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First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

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Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#221

Post by pfdietz »

smegger001 wrote: post #213
pfdietz wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decay products of uranium are not well contained at uranium mines. They are in massive tailing piles, just as the radioactive elements in coal end up in ash. Less gets said about these mine-related radioactive elements because they are typically in other countries, often countries where the people have darker skins.

Yes the radioactive decay products of the naturally occurring ore already in the ground naturally are still in the tailings. But they were there already before. With the removal of the uranium the net radioactive material left would be lower the the initial levels though no?

The daughter products will eventually decay away, but it will take a very long time. In particular, radium has a half life of 1600 years.

In any case, these are exactly the same daughters as from the decay of uranium in coal, so the argument you are making there is equivalent to an argument that could be made about coal ash.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#222

Post by fomine3 »

gggmaster wrote: post #181
wkat4242 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human deaths aren't the only measure of safety. Pollution into the ocean from Fukushima was huge, unfortunately. Just because it's not as bad as Chernobyl (which was as worst-case as it gets) doesn't mean it's safe.

Why this is downvoted? Propaganda from Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

Thank you for CCP propaganda

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#223

Post by pfdietz »

azinman2 wrote: post #220
jakewins wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is dope and we should build tons of it, but it ain’t our only hope; plenty of other alternatives to build at the same time. Eg hydro, overprovisioning solar or wind, transmission to remove local weather variations, coupling wind and solar, demand flexibility. Fervo just started its first full-scale new-gen geothermal plant, for instance; 24/7 firm power. You might like David Roberts interview with Tim Latimer…

Every serious analysis in green energy has never been able to make it work without nuclear.

This is a baldfaced lie (unless you are engaging a No True Scotsman dismissal of the large number of studies that say otherwise.)

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#224

Post by pfdietz »

weaksauce wrote: post #188
elihu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumped hydro can work anywhere that has hills. It's just a lot cheaper in some locations than others, due to favorable geography. Water use just has to keep up with evaporation on average. I'm not sure why building a reservoir needs to be an "ecological nightnmare" except in the sense that it's a sudden change to an environment.

I was lumping dam infrastructure into the "other gravity batteries" which does cause ecological nightmare situations. if they only meant the fringe gravity batteries like block elevators and the like then it's not as bad a thing but you still require a large amount of fresh water which is an issue in a lot of places too.

Pumped storage, even in a desert, consumes at least an order of magnitude less water than a nuclear power plant with the same energy output.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#225

Post by azinman2 »

pfdietz wrote: post #223
azinman2 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every serious analysis in green energy has never been able to make it work without nuclear.

This is a baldfaced lie (unless you are engaging a No True Scotsman dismissal of the large number of studies that say otherwise.)

https://youtu.be/bkIK4Xo1GRM

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#226

Post by Manuel_D »

pfdietz wrote: post #109
Manuel_D wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are non-intermittent kilowatt hours, though (and the maintenance that does need to happen is known in advance). One energy demand at peak production is saturated, intermittent sources become a lot more expensive since storage needs to be provisioned. Some markets are fast approaching this scenario: https://reneweconomy.com.au/california-duck-curve-now-a-cany...

Once cheap intermittent sources have in the moment saturated the market, nuclear cannot charge what it needs to pay off the very large capital cost. Nuclear is then dependent on making that money during brief spikes, but storage and demand dispatch will be flattening those spikes. Nuclear will have nowhere to hide.

Once cheap intermittent sources have saturated the market during peak production, further construction of intermittent sources will do nothing to displace the other 50% of demand that will continue to be fulfilled by fossil fuels. And then we either keep burning fossil fuels and wait until a storage breakthrough happens, or we start building non-intermittent sources of decarbonized energy.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#227

Post by pfdietz »

Kon5ole wrote: post #154
laiewjrliawej wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why I left the nuclear industry. Nuclear power is the safest form of power production we've ever produced (more people are killed per MWh installing and repairing wind turbines than in the nuclear industry) but it has never been anywhere near cost effective and no nuclear project has ever been completed anywhere near on-schedule. Every time I hear someone talk about how the world needs tons of new nuclear…

>>Nuclear power is the safest form of power production we've ever produced. This is a common claim but it abuses statistics. By looking only at the one metric (deaths) it ignores the enormous enterprise required to keep nuclear as safe as it has been. No other power source needs anything like it.

It also ignores the statistical value of lives. From a policy point of view, a life saved is worth about $9 M in the US. The putative lives saved by nuclear (vs. renewables) cost much more than this. If one accepts that this was worthwhile, it also implies the NRC is not regulating nuclear sufficiently, since additional improvements (like filter containment venting systems) would pay off in expected lives saved.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#228

Post by pfdietz »

nicoburns wrote: post #177
Manuel_D wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a trivial amount of storage for a trivial amount of money. Do the math, don't hand wave. Sure thing! Right now we have an annual battery production rate of 500 GWh globally [1]. If we're going to use global battery production figures, we need to use global electricity consumption, which is about 70 TWh per day [2]. How much storage we'll need varies, depending on the mix of solar and wind. Estimates I can find…

> Production of batteries may grow in the future, To me it seems reasonable to assume that not only will battery consumption grow, it will grow exponentially (over the medium term - say the next 10 - 50 years). Rationale: - There is high demand - The production process is well established technology that can be easily replicated - There are no obvious limits to growth in the medium term (In the short-term there are r…

And even ignoring grid storage, battery production must increase dramatically for electric vehicles.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#229

Post by pfdietz »

Manuel_D wrote: post #226
pfdietz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once cheap intermittent sources have in the moment saturated the market, nuclear cannot charge what it needs to pay off the very large capital cost. Nuclear is then dependent on making that money during brief spikes, but storage and demand dispatch will be flattening those spikes. Nuclear will have nowhere to hide.

Once cheap intermittent sources have saturated the market during peak production, further construction of intermittent sources will do nothing to displace the other 50% of demand that will continue to be fulfilled by fossil fuels. And then we either keep burning fossil fuels and wait until a storage breakthrough happens, or we start building non-intermittent sources of decarbonized energy.

Or we just raise taxes on the fossil fuels until they stop being burned. This will have to be done anyway (along with CO2 tariffs to isolate countries that refuse to do so.)

After that, storage gets rolled out. Nuclear never makes sense, and eventually the existing NPPs go away.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#230

Post by pfdietz »

epistasis wrote: post #121
aschearer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if climage change is a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?[1] [1]: 2009 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/What_if_it%27...

The alternative isn't carbon emission, the alternative is far cheaper wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, battery storage (both lithium and many others) The only question is if nuclear can offer something compelling to keep it in the mix. We have roughly 100 1GW of nuclear reactors in the US that are reaching end of life, and 90% of those communities would like to see replacements to keep the jobs in town. However, nobod…

The only reason Vogtle was built was because of the fixed price contract Westinghouse signed. Just as in the first nuclear buildout in the 1960s, fixed price contracts revealed themselves to be ruinous for the NPP builder.

No utility going forward is going to sign a contract that puts them on the hook for cost escalation (which turned out to be this contract too, once Westinghouse went bankrupt.)

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