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Google to back three new nuclear projects

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Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#291

Post by epistasis »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #226
epistasis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if nuclear has always been a field where charlatans proliferate, but it's certainly true of the past few decades. The Summer plant in South Carolina was completely fraudulent, sending the power executives to jail for their fraud. Billions spent and nothing to show except a hole in the ground. Vogtle was slightly better in that they powered through to construction completion so that nobody cared about the…

It's likely because the NRC is the most insanely regulatory body of the US government. Ostensibly, this is a good thing, nuclear power, meltdowns, radioactive waste, etc. But really I cannot emphasize enough how strict and overbearing they are. "Oh that 12V backup battery pack needs to be replaced? Better get the same one from the same manufacturer" "They aren't in business anymore but we have this 12V battery the fi…

I don't think that's an accurate depiction of NRC for builds like at Georgia's Vogtle. Even in California, entire reactors have been installed backwards and the regulatory problems were not the big problem.

Given that France's builds in both Finland and France itself have been similarly disastrous as the US builds, I don't think the NRC seems to be the likely cause. And France is much better at building big things than the US is, their infrastructure costs are a fraction of US costs. IMHO there's something deeper to the lack of success of nuclear as a technology. It's a mainframe trying to compete in the cloud era.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#292

Post by epistasis »

Animats wrote: post #223
perihelions wrote: post #2

Here's a better article: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/google_signs_another_... > "Elementl didn't respond to questions by press time. Its public materials offer little clarity on its actual operations—aside from broad claims about providing "turn-key project development, financing and ownership solutions customized to meet our customers' needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit." > "The nuclear d…

Oh, it's the NuScale guy again. NuScale got far enough to get approval to build a test reactor at the Idaho Reactor Testing Station, which is in Outer Nowhere for good reasons. But they never got enough funding to build it. The trouble with most of these small modular reactor schemes is that their big pitch is mostly "we don't need a big, strong, containment vessel because ... reasons." There's no inherent problem in…

> But they never got enough funding to build it.

It's worth examining why they never went forward with builds. In 2023 their cost estimates for power went from a manageable $55/MWh to a barely-managable $93/MWh. And that was before all the additional cost increases that are typical for first projects.

They were unable to paint a story that was financially compelling.

Nuclear's problems are not TMI, it's Summer, and other failed builds. The government will insure catastrophic damages. It will not insure against construction cost overruns, and those may not kill people but they kill companies dead.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#293

Post by epistasis »

cryptonector wrote: post #163
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average wholesale prices in California is nothing special. The costs come from the wildfires and a derelict grid requiring large infrastructure upgrades.

That's all? California has the economic might to not have that problem.

I'm not sure excatly what you mean by "that problem," but economic might means having the ability to maintain massive infrastructure in sparsely populated, difficult terrain. It means paying massive amounts of money to inspect, clear brush, and replace 100 year old equipment piecemeal.

Additionally, that economic might means that we have very high labor costs, and the ways of fixing things that are cheapest may be different for California than other parts of the country. But the utility is incentivized to spend as much as possible on these efforts (they take a fixed percentage of costs as profit), and the regulators have no clue what's going on. So proposing a method that's the cheapest elsewhere will get a rubber stamp.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#294

Post by epistasis »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #257
barbazoo wrote: post #86

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927371 > Ontario set to begin construction of Canada's first mini nuclear power plant

4x300 MWe for 20.9B CAD for this vs Vogtle 3 and 4 are 2x 1117 MWe for 36.8B USD. So the starting stated price is only 20% cheaper than that train wreck. Will love to see how high this number gets given it's a first of its kind.

It will likely be more expensive than Vogtle, smaller reactors are just more expensive and they go big because it's more cost effective.

What's slightly different is the financial risk profile. Failing on a 1x 300WM $5B project is slightly easier than a $18B 1GW project.

My personal hypothesis is that nuclear decisions are made almost entirely along financial lines, instead of the safety concerns that dominate most debate about nuclear.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#295

Post by epistasis »

christina97 wrote: post #256
bryanlarsen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The press release claims it is. But other jurisdictions can build 1GW of solar + battery for $2B.

Keep in mind that 1 GW solar does not equate to 1 GW firm production.

