[HN Gopher] Vogtle Unit 3 starts nuclear fuel load
___________________________________________________________________
Vogtle Unit 3 starts nuclear fuel load
Author : DisjointedHunt
Score : 251 points
Date : 2022-10-14 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.georgiapower.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.georgiapower.com)
| dylan604 wrote:
| "During fuel load, nuclear technicians and operators from
| Westinghouse and Southern Nuclear are scheduled to safely
| transfer 157 fuel assemblies one-by-one from the Unit 3 spent
| fuel pool to the Unit 3 reactor core in the coming days. "
|
| Are they recycling fuel in this reactor, or were they just using
| the spent fuel pool to store the new fuel while waiting approval
| for install?
| _n_b_ wrote:
| The latter. Fresh fuel moves into the reactor refueling pool
| (the area flooded around the reactor during refueling
| operations) via a transfer canal from the spent fuel pool.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Can someone in the know summarize the improvements in this plant
| vs. the older crop? From the POV of "good ideas that made it to
| production", not vs. "what could be if only". What battles did
| these engineers pick and win?
| chomp wrote:
| These have more passive controls that don't require active
| management, and can go a few days with almost no pumps or
| anything running. They also have some improvements that avoid
| Fukushima-like events, with a core catcher that can catch and
| cool a molten core.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > A notable improvement of Gen III+ systems over second-
| generation designs is the incorporation in some designs of
| passive safety features that do not require active controls or
| operator intervention but instead rely on gravity or natural
| convection to mitigate the impact of abnormal events.
|
| > Generation III+ reactors incorporate extra safety features to
| avoid the kind of disaster suffered at Fukushima in 2011.
| Generation III+ designs, passive safety, also known as passive
| cooling, requires no sustained operator action or electronic
| feedback to shut down the plant safely in the event of an
| emergency. Many of the Generation III+ nuclear reactors have a
| core catcher. If the fuel cladding and reactor vessel systems
| and associated piping become molten, corium will fall into a
| core catcher which holds the molten material and has the
| ability to cool it. This, in turn protects the final barrier,
| the containment building.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Develop...
| moffkalast wrote:
| The _ahem_ warp core ejection system.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| That's what Chernobyl had!
| ethbr0 wrote:
| In Soviet Russia, reactor core ejects building!
|
| (Couldn't resist. Accept downvotes. I'm sorry)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The key innovation is ejecting the core downward into a
| contained vessel, instead of upward into the sky (to be
| pedantic, it was the lid of the chernobyl reactor that
| shot upward, the core subsequently started to burn).
| robotnikman wrote:
| >Many of the Generation III+ nuclear reactors have a core
| catcher. If the fuel cladding and reactor vessel systems and
| associated piping become molten, corium will fall into a core
| catcher which holds the molten material and has the ability
| to cool it.
|
| Wow, that's actually pretty cool
| p1mrx wrote:
| I don't think it's true for the AP1000:
|
| https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public
| /...
|
| "Integrity of the Reactor Vessel is protected by
| surrounding it with water in the event of a threat of core
| melting, and therefore no core catcher is required"
|
| In other words "we don't need a core catcher because we
| promise to keep refilling the boiled-off water after a
| blackout." There are other reactor designs that can safely
| shut down without any human action.
| wahern wrote:
| According to this,
| https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1117/ML11171A340.pdf, the two
| design alternatives are "dry cavity" (aka "core catcher")
| and "wet cavity". But the dry/wet distinction is a little
| misleading as according to this paper, https://www.kns.or
| g/files/pre_paper/37/17S-854%EC%9D%B4%EC%A..., both
| alternatives require cooling water. The dry cavity design
| relies on indirect cooling--the water contacts the
| sacrificial layer ("catcher")--whereas in the wet cavity
| design the water directly contacts the core material,
| which has still effectively been "caught" in the cavity
| beneath the reactor vessel.
|
| I'm not sure what all the pros and cons are for each
| approach, except that the wet cavity design has a higher
| risk of a steam explosion because of the direct water
| contact. But this seems to be addressed by containment
| structures designed for higher pressures.
|
| EDIT: The succinct comparison of each approach is in the
| introduction to the second paper: "Some plants adopted
| the 'dry cavity' to enhance the spreading of the core
| melt on the cavity floor as well as to remove the steam
| explosion risk, while other plants use pre-flooding
| strategy to make the 'wet cavity' in order to enhance the
| coolability after RPV failure or to reduce the RPV
| failure probability."
