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Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

nytimes.com

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Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#251

Post by pdeuchler »

philipkglass wrote: post #97
freehunter wrote: post #4

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry. Westinghouse has made some bad deals, sure, but the real "blow to nuclear power" has been the massive refusal by both citizens and governments to build new plants, and the few nota…

I don't know if you have been following this saga over the past few years, but the reason that they're going bankrupt is they got several orders for new AP1000 reactors, but couldn't deliver on their planned budgets and schedules . (4 reactors under construction in China, 4 under construction in the United States, zero of them on schedule.) Was it a court injunction that put the Vogtle project behind schedule? Local…

I can't tell if your first sentence is implying that you did follow this saga over the past few years, but if so it's very strange that someone who professes to be intimate with the details here would leave out that the reason they couldn't deliver on planned budgets and schedules was massive accounting fraud, not a failure in their engineering or product management.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#252

Post by hueving »

smsm42 wrote: post #226
koolba wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This stupidly assumes that the people that dig the hole won't be able to communicate with generations after it.

The nuclear symbol is widely recognized across the planet so the only reason this would be a problem is if every one of the cultures that understands the importance of it is killed off.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#253

Post by putsteadywere »

akvadrako wrote: post #143
philipkglass wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you have been following this saga over the past few years, but the reason that they're going bankrupt is they got several orders for new AP1000 reactors, but couldn't deliver on their planned budgets and schedules . (4 reactors under construction in China, 4 under construction in the United States, zero of them on schedule.) Was it a court injunction that put the Vogtle project behind schedule? Local…

I don't know the specifics, but a big reason nuclear is more expensive is regulations. There are so many regulations it's safer per megawatt than even wind or solar. Thus your argument does not support your conclusion, since regulations come from outside the industry.

"There are so many regulations it's safer per megawatt than even wind or solar."

This surprised me! So I Googled it. Is this your source? It is Wikipedia's source. Who are the 440 people dying per trillion kWh of rooftop solar? (note: this is rooftop solar; utility solar statistics aren't included in the below source)

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

There wasn't even a single tkWh of power produced by rooftop solar in 2012. The total solar (rooftop, commercial, and thermal) energy produced in the US in 2012 was 4,327 million kWh... or half a percent of 1 tkWh... making me think that the 'deathprint' of 440 deaths per tkWh for rooftop solar in 2012 was extrapolated by taking the number of people who slipped and fell off a roof and multiplying it by 200. My guess, based on the expression "Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)", and the fact that less than 4.3 billion kWh of solar energy was produced in 2012 by rooftop solar (Wiki doesn't break out production by method), is that approximately two people have died in the quest for solar energy.

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Stat...

Further - it is too soon to tell what the 'deathprint' for any given kWh of nuclear energy is. The method of production could kill someone for some time after the kWh is consumed.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#254

Post by freehunter »

gph wrote: post #7
freehunter wrote: post #4

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry. Westinghouse has made some bad deals, sure, but the real "blow to nuclear power" has been the massive refusal by both citizens and governments to build new plants, and the few nota…

I feel like the only thing you did read was the headline... Westinghouse is a bit of a special case. There was accounting/financial fraud and they took on stupid fixed contracts that bit them in the ass when safety regulations forced them to spend more on design/construction. For as maligned as the nuclear industry is, a lot of this was self-inflicted.

The headline doesn't explain my comment of "sure Westinghouse made some bad deals". I completely acknowledge that Westinghouse is a bad company. But nuclear isn't dying just because this company is going under, there are a lot more pressures killing nuclear power.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#255

Post by Swizec »

1propionyl wrote: post #203
ben_jones wrote: post #183

Earlier 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.

You jest, but my first job[1] was back in 2005-ish for a small company[2] in Slovenia building web dashboards for Slovenia's nuclear power plant[3]. PHP and good old forms. My job was parsing the XML data and feeding it into some sort of graph component. Can't remember if they gave me a built graph component or I had to build one from scratch.

Not the kind of startup you'd hear about on HN of course.

