[HN Gopher] The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just App...
___________________________________________________________________
The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just Approved by US
Regulators
Author : cheinyeanlim
Score : 186 points
Date : 2022-08-06 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (singularityhub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (singularityhub.com)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Will they be allowed to export these? I am really hopefully
| developing countries can get them. Much less infra needed than
| renewables with storage.
| Julesman wrote:
| Claiming fission is clean energy is just objectively false and a
| notion mostly being pushed by industry shills.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
| [deleted]
| Drblessing wrote:
| > Objectively false
|
| Any evidence, bro?
| deusum wrote:
| Like Chernobyl?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Are you 8 years old?
| timbit42 wrote:
| Don't make perfect the enemy of good.
|
| A bit of radioactive waste is the least of our worries relative
| to global warming from CO2 and not all nuclear produces waste
| that lasts thousands of years. Some newer nuclear plants cannot
| melt down and have no risk of killing people by radiation.
|
| Right now we don't have sufficient means to produce excess or
| store solar power for nighttimes or wind for windless times.
| Nuclear can make up the difference when solar and/or wind are
| insufficient. It's the best interim solution we have. Without
| nuclear, temperatures will become much higher than if we build
| more nuclear.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Again this story.
|
| Ok, sure maybe it's smaller than a PWR behemoth. It's still solid
| fuel rod crap.
|
| If you have solid fuel rods, you have meltdown danger, you can't
| use up all the fissile material, there's no breeding, extraction
| of fission products. It's under a lot of pressure, so besides
| meltdown you have other dangers. Solid fuel rods can only use the
| very tiny percentage of uranium that is naturally fissile.
|
| This is simply not a good design for a nuclear reactor. The LFTR
| design has meltdown proof operation, no pressurized water, near
| 100% use of fuel, can burn/breed old solid fuel waste, can breed
| more fuel from plentiful thorium, and can scale down to closet-
| sized reactors.
|
| Pebble bed also shares some of these aspects, and I assume there
| are other new generation designs with advantages.
|
| But this is just more of the same bad design reactors. Oh great,
| it got spitshined and scaled down and passed approvals.
|
| What nuclear needs to be relevant is to tackle meltdown danger
| and nuclear waste. LFTR addresses both and any future reactor
| needs to address both. Perhaps LFTR could be a "waste processor"
| if LFTR isn't economical enough, while other meltdown proof
| designs do more economical generation in a sort of large scale
| web.
| sradman wrote:
| > It's still solid fuel rod crap.
|
| There are a number of First-of-a-Kind SMR and Micro Reactors
| planned for the U.S., UK, and Canada. The advantage of the
| three leading lightwater SMRs (NuScale VOYGR, GE Hitachi
| BWRX-3000, and Rolls Royce SMR) are fast time to market due to
| the existing supply chain and continuous innovation on well
| understood technology. The problem is not so much the solid
| fuel, but the Zirconium clad fuel bundles that produce
| explosive hydrogen gas during Loss-of-Coolant-Accidents (LOCA).
| Accident Tolerant Fuels are being deployed now and may be
| another important innovation that reduces the likelihood of
| meltdowns but these systems also address the main sources of
| LOCAs: 1. isolation condenser system (ICS) replace pressure
| release valves that caused the Three Mile Island accident, and
| 2. passive coolant circulation systems that don't require
| external/backup power like the ones that failed during the
| Fukushima accident.
|
| The problem with this class of lightwater SMR is that they are
| essentially base load power and the projected Nth-of-a-Kind
| costs will be competitive with fossil fuels (coal and natural
| gas) at best but are not cost competitive nor a good complement
| to intermittent renewables (wind and solar). They are a good
| slot-in replacement for existing coal fired plants.
|
| There are also a number of Advanced SMRs and Micro Reactors
| (mobile and campus-size) that have announced First-of-a-Kind
| builds like the X-Energy Xe-100, TerraPower/GE Hitachi Natrium,
| ARC-100, Moltex SSR-W, USNC MMR, Xe-Mobile, and Westinghouse
| eVinci. These designs compete on a much larger landscape of
| theoretical trade-offs that may leapfrog the lightwater SMRs. I
| prefer this diverse mix of technologies and applications over a
| single anointed technology like Liquid fluoride thorium
| reactors (LFTRs). YMMV.
| atwood22 wrote:
| Are LFTRs actually viable though?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| That's why I don't want to say "WE NEED TO USE LFTR".
|
| But the LFTR features are what we need in next gen nuclear:
| meltdown proof, full fuel use / vast waste reduction,
| scalable.
|
| Oak Ridge National Lab had a molten salt reactor that was
| closet-sized that they were working on. So it existed. Were
| all materials issues solved for a high temperature molten
| salt with all those neutrons flying around from breeding? No.
|
| China is (somewhat thankfully, why does fucking CHINA have to
| represent the major economic funding for solar, wind,
| batteries, and nuclear solutions to global warming?) bringing
| an MSR/LFTR online at utility scale in a couple years.
|
| But the point is I don't see nuclear being a viable solution
| unless it alleviates the Fukushima risk (unexpected meltdown)
| and the nuclear waste NIMBY issues. Scalability is necessary
| for economic viability.
| formercoder wrote:
| From what I have read waste storage is a non-problem from
| any practical view. It's a really big planet. Just no one
| wants it in their little corner.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The waste storage (Yucca mountain, find some geological
| scale safe place) would seem to, but again we run into
| the "old nuclear" view of things.
|
| Fukushima showed the flawed thinking that underpins "old
| nuclear": well, we have fixed the risks for everyday
| conditions ... that is, we put the minimum amount of
| required thought into safety from a political but not a
| fundamental design aspect.
|
| Waste TRANSPORT falls into this. Are we pretending that
| this isn't the transport of nuclear dirty bomb material?
| That's the fundamental issue. Sure it can be safe when it
| gets there, but the security of the waste in transport
| and the other dangers is just too high. I mean, a deer
| crossing the road could cause a crash and spill. Tire
| blowouts. etc.
|
| And there are just too many examples of corporations not
| giving a shit about truly dealing with
| environmental/waste/pollution procedures. Look at the
| fracking industry, they likely poisoned a great deal of
| water tables and other widespread effects, but didn't
| care in the least. They could get away with it.
|
| For waste storage, we can have some regulatory
| rubberstamp that "it is compliant" but all we need is
| some spill or something similar and you have nuclear
| waste in the water table. Great.
|
| Power generation and nuclear generation companies are
| full of conservative and environmental-hostile people. I
| don't know why this is, but it is, and it is another big
| issue with "old nuclear". I suspect it is a combination
| of the military origin of nuclear technology, regulatory
| fatigue, and the contempt of the Greenpeace antinuke
| types. But it is a fundamental organizational and culture
| problem of the nuclear industry. These organizations are
| hostile to the safety regulations and environmental
| concerns to the point that they will do the absolute
| minimum or backburner the risk mitigations.
|
| So that's why I view the LFTR's near-100% fuel use as a
| critical aspect of a next gen nuclear approach. It
| eliminates the problem of waste, and instead changes it
| to an efficiency challenge. There is no waste issue to
| deal with so it won't be down-prioritized on
| contemptuously viewed. No NIMBY issues on transport and
| storage.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > we put the minimum amount of required thought into
| safety from a political but not a fundamental design
| aspect.
|
| This viewpoint is not corroborated by any of the design
| and development summaries I've seen.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Are we pretending that this isn't the transport of
| nuclear dirty bomb material
|
| How are you proposing that someone could even open a cask
| with nefarious purposes and build a bomb without
| receiving a fatal dose of radiation? Dirty bombs
| basically aren't a thing anyway. They would require a lot
| of material since the heavy and dangerous isotopes
| wouldn't hang in the air for long or go very far. To get
| all of that in the air you need a very large bomb.
| Essentially your looking T something like a truck bomb
| that would be hot enough to cook the driver. Totally
| impractical.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Indeed. It's not costly to just put spent fuel in dry
| casks. At least, if one has solid fuel elements. I'm not
| sure how the molten salt people propose to do it.
| walleeee wrote:
| > fucking CHINA
|
| What's behind this sentiment?
|
| The Chinese system of government is demonstrating itself
| capable of funding and following through on long-term,
| large-scale public infrastructure in a way the American
| system currently struggles to match. Westerners could
| perhaps ask why this is the case, study the differences,
| and take some notes from the Chinese in this and some other
| areas. That doesn't mean sacrificing desirable
| characteristics of the western system, and it doesn't mean
| Chinese governance doesn't have its own problems. It means
| we can all learn from one another in pursuit of
| improvement. Is this a controversial position?
| bilsbie wrote:
| Couldn't this be a stepping stone though? It seems to be a move
| in the right direction at least. Once costs come down they'll
| be more investment in the tech you mentioned.
|
| Also this one does seem to have a good failsafe even though it
| has those risks.
| replygirl wrote:
| > What nuclear needs to be relevant is to tackle meltdown
| danger and nuclear waste.