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's an AP1000 PWR. Wikipedia has a summary of the design
| features:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000#Design_specifications
| advisedwang wrote:
| The biggest thing the AP1000 does is production scale with
| passive safety. With zero power and no operator intervention it
| can shut down a reactor and keep it cool for long enough not to
| melt down.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Is there a way an operator can command the operator into a
| failure mode?
| advisedwang wrote:
| By failure I assume you mean catestrophic disaster. The
| passive safety doesn't mean no failures, it just limits the
| damage done by them. The reactor is probably wrecked if the
| safety measures have to kick in.
|
| But yes, if an operator (or more likely a whole shift of
| operators) was malicious, they probably could defeat the
| safety systems. The main innovation is basically just a
| huge tank of water that can drain into the reactor by
| gravity, so if you emptied this tank then the safety system
| is defeated. They could also just take a fuel rod, break it
| apart and dump it into a schools water tank. You can't
| really create a system that defends against murderous
| intent.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| OK good point, but I'm guessing no one would be crazy
| enough to pick up a fuel rod and try and break it. I
| think you'd actually get burnt just from handling it.
|
| In any case I was actually thinking about a foolish
| operator, not a malicious one.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Also adding onto this, what _non-safety_ improvements were
| made? As I understand the PWR is a generally crap & outdated
| design that tends to suck up the benefits of nuclear in it's
| lackluster reliability and efficiency
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| This is not correct. PWRs are slightly less efficient than
| BWRs, but their safety systems are much more straightforward
| due to having an entirely non-nuclear secondary. PWR turbine
| halls do not need containment, whereas BWRs' do.
| apendleton wrote:
| I suspect that this person wasn't talking about PWRs vs.
| BWRs, but rather, PWRs vs more-exotic gen-IV-ish designs
| (molten salt cooling, gaseous helium cooling, etc. etc.).
| mandevil wrote:
| What is the biggest Gen-IV design ever built, in MW
| terms? Is it the 200MW Pebble Bed reactors in China that
| just started powering lights at the very end of last
| year? Given how difficult it has been to build the much
| more well-understood PWR reactors, I can understand the
| skepticism for trying to build a Gen-IV design.
| apendleton wrote:
| Yeah, there are steep hurdles, but the hope eventually
| with at least some of the smaller gen IV designs is that
| a design can be approved once along with any requirements
| for siting, etc., and that then at each site where
| they're to be installed, installers will only need to
| show that the site meets the already-approved siting
| requirements rather than starting a whole new process
| from scratch, which should seems like it at least has the
| potential to make the regulatory burden more sane. The
| NRC is already working on a revised approval process that
| aims at this goal, and is set to be ready in 2024. Who
| knows if it'll pan out, but there's at least the
| possibility of change.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| From the manufacturer, Westinghouse, so please take with a
| critical look:
|
| Key quote from the second link: "The key feature of the AP1000
| plant is the replacement of complex redundant safety systems
| that are powered with AC power with passive safety methods such
| as gravity and heat transfer by conduction, convection and
| radiation.....
|
| .....The AP1000 plant does not require AC electric power to
| achieve safe shutdown nor to establish and maintain, for an
| extended period of time, safe shutdown mode while removing
| decay heat from the nuclear fuel. By removing the reliance on
| AC power, you solve the paradox in which you need AC power to
| remove decay heat. With the AP1000 plant design, you don't need
| AC power. You just need the laws of physics and stored energy
| from DC batteries, compressed gases and gravity to remove decay
| heat, and that is what achieves the simplicity and robustness."
|
| Safety features overview page:
| https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap1000-pw...
|
| Interviews with engineers for a salesy focused magazine (Not
| mobile friendly):
| https://digitaleditions.nuclearplantjournal.com/JA18/22/
|
| Product overview page:
| https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap1000-pw...
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I like how much this resembles a GDI power plant in Command and
| Conquer
| ryan93 wrote:
| The national debt has gone up like 20 trillion in my life. Just
| ten percent of that could build 133 ap1000 reactors. probably
| more if some parts were mass produced and the talented welders
| got experience on multiple projects.
| patientplatypus wrote:
| unglaublich wrote:
| I love how nuclear is like: 20% is the time is spent on getting
| something working, the remaining 80% of the time is spent on
| getting it safe.
| trasz wrote:
| The title is misleading, the actual first one has been operating
| commercially since 2018
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station).
| There are another couple of them in operation.
| kelnos wrote:
| It's also notable that it took less than a year after agreeing
| on a contract for the Chinese to break ground on the Sanmen
| plant, while Vogtle sat around for 7 years waiting on US
| regulatory approval.
|
| The pair of reactors at Sanmen also only cost CNY 50.1B (just
| under US$7B) to build, while it seems costs at Vogtle are at
| $30B and counting.
|
| (At least if the figures on their respective Wikipedia pages
| are accurate.)
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, first in the US but not in the world.
| kelnos wrote:
| Did a little more reading on Wikipedia, and found this bit of
| "oof"[0]:
|
| > Cost overruns at Vogtle and the cancellation of Summer [Nuclear
| Generating Station in South Carolina] led to Westinghouse's
| bankruptcy in 2017.
|
| This raises a somewhat-scary question: in this case,
| Westinghouse's bankrupt remains were bought out by a private
| equity firm, and they presumably took on Westinghouse's
| obligations toward in-progress nuclear plant construction, but...
| what if that hadn't been the case? What if Westinghouse had just
| completely failed and ceased operations? Who would support the
| remainder of projects like Vogtle 3 & 4, and ongoing maintenance
| for the next however-many decades?
|
| I guess a company in a heavily-regulated sector like this must
| have some sort of succession plan, but it's not clear to me how
| this would work, in the case of e.g. the company going bankrupt,
| and all the staff with institutional knowledge about a reactor
| design dispersing to various other companies. Hell, that could
| have even happened in Westinghouse's case.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
| bombcar wrote:
| If nobody wants take it over, the government steps in and tries
| to find a buyer (basically read: promises to subsidize someone
| who will take it on hand).
