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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

#261

Post by bryanlarsen »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #244
bryanlarsen wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear and solar also can dual-use most of their footprint. For nuclear, the keep-out zone becomes a de facto nature preserve. And a pretty good one at that, since the keep out is enforced well. Solar installations can be grazed. Alternatively, bifacial panels can be installed vertically east-west and the strips between can be farmed. Or the panels can be placed on rooftops. Or used to shade parking lots. Et cetera.

Honestly the parking lots should be the absolute first stop on the search for places to put solar. Literally all parking lots can and should be filled with solar. Nature preserves should be the absolute last place to install it. Why on earth would we displace wildlife and thus rile up the nature conservationists when the parking lot real estate has already displaced the wildlife that was there? The benefits are two-f…

I wrote "For nuclear, the keep-out zone becomes a de facto nature preserve."

You missed "nuclear keep-out zone". You missed "becomes". And you missed 'de facto".

Please read comments properly before going on a rant.

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

#263

Post by credit_guy »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #238
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?

Because of either ignoring, willfully or otherwise, scaling laws. The relationship between price and size of most plants takes the form of: Price(size) = fixed + K*size^b Where b is almost always less than 1, can go as low as 0.6. So building 6 small reactors will be more expensive than building a single reactor 6 times the size. This is the difference between vertically scaling (bigger thing) vs horizontal scaling (…

Your equation is correct except when it's not.

We build so few gigawatt-size reactors. In the US only 4 came online since 1990. For most of the construction crew of such a reactor, that job is the first of that type in their career, and the last. They get trained on the job, and that (ultra-expensive) training is then never used again.

Contrast that with the building of naval reactors, which are essentially SMRs. The US builds about 1 or 2 per year. In factories. The workers there participate in the building of numerous reactors during their careers. For each reactor, the majority of the crew has already done the job at least once before, and they know they will continue using their skills for many years to come.

The cost of naval reactors is classified, but one could infer from this congressional report ([1], page 6) that an A1B reactor cost about $400 MM in 2011 money. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $560 MM today.

A single A1B reactor is equivalent to about 3 NuScale modules, so 2 A1Bs would be equivalent to the 6-module package that was canceled here, because its cost ballooned to more than 9 billion. The US Navy is able to procure them for less than $1.2 BN.

So, no, the economics don't fundamentally doom SMRs. It's just that you can expect the numbers to start working out only after you enter serial production. The first-of-its-kind costs are always high.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-...

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

#264

Post by ohyes »

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?

Like, imagine something maybe 1000x as complicated as your car, that has to work reliably 100% of the time for 50+ years .

Now imagine that we don’t have any practice building one of these things because people have been scared of building them for approximately 40 years, so the last person to make one is 70-90.

Now imagine that the failure case for this thing is a disaster that causes an expensive cleanup in the surrounding area, so no one will insure the project against that unless you pay an astronomical amount. Now add in that you’re using a “new” design that’s never been tested, and you have to follow a bunch of government regulations that didn’t even exist when the last comparable reactor was built.

Stack up all these things and you get a lot of uncertainty about project scope, uncertainty about financing, and uncertainty about whether it will work.

This means that to ballpark what it was cost, it will necessarily be expensive because of the risk everyone is taking in producing it.

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

#265

Post by jdechko »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #136
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…

This problem isn't confined to nuclear energy either. Just about the only thing our society is still able to build quickly and cheaply are roads.

Not exactly. I work as a project manager in the transportation field, and I can tell you that inflation has doubled (or more) the cost of several of my projects in the past few years. Most of the increases can be attributed to rising costs, and not necessarily scope changes.

Combined with limited funding, the projects continue to get delayed.

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

#266

Post by effie »

nickpp wrote: post #258
effie wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme events and subsequent changes are why it can be the "safest form of energy". After Chernobyl and Fukushima, regulation did change in those countries as well.

