with no definite answer). E.g. see https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/how-t...
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you install your own brake pads on your car? This goes for a lot of parts on the car you may drive. Yes, it's just your passengers and the possible victims of an accident, but there are a lot of things that can go wrong on your car. Is your trust in the auto-repair industry similarly 'catastrophically destroyed'?
The last time I did that was in 1978 on a Rabbit - with no experience whatever. It was a piece of cake and they worked fine. I did the timing belt, too. I sure as heck wouldn't try it on my 1999 Golf. I can't even change the headlight bulb.
It's not that hard, just a little awkward because you can't really see how it screws in while you're doing it because the light assembly is sealed except for the bulb hole.
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ones I know, ex-Navy, are living pretty high on the hog.
There most be an increasing amount of hardware/software with egregious business value (hundred million+) with a decreasing number of surviving/available designers etc. Rationally if these people were required to fix or maintain such systems their yearly value would be in the millions wouldn't it? For some reason I get the feeling that such people are not paid in the millions. Maybe double or triple a traditional sala…
> egregious business value (hundred million+)
the cost of shutting down San Onofre is $4B+
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a little dishonest to state a casualty rate when the spent, toxic fuel going to be deadly for a few hundred thousand years yet. That problem is so very far from solved, and it's a massive problem.
> That problem is so very far from solved, and it's a massive problem. I thought the problem was solved: 1. Dig hole. 2. Put it in hole. 3. Guard hole.
The main problem is nobody can agree where to dig the hole.
Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> falsified fire safety data In a situation where something that severe (and malicious) is found, what would even be the short-term response? Are the management of the plant completely replaced?
I would hope someone went to jail for such an extremely dangerous form of fraud.
Well, falsification of certificates seems to be quite common by nuclear subcontractors, and depending of the number of alternative shops able to do (kind of) the same thing (minus or plus correct quality...) those who falsify stuff might get away with a mere slap on the wrist and safety authorities telling them that it is bad, don't do it again.