|
| If that fails, the government sometimes will setup its own
| company to take it in hand either at the state or federal level
| (this would almost certainly be federal).
|
| Failing that, the projects would cease.
| kelnos wrote:
| Ah, good to know there are a couple layers of fallbacks.
|
| I guess there's still one failure mode: project is completed
| and plant is running, and _then_ the manufacturer goes out of
| business. I guess in that case the government would have to
| act as a backstop no matter what, and worst-case they would
| just operate until the plant could be decommissioned.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What if Westinghouse had just completely failed and ceased
| operations? Who would support the remainder of projects like
| Vogtle 3 & 4, and ongoing maintenance for the next however-many
| decades?_
|
| For maintaining and decommissioning built plants, there are
| reserve and bonding requirements [1]. For new developments,
| that's a risk inherent to every construction project. Some hold
| that risk on their books, others sell it to an insurer. (One of
| the many reasons fuel is loaded last.)
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-
| collections/cfr/part030/p...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > For new developments, that's a risk inherent to every
| construction project.
|
| Yes but I would argue that the level of risk involved is
| different between different energy options. $20B worth of
| solar and wind plus energy storage (including subsidies for
| home solar/storage and EVs with V2G capability) would carry
| less risk for this scenario than a single nuclear power
| plant.
|
| I still think based on my back of the napkin calculations
| that solar + wind + storage (with the above mentioned
| subsidies) can be a compelling alternative to nuclear. It can
| be built faster, avoids the risk of a single large terrorist
| attack target, provides more energy independence for those
| who receive the subsidy for their own solar and storage,
| diversifies the grid, and avoids the need for a powerful
| government to control risky nuclear production facilities.
|
| You can do a quick calculation and see that $10B of solar and
| $10B of storage will produce similar continuous base load
| power as the $20B Vogtle system.
| kelnos wrote:
| And in addition, there are tons of companies who could
| likely take over maintenance and repair for any particular
| solar grid if the original company went out of business.
| The tech is not particularly different when going from
| manufacturer to manufacturer for panels, inverters, etc.,
| and many parts can be swapped out for new versions, made by
| a different manufacturer, if they break down and can't be
| repaired.
|
| In contrast, there is exactly one company that fully
| understands a particular nuclear reactor design. If that
| company disappears, it will take a lot of specialized
| knowledge transfer (likely requiring the continued
| employment of many of the original designers and builders)
| to allow another company or the government to take on that
| maintenance burden.
|
| Still, I'm not convinced solar + wind + storage will come
| along soon enough at scale to eliminate enough fossil-fuel
| burning in order to dig us out of our climate change hole
| without things getting so much worse first. Then again, if
| it takes 16 years from permit application time to get a
| nuclear plant project completed in the US, maybe we're
| screwed either way.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yeah it's the long production time for nuclear that makes
| a big difference. Solar/wind/storage can roll out today
| and start producing energy tomorrow. We'd have 16 years
| to match the scale required which I think would only be a
| challenge for storage (wind and solar seem relatively
| simple to scale). In that time we can immediately begin
| producing clean power at least during the day,
| supplementing clean power for dirty at night for 5-10
| years until more storage is available. This seems better
| than continuing with dirty power for 16 years until
| nuclear comes online.
|
| We are, generally, pretty screwed though yes.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Permitting is a huge problem for everything, including
| solar and wind. The transmission lines cross a bunch of
| jurisdictions and get NIMBY-ed to death. The generating
| facilities themselves also take a long time to get
| through the NIMBY process.
| nine_k wrote:
| Unless a solar plant is built in a completely uninhabited
| place, could existing allocations / permits for local
| power distribution be reused to build a larger power
| line? I mean, there should already be a power
| distribution grid there, maybe just not powerful enough.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I suspect a lot of that is what we've been building in
| the last 10 years, but that the low-hanging fruit is
| taken. Some next-level fruit is solar shade structures
| over parking lots at existing retail and office sites.
|
| Big wind projects have had issues reaching viability due
| to insufficiency of the transmission grid. T. Boone
| Pickens and the Texas Panhandle comes to mind.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The thing about solar is this also includes distributed
| rooftop solar, which is probably easier to permit than
| one massive solar facility.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Absolutely! And more people should have it (no matter
| what the IOUs are convincing the CPUC to do). But
| particularly for cities, there's too much demand relative
| to rooftop to reach self-sufficiency this way.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Solar/wind/storage can roll out today and start
| producing energy tomorrow.
|
| Built by elves, perhaps, like the fairytale about the
| shoemaker?
|
| Sorry, no. Replacing any significant portion of the grid
| with solar is going to take many years. More likely
| decades.
|
| > In that time we can immediately begin producing clean
| power at least during the day
|
| During the day, in the summer, when it's not cloudy,
| perhaps.
|
| You are aware that not every place in the world has the
| weather found in California, yes?