And no, I don't know what the motivation was for the nuclear power plant to issue a RFP that involved web dashboards. Maybe upgrading their interfaces from the analog ones built in the 80's?

[1] more of an internship

[2] not quite a startup, more of a spinoff iirc

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C5%A1ko_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#256

Post by kbenson »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #243
astrodust wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far the number of nuclear plant incidents has been pretty minor especially considering how many nuclear plants are in operation. Meanwhile how many people have died in propane bottling plant explosions? In coal mining? In off-shore drilling incidents? It's not perfectly safe, not even close, but it's statistically one of the least dangerous power generation methods.

Statistically, it's very safe to be a turkey on a turkey farm until shortly before Thanksgiving. A lot of stuff that is theoretically guaranteed to be a disaster looks very safe and profitable until shortly before disaster strikes.

We all know what happens to turkeys at thanksgiving, but we don't all know what the worst, or even average case is for a nuclear accident, nor how that is affected by the type of nuclear technology. This is an argument taking advantage of people's fear and ignorance.

An appropriate response to the turkey statement along these lines is to ask where the farm is and what people it serves. There are many farms in the world where statistically, Thanksgiving makes no difference to the mortality of the Turkeys.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#257

Post by kesselvon »

enraged_camel wrote: post #157
skywhopper wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this stuff fall under Department of Energy, ie Secretary Perry? Who didn't know what the DoE did until after he was nominated?

Yep, he thought that the Department of Energy was responsible for regulating the energy sector.

And somehow that wasn't a dead-end for his confirmation

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#258

Post by kesselvon »

iamacynic wrote: post #232
killjoywashere wrote: post #5

The real concern here is making sure the existing nuclear plants have a clear glide slope toward end-of-life. Nuclear power is an extremely tight community. On the nuclear carrier I was on (powered by Westinghouse plants), there was a valve (a valve!) malfunctioning and the tech rep flown out from the company took one look at it and said "This bit's in backward". "How do you know?" "I designed it". Which means the sa…

for westinghouse to file bankruptcy less than 90 days into a new republican administration with a focus on defense, nationalism, and domestic business is a pretty obvious move to get either a bailout or absorbed into DoD or DoE. and i'm pretty sure the secretary of defense "understands" the people who run his entire nuclear fleet are sort of important, the question is, does rick perry? magic 8 ball says: reply hazy.

Westinghouse is a Japanese subsidiary now. It's basically a move to GTFO out of the nuclear power market

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#259

Post by funkymike »

smsm42 wrote: post #226
koolba wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One can at least hope that humanity's level of technology does not regress. So then there is at least the fact that the radioactivity can be detected even after the signs have long gone.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#260

Post by opo »

lostlogin wrote: post #187
opo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...That mistrust is based on historical facts What historical facts would those be? Historically nuclear has been about the safest form of mass power when looking at accidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents Anything at all related to nuclear is covered by the media orders of magnitude more than other power sources so people have an understandable perception that it is much more dangerous than the re…

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.

The original poster was talking about the possibility of human error (particularly the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station) so it was not "a little dishonest" to focus on the deaths from power sources that one could attribute to human error.

>...when the spent, toxic fuel going to be deadly for a few hundred thousand years yet.

Right now waste can and should be recycled which would reduce the amount of waste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

Soon it will be possible to use most of the waste as fuel:

"...Fast reactors can "burn" long lasting nuclear transuranic waste (TRU) waste components (actinides: reactor-grade plutonium and minor actinides), turning liabilities into assets. Another major waste component, fission products (FP), would stabilize at a lower level of radioactivity than the original natural uranium ore it was attained from in two to four centuries, rather than tens of thousands of years"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

(Funding for the integral fast reactor was killed by Bill Clinton, but there is no reason that the US or some other country couldn't fund this or any of the other 4th gen designs.)

>...That problem is so very far from solved, and it's a massive problem.

Right now nuclear waste is a very manageable problem and relatively soon the waste could be used to produce electricity if we so desire. Considering that no one of the general public has been killed from nuclear waste (and tens of thousands die each year from burning coal) why would someone consider nuclear waste a "massive problem"?

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