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First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

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Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#331

Post by Retric »

dragonwriter wrote: post #329
Retric wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average car in the US is 12.2 years old. To offset cars purchased yesterday someone needs to be driving a 24.4 year old car to average 12.2 years. As to electric demand, “The average miles driven per year is 13,489 in 2021.” Efficiency varies, at say 4 miles per kWh that’s 3,372 kW per year, we’re talking roughly 0.38 kW bump that to 0.4kW per car * all 762,883 EV’s sold in 2022 and your up to 305 MW nationwide. Mean…

> Average car in the US is 12.2 years old. To offset cars purchased yesterday someone needs to be driving a 24.4 year old car to average 12.2 years. 12.2 was a year ago [0], 12.5 now [1], but you could also get to that with 9 at 13.9 years for each one today, instead of one at 25. [0] https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera... [1] https://fortune.com/2023/05/15/average-age-of-cars-on-u-s-ro...

The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast, or to randomly pairing things off which doesn’t tell us anything.

If we pair the newest with oldest car and work to the middle things don’t quite work due to antiques, the pandemic, and increasing production, but it’s close enough for 25 years to be a safe estimate.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#332

Post by pfdietz »

coldpie wrote: post #31
justrealist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we could decarbonize the entire US power grid for what we spent on COVID relief/stimulus? That seems like a good deal, even without economies of scale...

Yup. The Georgia plant seems expensive until you remember it cost half of what Twitter did.

"Cheaper than twitter" is a canonical example of damning with faint praise.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#333

Post by dragonwriter »

Retric wrote: post #331
dragonwriter wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Average car in the US is 12.2 years old. To offset cars purchased yesterday someone needs to be driving a 24.4 year old car to average 12.2 years. 12.2 was a year ago [0], 12.5 now [1], but you could also get to that with 9 at 13.9 years for each one today, instead of one at 25. [0] https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera... [1] https://fortune.com/2023/05/15/average-age-of-cars-on-u-s-ro...

The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast, or to randomly pairing things off which doesn’t tell us anything. If we pair the newest with oldest car and work to the middle things don’t quite work due to antiques, the pandemic, and increasing production, but it’s close enough for 25 years to be a safe estimate.

> The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast.

Its not at all consistent, and the reason the average age has gone up is supply chain issues driving costs up and sales down for new cars.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#334

Post by _hypx »

pfdietz wrote: post #309
_hypx wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pick one reactor design and make dozens of them. That will be much cheaper than building a bespoke reactor type every time.

Again, this has not been demonstrated. Nuclear in France showed negative experience effects.

A lot of that is just anti-nuclear propaganda. Nuclear in France does not have major problems.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#335

Post by Manuel_D »

Retric wrote: post #314
Manuel_D wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The estimate of 12 hours of storage was one of the more optimistic ones. It's not just day/night cycles there's also weather that results in long term fluctuations in output. Some of the estimates call for weeks of storage. Energy conservation is likely not going to be feasible as more and more transportation gets electrified, as gas heating is replaced with electric, and industrial processes like smelting are decarb…

Estimates for weeks of storage are made by people who don’t understand the fundamental cost optimization going on. More production costs X which reduces the need for batteries by Y, as long as X > Y you build more production even if most of it’s output is unnecessary. Also 16% of global electricity comes from hydroelectric generation, we really don’t need that many batteries. Actual optimized energy storage is on the…

2-6 hours is nowhere near enough to offset daily fluctuations, let alone seasonal fluctuations. Overproduction only gets you so far, unless this proposal also involves transoceanic HVDC cables. Hydropower is not exactly the same thing as storage: you can stop releasing water and build up the reservoir, but you cannot pump water up river. Even just 6 hours of storage -which would not be sufficient even with several factors of overproduction - is 15,000 GWh of storage to satisfy present global electricity use.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#336

Post by cauch »

JakeFromTexas wrote: post #307
cauch wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you miss my point. "hundreds of reactor in operation for decades" is NOTHING. These plants have a large number of differences, and are located and operated often very differently. At the end, you have something like "10 plants operated for ~10 years under conditions A", "10 plants operated for ~15 years under conditions B", ... SIX! Six reactors were the site of a military battle and ended up sustaining damage…

How do you reconcile this kind of thinking with driving a car?