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| Right, but the point being it'll likely be at least a
| decade before a nuclear power plant started today
| actually gets completed anyway. And that's for one.
| Replacing any significant portion of the grid with
| nuclear would _also_ take many years, most likely
| decades.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > During the day, in the summer, when it's not cloudy,
| perhaps.
|
| > You are aware that not every place in the world has the
| weather found in California, yes?
|
| Your info is sorely out of date. Modern solar panels can
| operate in cloudy conditions. And they operate better
| when they are cool. The UK is installing solar all over
| the place. Solar panels operate on daylight, not direct
| sunlight.
|
| Cleve Hill solar farm in the UK was approved in 2020 and
| will generate 350MW. The idea that solar is only feasible
| is sunny climates is frankly absurd.
| samatman wrote:
| 350MV is the nameplate capacity. To get the actual
| generated power, you must, tragically, multiply by the
| capacity factor.
|
| What's the capacity factor for Cleve Hill? We don't have
| to guess, it's in this document:
|
| https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-
| conten...
|
| It's 10.8%.
|
| This is a 35MW plant. Oh, but it has batteries I hear you
| saying!
|
| Doesn't matter. It will generate 35MW-years per year.
| Batteries, at best, mean wasting less of it.
|
| Meanwhile, a 350MW nuclear plant has a capacity factor of
| 90%, most of the loss being conversion to AC, with a bit
| of downtime.
|
| So that would deliver 315MW-years of energy, per year.
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| _" Solar/wind/storage can roll out today and start ...
| producing clean power at least during the day"_
|
| Why only during the day?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I meant worst case, if sufficient scale for batteries is
| not immediately available, you're still going to get lots
| of green power most days. Of course with wind you'd prob
| get power at night too. Either way the immediacy of this
| roll out is better than waiting 10-15 years for a nuclear
| plant to come online, even if storage takes a few years
| to fully meet demand.
| k__ wrote:
| Ah, okay.
|
| Yes, I always had the impression nuclear proponents
| vastly underestimate the time and work such a plant
| takes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can do a quick calculation and see that $10B of solar
| and $10B of storage will produce similar continuous base
| load power as the $20B Vogtle system_
|
| Does it? And does this math scale?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think it does, but someone independently verify my
| claim. As far as scale, we should consider that it may
| take ten years to build a nuclear plant, so worst case we
| can compare projected storage production in that time
| frame rather than solely what is produced today. A
| benefit to my scheme is that roll out can begin
| immediately, even if reaching full scale takes a little
| while.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It doesn't require back of the napkin calculations, there
| has been plenty of studies that showed that full
| renewable is possible even without storage (not counting
| current hydro). Storage just means less overprovisioning.
|
| What this does require is significant investment in grid
| infrastructure which has been criminally neglected in
| years.
| nine_k wrote:
| How much solar can you overprovision to have power at
| night time? North America is not wide enough to have at
| least a bit of it illuminated by Sun at all times.
|
| And I bet local storage is more economical to build and
| maintain than an additional network of huge continent-
| wide transmission lines.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Base load is a myth. You're right; you can break ground
| today with renewables and start pushing fossil fuels out
| of the mix during daylight and windy periods, with
| batteries slowly consuming more of fossil generation as
| their costs decline.
|
| https://energypost.eu/dispelling-nuclear-baseload-myth-
| nothi...
|
| There is ~1TW of renewables in US grid queues, and ~427GW
| of storage. While many of these projects might not get
| built, the velocity should be noted. ~95GW of nuclear
| generation capacity remains. It takes 10 years and
| billions of dollars to build a single nuclear generator.
|
| https://www.pv-tech.org/nearly-1tw-of-renewables-in-us-
| inter...
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/estimated-427gw-of-
| energy-st...
| HyperSane wrote:
| "Base load is a myth"
|
| This is a lie repeated by anti-nuclear types. Base load
| is simply the year round constant electricity demand.
|
| How are we actually going to build hundreds of billions
| of dollars worth of batteries? How are we going to
| dispose of them?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > How are we actually going to build hundreds of billions
| of dollars worth of batteries?
|
| With battery factories. The very same that will be
| required to electrify vehicles when jurisdictions are
| enacting combustion vehicle sales bans at the end of the
| decade. 74-78 million new vehicles are sold each year.
| That's a lot of battery demand, which will be a forcing
| function to scale up battery manufacturing, driving down
| costs.
|
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-
| energy/electri...
|
| > How are we going to dispose of them?
|
| We recycle them. We already do today.
| https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ (Redwood has battery
| recycling agreements with several automakers)
| HyperSane wrote:
| And where will we get the raw materials needed to build
| such vast amounts of batters? Global supply of lithium is
| already an issue just for electric car production. Global
| supply of lithium will not be sufficient to store grid
| scale amounts of energy.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-
| wor...
|
| The world could face lithium shortages by 2025, the
| International Energy Agency (IEA) says, while Credit
| Suisse thinks demand could treble between 2020 and 2025,
| meaning "supply would be stretched".
|
| About 2 billion EVs need to be on the road by 2050 for
| the world to hit net zero, the IEA says, but sales stood
| at just 6.6 million last year, and some carmakers are
| already selling out of EVs.
|
| Lithium supply faces challenges not only from surging
| demand, but because resources are concentrated in a few
| places and over half of today's production is in areas
| with high water stress.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| There's a lot of methods of grid scale energy storage
| that don't have anything to do with lithium.
| HyperSane wrote:
| Such as? Pumped hydro is really the only practical one.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The same way we found oil for the last century and a
| half; we explore and produce based on the price of the
| commodity. Lithium is one of the most abundant materials
| in the Earth's crust.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the
| Earth's crust.