|
| we already had the ingredients for that, but we cancelled yucca
| and a bunch of ap1ks
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Isn't corrosion from molten hot salt still an unresolved issue?
| Or at least a potential problem as big as loss of coolant in
| PWRs?
| pfdietz wrote:
| There are lots of unresolved issues for MSRs.
|
| https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-Ov.
| ..
| Kalium wrote:
| Same here, as far as I'm aware Thorium salt reactors are
| still solidly in the experimental stages. Demanding a switch
| to something that isn't ready yet strikes me as making
| perfection the enemy of better.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Ok, sure maybe it's smaller than a PWR behemoth. It's still
| solid fuel rod crap.
|
| Yes, "solid fuel rod crap" same as used in every other
| production nuclear power plant? This SMR sounds like it might
| actually get _built_.
|
| One of the biggest issue that SMRs try to solve is the
| inability of (western) nations to build nuclear plants - which
| itself has myriad causes, but a big one is the difficulty in
| building _any_ massive facility without cost and schedule
| overruns
| cma wrote:
| ~~Few plants built after the non-proliferation treaty,
| because many plants were subsidized by proliferation needs.~~
| (not true, see comments for correction) Nuclear plants don't
| even really pay insurance, they have $15 billion liability
| cap on the entire industry, when there are possible $1
| trillion+ single incident disaster scenarios.
|
| Our first change should be that nuclear plants have to pay
| enough insurance to cover their full liability. Better to tax
| fossil than just hand out huge nuclear subsidies that risk
| safety. Let them both account for their risk and
| externalities individually.
|
| The Price Anderson Nuclear Indemnities Act was supposed to be
| temporary while the insurance industry for things stabilized:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nucle.
| ..
|
| > The act was intended to be temporary, and to expire in
| August 1967 as it was assumed that once the companies had
| demonstrated a record of safe operation they would be able to
| obtain insurance in the private market.
|
| There are some similar liability caps on oil spills and dam
| failures that should also be removed.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Few plants built after the non-proliferation treaty,
| because many plants were subsidized by proliferation needs.
|
| This is incorrect. Looking at the list[1], only 2 remaining
| reactors in Canada were built before the NPT was complete,
| and they're both scheduled to shut down in 2024. So
| essentially the entire Canadian nuke fleet was built after.
| Same thing for France. And Germany.
|
| For the US, also same - only a few that started
| construction before the 1968 signing remain working. Most
| operational plants started construction in the 1969-1976
| range.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclea
| r_rea...
| credit_guy wrote:
| You know what killed nuclear power? The moving targets of the
| Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
|
| Was the NRC out to make life hard for new nuclear power plant
| construction? Some claim that, but I chose to believe that they
| were just doing their job. As more corner cases were discovered
| in the operation of the existing power plants, the regulations
| had to be upgraded to deal with them.
|
| This process will continue, that's for sure. But fewer corner
| cases will be discovered for PWRs than for new technologies.
| For the reason that in the US the experience with PWR is at
| least two orders of magnitude higher than with any other
| nuclear technology.
|
| Still, it took Nuscale 6 years to get their approval, 2 million
| man-hours and half a billion dollars. Whatever estimate they
| have for the time their first reactor goes online (2030
| currently), it might be delayed because of new regulatory
| changes. But at least they have a proven design. If someone is
| trying a new design, the chance of delays increases one hundred
| times.
|
| I love new technology. I am personally rooting for the gas
| cooled fast reactors (like Xe-100) or for the sodium cooled
| fast reactors (like Terrapower's Natrium).
|
| But you need to walk before you run.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > You know what killed nuclear power? The moving targets of
| the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
|
| Uh, massive political pushback from environmentalists
| starting in the 70s leading to less nuclear and more fossil
| fuel plants, because somehow they were (and continue to be in
| parts of the world) much more strongly and rigidly opposed to
| NPPs than coal and gas power plants.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's not how it actually worked.
|
| What killed nuclear in the 1970s was a combination of
| things. First, NPPs turned out to be more expensive to
| build than vendors had promised. Second, electricity demand
| suddenly stopped growing as it had been. Third, PURPA
| passed, allowing non-utility producers onto the grid
| (ostensibly for cogeneration, although many were
| cogeneration in name only.)
|
| To the extent regulation bit nuclear, it was because of
| NEPA, which affects all industry not just nuclear. The AEC
| has tried pretend this didn't apply to nuclear but the
| Calvert Cliffs decision at SCOTUS said otherwise.
|
| 2+3 together meant utilities suddenly were in an
| environment where adding new GW capacity was a hard sell to
| state regulatory boards, and 1 made it even harder.
|
| Sure, environmentalists complained about nuclear, but don't
| infer that just because they complained, they caused
| nuclear to fail. Correlation != causation.
| ksec wrote:
| >This is then used to drive a turbine that generates electricity.
|
| We could have Nuclear Fusion but we will still using turbine to
| generate electricity. :P
|
| >these smaller reactors are actually likely to produce more
| radioactive waste than conventional plants.
|
| >nuclear power expert M.V. Ramana also points out that the cost
| of renewable energy like wind and solar is already lower than
| that of nuclear, and continuing to fall rapidly.
|
| Why are we repeating these same questions when we already have an
| answer? Edit: Solar and Wind aren't constant, and nuclear waste
| is a solved problem.
|
| >SMRs could cost more than bigger nuclear plants, he adds,
| because they don't have the same economy of scale.
|
| I thought the whole point of SMRs were economy of scale?
|
| >Tellingly, some utilities have already backed out of NuScale's
| first project over cost concerns.
|
| Anyone could chime in here? Was it because NuScale is too
| expensive?
|
| I was expecting SMRs, once approved could be built much more
| quickly. I was thinking in terms of 3 years with perfect project
| planning. But right now even the earliest ( and likely optimistic
| ) first SMRs site is 2030. Why does it take so long?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Nobody has managed to build even an experimental fusion reactor
| that produces more power than is necessary to start each
| reaction cycle... unless you count bombs.
|
| Assuming we did, to get away from mechanical turbines and
| generators as the heat->motion->electricity step would require
| a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
| -- which have had more success but still face serious material
| issues.
|
| As for "why does it take so long?" -- the first of anything
| takes longer. And the US has terrible problems in building
| anything new or big.
| he0001 wrote:
| >And the US has terrible problems in building anything new or
| big.
|
| What are the reasons for this do you think?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Baumol's cost disease.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease
| dsr_ wrote:
| We have more knowledge of the terrible ways things go
| wrong.
|
| A bridge has failure consequences that are predictable:
| bridge breaks, people on the bridge die, local economy
| suffers. All of those are understandable by an elementary
| school student playing with toys and imagining the town
| around it.
|
| The failure consequences of fission plants were not known
| to include things that had to be discovered years after
| Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Not to mention
| -- who knew that exhausting hot non-radioactive water into
| a river could be bad for it?
|
| The failure consequences of Thalidomide were not known for
| years. The failure consequences of dioxin usage were not
| known for years:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_organic_pollutant
|
| Let's also include the US propensity to fall victim to
| charlatanry: enough of us want to believe so much, we will
| give lots of money to Juicero, uBeam, and Nigerian Princes.
| (Hyperloop, cough.)
|
| So if you want to do something big, it needs to be well-
| understood. If you want to do something new, it needs to be
| proven and well-examined.
| replygirl wrote:
| brain drain to web development, mostly.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| General Fusion is currently building their half scale test
| reactor. Won't produce power but will be a proof of concept.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > >This is then used to drive a turbine that generates
| electricity.
|
| > We could have Nuclear Fusion but we are still using turbine
| to generate electricity. :P
|
| This is actually one of the main points of why the whole talk
| about "economies of scale" for nuclear just doesn't make much
| sense. More than 50% of a nuclear plant is essentially the same
| as any other thermoelectric plant. Despite the many power
| plants being build we haven't seen a this elusive cost
| reduction. Construction projects (in contrast to things build
| in factories) don't lend themselves to economies of scale (in
| terms of building many).
|
| There was an HN submission that analysed the cost of a nuclear
| plant and showed that there is really not much room for any
| economies of scale reductions.
|
| > >these smaller reactors are actually likely to produce more
| radioactive waste than conventional plants.
|
| > >nuclear power expert M.V. Ramana also points out that the
| cost of renewable energy like wind and solar is already lower
| than that of nuclear, and continuing to fall rapidly.
|
| > Why are we repeating these same questions when we already
| have an answer?
|
| > >SMRs could cost more than bigger nuclear plants, he adds,
| because they don't have the same economy of scale.
|
| Yes that's always the weird part of the discussion. There are
| reasons why nuclear plants are build large, it's cheaper.
|
| > I thought the whole point of SMRs were economy of scale?
|
| > >Tellingly, some utilities have already backed out of
| NuScale's first project over cost concerns.
|
| > Anyone could chime in here? Was it because NuScale is too
| expensive?
