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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

#221

Post by effie »

theultdev wrote: post #139
ceejayoz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland is hardly a low-regulation country, especially compared to Idaho.

It is when it comes to nuclear regulation. The NRC effectively makes nuclear impossible in the US.

Commercial nuclear should be very hard, almost impossible. This seems to be the correct conclusion after all the accidents and the reasons for them - incompetent, self-serving management pushing dangerous commands on the personnel (Chernobyl,Three Mile Island) or normalizing bad architecture and security plans (Fukushima). Better expensive energy than another major nuclear accident.

Nuclear energy can be done safely as long as it is run by competent nuclear energy physicists/technicians with real authority, so they can and will shut down stupid ideas such as operating outside parameters because economy/boss said so. This seems to rule out commercial organizations. NRC is more benevolent than that, maybe they should actually be even tougher.

We should allow only competent states to build and operate nuclear plants, so science and rules take precedence to money and boss boot-licking.

This may push nuclear energy into unprofitable territory, depending on the market conditions, infrastructure, water and people resources. Which is fine by me - nuclear energy in some areas is so important for grid stability we should have it even if it is unprofitable.

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

#222

Post by patmorgan23 »

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…

Nuclear can load follow and be quite dispatch able. Nuclear is variable (though not as nimble as NAT Gas)

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

#223

Post by Retric »

tomatocracy wrote: post #189
Retric wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 du…

Yea, UK solar is still offsetting natural gas so it’s viable.

One issue for significantly higher UK solar production is they use more electricity in the winter. January 2023 was 26 TWh where July 2022 was only 20 TWh which is the opposite of solar’s peaks. https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr... (Older reports on bottom)

They can import from France, but France also has higher demand in the winter: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107089/electricity-cons...

It’s only when you’re far enough south to see significant summer AC demand that it flips.

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

#224

Post by jvanderbot »

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?

Yeah, we landed a van sized nuclear powered rover - lowered from an autonomous hover rocket! - on Mars for 3 billion.

But I guess there's no permitting process on Mars.

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

#225

Post by credit_guy »

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…

> David believes SMRs are getting more attention and investment than warranted by their current capabilities and progress

Yes, but most of that investment is private. In this country, people are free to choose how to invest their money. A lot of people see nuclear as a promising clean energy source, and they put their money where their mouth is.

Nuclear gets some government subsidies, but much less than solar and wind have received over the last few decades, and continue to receive.

All the other criticisms are so unfair that it's loughable: of course SMR's did not prove themselves: none was built yet. How can that be a valid criticism? Of course their capabilities are mostly theoretical at this stage, for the reason that they are entirely theoretical. Reminder: none was built yet. Of course they have yet to deliver on their promise benefits. Why? None was built yet.

By this logic we should never contemplate building anything new, because something that was not built has yet to deliver on their promised benefits, has mostly theoretical capabilities and did not prove itself yet. Duh.

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

#226

Post by downvotetruth »

threeseed wrote: post #42
downvotetruth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used the word inhabitable. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I have edited to mean uninhabitable. e.g. places like outback Australia where it reaches 50C and is a long distance from water.

Those places would be better described by unhabitable given the boundary is rather approximate and not fixed.

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

#227

Post by pornel »

jes5199 wrote: post #145

I think it's time to give up on nuclear. Solar+Wind+Batteries continue to get cheaper. Nuclear doesn't seem to have a detectible learning curve at all

It's also why I'm doubly sceptical of fusion, and really annoyed when it's presented as a solution we'll have "soon". Even if a breakthrough was invented tomorrow that made fusion actually work, it would still require building a massive number of fusion plants, and building them cheaper than renewables+batteries.

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

#228

Post by theultdev »

effie wrote: post #221
theultdev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is when it comes to nuclear regulation. The NRC effectively makes nuclear impossible in the US.

Commercial nuclear should be very hard, almost impossible. This seems to be the correct conclusion after all the accidents and the reasons for them - incompetent, self-serving management pushing dangerous commands on the personnel (Chernobyl,Three Mile Island) or normalizing bad architecture and security plans (Fukushima). Better expensive energy than another major nuclear accident. Nuclear energy can be done safely…

Nuclear is by far the safest form of energy and is developed safely in many countries without the strict overregulation that the US has.

Pointing to extreme events with outdated designs has nothing to do with this.

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

#229

Post by pfdietz »

Retric wrote: post #190
konschubert wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someth…

Using batteries for seasonal storage is crazy. E-fuels like hydrogen would be much more economical for that storage use case.

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

#230

Post by pfdietz »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #157
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…

> And this is a loss, because we need non-variable energy sources to augment wind/solar/tidal. We need dispatchable energy to complement renewables. Nuclear is on the complete opposite side of the dispatchability equation with high CAPEX and low OPEX. Like the cancellation exemplifies, even running at 100% nuclear is wholly uncompetitive. Being dispatchable means vastly lowering the utilization rate.

Exactly. The people who say nuclear is needed to complement renewables are just not thinking it through.
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