|
| Sure, and rare earth metals aren't really all that rare.
| The problem is that the processing cost is well beyond
| economical for most of it.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Markets disagree:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
| nine_k wrote:
| To be fair, grid-scale storage does not have to use
| lithium batteries, and likely should not use too much of
| them, because they are such a fire hazard.
|
| A number of alternative chemistries exist, which are much
| less expensive and less flammable. They of course have
| lower energy density, but it does not play a major role:
| batteries sitting on the ground can afford to be be bulky
| and heavy.
| [deleted]
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, base load is indeed a myth.
| HyperSane wrote:
| How is it a myth?
| rayiner wrote:
| LOL base load is definitely not a myth. What's actually a
| myth is "supply and demand" in electricity, as if it's a
| commodities market. In reality it's more like homeostasis
| --you have to carefully match generation and load and if
| you don't match it within a few % shit goes extremely
| sideways.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Load shifting is definitely a thing, and it could become
| much more of a thing if we rolled out smart appliances
| and power meters that could automatically react to grid
| conditions in real time. You do have to carefully match
| generation and load, but that doesn't always have to be
| on the generation side, it can be on the load side.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I don't think load shifting can have much of an effect. I
| would be surprised if more than 10% of the load could be
| shifted more than an hour.
| catiopatio wrote:
| I don't want to live in a world where my appliances turn
| off at unexpected times to manage load.
|
| I also don't want every appliance in my house connected
| to the cloud and collecting usage data.
|
| I sincerely doubt I'm in the minority on the former, and
| I hope I'm not in the minority on the latter.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > ~427GW of storage.
|
| Storage isn't measured in GW, but rather in GWh.
|
| I'd take any source that doesn't know the difference
| between W and Wh with a very, very large boulder of salt.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| Well, you need both GWh and GW ratings for storage - how
| much fits in storage, and how fast can you add and remove
| stored energy.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Base load isn't a myth. The reality is that peak and
| trough loads differ by usually only ~20% outside of
| summer [1]. Thus, 80% is base load.
|
| > and ~427GW of storage
|
| Got a source for this claim? That's an order of magnitude
| off [2] from what I've read before.
|
| 1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
|
| 2. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-
| insights...
| samatman wrote:
| It's people being lied to by their sources, through a
| conflation of nameplate capacity and delivered power. You
| have to knock 90% off every claim you hear about a
| renewable, that puts the number in the ballpark of what
| users of electricity will actually get out of it.
|
| It's of course the fossil fuel industry which profits
| from this relentless mendacity. Renewables are great, but
| they aren't coal's competition and coal knows it. Nuclear
| is.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > As far as scale, we should consider that it may take
| ten years to build a nuclear plant
|
| Unlike the solar panel factories, battery factories, and
| replacement distribution network required to replace the
| entire US electrical grid, which can be online tomorrow
| morning at the snap of someone's fingers?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The research agrees with you. Mind that fossil fuels are
| cheaper than nuclear.
|
| > *B. Dealing With Variability and Stability*
|
| > Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy (RE)
| systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori
| assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is
| impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics
| of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with
| 'firm' energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often
| combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is
| the key point made in some already mentioned reactions,
| such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard
| et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al.
| [275], [276].
|
| > However, while it is true that keeping a system with
| variable sources stable is more complex, a range of
| strategies can be employed that are often ignored or
| underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and
| wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82],
| [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172],
| e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed
| charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid
| via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]-[282]; storage (battery,
| compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]-[43], [46], [83], [140],
| [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16],
| [39], [90]-[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the
| interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and
| industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g.
| producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant
| energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively
| to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge
| development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
|
| > With every iteration in the research and with every
| technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems
| become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit
| that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at
| costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still
| questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no
| longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively
| expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many
| mitigation options, and energy system studies are
| increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
| arcticbull wrote:
| Fossil fuel energy isn't cheaper than nuclear, the deaths
| they cause aren't priced in. Coal kills 25 people per
| TWh, and the NRC uses an actuarial cost of $9M per death.
| That means coal should be $0.35/kWh.
| xupybd wrote:
| I think one of the problems is we need proof at scale.
| Yes there are many theoretical ways to store energy for
| the grid but until we see a reasonable implementation
| it's a hard argument to sell.
| HyperSane wrote:
| "plus energy storage"
|
| Grid scale energy storage doesn't exist.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What's the definition of grid scale energy storage in
| that statement?
| arise wrote:
| For context, suppose Vogtle 3 & 4 generates 2200 MW
| during 16 hours of winter darkness. That's 35.2 GWh. If
| you had to replace that with Tesla Powerwalls you'd need
| 2.6 million of them or 22 copies of Moss Landing Energy
| Storage Facility (the world's largest). And that's back
| of the envelope numbers assuming a 100% duty cycle for
| the batteries and no degradation.
| HyperSane wrote:
| Lets say 24 hours of the US's electrical demand.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I heard recently of a study that found 2-4 hours is
| sufficient along with an interconnected grid.
| lazide wrote:
| That's BS. For several reasons.