|
| > I was expecting SMRs, once approved could be built much more
| quickly. I was thinking in terms of 3 years with perfect
| project planning. But right now even the earliest ( and likely
| optimistic ) first SMRs site is 2030. Why does it take so long?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Turbines are a great, mature technology. The SMR alone is new
| enough.
|
| Imagine writing a piece of software that needs to parse XML. It
| is probably better just to use an existing library for that,
| instead of reinventing the wheel.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| >> Tellingly, some utilities have already backed out of
| NuScale's first project over cost concerns. > Anyone could
| chime in here? Was it because NuScale is too expensive?
|
| The NuScale VOYAGR, in particular, is a really big SMR in terms
| of [plant size]/[megawatt]. The economies of SMR come when you
| can reduce that footprint by making smaller safety systems or
| eliminating active safety features (because the plant is small
| enough not to need them) AND factory-build them with on-site
| assembly. Other SMR designs seem to have more promising ideas
| for doing both, but NuScale's is just too big. (There are also
| micro-reactors that optimize for replacing diesel engines and
| gas turbines with a very small footprint at the tradeoff of
| cost.)
|
| >I was expecting SMRs, once approved could be built much more
| quickly. I was thinking in terms of 3 years with perfect
| project planning. But right now even the earliest ( and likely
| optimistic ) first SMRs site is 2030. Why does it take so long?
|
| There's a lot going between "approved today" and "SMR online":
| particularly that factory infrastructure needs to come on line
| and site licensing need to happen, and then the plant needs to
| get commissioned after it is built (which takes longer for the
| first). It's very conceivable to me that the Nth SMR could be a
| ~3ish year project, but longer for the FOAK unit is almost
| inevitable.
| ksec wrote:
| Thank You. I should have read the article more carefully. It
| does state the reactor "consists of a 76-foot-tall, 15-foot-
| wide cylindrical containment vessel that houses the reactor".
| Looks like NuScale's SMR doesn't fit my mental model of SMRs.
| I was thinking SMRs size that could easily fit within a 40ft
| container.
|
| >particularly that factory infrastructure needs to come on
| line and site licensing need to happen, and then the plant
| needs to get commissioned after it is built (which takes
| longer for the first).
|
| Oh Ok. So it is only the "design" that has been approved. (
| Again I should have read it carefully ). No wonder why it is
| taking so long.
|
| Thank you for the reply.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| > I was thinking SMRs size that could easily fit within a
| 40ft container.
|
| Those would be 'micro-reactors' and as noted tend to be
| optimised for off-grid applications.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Anutronic fusion could generate electricity without a turbine.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Fusion is probably 50-100 years away at best. It's just to
| difficult
| anovikov wrote:
| It's also not necessary and is probably already outdated and
| won't be funded if was achieved today.
|
| See fusion this way: it's like a coal power plant with
| infinite free coal (because the rest of it is the same -
| turbines, water treatment, condensers, generators, power
| transformation and transmission - and thermonuclear reactor
| will for sure never be cheaper than a coal-fired steam
| boiler). Which means, electricity cost will be same as of a
| coal plant minus the price of coal. Which will already be
| above cost of most renewable sources and, once electrolyzers
| for green hydrogen will start coming online, remembering that
| barely 15% of renewable electricity will need to be passed
| through them (rest can simply be balanced by different
| renewables), will still be sort of competitive.
|
| And we don't have fusion yet, while renewables will keep
| getting cheaper.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| There are non-turbine fusion options, like Helion.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And such options are, IMO, likely to be necessary if
| fusion is to be competitive.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Coal plants are comprehensively more expensive than
| solar/wind, as are current design nuclear plants, perhaps
| that's because of coal prices.
|
| The other aspects of fusion get swept under the rug: high
| speed neutrons from sustained fusion energy production will
| degrade the equipment, so you build this HUGE EXPENSIVE
| facility and it will have a shelf life, and be somewhat
| radioactive, in ... well, I don't know the timeline, but
| I'll assume decades.
|
| Even without that, fusion costs even with "free" fuel (I
| mean, it will probably be deuterium and separation will
| cost some money) will probably be quite high for operation,
| maintenance, to say nothing of the massive installation
| cost.
|
| I think it is still worth the current investment in
| research though, it's not like I want the book closed on
| fusion power. But I wouldn't count on it getting us out of
| the global warming hole we are in.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Coal is more expensive than solar even if the price of
| coal at the mine is 0.
| ciconia wrote:
| > Why are we repeating these same questions when we already
| have an answer?
|
| The answer is not solar and wind. For solar and wind to replace
| fossil fuels for electricity generation will require ramping up
| mining activity by a factor of a few tens from current levels.
| Not to mention the fact that we still don't know how to produce
| solar panels and wind turbines without using fossil fuels - for
| mining, metallurgy and transport. The numbers are just not
| there.
|
| The only possible answer is a significant reduction of energy
| consumption, but it seems very few people are ready to accept
| it.
| allemagne wrote:
| "Significant reduction of energy consumption" is only a
| possible answer if you're able and prepared to suppress the
| lifestyles of billions of people through any means necessary.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| There is a strong possibility that even fusion reactors will
| use turbines. They are a very efficient way of converting heat
| into electricity.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I argue the opposite, a steam turbine maxes out at about 37%
| efficiency.
|
| The inefficiency and massive capital costs of of steam
| turbines is a major reason why natural gas is so much cheaper
| than coal or fission -- natgas uses a combined cycle turbine
| rather than a steam turbine.
| joak wrote:
| Wind and photovoltaics just skip the heat part in the
| cycle. Electricity is generated without converting heat to
| kinetic energy.
|
| This is also the case of helion energy fusion solution.
| Aneutronic fusion with direct energy conversion. No heat in
| the cycle.
|
| The issue with these thermal power solutions is the waste
| heat. It means you need water nearby to cool down your
| reactor. Side effect: thermal pollution, raising the temp
| of rivers and/or coastals water is detrimental to
| ecosystems. Plus: how do you deal with droughts?
| depressedpanda wrote:
| The waste heat needs not be 'waste'; it can effectively
| be used for district heating.
|
| This makes fission quite attractive in colder climates.
|
| https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-
| nuclea...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I believe modern heat --> electric conversion systems use
| the turbine and several other additional heat -->
| electricity recapture systems to approach 50-60% efficiency
| at large scales so they can beat the Carnot Limit of just
| the turbine engine.
|
| https://www.powermag.com/efficiency-improvements-mark-
| advanc...
|
| That claims 64% for a gas turbine.
|
| LFTR presentations said they could use the brayton cycle I
| think due to high temps, I'd imagine a fusion would also
| have the temps to enable brayton cycle and several other
| tricks to achieve good efficiency.
|
| Remember, what matters at scale is cost cost cost. Turbines
| might not be sexy, but if they are cheap, then that is what
| you use.
| aordano wrote:
| For anyone curious, check out
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Remember, what matters at scale is cost cost cost.
| Turbines might not be sexy, but if they are cheap, then
| that is what you use.
|
| Exactly. Turbines (along with the accompanying water
| treatment, condensers, generators, power transformation)
| aren't cheap. A 600MW coal plant costs $2B.
| epistasis wrote:
| There's a difference between "best possible efficiency" and
| "efficient," and I would argue that anything <75% efficiency
| is not "very efficient." Especially since a lot of people
| look to nuclear for applications in space, where it's hard to
| dissipate all that waste heat.
| danuker wrote:
| > Why are we repeating these same questions when we already
| have an answer?
|
| What are the questions? Are renewables the answer?
|
| Only hydro can store energy cheaply. And solar and wind are not
| available constantly.
| ksec wrote:
| >What are the questions? Are renewables the answer?
|
| That was the question partly laid out in the article.
| Suggesting we dont need Nuclear because we already have solar
| and wind.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Only hydro can store energy cheaply.
|
| Please stop this nonsense. There is no law of physics or even
| any strong practical reason to think your assertion is
| correct.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Everyone is piling on about better designs or mythical future
| tech.
|
| This is a win for clean energy. End of story.
|
| Smaller reactors have maintenance and footprint wins that are
| hard to appreciate. I think this is one of a few key turning
| points that are coming up that will help us transition to a
| better carbon future.
|
| But if not, at least now we have _more options_ which means _more
| competition_ and _more innovation_.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Isn't it a little disingenuous to call this _clean energy_? It
| might be carbon free energy, but doesn 't _clean_ imply that it
| 's not stressing the environment altogether?