In the US, the equivalent to 1GW nuclear would be something like 4GW solar + 18GWh storage. Though it's not fully equivalent because solar + storage is far more flexible and would make a lot more money on the grid, since it can shift power to when it's needed rather than being a constant base of power.

At old NREL prices that would be $4.3B for the solar, and $7.4B for the storage, but the lifetimes don't match up with nuclear either. You'd need to replace the storage after 15-20 years, and the solar after 30 years, if the nuclear plant is going to get a lifetime extension to 50 or 60 years. But 15 years from now, prices for batteries and solar will be far far far lower, we just have no clue how much.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#296

Post by gcheong »

bhelkey wrote: post #284
gcheong wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By sheer numbers, yes, but the kinds of birds killed are different. Larger, slower reproducing birds such as eagles, condors, etc. are more at risk being killed by wind turbines because deaths in those groups have a much larger effect whereas cats kill a much larger number of birds but they tend to be smaller, faster reproducing species and as such their numbers overall aren't as much at risk.

Cats are one of five categories with >100x the rate of wind turbine bird deaths [1]. If your position is that all five of these factors don't impact larger birds, the onus is on you to back that claim up. [1] https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...

I’m not saying they don’t but I am saying looking at sheer numbers of deaths as a comparison is misleading because it’s the details of what kinds of deaths that make the difference. Your linked article even mentions this: “ While the relationship between wind turbines and different types of bird populations, particularly apex birds, is understudied, there is some evidence that turbines can hurt those populations.”

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#297

Post by lostlogin »

jenadine wrote: post #272
lostlogin wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn’t call Fukushima a large disaster? The financial cost is at $180 billion US. That seems large.

According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan , Japan had about 300 TWh of nuclear for a year at the time of the accident. So $180 billion amount to $0.6/kWh over a year if I'm not mistaken. Not cheap. But if you spread over a few decades then that's reasonable.

> $0.6/kWh

I must be messing something up, as that’s about 3-4x what I pay for electricity and seems a lot?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#298

Post by _aavaa_ »

epistasis wrote: post #295
christina97 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that 1 GW solar does not equate to 1 GW firm production.

In the US, the equivalent to 1GW nuclear would be something like 4GW solar + 18GWh storage. Though it's not fully equivalent because solar + storage is far more flexible and would make a lot more money on the grid, since it can shift power to when it's needed rather than being a constant base of power. At old NREL prices that would be $4.3B for the solar, and $7.4B for the storage, but the lifetimes don't match up wi…

In addition to this, the nuclear plant also needs both major component replacements and refurbishments over it's life, and then decommissioning at end of life, neither of which are cheap or accounted for in the sticker price.

Do you know if there's enough of a market yet for battery recycling at utility scale, and if they pay you to get the old battery?

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#299

Post by epistasis »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #298
epistasis wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the equivalent to 1GW nuclear would be something like 4GW solar + 18GWh storage. Though it's not fully equivalent because solar + storage is far more flexible and would make a lot more money on the grid, since it can shift power to when it's needed rather than being a constant base of power. At old NREL prices that would be $4.3B for the solar, and $7.4B for the storage, but the lifetimes don't match up wi…

In addition to this, the nuclear plant also needs both major component replacements and refurbishments over it's life, and then decommissioning at end of life, neither of which are cheap or accounted for in the sticker price. Do you know if there's enough of a market yet for battery recycling at utility scale, and if they pay you to get the old battery?

I know that there are several battery recycling startups, and their biggest hurdle is lack of batteries to recycle. Also that the amount recovered is high enough, and manufacturing progress a fast enough, that a recycled battery will have greater capacity than the original battery.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#300

Post by themaninthedark »

Animats wrote: post #268
themaninthedark wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you see that the containment at Fukushima was too small? I thought that most of the release was done because there was not enough storage of contaminated water.

Fukishima containment.[1] The top of the containment vessel is shown in yellow, just above the red cylinder containing the reactor. The containment vessel was a heavy shell, but not much larger than the reactor. It had to contain any steam overpressure resulting from an accident, and didn't have enough volume that the steam pressure would decrease, and maybe condense. The surrounding building wasn't a pressure vessel…

Thanks!
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