|
| 1) grid connections fail sometimes. Do you want people
| freezing to death in NY when the Texas interconnect goes
| down for a day or two, or vice versa?
|
| 2) regional storms (Florida hurricanes, NY ice storms,
| etc), periodically take out large swathes of grid and
| would take out grid interconnections too.
|
| Currently, the scope of the impact of these things is
| quite limited because everyone also has regional
| capacity.
|
| But if you're in a giant storm, you'd be super screwed
| and the whole region would be blacked out for awhile,
| because renewables also are impacted by these storms -
| far more than a gas turbine, for instance.
|
| And that's not even counting demand spikes and the like
| due to weather issues (longer than usual hot or cold,
| etc.)
| HyperSane wrote:
| I wouldn't be willing to bet my economy on that.
| [deleted]
| proc0 wrote:
| We need more of these. The path to 100% green energy without
| coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to
| upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt
| cheap. At that point people will want to buy electric vehicles
| because it will make more sense.
| mradek wrote:
| How would hydrogen fare for big (<-- keyword) trucks vs battery
| powered?
|
| For ex. I read that you lose a ton of efficiency if you start
| hauling or carrying a heavy load.
| exabrial wrote:
| It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience; and this
| is where the damned hydrogen conversation keeps going off the
| rails!
|
| A tesla converts nearly 100% of it's potential energy into
| kinetic energy, but "refueling" is not convenient as an F150;
| which converts something like 15% of it's potential energy
| into kinetic energy, but can hold a _ton_ more energy and
| refueled in minutes.
|
| It's ok to be far less efficient if convenience to the
| consumer is increased, as long as the power source was carbon
| neutral.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It seems likely to me that this will get solved with better
| battery tech. Solid state lithium-ion batteries seem poised
| to hit commercial availability sometime this decade. And
| there are hundreds of other more battery techs in the
| research stages. They're obviously not available yet, but
| it's not so long ago that lithium-ion wasn't either.
|
| We can also have things like extra batteries that one can
| rent and stick in your trunk for longer journeys or times
| when you don't have time to wait.
|
| > It's ok to be far less efficient if convenience to the
| consumer is increased
|
| It's also ok if convenience to the consumer is decreased.
| Nobody is owned convenience.
| mradek wrote:
| I know, that's why I'm asking for big trucks only, like the
| people who use F250/350 for hauling, or larger.
|
| F150 is kind of a small truck, in the world of work trucks.
| It should be fine as a standard EV for most contractors,
| etc.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Colloquially, efficiency can be either dimensionless (e.g.
| x% efficient) or carry a dimension (e.g. L/100km, MPG,
| Wh/mi). In the latter sense, towing a load (particularly a
| high-drag load) will lower your efficiency.
| epistasis wrote:
| > We need more of these. The path to 100% green energy without
| coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to
| upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt
| cheap.
|
| These two statements are at odds with each other, however.
| Every new nuclear plant we build like Vogtle will end up
| increasing our cost of carbon-free energy rather than
| decreasing it.
|
| Buying a nuclear power plant locks the energy price for 40-60
| years, and all the current buildable designs are more expensive
| than current renewables plus the cost of storage to make the
| renewables a firm energy source.
|
| And the trend for renewables and storage is drastic price
| decreases, slowed down only by occasional supply shortages that
| get innovated around, which in turn drive prices even lower. So
| when we replace the storage in 15-20 years at EoL, the
| replacement will be vastly cheaper. And we get 2-3 of those
| price drops during the time that we would be locked into the
| cost of current nuclear.
|
| Our energy future is one of energy abundance, and cheap cheap
| cheap energy, but it's very unlikely to include nuclear as part
| of that mix. And any nuclear we do invest in will hinder energy
| abundance and energy cheapness.
| mattwest wrote:
| How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are
| you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to
| burn in order to extract it?
|
| Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The
| energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it
| can produce in ~5 years.
|
| I don't understand how you believe the future is "very
| unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base
| load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a
| "green grid" without nuclear.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > I don't understand how you believe the future is "very
| unlikely to include nuclear".
|
| China aggressively pushed nuclear over the past 20 years
| and they still haven't caught up with France in terms of
| generating capacity.
|
| Almost 10 years ago wind power in China overtook nuclear in
| terms of GWh delivered and things stayed that way.
|
| Unless there's some kind of breakthrough, nuclear will
| remain this safe, stable, clean but really slow to build
| and expensive energy source.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where
| are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is
| going to burn in order to extract it?
|
| Where do they come from for electric vehicles? Also where
| do you get the uranium from? If we significantly increase
| nuclear energy production we run out of uranium in 40 years
| or so.
|
| > Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The
| energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what
| it can produce in ~5 years.
|
| Maybe you should have a look how contracts for these things
| are made. Nobody would invest into a nuclear power plant if
| they don't get a guaranteed price.
|
| > I don't understand how you believe the future is "very
| unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base
| load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to
| a "green grid" without nuclear.
|
| Wind, solar are provide base load, they are not load
| following, to quote wikipedia:
|
| Base load demand... can be met by unvarying power
| plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection
| of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on
| which approach has the best mix of cost, availability and
| reliability in any particular market.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
| audunw wrote:
| > How do you envision energy storage of the future?
