Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 332 posts

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

#291

Post by nickpp »

effie wrote: post #266
nickpp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> The black swan big disasters

We had 2 huge ones. They resulted in a few thousand deaths and some uninhabitable land. Nothing compared to pollution damage.

> accepted by society [...] socially acceptable

I'd rather decide based on reason. And I doubt many people find millions of deaths due to pollution every year acceptable. They just don't know they had a choice. Choice stolen from them by rabid anti-nuclear fear mongering.

> I don't think climate change is a civilization-ending danger

Yet you think a few black swan nuclear disasters are? Can I borrow your crystal ball? You are pretty sure about the future but most experts I read disagree: nuclear experts consider it extremely safe while climate experts warn of dire futures.

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

#292

Post by konschubert »

Retric wrote: post #286
konschubert wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what you're saying works. But only for short term outlier events, not storing power from summer for winter.

We can’t predict seasonal demand that accurately so trying to use a finite reserve for anything but outlier events is risky. Plan for a large deficit and the infrastructure you create to fill that reserve is sitting around in the off season reducing the size of your deficit. Plan for a small one and your estimate may be wildly inaccurate. What’s left for “seasonal storage” is to cover gaps in production from extreme…

If you use Ammonia as fuel, you can ship it worldwide in an energy crunch.

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

#293

Post by _aavaa_ »

credit_guy wrote: post #289
_aavaa_ wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still, NuScale has produced more than one million pages of documentation to get their SMR design approved by the NRC. One can imagine they also put a lot of thinking in the economic viability of the project. Just because the pile of sh*t is massive doesn’t mean there’s a pony somewhere underneath it.

You mean the docs they sent the NRC? That's not a pile of shit. The NRC is one of the most conservative regulatory bodies anywhere in the world, you can't send them garbage. Oklo tried that stunt and fell flat on their face [1]. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/large-lwr/col/auro...

No, I mean the economics. Oklo's issue was, and I quote, that they "repeatedly failed to provide substantive information [...] on the maximum credible accident (MCA) for the Aurora design, the safety classification of structures, systems, and components (SSCs), and other issues needed for the NRC staff to establish a schedule and complete its technical review."

The NRC denied them, without prejudice might I add, a license based on an evaluation of the technical merits and safety of the reactor, not on its economics.

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

#294

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #261
SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Weird way to interpret my reply but you do you.

I didn’t miss those things and I’m really agreeing with you but leaning more heavily into the solar since it’s not nearly as controversial as nuclear and the “land issue” is, in fact, very often cited as the reason that solar won’t scale but it’s a actually a thinly veiled argument for NIMBYism.

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

#295

Post by effie »

nickpp wrote: post #291
effie wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> The black swan big disasters We had 2 huge ones. They resulted in a few thousand deaths and some uninhabitable land. Nothing compared to pollution damage. > accepted by society [...] socially acceptable I'd rather decide based on reason. And I doubt many people find millions of deaths due to pollution every year acceptable. They just don't know they had a choice. Choice stolen from them by rabid anti-nuclear fear m…

I did not say black swan nuclear disasters are a civilization-ending danger. I said people are afraid of them much more than of climate change.

Nuclear experts consider it safe because of existing regulations and because it is hard for sketchy company to launch a new plant.

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

#296

Post by effie »

firebat45 wrote: post #284
nickpp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When discussing nuclear vs coal, it's always funny to point out that coal power plants produce several times as much radiation as nuclear power plants.

Coal plants emit more radionuclides into atmosphere, but nuclear plants produce more radionuclides overall (burnt fuel). This coal nuclear pollution is however still very small to the point of irrelevance, the real pollution problem is with CO2, dust and mining coal.

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

#297

Post by credit_guy »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #293
credit_guy wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the docs they sent the NRC? That's not a pile of shit. The NRC is one of the most conservative regulatory bodies anywhere in the world, you can't send them garbage. Oklo tried that stunt and fell flat on their face [1]. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/large-lwr/col/auro...

No, I mean the economics. Oklo's issue was, and I quote, that they "repeatedly failed to provide substantive information [...] on the maximum credible accident (MCA) for the Aurora design, the safety classification of structures, systems, and components (SSCs), and other issues needed for the NRC staff to establish a schedule and complete its technical review." The NRC denied them, without prejudice might I add, a li…

In that case you are right. I don't know what NuScale's economic argument was, and there's a (pretty good) chance that it will not work out.

But, imagine that whenever you want a new car, the car company sent a crew to your house and builds the car in your backyard. All the parts needed will be shipped to your address, and workbenches, tools, machinery, too. They put the car together, paint it, dry it, and voila, the car is yours. Would it surprise you if it was 10 times more expensive than if it came from an assembly line?

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

#298

Post by tstrimple »

silexia wrote: post #262

Nuclear is way overregulated. It is the safest form of power generation by far now, but oil funded environmental groups have demonized it.

Ah the classic “Nuclear power is safe! We just need to get rid of these pesky regulations ensuring safety so we can make it cost competitive!”

It’s like you’ve never seen companies cutting literally whatever corners they can get away with every chance they think they can get away with it.

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

#299

Post by _aavaa_ »

credit_guy wrote: post #297
_aavaa_ wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean the economics. Oklo's issue was, and I quote, that they "repeatedly failed to provide substantive information [...] on the maximum credible accident (MCA) for the Aurora design, the safety classification of structures, systems, and components (SSCs), and other issues needed for the NRC staff to establish a schedule and complete its technical review." The NRC denied them, without prejudice might I add, a li…

In that case you are right. I don't know what NuScale's economic argument was, and there's a (pretty good) chance that it will not work out. But, imagine that whenever you want a new car, the car company sent a crew to your house and builds the car in your backyard. All the parts needed will be shipped to your address, and workbenches, tools, machinery, too. They put the car together, paint it, dry it, and voila, the…

Again, I am not disagreeing with you, building nuclear plants on a conveyer belt would allow you to decrease the per unit price as you make more of it. My issue with the approach is that the prices for those first (100) units, even before the inevitable order of magnitude cost overruns, results in more expensive electricity than the one off projects they aim to replace. This is coupled by the twin problems of a) alternative tech which is constantly benefiting from wrights law, and b) a lot of competition in the field fighting over a small number of reactors.

Not much to do about a), so if this technology were to succeed, the government would have to play kingmaker and pick only one company such that they actually go through enough units to drop down the price curve. This might work domestically, but I foresee political difficulties when trying to convince other countries to abandon their homegrown tech in favour of yours.

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

#300

Post by cushpush »

pembrook wrote: post #276
ohyes wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sur…

You're right, however nearly every single point was also true 50 years ago, when we built many of these things around the globe (and many are still going, pumping out the cleanest energy the world has ever seen). The real difference between then and now, is willingness to take on risk. Developed countries of today are essentially victims of the innovators dilemma. We're fat and happy and complacent, and that's why we…

  the cleanest energy the world has ever seen
I think this is false now thanks to fusion demonstrations, and maybe false because of things like solar and wind, although those do cost petroleum investment in equipment.
Post reply on HN