Are you seriously thinking that someone is incapable to drive a car if they are not incorrectly convinced that an incorrect math computation is correct?

The large majority of things in life is "impossible to statistically prove". I had no proof that I will not burn my toast for breakfast this morning. Yet I had breakfast without problem AND I did not pretend that "since I've used this toaster 5 times and did not burn a toast, it implies that burning a toast will never occur" (this sentence is incorrect: the observations are compatible with the fact that my setting is very good and reduce the risk of burning the toast very low, but also compatible with another realistic hypothesis: my toaster burn a toast about 1 time over 10, and so far I was just "lucky").

But why would I not make a toast or take my car? I just don't know if it will work or not, but I also don't know if it will not work or yes. You cannot say "if you are not sure of X, you should act as if non-X is sure", because if you set Y=non-X, you will say "if you are not sure of Y, you should act as if non-Y is sure", and you end up saying you should both act as if both X and non-X are sure.

Nobody here is saying nuclear is not a solution (I mean: if you think I'm saying that, you are dead wrong). But it is tiring to see pro-nuclear people making pseudo-scientific claims to entertain their own belief (belief that may turn out to be right). If you are so confident in your belief, just say so: "I know we cannot properly tell that nuclear is 'safer' than X or Y, it does not make any sense to do so, but yet I believe it is still a good option. You are free to disagree with me, but you also have no ground to pretend it is 'less safe' than X or Y, so your position is as legitimate as mine".

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#337

Post by Retric »

dragonwriter wrote: post #333
Retric wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast, or to randomly pairing things off which doesn’t tell us anything. If we pair the newest with oldest car and work to the middle things don’t quite work due to antiques, the pandemic, and increasing production, but it’s close enough for 25 years to be a safe estimate.

> The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast. Its not at all consistent, and the reason the average age has gone up is supply chain issues driving costs up and sales down for new cars.

I didn’t say constant, just reasonably consistent. Individual years don’t matter much here it’s the overall trend we care about and the trend shows nothing close to an 9x increase and decrease:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA (Note the graph minimum is 7.5 not 0.)

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#338

Post by Retric »

Manuel_D wrote: post #335
Retric wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates for weeks of storage are made by people who don’t understand the fundamental cost optimization going on. More production costs X which reduces the need for batteries by Y, as long as X > Y you build more production even if most of it’s output is unnecessary. Also 16% of global electricity comes from hydroelectric generation, we really don’t need that many batteries. Actual optimized energy storage is on the…

2-6 hours is nowhere near enough to offset daily fluctuations, let alone seasonal fluctuations. Overproduction only gets you so far, unless this proposal also involves transoceanic HVDC cables. Hydropower is not exactly the same thing as storage: you can stop releasing water and build up the reservoir, but you cannot pump water up river. Even just 6 hours of storage -which would not be sufficient even with several fa…

Overproduction means you don’t ever see daily fluctuations you have a surplus every single day of the year. Unless storage gets insanely cheap that’s by far the cheapest safe option.

Hydropower dams are already storage. When you don’t release the water it’s saved until you do.

If you have enough rain from 3 months ago to release 10 MW 24/7 over a week then you also have enough water to release 15 MW for 12 hours and 5 MW for the other 12 every day etc. You can’t save 100% of the water or the river downstream runs dry but the minimum is generally well below the average flow rate.

This isn’t unusual, most dams ramp production up and down to maximize the value of the stored water.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#339

Post by pas »

pfdietz wrote: post #326
preisschild wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it makes sense, if the Atomic Energy Commission already licensed the plant site, why shouldnt they be able to reuse it?

Laws have changed a lot since the AEC existed.

without looking up we can easily bet that anti-nuclear activists did their share of lawsuits to try to get those new laws applied to the plant, so there have been reviews.

Re: First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia

#340

Post by pfdietz »

_hypx wrote: post #334
pfdietz wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this has not been demonstrated. Nuclear in France showed negative experience effects.

A lot of that is just anti-nuclear propaganda. Nuclear in France does not have major problems.

I'm sorry, you don't get to dismiss inconvenient facts by calling them "propaganda".
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