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| The process of manufacturing solar panels stresses the
| environment plenty, are we eliminating solar power from the
| clean list too?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you look up the average quality of uranium ores globally,
| there's a bit of a problem:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_ore
|
| Each installed gigawatt of nuclear reactor power, regardless of
| whether this is twenty 50MW reactors or a single 1000MW
| reactor, requires on the order of 200 tons of uranium fuel rods
| per year to operate. By comparison, a 1GW bituminous coal plant
| burns on the order of 2,750,000 tons of coal per year to
| achieve the same kind of baseload power output.
|
| However, coal requires no further processing once mined. To get
| those 200 tons of fuel rods, it can take a varying amount of
| uranium ore, and the majority of that ore is not high-grade,
| it's down around 0.1% U3O8 more often than not (there are a few
| high-grade deposits). So you might have to mine 200,000 tons of
| ore, extract the uranium in the form of yellowcake, convert
| that to uranium hexaflouride gas for enrichment from ~0.7% to
| (apparently) 4.95% for the NuScale design, and then convert the
| gas to solid uranium oxide and package it in a fuel rod. This
| is a pretty intensive industrial process just to make the
| required fuel and is neither cheap nor all that clean.
|
| Enrichment level & NuScale plant design parameters:
| https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103470495.pdf
|
| If you are in a location with plenty of sunlight and wind, I
| don't see how this could possibly by less expensive than some
| kind of integrated wind turbine/solar PV/solar thermal linked-
| to-storage grid of the same capacity.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| You bring up two advantages of nuclear's competitors: 1. coal
| requires no processing after mining 2. solar and wind are
| less expensive
|
| For #1, it doesn't seem like that statement is true:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-
| sci...
|
| For #2, I'm interested in an energy cost comparison,
| including the cost of ongoing maintenance, too. Solar and
| wind seem like an obvious investment in our future.
|
| I don't know about the quality of "nuclearasia.com," but I
| found an interesting anecdote that more directly answered the
| question "how much raw ore converts to a how much fuel rod?"
| The answer is that
|
| * 2.5 tons of uranium ore = 1kg fuel
|
| * 1kg uranium fuel = same energy output as 100 tons of coal
|
| * 2.5 tons of uranium ore = same energy output as 100 tons of
| coal
|
| > Even if you take a relatively poor ore (with a uranium
| content of 0.2%), it turns out that to produce 1 kg of
| enriched uranium fuel you need approximately 2.5 tonnes of
| uranium ore. If we recall that one kilogram of enriched
| uranium contains the energy "equivalent" of 100 tonnes of
| coal, it turns out that to produce the same amount of energy
| you would need 40 times less ore compared to the same amount
| of coal. Another advantage is that coal has to be delivered
| to the station in "bulk" but there is no need to ship uranium
| ore far from the place of extraction. Uranium and uranium
| fuel take much less space than coal, and this means a
| dramatic reduction in transportation costs.
|
| https://www.nuclearasia.com/knowledge-centre/much-uranium-
| or...
|
| What I'd like to know is the overall cost (mining,
| processing, transportation, handling/disposal, and
| maintenance) in terms of $/energy. I would think that
| individual energy plants could provide this information.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| > What I'd like to know is the overall cost
|
| We can estimate this for nuclear pretty easily. From the
| UxC cost calculator[1], we can see the various components
| that go into getting mined ore, converting it, and
| enriching it. At today's prices, let's call it $2000/kgU.
| We need to add fabrication, transportation, and carrying
| costs to that. Let's call fabrication $250/kgU[2] and throw
| on another $50 for transport and misc costs, giving us
| $2500/kgU for finished fuel. Assuming we burn our fuel to a
| an average discharge burn of 50 GWd/MTU and the plant is
| operating at about 34% electrical efficiency, that works
| out to 0.6 cents/kWh for nuclear fuel.
|
| On to disposal, in the US utilities were previously charged
| 0.1 cents/kWh for disposal; utilities haven't been charged
| this fee since 2014 due to a disposal route not being
| available[3], although DOE retains responsibility for
| disposing of civilian nuclear waste.
|
| On top of that you have the plant's O&M costs, which are
| probably another 0.8-1.0 cents or so/kWh.
|
| [1] https://www.uxc.com/p/tools/FuelCalculator.aspx [2] htt
| ps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S173857331..
| . [3] https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-603.pdf
| paul_funyun wrote:
| "is neither cheap nor all that clean."
|
| In terms of greenhouse gas emmissions, it's very clean.
| That's the whole point of bothering with green energy.
|
| "If you are in a location with plenty of sunlight and wind, I
| don't see how this could possibly by less expensive than some
| kind of integrated wind turbine/solar PV/solar thermal
| linked-to-storage grid of the same capacity."
|
| Unsurprising - things that exist are generally more expensive
| than things that don't. I'm not sure how you can even assess
| the cost of storing the power from those sources to compare
| them.
|
| Until a realistic method of storing that energy is created
| (if it ever is), nuclear as well as waste-incineration and
| hydroelectric are superior by virtue of being viable.
| epistasis wrote:
| It will be a win when it's on the grid and running.
|
| Producing a design has never been a challenge for nuclear
| power, that's the easy part. The hard part has been building
| the designs.
| linkdink wrote:
| That's exactly the problem this modular type is supposed to
| address.
|
| > small modular reactors (SMRs) are designed to be small
| enough to build in a factory before being shipped
| epistasis wrote:
| Right, but that's why we it won't be a win until it's
| generating. We don't know that this manufacturing method
| will work out better than prior attempts.
|
| The AP1000, was supposed to address construction problems
| by being able to ship in large parts already constructed.
| But that failed so miserably that SMRs-long ignored because
| they weren't thought to be economically efficient-became
| the last ditch effort to build nuclear. And the AP1000
| failed because of all the on-site mismanagement of things
| as simple as concrete pours.
|
| SMRs are unproven in at least two regards: 1) ability to
| manufacture in a factory economically, and 2) ability to
| construct all the on-site infrastructure for the SMR to
| generate the electricity.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It will be another win when it's on the grid and running
| cudgy wrote:
| I'm looking forward to off-grid tiny reactors that can power
| a single home.
| njarboe wrote:
| The design might not not be hard but getting it approved is a
| real pain.
|
| "NuScale completed the first NRC review of an advanced
| reactor application, and overall the NuScale DCA review was a
| success. Staff completed review of the first small modular
| reactor design in 41 months following docketing of the
| application. The review was thorough; it involved over a
| quarter million review hours, about two million pages of
| documentation made available for review or audit, and about
| 100 gigabytes of test data." [1]
|
| 1/4 of a million review hours!
|
| IIRC, NuScale said they spent about $500 million on getting
| it approved.
|
| This was the first modular design ever approved. This is
| really good news and the fact that none of the climate change
| bills fund the quick ramping up of testing and building this
| design means that people don't really want quick action on
| reducing CO2.
|
| [1]https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2105/ML21050A431.pdf
| [deleted]
| systemvoltage wrote:
| How much of NRC regulations are based on 1980's
| scaremongering and FUD, vs. real and material risks of
| Nuclear reactor designs?
|
| I suspect there is some malaise and misallocation of
| resources where we could benefit from very strict
| regulations where _it really matters_.
|
| Reminds me of the story of 3D printers where Stratasys had
| 80 patents expiring between 2005-2010 and as soon as that
| happened, 3D printers were all the rage. Sometimes, it's
| not the fundamental physics, engineering or manufacturing
| issues; but purely artificial boundaries created by, in
| this case, IP regulation (patents).
| panick21_ wrote:
| Unfortunately in the US regulation is technology
| depended, so the specification might say 'how is your
| secondary steam loop secured', but of course a molten
| salt reactor doesn't have steam. You literally can't get
| approval for anything that is not a PWR. NuScale could
| kind of slip threw by still being a PWR.
|
| NuScale still had some major challenges, one of the
| reason they had to pay so much is that they wanted 1
| control room to control multiple nuclear reactors. That
| was partly paid for be the government as it will help
| others as well.
|
| If you wanted to do anything other then PWR, you
| basically have to give them a huge amount of money and a
| design (couple 100M invested to get there) and then they
| will take a long time (on your cost) and then potentially
| develop a regulatory framework and then tell you what
| your design needs to add. So in practice you are gone be
| down billions and decades before you get something like a
| molten salt reactor threw approval.
|
| That is why virtually all (at least non DoD) next
| generation reactors go to Canada to go threw initial
| deployment. Its hopped that once Canada approves an GenIV
| reactor other places might be easier to get threw. And
| thankfully the US is actually looking to Canada and they
| are considering cross licenses.
| mynameisash wrote:
| > How much of NRC regulations are based on 1980's
| scaremongering and FUD, vs. real and material risks of
| Nuclear reactor designs?
|
| Quite a lot, I think. My dad spent his career in the
| nuclear industry. I don't know exactly how much
| interaction he had with the NRC, but he did spend several
| years working in the relicensing group, so I assume it
| was a lot. The impression I got from my conversations
| with him was that there was very much an adversarial
| relationship -- not collaborative.
|
| Grain of salt, n=1, etc.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I did not work with the nuclear regulators, but I worked
| plenty with other regulators. Like lots, maybe thousands
| of hours of interaction. I noticed the tendency among the
| industry people who interact with regulators to grumble
| that "they don't even know what questions to ask", etc. I
| always found that unfair. Of course, as a worker you'd
| always rather do something else than produce
| documentation for regulators, but I personally appreciate
| that the regulators have a job to do, and in my
| experience they do it well. In many cases I was simply
| amazed of how thorough they can be.
|
| I spent some time looking at the NRC safety approval of
| the NuScale design [1]. You look at all those documents
| published there and realize that they are all necessary.
| You pick one randomly and open it at a random page, and
| you don't find superfluous things.
|
| Now, when you have a review that takes millions of man-
| hours of effort, you'll find cases of irrelevant
| inquiries. I suspect however that most of these inquires
| were irrelevant only in hindsight, not because the NRC
| supervisors were incompetent.