There must be a name for the fallacy when one is focused on avoiding a single risk while completely ignoring much larger and closer dangers. Nuclear energy has a minuscule list of total casualties throughout history. Casualties per megawatt produced? It's practically zero . At the same time burning hydrocarbons kills every single day through pollution. It kills millions yearly. Burning coal even spews radioactive ash…

The black swan big disasters have to be taken seriously too.

A nuclear accident creates a big and costly disaster suddenly. People don't like sudden big problems but can live with continuously growing ones.

Burning hydrocarbons is much more acceptable in that regard. CO2/dust pollution is accepted by society, because it is continuous and dilutes well. Killing millions is socially acceptable when it happens randomly all over the planet. Radioactive pollution due to coal burning is/should be negligible, most is(should be) filtered out in the smokestack scrubbers.

I don't like fossil power plants, but they are much easier to build and more acceptable to people than nuclear ones. That's why regulation and security have to be high with nuclear, to make it acceptable to most of society.

> civilization-ending danger

I don't think climate change is a civilization-ending danger in the coming decades. It already creates political problems, migration. If we keep pumping CO2 then maybe in hundred years.

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

#267

Post by simbolit »

nickpp wrote: post #260
simbolit wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nuclear power plant is the literal last thing I would want looser regulation on.

Don't you think we should regulate more the energy industries with most deaths per produced megawatt?!

If you are referring to coal, the answer isn't regulation, it's ending burning it completely.

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

#268

Post by _aavaa_ »

credit_guy wrote: post #263
_aavaa_ wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of either ignoring, willfully or otherwise, scaling laws. The relationship between price and size of most plants takes the form of: Price(size) = fixed + K*size^b Where b is almost always less than 1, can go as low as 0.6. So building 6 small reactors will be more expensive than building a single reactor 6 times the size. This is the difference between vertically scaling (bigger thing) vs horizontal scaling (…

Your equation is correct except when it's not. We build so few gigawatt-size reactors. In the US only 4 came online since 1990. For most of the construction crew of such a reactor, that job is the first of that type in their career, and the last. They get trained on the job, and that (ultra-expensive) training is then never used again. Contrast that with the building of naval reactors, which are essentially SMRs. The…

> For most of the construction crew of such a reactor, that job is the first of that type in their career, and the last. They get trained on the job, and that (ultra-expensive) training is then never used again.

I am not disagreeing with the idea of Wright's law. The US Navy very likely benefits from it, but NuScale does not, and possibly never will.

However, a) this does include other prices such site licenses and environmental assessment.

b) Wrights law models a decrease with every doubling in units produced. At 1-2 a year, we're looking at a very long time to get several doublings in. NuScale meanwhile has 0 doublings under their belt. And NuScale is not alone in this field, there are dozens of companies, each one promising the same thing (SMNRs). The Navy has a single source for their reactors, NuScale has lots of competition and has to share the market, leading each of company to get even fewer reactors built per year.

c) Someone has to pay those early costs. For the Navy, there are not many alternatives; there are no PV or Wind aircraft carriers. It's nuclear or oil. The same is not true about power generation.

d) As you say, each navy reactor is about 3 NuScale modules. Why does the Navy not build 3 smaller modules and get even better scaling? Why not 30? I argue they don't because of the costs associated with horizontal scaling. NuScale meanwhile doesn't have a power budget they need to hit, they are trying to produce baseload power, and the bigger they make them the more economies of scale the nuclear reactor benefits from.

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

#269

Post by extraduder_ire »

jvanderbot wrote: post #224
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.

There's already RTGs in loads of places on earth. (a few from the USSR are still missing, IIRC)

They're not super efficient either, and ones on the last two american rovers use plutonium that still has to be made in a reactor.

Still, I'd love an RTG for powering or heating my home. Even if I needed batteries to even out the demand on the couple thousand watts one can make.

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

#270

Post by effie »

simbolit wrote: post #267
nickpp wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think we should regulate more the energy industries with most deaths per produced megawatt?!

If you are referring to coal, the answer isn't regulation, it's ending burning it completely.

The only way to end burning is government action, i.e. regulation.
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