|
| Not the guy you responded to, but: a combination of
| traditional batteries, molten metal batteries, liquid air
| or CO2 storage, pumped hydro, gravity storage, stored
| thermal energy, and more. All of which are around the
| commercial demonstration plant phase right now.
|
| > Where are you going to get the metals?
|
| Many of these don't require much metals. Molten metal
| batteries use metals that are extremely abundant.
|
| > How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract
| it?
|
| In a decarbonized world? Zero. What? You think climate
| change can be solved without making mining zero-emission?
| If you're wondering how this will be done, it'll be
| battery/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuel for mining equipment,
| trucks, ships, etc. We have to do that no matter what,
| otherwise we've just postponed climate change, not solved
| it.
|
| > How else do you provide base load requirements?
|
| Personally I believe a good share of base load will be
| provided by nuclear in many countries. I have nothing
| against nuclear. But I also think the base load problem can
| be solved without nuclear quite easily, assuming we
| actually solve CO2-emissions. This is because solving
| CO2-emissions means we'll produce
| batteries/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuels on the same order of
| magnitude needed to balance renewables to provide baseload.
|
| If you want to dive into more detail, look at Marc Z
| Jacobsens studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar
| ticle/abs/pii/S09601...
|
| I think advanced geothermal may become a significant part
| of renewable base load in the future. It would be a huge
| hail mary for the climate change cause, because it'd make
| it SO much easier to get political willpower and
| investments from the whole oil/gas-sector. Check this out:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY
|
| > It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid"
| without nuclear.
|
| Optimistic, but not naive. There's a clear path. Difficult,
| but not much more difficult than rebooting the nuclear
| energy industry.
|
| And you have to be optimistic to think we can get to zero
| CO2-emissions anyway.
| catiopatio wrote:
| This is science fiction-thinking. Not just optimistic:
| absolutely naive.
|
| We have the tech for nuclear, today. In fact, we could
| have switched the entire country over to nuclear 30+
| years ago.
|
| Instead, we've been burning fossil fuels for decades
| because, for so-called environmental activists, an
| impossible perfect solution is the only thing they'll
| accept.
| epistasis wrote:
| Run the numbers, time tracking throughout the day, on how
| you're going to run an entire grid on nuclear. Calculate
| how much storage you need in order to convert baseload
| into something that matches demand.
|
| Do the same calculation for renewables. Both need
| storage, and renewables need a bit more storage, but
| their primary energy is also 5-10x cheaper than nuclear.
|
| Calling something "naive" or "fantasy" requires
| evaluating the current state of the tech, and where the
| tech is going. From that perspective, especially with the
| data coming from the nuclear build at Vogtle and Summer,
| thinking that nuclear GenIII+ reactors have any place on
| the grid is completely unrealistic.
|
| We can not even build four of these nuclear reactors . We
| started plans to build about a dozen, started on only
| four, and had to abandon two mid-build. Nuclear is not a
| good fit for advanced economies, anymore than complex
| Victorian style wood carving is a fit for advanced
| economies. Nuclear requires way too much skilled labor,
| too much construction versus manufacturing.
|
| We no longer live in the 80s, we have much better tech,
| 40 years of advancement, and we need to use the best
| tech, not the one that was best in 1980.
| realusername wrote:
| See how this strategy is turning out in Germany right now,
| turns out this "cheap cheap cheap energy" was not including
| the diplomatic, environmental and financial costs of the gas
| backups.
| croes wrote:
| How was the nuclear nuclear nuclear energy in France going?
| Germany had to burn more gas to substitute for France's
| downtime of nuclear power plants.
|
| The cost and time for the construction of new one not
| included and the risk of sabotage not mentioned. I bet
| russia will at least try to damage them as a revenge for
| the help of Ukraine.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Well, if Germany had more nuclear power they would not be
| burning gas to help France during the French downtime now
| would they? Nor would they be restarting coal power
| plants, the dirtiest form of energy.
|
| It's funny how the Green idea of a large grid that shares
| power, i.e. it's always windy somewhere, suddenly falls
| flat when the neighbors wind(nuclear, in this case) is no
| longer blowing.
|
| The only fault of France is trusting Germany to have a
| sane power production plan when they entered a peering
| agreement with them.
| croes wrote:
| If Germany would have more nuclear power plants it would
| have more nuclear waste without nuclear repository.
|
| More problems like Asse and Brunsbuttel
| themaninthedark wrote:
| So Germany's inability to deal with their nuclear wast
| excuses them from spewing waste(CO2) out the end of a
| smokestack that we all have to deal with?
|
| How is France dealing with their waste? Can Germany pay
| France to take it?
| croes wrote:
| >it's always windy somewhere, suddenly falls flat when
| the neighbors wind(nuclear, in this case) is no longer
| blowing.
|
| There is a difference between the outage of an nuclear
| power plant and the outage of wind turbine.
|
| One power plant less has a much bigger effect than
| thousand wind turbines without wind. Nuclear power plants
| are the equivalent of Cloudflare, one outage has massive
| effects. Wind turbines are decentralization and that's
| better especially since Russia return as the bad guy.
|
| Didn't hear much fear about Ukrainian wind turbines but
| lits of worries about nuclear power plants.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Yes, one nuclear power plant has greater output than a
| large number of wind turbine. That is not what the
| analogy was about.
