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

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

#41

Post by donny2018 »

kagakuninja wrote: post #22
jmclnx wrote: post #16

>The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project no longer had enough additional utility partners I cannot help but to think the Fossil Fuel Industry had their hands in this.

No, it turns out that SMRs are not yet economically viable, just as us skeptics have been claiming. SMRs are continually hyped by the pro-nuclear crowd online. They aren't cost efficient vs renewables.

Nuclear tech hasn't had a luxury of having renewables-like subsidies though.

Who knows what the prices could have been had nuclear got the same level of subsidies.

Nuclear energy (especially fast neutron tech that can use the abundant U-238 and nuclear waste from existing NPPs) isn't getting attention it deserves. Only Russia, China and India are investing in it, but it's neglected in the West because there is no immediate profit to gain from this.

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

#42

Post by threeseed »

downvotetruth wrote: post #36
threeseed wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many parts of the world that are uninhabitable because it is too hot. The perfect location for solar installations.

You used the word inhabitable. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I have edited to mean uninhabitable.

e.g. places like outback Australia where it reaches 50C and is a long distance from water.

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

#43

Post by kragen »

pfdietz wrote: post #3

This was entirely foreseeable. Notes from the Feb. 2023 meeting of the Idaho Falls Power Board (one of the utilities in UAMPS, and the place where the reactors would have been built.) https://www.idahofallsidaho.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minute ... NuScale still needed to get costs down by $700 M to reach the promised $89/MWh. Without that, it would be $105/MWh. This is also after federal subsidies. "GM Prairie said…

note that 89 dollars per megawatt hour is three to five times what solar energy usually costs

as i have said before, if small modular reactors were cheaper energy sources than diesel engines, they would power every ship in the navies of the usa, france, the uk, russia, and china, instead of just the aircraft carriers, some of the submarines, and a few other russian ships

(and note that diesel engines are too expensive to compete with solar and wind)

one day nuclear energy will be cheaper than solar and wind, but for now the humans' manufacturing is too primitive

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

#44

Post by kragen »

sciencesama wrote: post #12

Used to work in utah, warren buffet is damn close with the mayor and team and threatened to use his full power if state starts using more renewable energy, he has huge coal mining shares fyi !!

it's news to me that utah's head of state is a mayor

i would be surprised if your information about warren's position on renewable energy turns out to be more accurate than your information about how he spells his name

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-19/buffett-s...

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

#45

Post by jcranmer »

kragen wrote: post #33
gravitronic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A harder stumbling block compared to nuclear is land mass requirements per Mwh: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source

no because even though pv uses orders of magnitude more land per megawatt (not per megawatt hour; please get your units straight) it still uses two orders of magnitude less land than is available please do the math instead of posting random bullshit without any regard to whether or not it is true i did https://dercuano.github.io/notes/solar-economics.html

If this is the math you did:

> A crude calculation (earthradius_equatorial^2 * pi * (1000 W/m^2) * 1 year in units(1) --- gosh, Unix is great!) suggests that the total solar energy falling on the earth is about 40000 * 10^20 joules per year.

... that's not a good approximation. There's someone who actually has done less crude math for maximum possible solar energy, at least for the UK: https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml (though the HTML version is somewhat annoying because it's still paginated as if it were a book). Spoiler alert: it's roughly enough energy to cover total transportation energy demand, nowhere near total energy demand in the UK.

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

#46

Post by kragen »

donny2018 wrote: post #41
kagakuninja wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it turns out that SMRs are not yet economically viable, just as us skeptics have been claiming. SMRs are continually hyped by the pro-nuclear crowd online. They aren't cost efficient vs renewables.

Nuclear tech hasn't had a luxury of having renewables-like subsidies though. Who knows what the prices could have been had nuclear got the same level of subsidies. Nuclear energy (especially fast neutron tech that can use the abundant U-238 and nuclear waste from existing NPPs) isn't getting attention it deserves. Only Russia, China and India are investing in it, but it's neglected in the West because there is no imm…

nuclear tech had the biggeet subsidies program in human history in the 01940s and 50s, continuing to a significant extent into the 80s, which is how the humans got it in the first place

some historians argue that subsidizing nuclear tech too heavily was a major factor in the collapse of the ussr

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

#47

Post by atoav »

threeseed wrote: post #21
gravitronic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A harder stumbling block compared to nuclear is land mass requirements per Mwh: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source

There are many parts of the world that are uninhabitable because it is too hot. The perfect location for solar installations.

As an electrical engineer I have to sadly inform you that electricity transport is not free. Transporting electricity from those places to the places with populations is overall inefficient.

So the best place for a solar panel is right next to were the energy is needed (provided there is at least some sun).

Solar installations in deserts could still be a thing if you are willing to think it differently (e.g. use the energy for desalination and to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, transport that hydrogen via container ship etc).

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

#48

Post by StillBored »

cesarb wrote: post #25
monero-xmr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. I am hopeful that hydrogen can be generated in the desert and moved by hydrogen-truck. Or grid-scale batteries actually exist someday. But if we write off nuclear, a lot of coal and natural gas will be burned.

> I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. You are making it harder by adding that "cleanly" requirement, because the simple answer is going to be "natural gas". Unlike coal or nuclear, natural gas power plants are fast to start and stop (hydroelectric is even faster, but depends on favorable geography), so they can be left powered down (using no fuel)…

funded by backdoor taxes if texas is any indication. Prop 7 passed, which is basically just shifting the cost of grid reliability from the energy companies to the tax payers. So now you get to pay top dollar for the energy which is 50%+ carbon sources, while also paying to keep the plants operating from the general budget.

Its like a wet dream for those energy traders.

https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_Proposition_7,_Creation_of_Sta...

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

#49

Post by atoav »

threeseed wrote: post #42
downvotetruth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used the word inhabitable. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I have edited to mean uninhabitable. e.g. places like outback Australia where it reaches 50C and is a long distance from water.

So the solar panels will have dust and extremely harsh temperature cycles. I don't have any source on that, but I don't think the gained efficiency from the hot sun is going to outweigh the pain (and efficiency loss) from maintaining that efficiency in such an environment.

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

#50

Post by imadierich »

kragen wrote: post #43
pfdietz wrote: post #3

This was entirely foreseeable. Notes from the Feb. 2023 meeting of the Idaho Falls Power Board (one of the utilities in UAMPS, and the place where the reactors would have been built.) https://www.idahofallsidaho.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minute ... NuScale still needed to get costs down by $700 M to reach the promised $89/MWh. Without that, it would be $105/MWh. This is also after federal subsidies. "GM Prairie said…

note that 89 dollars per megawatt hour is three to five times what solar energy usually costs as i have said before, if small modular reactors were cheaper energy sources than diesel engines, they would power every ship in the navies of the usa, france, the uk, russia, and china, instead of just the aircraft carriers, some of the submarines, and a few other russian ships (and note that diesel engines are too expensiv…

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