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-
| reactors/smr/nuscale/ser-op...
| njarboe wrote:
| The next paragraph after the one quoted above gives some
| hope for reducing unneeded parts of the NRC review
| process:
|
| "While successful, the level of effort for reviewing the
| NuScale DCA may not be repeatable for future reviews.
| Significant resources were expended on issues with little
| bearing on the safety of the design, matters well beyond
| the purview of reasonable assurance of adequate
| protection. Several issues were left unresolved by Staff,
| which could have been avoided were the recommendations
| here in place. During the course of review, NuScale
| identified several overarching problems with the review
| process and review criteria that could yield significant
| efficiencies in the review of future applications,
| without impacting the effectiveness of NRC's review."
|
| Refering to you 3D printer history, most technologies
| don't take off till the first round of patents expire. I
| think one reason tech makes such great strides during war
| time is that all war related patents are ignored or cross
| licensed to everyone else.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The competition is for cost. I don't mind more competition, I
| think it's great that there are alternatives. However, I don't
| see nuclear as particularly competitive on that front as it is
| currently, by far, the most expensive option. The only thing
| that comes close is natural gas. Which has seen pretty high
| price hikes of course.
|
| Low carbon energy generation is basically happening with or
| without nuclear. At this point, we're past the point where
| people need to study the cost of wind or solar. They have
| proven much cheaper than anything else and they are being mass
| deployed all over the world as a result of that.
|
| Nuclear, not so much. A few deployments here and there. Usually
| at prices that are way over budget and years late as well.
| Maybe smaller nuclear plants will change that. They have a lot
| to prove. I wouldn't bet the future on that. It's a wild card
| at best.
|
| Meanwhile, the future is now. Lots of countries are going
| carbon neutral in the next decade or so and mostly without the
| help of nuclear power. No need to wait for small reactors to
| work or not. If they do somehow work at a price point that
| isn't prohibitively expensive, great! But not a problem if this
| is just the next chapter in nuclear power's long history of
| being too costly and complicated to be practical.
| yrgulation wrote:
| > The competition is for cost
|
| Ideally there would be competition for end user low costs as
| well as investment costs. Electricity should be cheaper than
| tap water.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Predicting future cost is really, really hard. Future cannot
| really be extrapolated from the current state of things.
|
| Until 2022, a lot of Europeans counted on cheap Russian gas.
|
| If any kind of cold war breaks out with China, will solar
| panels be as available as they are today?
|
| _Ceteris paribus_ , I would always keep at least some energy
| generating capability "at home", without the need to rely on
| potentially hostile powers or unstable regions. Even if it
| looked uneconomical at the very moment.
| Retric wrote:
| "Will solar panels be as available as they are today"
|
| Already installed solar obviously has zero dependency on
| China. In the steady state you need to replace around 3%
| per year to keep up with panel degradation, but a
| dependable solar grid has significant excess production so
| you have wiggle room to build up domestic manufacturing.
| And you can ramp up alternatives like wind.
|
| Nuclear has more significant systemic risks, which are less
| obvious. Over half of Frances's Nuclear powerplants are
| currently offline for deferred maintenance. If they where
| nearly as dependent on Nuclear as often reported they would
| be having real trouble right now.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Already installed solar obviously has zero dependency
| on China
|
| > Over half of Frances's Nuclear powerplants are
| currently offline for deferred maintenance
|
| There is more. Nuclear power requires continual
| availability of skilled technicians and engineers,
| replacement parts that need advanced manufacturing, water
| and other material, access to road and infrastructure.
|
| And a stable socioeconomical and political and legal
| system. And military defense.
|
| For some developed countries it can already difficult to
| provide all these things with 100% reliability. Today,
| before the bigger impact of climate change.
|
| And what about the remaining 50% of human population? Do
| you see South American, African and middle-eastern
| countries being able to run nuclear plants?
|
| And they do, what about plutonium and nuclear
| proliferation?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _And what about the remaining 50% of human population?
| Do you see South American, African and middle-eastern
| countries being able to run nuclear plants?_
|
| This is hard to read charitably. It seems like a racist
| remark, not least because there _are_ nuclear power
| plants in South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
| Maybe you aren 't racist yourself, but you presume
| nuclear power proponents to be racist? The ends justify
| the means, so you can play into the racial biases of
| those you oppose?
|
| I don't like this.
| Retric wrote:
| Suggetsing countries like Afghanistan that have had
| difficulty maintaining basic infrastructure would have
| more difficulty safely maintaining more difficult
| infrastructure like nuclear power plants.
|
| There is nothing racist about suggesting South Africa
| might have better odds than Sudan.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| If Bulgaria and Ukraine can run their nuclear plants, why
| not Brazil or Argentina?
| Retric wrote:
| Ukraine has a poor history of running nuclear power
| plants.
|
| They recently had one suffer a large scale military
| attack and are of course managing the aftermath of
| Chernobyl.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The Chernobyl explosion happened during Soviet times, 6
| years before Ukrainian independence. So I wouldn't blame
| Ukraine as such for it.
|
| The fact that an aggressor chose Ukrainian nuclear plant
| as a target and impromptu military dump isn't Ukrainian
| fault either. This could have happened to Finland or
| Sweden, too, in case of a Soviet/Russian attack. (Neither
| country was under NATO's protective umbrella.)
| Retric wrote:
| Actually attacking it is on Russia. However, placing
| troups inside the nuclear power station is on Ukraine.
| It's for similar reasons that you don't station troups
| inside a school, which apparently Ruissa has been doing.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Sure, there have been these two incidents. But whats the
| real argument here? Do these indicents mean that Ukraine
| has an _intolerably_ poor track record? I don't see how
| it does--especially since one occurred when Ukraine was
| part of the USSR, which was actually the nation operating
| the plant, and the other was caused by a neighbor's
| aggression.
|
| And the actual point here was about Latin America.
| Ukraine was just an example. Is it really so implausible
| to think that, for example, Brazil and Argentina could
| not safely operate nuclear plants?
| belorn wrote:
| The sad part is that the power grid is exceptional
| vulnerable to military operations and the single most
| vulnerable source that caused the loss of more lives than
| any other energy source during war is hydro power. A
| single hydroelectric dam has the potential energy of
| multiple nuclear bombs just waiting for a single fuse to
| go off, and as demonstrated during the second world war,
| even a mostly failed attempt to set it off can cause a
| massive amount of death and destruction.
|
| Attacking hydroelectric dams during war is a major war
| crime for a big and deadly reason.
| Retric wrote:
| If WWII is anything to go by, Dams are a surprisingly
| difficult target.
|
| Operation Chastise cost 53 RAF killed, 3 captured, and
| the loss of 8 aircraft. Net result 2 hydroelectric dams
| destroyed, several damaged, and ~1,600 civilian
| casualties. And it was only that successful do to high
| water levels at the dams in question.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| What do you think about the reliability of the global
| supply chain for uranium ore and fuel rod production?
| Canada has some high-grade ore but the United States and
| Europe don't seem to have much at all.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Canada is fine with me. Finer than China.
|
| You can also stockpile rods easier than, say, gas. They
| don't take up as much space, given how energy dense they
| are.
|
| Having a three year strategic reserve is thinkable, not
| so much with other means of electricity production.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The strategic reserve of sunlight and wind isn't
| susceptible to disruption due to war or economic
| collapse. It does take some work to collect that energy,
| i.e. a domestic PV and turbine and battery manufacturing
| capacity, but these are not consumables like oil, gas,
| coal or uranium - they're durable goods that should last
| for years to decades, and which can be recycled.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Manufacturing of PVs and batteries on a large enough
| scale (and that means much larger, at least volume- and
| weight-wise, than a fleet of SMRs) needs enormous amounts
| of minerals that are produced in either unstable or
| potentially hostile regions. The sheer energy density of
| uranium cannot really be downplayed here.
| Retric wrote:
| PV's require minimal rare materials because the part that
| makes power is only ~1/5000th of a meter thick. It works
| out to around 80 gigawatt hours per cubic meter and most
| of that material is silicon. By comparison a nuclear
| powerplant goes through around 240 kg of uranium to
| generate that much power.
|
| The casing on the other hand can be made from an
| extremely wide range of materials. And of course long
| term you can recycle PV panels because they arn't
| consuming the material.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > It works out to around 80 gigawatt hours per cubic
| meter and most of that material is silicon. By comparison
| a nuclear powerplant goes through around 240 kg of
| uranium to generate that much power.
