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Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

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Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#31

Post by vuln »

Krasnol wrote: post #10
Province1108 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We lost much of our nuclear engineering capability in the US, so in many ways contractors are "idiots" here and made many costly mistakes during construction. Many articles on this and how it lead to the Westinghouse bankruptcy. Sadly, there's only a handful of western-friendly firms in the world that can build a reactor, so hoping the expertise and lessons learned will be worthwhile for future projects. Nuclear isn'…

This "loss of nuclear engineering capability" doesn't hold up when you see reactors build by the French having the same problems: overdue and over budget. The French never stopped building reactors all over the world. "Base generation" is an outdated concept. It can be replaced by storage and grid size for example.

Do you have any examples of other energy plants that weren't nuclear, were consistently under budget and delivered before the due date?

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#32

Post by jfengel »

coldpie wrote: post #15
burlesona wrote: post #9

I feel like the fact that this plant coming online will raise the rates for Georgia electricity is basically the death-knell of nuclear power, at least in it's current form of large central power plants[1]. By comparison, solar and wind seem like classic "worse is better." They don't run all the time, but they're cheap and relatively simple, if you screw up a unit then you get no power from that one unit, but the nat…

You can't get around the fact that you need baseload and/or storage. Both are hard problems. Some locations have regional baseload solutions like hydroelectricity, but many don't. Nuclear is a solution that works anywhere, but like you say, it's expensive. Storage is similar: there are some regional solutions (pumped hydro), or a difficult and expensive general solution (chemical batteries). There's no single answer…

Gas peaker plants solve the problem, with no additional costs.

We don't have to get carbon production to zero. If we run the gas plants even as much as 10% of the time for no-sun-no-wind-flat-batteries conditions, you've still cut 90% of carbon emissions.

At that point it would be much cheaper to look elsewhere for more improvements. There's no need to invent a reason for massive new energy infrastructure. The gas plants already exist; no exotic solutions are required to give 100% continuous power supply.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#33

Post by vuln »

woeirua wrote: post #21

How much solar could they have built for the same price? Just doing some very rough calculations, they could have built enough panels to output several times as much peak power as they can with the nuclear reactors. Even including storage costs, they still could have probably built a system with more productive capacity than the nuclear reactors. This project is almost certainly the last conventional fission reactor…

Did you factor in land costs, preparing the land, lawsuits, etc in your rough calculations? How many acres would your calculation of solar panels cover?

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#34

Post by pwinnski »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #27
coldpie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that price include enough storage to heat the entire Twin Cities area (~4M people) for six continuous weeks of average -20C weather with overcast skies, where power failure means widespread death and property damage (broken pipes)? It might do, I don't know, but I'm skeptical. That's a lot of power! My gut feeling is a baseload solution is better for that kind of situation, though what I'm really advocating for…

Pump water uphill on sunny & windy days. One thing that MN doesn't lack is water.

During the long winter season, that water is largely in solid form, making it less useful for hydro-battery use.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#35

Post by throwuwu »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #27
coldpie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that price include enough storage to heat the entire Twin Cities area (~4M people) for six continuous weeks of average -20C weather with overcast skies, where power failure means widespread death and property damage (broken pipes)? It might do, I don't know, but I'm skeptical. That's a lot of power! My gut feeling is a baseload solution is better for that kind of situation, though what I'm really advocating for…

Pump water uphill on sunny & windy days. One thing that MN doesn't lack is water.

Wtf does six weeks of peak power consumption for a city look like in volume of water? Probably bigger than a city

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#36

Post by throwuwu »

Elyra wrote: post #25
slenk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries in their current form are incredibly harmful to the environment, and I think would need to be replaced more than nuclear fuel sources.

Exactly, and the reason why they're cheaper now is because it's easier to dump their externalities on developing countries with lax environmental policy, whereas nuclear has unreasonably strict safety requirements which drive up costs substantially, along with the lost expertise in the work force by pausing it for so long.

TANSTAAFL

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#37

Post by miguelazo »

So glad we finally designated the permanent repository for nuclear waste in the United State. /s

Since the waste will almost certainly not be accepted by another state, I would like to know where it will be stored in Georgia. I have some guesses, based on the demographics of adjacent populations, but perhaps the many HN nuclear boosters have some specifics?

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#38

Post by causi »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #29
burlesona wrote: post #9

I feel like the fact that this plant coming online will raise the rates for Georgia electricity is basically the death-knell of nuclear power, at least in it's current form of large central power plants[1]. By comparison, solar and wind seem like classic "worse is better." They don't run all the time, but they're cheap and relatively simple, if you screw up a unit then you get no power from that one unit, but the nat…

One further point to add on decentralization: a nuclear power plant necessarily requires a powerful state to protect the plant and supply chain and avoid proliferation risks. This powerful state has other side effects. From a libertarian perspective you cannot have a weak state and safe nuclear power (or rather, this is uncertain), while wind and solar present no such risk. I looked at the numbers for this Georgia pl…

avoid proliferation risks

Proliferation risks seem like something we pretend to care about much more than we actually do. India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea all developed nuclear weapons with little more than complaining from the US.

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#39

Post by mikeyouse »

vuln wrote: post #31
Krasnol wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "loss of nuclear engineering capability" doesn't hold up when you see reactors build by the French having the same problems: overdue and over budget. The French never stopped building reactors all over the world. "Base generation" is an outdated concept. It can be replaced by storage and grid size for example.

Do you have any examples of other energy plants that weren't nuclear, were consistently under budget and delivered before the due date?

It's entirely routine in the natural gas world;

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170518005288/en/Pan...

> After the installation of 1.4 million linear feet of electrical cable, 113,161 feet of pipe, 890 tons of steel and expending more than 1.6 million man hours, Panda Power Funds’ 778-megawatt “Stonewall” generating station has achieved commercial operations. The Loudoun County, Virginia power facility was finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and initial tests show the plant is exceeding performance guarantees for both power output and efficiency. The plant is capable of continuously supplying the power needs of up to 778,000 homes in the Northern Virginia/District of Columbia metropolitan area.

Lest you believe the PR page after the fact -- They fundraised in 2013/2014, started site prep in November 2014, broke ground in August 2015 with a target commercial launch date of June 1, 2017 and Bechtel finished commissioning in May 2017.

https://web.archive.org/web/20151015014525/http://www.power-...

https://www.power-technology.com/projects/stonewall-power-pr...

Re: Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

#40

Post by hefferbub »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #3

As much as I'd love more nuclear power on the grid, this project cost over double its initial bid and is actually raising rates for GA utility customers... I can't tell from the story whether "nuclear is hard" or if "contractors are idiots" here. Reactor was supposed to open in 2016 - it's very hard to cheer for a 7-year delay and a 140% cost overrun.

And don’t forget, this was the “revolutionary” AP1 design that was supposed to fix all the bad things about the previous revolutionary designs.
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