|
| Well, one cubic meter of uranium is ~19000 kg, so not
| sure what your point was.
| Retric wrote:
| The point was Silicon isn't rare, it's 28% of earths
| crust.
|
| If ~99.5% of the 1 cubic meter is silicon then, the rare
| bits _assuming uranium density_ are ~95kg which is less
| than 240kg of uranium.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Are you including the cost of battery storage in solar & wind
| power generation for 24 / 7 power output? Otherwise Nuclear
| power is of higher quality since it can be sustained
| virtually at any time unlike solar & wind
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| My understanding with the Vogtle nuclear power plant in
| Georgia is that you could buy solar and batteries for
| cheaper and deploy sooner. You could throw in a subsidy for
| electric cars too which can feed back to the grid in an
| emergency. That said the small reactors of this article
| will hopefully have lower costs and faster deployment
| times.
|
| Another advantage of wind and battery is that they aren't
| national security targets in the way nuclear is.
| kbenson wrote:
| I'd hate to be relying on cars feeding back into the grid
| when a natural disaster happens which encourages people
| to evacuate, or prepare to evacuate such that they want
| to ensure their batteries are charged.
|
| I would hate to weather another large and close wildfire
| where in addition to the normal grid instability and
| power issues it's exacerbated by lack of expected car
| feedback resources because people have evacuated or are
| standing by to.
| geysersam wrote:
| On the other hand. Nuclear is not immune to natural
| conditions either. Look at France, currently turning off
| reactors because of lack of cooling water due to the
| drought.
| belorn wrote:
| Right now the European grid is operational and demand is
| being met. When winter arrive it is expected that
| multiple countries will have to start to shut down part
| of society in order to save the grid.
|
| Thankfully the cooling issue won't hopefully exist during
| winter, and given how much political outcry will occur if
| the grid do collapse, France might actually step up and
| fix their reactors given enough political pressure.
| geysersam wrote:
| I'm glad the issues in France won't have too bad of an
| impact. But that's somewhat besides the point. The cause
| of the electricity shortage is the enormous overreliance
| on Russian gas and oil. It's not about renewables vs.
| Nuclear.
|
| The comment I responded to argued nuclear is superior in
| a situation of crisis, and selects as an example a
| natural disaster. Wanted to point out that this seems to
| depend rather sensitively on the _kind_ of crisis.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| French nuclear power is unavailable more often due to
| maintenance or lack of cooling water than British wind is.
|
| British wind often generates less power than it can, but it
| very rarely drops to zero.
| toast0 wrote:
| Nuclear plants may or may not be reliable, but outages at
| multiple nuclear plants are usually not corellated.
|
| Solar is corellated around time of day on a large scale
| and cloud cover on a more localized scale. Lack of wind
| sometimes happens to fairly large regions;
| interconnections to farther away wind farms helps though.
|
| Weather extremes outside the design can result in outages
| for all kinds of plants though, so a relatively
| geographically small and isolated grid like Texas, that
| has many plants unprepared for cold will likely have
| outages at plants of all types during a bad cold snap; a
| particularly bad heat wave might cause issues as well.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| On the other hand an advantage that solar and wind have
| is that they are predictable in the medium term. Weather
| forecasts are fairly reliable predictors of solar & wind
| output about a week or so out. They also ramp up and down
| smoothly.
|
| So while grid operators have to be constantly adjusting
| for solar & wind output variations, they can do so
| without panic and without customers noticing.
|
| Reactor shutdowns, while rare, are sometimes very
| unexpected and drop a lot of capacity from the grid very
| quickly.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| This isn't really any more or less true of Nuclear than
| any other facility. A power outage which took out many of
| the railways in London a few years back was caused by one
| of the offshore wind fields tripping from the grid.
| elcomet wrote:
| Lack of water to cool down is unfortunately correlated
| across the country.
| jtlisi wrote:
| Which country?
| njarboe wrote:
| France
| chelical wrote:
| Capacity factor is generally better for nuclear than any
| other energy source.
|
| > British wind often generates less power than it can,
| but it very rarely drops to zero.
|
| Sorry, I didn't realize French nuclear reactors weren't
| generating any energy at the moment.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Over half of French reactors are down.
| https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/07/28/frances-
| nuclear-...
| phtrivier wrote:
| Let's note that part of them are down now for planned
| maintenance that had to be delayed because of the
| pandemic. Hopefully, this is not going to be a recurring
| event.
|
| Water temperature is also a problem, but, again, is
| something that is going to resolve itself "at some
| point".
|
| Finally, others are closed for potentially recurring
| corrosion issues, and _that_ is the really problematic
| stuff since most of our reactors were built around the
| same time.
|
| I don't exactly understand why everyone is tiptoing
| around the fact that we're going to have electricity
| shutdowns this winter in Europe, when the gas that's
| supposed to full peaked plants is going to be missing.
|
| Sadly there is not much we can do to prevent it, at the
| moment, and at least a good old blackout and a few
| shortages at gas stations might make some people take
| energy issues seriously.
| landemva wrote:
| > Sadly there is not much we can do to prevent it ...
|
| The people could demand a resolution to the politician's
| issues which are holding five turbines in Montreal that
| could be installed in a pipeline which supplies gas to
| parts of Europe. It is almost like some political
| segments don't want a resolution before winter.
|
| Edit: I had read one was returned, five being repaired,
| and Germany restarting ten coal plants.
| https://globalnews.ca/news/9002839/canada-turbines-
| return-ru...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Those turbines were sent back to Germany a couple of
| weeks ago.
|
| It is almost like the news is more interested in
| reporting on ongoing problems than solved ones.
| mrep wrote:
| Are you including the cost of storage in nuclear power
| generation for 24 / 7 power output? If not, then please do
| the math on how much it would cost to have enough surplus
| nuclear to heat every building in the entire continental US
| 30-100 degrees fahrenheit when a polar vortex hits [0].
|
| Nuclear has the opposite problem of wind/solar in that it
| needs to be run at 100% capacity as much as possible in
| order to amortize its absurd building costs over its low
| operating costs. Building enough nuclear to support that
| load that then sits idle 95% of the year would be absurdly
| expensive.
|
| You could of course then use that idle capacity to make say
| methane [1] which is what we currently use to heat our
| homes but then why spend 3x [2] the money to make that
| storable energy when you can just use wind/solar to do it.
|
| [0]: https://mashable.com/article/polar-vortex-2021-cold-
| temperat...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_s
| ource#...
| seanalltogether wrote:
| > Nuclear has the opposite problem of wind/solar in that
| it needs to be run at 100% capacity as much as possible
| in order to amortize its absurd building costs over its
| low operating costs.
|
| Can you not make the same argument for wind/solar? If any
| power generator isn't capable of dumping it's full output
| onto the grid when possible, it's not going to be
| profitable. This pdf seems to indicate that wind is
| allowed to just dump all of their output onto the grid
| and everyone else has to ramp up or down. Which doesn't
| give realistic comparisons of cost between the two.
| https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/61721.pdf
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Wind and solar are unique in that their fuel has a cost
| of $0, which is why they've been putting some fossil fuel
| plants out of business.
|
| Nuclear still needs some fuel that costs money to obtain
| and handle.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nuclear also has higher "fixed" O&M costs, from all that
| staffing.
| mrep wrote:
| Bad phrasing on my part. Wind/solar/nuclear are all
| basically pure capex with no marginal cost to producing
| max energy so they all need to be run at 100%.
|
| To handle daily/seasonal energy demands though, you'll
| want to run any of those all the time and thus dump
| surplus energy into some type of storage to reduce capex
| costs and dynamically handle demand with some type of
| peaker.
|
| So your options are nuclear surplus + storage or
| wind/solar surplus + storage but why light your money on
| fire with nuclear creating said storage when wind/solar
| are 1/3 the cost.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| In particular wind is very inexpensive.
| teddyh wrote:
| _Sometimes_ wind is free, but _some other times_ , you
| can't get it for love or money. Same with solar. This is
| why they can never be a solution by themselves.
|
| (Until battery technology improves, and please, let me
| know if that ever happens.)
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The point, in this particular subthread, is that wind is
| so inexpensive so there's no problem if we have to "dump"
| a lot of unused power windy day. And we can have enough
| wind so even when it delivers say less than 50% of max,
| it will be enough. And windy days with a lot of extra
| capacity, we make hydrogen (or pump mass to higher
| elevation where practical), even though the efficiency
| isn't particularly good. When the energy we put in is for
| free, it doesn't matter that the efficiency is 30% or
| even 20% for the full cycle.
|
| And this can't be said for nuclear power. It's so
| expensive to build and run, so it has to run most of the
| time to make a profit. And this will of course be problem
| when it sells it output on the same market as wind, where
| many days the cost of electricity is almost zero.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _The point, in this particular subthread, is that wind
| is so inexpensive so there 's no problem if we have to
| "dump" a lot of unused power windy day._
|
| Fair enough.
|
| > _And windy days with a lot of extra capacity, we make
| hydrogen (or pump mass to higher elevation where
| practical), even though the efficiency isn 't
| particularly good._
|
| From what I understand, those are not worth the cost. Is
| is even remotely feasible to even produce, let alone
| build, enough solar and/or wind electricity production
| plants which give enough hydrogen to be able to handle
| the world's energy needs? Even in places with extended
| periods without sun and wind? Until that is true, nuclear
| seems to be the only alternative left which is not oil,
| coal, or natural gas.
|
| (Left out is hydro, which, from what I understand, is
| already built everywhere it can be built.)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No one is saying that the grid should be fully nuclear.
| What we are saying is that wind and solar require another
| technology to pick up the slack when they have low
| generation. Currently, that is gas or coal in most
| places. In the future, it may be large scale long term
| storage, but that doesn't generally exist.
|
| The only green technology we know about that could
| replace coal and gas as slack for wind and solar today is
| nuclear.
|
| Does nuclear cost more than wind and solar? Irrelevant,
| since wind and solar can't power the whole grid. Does it
| cost more than coal and gas? Irrelevant, since those need
| to be stopped or the effects of global warming will
| destroy our industrial life in 50 years.
|
| Does nuclear cost more than large-scale long-term
| storage? This is an interesting question, and we don't
| yet have a good answer, as no one has really tried
| creating storage for hundreds of megawatts for something
| like half a year. There is one such storage location in
| Switzerland, and in fa t it took 14 years to build
| compared to South Korea's newest nuclear reactor taking
| 10 years (while also producing 1350MW compared to
| Switzerland storing 950MW). Is that representative of
| such costs? Probably not, but who knows.
|
| Well, I should mention hydro as well, though that is very
| geographically dependent, so it's often not an option at
| all.
| mrep wrote:
| IDK what your definition of green is but I'm fine with
| using gas (methane) to pick up the slack for
| wind/solar/nuclear if it is made with electrical
| surpluses from wind/solar/nuclear in a carbon neutral
| way.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That still requires you to store that gas on bright windy
| days so you can use it weeks or months later on overcast
| still nights, so I am lumping it with "storage
| technologies".
|
| Today, "coal and gas" means using fossil fuels, not
| renewable coal and gas produced out of CO2 in air, and I
| expect this to remain true for quite a while longer - the
| temptation will be too large, given the price difference.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Why the heck would you create half year storage? No place
| ever goes sun and wind free for 6 months.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Maybe 6 months is too much, but for example in Europe,
| you do need more than a month to ensure that your grid
| actually works even if you have low wind and low sun for
| that long - at least until you can over-generate so much
| that you have enough production on a ~14h of sunlight on
| a cloudy day in winter with low wind you can ensure
| enough power for the whole day. The farther north you go,
| the bigger this problem gets - places like Norway or
| Finland have far less than 14h of sunlight in winter per
| day, for example, for months.
| j-bos wrote:
| Answered my own questions, posting in case my thoughts
| match someone else's.
|
| Did I understand correctly: Wind and solar are better
| than nuclear because nuclear isn't cost effective at
| having enough slack for a polar vortex?
|
| But if that's the case, don't wind and solar fail in a
| polar vortex? Ah, you're saying that nuclear, wind, and
| solar all require storage. Got it.
|
| Then the question would be how much storage do they
| require. Which I guess is what you're saying.
| mrep wrote:
| Yes, wind/solar require more peaker plants to handle
| their unreliability compared to nuclear but seeing as
| nuclear is 3x as expensive, I don't see it as the optimal
| solution to getting carbon neutral.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >At this point, we're past the point where people need to
| study the cost of wind or solar. They have proven much
| cheaper than anything else and they are being mass deployed
| all over the world as a result of that.
|
| If the costs are so settled, why are countries like China
| still installing more thermal plants than solar or wind?
|
| You think they would favor the cheaper proven options?
| oezi wrote:
| Is China installing more thermal than renewables? I thought
| it was roughly balanced between fossils and
| hydro+wind+solar.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are right if you add it all up.
| anton96 wrote:
| For your renewable vs nuclear cost, is the cost advantage
| that obvious?
|
| When price is comparison is done, does it account for
| lifespan difference, a nuclear reactor last 60 year vs 20 for
| wind and solar. That can already triple price of the
| renewable.
|
| Does it account, that you should build extra capacity of many
| time what you need because not all the same regions have the
| same wind and sun exposition at the same time? You can look
| how oversize is the installed capacity of Germany [1]
| compared to France.
|
| Also, I'm not sure for the US but the EU got its solar panel
| production wiped out by the heavily subsided Chinese
| industry. So the rather lower apparent cost of solar by might
| be partially driven by the Chinese attempt to pump money in
| to gain market share.
|
| [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Solar panels can last 50 years. The main reason they don't
| is that they improve so much every decade that the
| opportunity cost of doubling power output per square meter
| makes it worth replacing them.
|
| So you're left with 2 theses:
|
| 1: solar panels will stop improving, so you should amortize
| over 50 years. 2: solar panels will keep improving, so cost
| / kWh will be less than a 50 year amortization.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Nuclear absolutely has to be part of that carbon neutral
| equation. Solar and wind are awesome, but they are not
| "dispatchable". i.e. they turn off sometimes when the wind
| stops blowing or the sun isn't shining. Without tons of
| batteries, natural gas and coal etc are always going to be
| used to fill the gaps. Nuclear is the perfect choice to
| replace those dispatchable sources.
|
| Also, additional nuclear capacity can be used to do things
| like desalinate ocean water and help alleviate droughts in
| the future.
| oezi wrote:
| You say "always", but the technological progress and price
| curves indicate that within the next 20 years wind and
| solar (with batteries) are going to outperform any other
| source of energy generation by such a large factor and
| become so cost efficient that it would be ridiculous not to
| use them exclusively.
| epistasis wrote:
| Traditionally, nuclear is not dispatchable either, it's
| baseload, and in particular these SMRs are not
| dispatchable. There are a few variable output reactors in
| France, but they are very expensive. Molten salt reactors
| could perhaps have a thermal storage component, but...
|
| Nuclear is "firm" in that its always running. This is a
| good characteristic. I'm more optimistic about advanced
| geothermal that has been developed in recent years, using
| the advances in drilling developed for fracking.
|
| If we can use the waste heat from nuclear for something
| productive, like desalination, then I think it has a much
| better chance. But coastal communities will also have
| access to offshore wind, which has really high capacity
| factors and will be far far cheaper than nuclear could be.
| politician wrote:
| An array of SMRs is dispatchable even though a single SMR
| is not. It's a scheduling problem.
| epistasis wrote:
| Oh really, what's the ramp rate of this design? I haven't
| heard anybody claim that ability for SMRs.
|
| What makes an array more dispatchable than a single SMR?
| I don't follow how that could be possible.
| njarboe wrote:
| Elsewhere in the thread, credit_guy quotes 20% to 100% in
| 96 minutes[1].
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32370392
| credit_guy wrote:
| The design we are talking about here has the capability
| to load follow: The unique features of a
| NuScale plant allow its modules to respond to meet the
| power generation demand in the evenings by increasing
| from 20% to 100% power in 96 minutes
|
| [1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/newsletter/nucleus-
| winter-2019/...
| epistasis wrote:
| Thank you! I'm surprised that I've not heard this before,
| and I never noticed it the many times I've been to
| NuScale's site.
|
| I'm clearly in left field when it comes to concerns about
| nuclear, in that I mostly am worried about wasted effort
| and capital on a tech that I do not foresee being able to
| keep up, rather than concerns about "safety" or belief
| that it is in anyway necessary for decarbonization. So I
| appreciate seeing some new information that make me more
| hopeful that SMRs will succeed.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Traditionally, nuclear is not dispatchable either, it
| 's baseload, and in particular these SMRs are not
| dispatchable._
|
| Thermally, generally not. But one can design a system so
| that the steam is not sent to the turbines and so
| electrical power is not generated.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > Molten salt reactors could perhaps have a thermal
| storage component
|
| If you can build one of those economically and deal with
| the caustic molten salt then you can build a concentrated
| solar thermal plant with molten salt for storage even
| more economically with no worries about a nuclear
| disaster.
| jonhohle wrote:
| While nuclear disasters are acutely catastrophic, they
| are also exceptionally rare. In the US, nuclear power has
| 1/100th the deaths per TWh compared to hydro electric,
| 1/500th oil, and 1/1000th coal.
|
| I really hope the US can adopt a more aggressive approach
| to using more fuel, even if that means it may be closer
| to weapons grade at some point in its cycle. This would
| eliminate a significant amount of waste leaving
| catastrophic failure as the only real downside.
|
| I would be very happy with a nuclear+solar future (which
| is currently my present as well).
| Gareth321 wrote:
| > Low carbon energy generation is basically happening with or
| without nuclear. At this point, we're past the point where
| people need to study the cost of wind or solar. They have
| proven much cheaper than anything else and they are being
| mass deployed all over the world as a result of that.
|
| A lot of these calculations are based on straight line
| production cost against average power output. They often omit
| one of the most valuable aspects of nuclear: grid stability.
| Redundancy is expensive but EXTREMELY important. I see few
| papers accurately imputing this cost when they conclude that
| we should all switch to renewables immediately. Here in
| Europe we can have swings in wind power production in excess
| of 50% in the span of a day. This is ENORMOUS volatility, and
| requires some kind of stable power production to offset the
| slow wind days.
|
| Grids need to be diversified. Solar, wind, tide, geothermal,
| hydro, and definitely nuclear. If not nuclear, we are stuck
| with coal and LNG for the foreseeable future.
| oezi wrote:
| This will just mean that even more renewables will be built
| up the point where it is economically feasible to store
| such energy in batteries, heat, hydrogen, synfuels etc.
| Yes, many of these processes are inefficient, but if you
| consider wind already being the cheapest mode of
| electricity generation then after another 50% price decline
| due to progress in technology we might have electricity for
| lots of inefficient storage mechanisms.
| macintux wrote:
| Heavy discussion a week ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32282632 (742 comments)
| joak wrote:
| And another one here 5 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32298994
|
| It seems to me that the nuclear lobby is particularly active
| these days. My impression is that the window for nuclear is
| rapidly closing. The alternative (wind, solar and batteries) is
| becoming cheaper and cheaper (even Texas is adopting it). Soon
| nuclear will be completely irrelevant.
| swarnie wrote:
| My issue is still with storage.
|
| It doesn't matter how "green" your energy production is if
| storing it requires you to turn an entire continent upside
| down for the battery minerals.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| That's even more of a problem with the uranium ore required
| to feed into fuel rod production, however. Battery
| materials like lithium-iron are also quite recyclable.
|
| The United States today has close to 100 GW of nuclear
| power plants installed (almost all built decades ago). Most
| uranium ore bodies seem to hover around 1.0 - 0.1 % uranium
| by mass. Each GW appears to require about 200 tons of pure
| uranium (enriched somewhat from the natural 0.7% U235).
| Assuming we take an average, that's on the order of (200
| tons of ore/ton of fuel) * (20,000 tons of fuel rods per
| year) = ~4 million tons of ore per year (non recyclable).
|
| Batteries seem like the better option.
| oezi wrote:
| You don't need to focus only on batteries. You could also
| generate heat and store that for later use or hydrogen or
| other synfuels. Once you give consumers price incentives to
| follow current production, many things are possible (for
| instance running washing machines when power is cheapest
| etc.)
| koffiezet wrote:
| It's never an "or" thing, it's an "and" thing, we need both.
| The more renewable we have, the better, but for a base-load
| it's hard to have this everywhere and batteries are far from
| an ideal solution. We don't need nuclear to replace
| wind/solar, we need it to replace the oil/coal/gas which we
| can't seem to get rid of for that base-load.
|
| And Texas has a lot of sun during moments with peak usage
| (aircos) - so it you'd have to be an absolute moron not to
| see the advantages there, but for example in Germany they're
| going backwards here, they use coal and gas to replace
| nuclear - in a time where our primary focus should be on
| producing as little CO2 as possible - which is just another
| level of stupidity.
| LightG wrote:
| How about the world installs such an excess of
| solar/wind/renewable that the even the lowest variable
| takes care of the base-load?
|
| I don't know ... call me suspicious ... but having Ukraine
| and and Russia fighting in amongst a nuclear reactor gives
| me the willies.
|
| Something previously unthinkable. Until the unthinkable
| becomes thunk.
|
| You don't know what's around the corner. And those in
| support of nuclear have such a hard-on about it that
| they're starting to sound like the crypto cult. I'm not
| convinced.
| macintux wrote:
| > And those in support of nuclear have such a hard-on
| about it that they're starting to sound like the crypto
| cult.
|
| Please don't. There are plenty of valid reasons to
| support more nuclear power, there are plenty of valid
| reasons to oppose it, but there are no good reasons to go
| ad hominem.
| [deleted]
| gary_0 wrote:
| Who is the "nuclear lobby"? I'd be interested to know about
| which industrial interests are pushing the government for
| nuclear investment. I was under the impression there weren't
| many, especially compared to the fossil fuel and
| environmental lobbies (although nothing really compares to
| the omnipotent fossil fuel lobby, I guess).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I suppose it depends on the country, but nuclear power
| (with the exception of the just-approved SMR) is generally
| produced by large industrial conglomerates.
|
| The US lost its own companies due to mergers, but there is
| certainly an industrial complex in, say, France, where
| Areva was bailed out and restructured by the state, or
| Japan, where TEPCO enjoyed a close relationship to the
| government.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| A Google engineer on their science/climate team moonlights
| as a registered lobbyist:
|
| https://www.thirdway.org/memo/how-advanced-nuclear-got-on-
| th...
|
| (The article provides a really interesting window into a
| real-world lobbying project IMO.)
| jmyeet wrote:
| I highly encourage you to look at this factsheet I only just
| found today [1]. Some highlights:
|
| > - Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) includes the lifetime costs
| of building, operating, maintaining, and fueling a power plant.
| Estimated LCOE for plants built in the near future are: combined
| cycle natural gas: 3.71 C//kWh; advanced nuclear: 6.31 C//kWh;
| and biomass: 8.92 C//kWh
|
| and
|
| > - Spent fuel is placed in a storage pool of circulating cooled
| water to absorb heat and block the high radioactivity of fission
| products
|
| > - Many U.S. spent fuel pools are reaching capacity,
| necessitating the use of dry cask storage.
|
| This point is often overlooked. Nuclear waste generates heat. It
| needs to be actively cooled, possibly for a decade or longer,
| until it can be stored in dry storage. There's transportation
| risk there (for tens of thousands of tons per year at current
| rates) and facilities that need to be maintained to do that. Plus
| adding water increases the risk of site contamination.
|
| Also consider:
|
| > - ... Managing nuclear waste requires very long-term planning.
| U.S. EPA was required to set radiation exposure limits in
| permanent waste storage facilities over an unprecedented
| timeframe--one million years
|
| > - The U.S. has no permanent storage site.
|
| TIL:
|
| > - The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear
| plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for
| individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants.
|
| WHY?
|
| This is the big problem with nuclear: failure modes have
| incredibly high cost but relatively low likelihood. Companies
| have limited liability so they get to pocket the profits for
| under-maintaining plants and move the costs to the government.
|
| In addition to being a bad idea this presents a falsely cheap
| picture of the true costs of nuclear power.
|
| In this same vein:
|
| > - The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the U.S. federal
| government to begin taking control of spent nuclear fuel in 1998.
|
| Another cost shifted to the government.
|
| EDIT: over the years I've learned that the more rabid one side of
| an argument is, the more likely they are to simply downvote
| anything they disagree with, regardless of the merit. This,
| sadly, is my experience with nuclear on HN (which isn't plagued
| with downvote-as-disagreement like, say, Reddit is). It's not a
| reason to be anti-nuclear but it sure makes it hard to be swayed
| by pro-nuclear arguments.
|
| [1]:
| https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear...
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| I don't necessarily agree with this comment, but I do agree
| that it's sad this is getting downvotes. The comment is
| thoughtful and I learned something from it. I support building
| more reactors but I don't support reflexively shouting down
| commenters which take the opposite stance.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| I support _every_ method of power generation getting this
| treatment. But it's only nuclear that's held to this
| standard. No other source routinely has all deaths in the
| life cycle from ground to ground counted as part of a piece
| that's essentially a press release.
|
| Imagine if we had a solar article that started with:
|
| >While promising the new solar cell tech does nothing to
| address the ever increasing number of deaths associated with
| roof top solar, which has surpassed Chernobyl as of 2015.
|
| You'd call that article a coal industry hit job. Yet this is
| exactly what the OP's article does.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Can someone correct me if I'm wrong but I remember one of the
| reasons the RMBK reactor is so large was because there are
| efficiency gains with a large reactor (among other reasons you
| lose fast neutrons at a higher rate in a smaller volume right?).
| How do these small modular reactors get around this?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, neutron economics permit the use of poorer fuel on a
| larger reactor. That saves on the enrichment.
|
| A larger reactor also gains efficiency on the power generator.
| Larger turbines are cheaper by power than smaller ones.
| thehappypm wrote:
| With nuclear, efficiency really doesn't matter that much. It's
| not the cost of the fuel that matters almost at all, it's the
| cost of the reactor itself. The cost of the fuel and the
| efficiency of using that fuel is really a secondary cost
| compared to building the reactor in the first place, and
| operating the reactor with people
| coding123 wrote:
| The insurance required is a big one:
|
| https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
| sheets/n...
| grej wrote:
| There is an in depth presentation about the reactor on youtube:
| https://youtu.be/JhrxFCtCPUo
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