|
| The analogy is about how people pushing for wind and
| solar only/main are relying on every other area to be
| able to pick up the slack when their area is down. And
| the fact that they are not able or willing to pick up the
| slack when someone else's area is down.
|
| Your comment was that Germany is having to support France
| while they have their reactors down and viewing that in a
| negative light. If France was supplying power to Germany
| during a lull in the wind, the response would be "This is
| just so, even though the wind does not blow all the time,
| with enough interconnects we can ensure that a green grid
| is possible."
|
| There was even talk about expanding Europe's grid across
| to Libya in order to ensure that the wind would be
| blowing somewhere.
|
| That is just holding one energy source to an impossible
| standard(i.e. zero downtime) while giving generous
| excuses to the other.
| proc0 wrote:
| I'll have to really look into the price breakdown. I thought
| the output of nuclear would more than make up for that.
| Regardless, renewables can also be built. I don't think it
| should be all nuclear, but it seems like the only way to
| scale consumption at the moment. Both technologies will get
| better as well, and I think the biggest innovation right now
| is on the nuclear side with nuclear fusion.
| epistasis wrote:
| I'd recommend Lazard for cost info of both generation and
| storage
|
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
|
| These are last year's numbers, but I don't expect that we
| will see much of a drop later this month when the new
| numbers come out, since demand is still way outpacing
| supply at the moment.
|
| Additionally, we do not expect nuclear to decrease in cost.
| Throughout its entire history, it has not, and there's no
| tech on the horizon to expect a change. Nuclear is
| primarily a construction project, not manufacturing.
| Construction does not see the massive productivity gains
| that manufacturing does. In France and the US, one country
| with favorable regulatory conditions, and one with
| supposedly bad regulatory conditions, subsequent builds of
| the same reactor get more expensive, not less. South Korea
| managed to figure out how to decrease costs with subsequent
| reactors, but SK also sent many of their suppliers' execs
| to jail for corruption on certifications.
|
| In contrast, solar, wind, and storage see massive
| innovation year after year, for decades. They are in a true
| tech curve, and have scaled to hundreds of GW/year of
| deployment.
|
| Scaling nuclear to the point of deploying hundreds of
| GW/year is pretty difficult to imagine. We don't have the
| labor force to enable something like that, and couldn't
| build it in any reasonable time frame. Nuclear simply does
| not scale as well as the manufactured technologies of
| solar, wind, and storage.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Bear in mind that generation is only part of the holistic
| system of energy delivery. Intermittent sources require
| storage, which is separated out into a separate chart.
| Even just 4 hours of storage would bring solar's $30/MW
| to $210 to $350/MW. And 4 hours of storage is pretty thin
| - most plans call for 12 hours of storage. And storage
| costs are only projected to increase:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/ev-battery-costs-set-to-
| spik...
|
| By comparison nuclear costs $131-$204/MW, so it's still
| cheaper after storage. The Lazard estimate also didn't
| include the transmission expansions necessary to support
| the distributed nature of renewable generation (explained
| further here:
| https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-
| ene...)
| concordDance wrote:
| The obvious solution is the build more 1960s and 1970s
| reactors, under a similar regulatory regime. Those are 10x
| cheaper per kwh.
| epistasis wrote:
| To do that, we'd also have to pay 1960s and 1970s wages. In
| the meantime labor productivity has massively increased, so
| it's harder to find skilled labor at those prices.
| remorses wrote:
| Battery prices will increase in the near future, not decrease
|
| We should extract 30x times more lithium and rare earths to
| make your strategy work [1]
|
| And 80% of rare earths is extracted in China [0], creating a
| similar situation Europe has with Russia
|
| [0] https://www.mining-technology.com/analysis/china-rare-
| earths...
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-
| minerals-in...
| epistasis wrote:
| Even if batteries increase now, they will drop more in the
| future as production capacity ramps up. Same thing happens
| again and again for every other tech curve, for example
| solar. A price drop suddenly makes an entirely new
| application class cost feasible, and there's a non-
| linearity in the demand function, and demand explodes.
|
| We are currently at one of those non-linear increases in
| demand. Additionally, we are experiencing massive supply
| chain bill whip effects across the entire economy.
|
| Increasing extraction is happening and will continue to
| happen. But also take into account that a lot of the price
| drops come from needing to use fewer input materials.
|
| Rare earths are not relevant for current battery
| technologies. Further, there are plenty of other sources of
| rare earths that will open up as we need more in the
| future.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| We do, and yet I've never heard any of the 'nuclear is the
| greenest technology' crowd give credit ( _qua_ political
| capital) for bringing this project to fruition. Why aren 't
| nuclear advocates loudly praising the state/federal/business
| decision-makers that delivered here?
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Looking at the F150 lightning convincing people who typically
| might fall in a cohort skeptical of EVs is eye opening.
|
| People will happily buy EVs if it fills the gap their present
| vehicles do and proponents of EVs will do well to remember that
| not everyone leads the same lifestyle, living in dense cities
| with lots of highway driving.
|
| I'm very hopeful for the future seeing the swarm of Nuclear
| startups pushing the boundaries in the United States. It feels
| like we're in ~2004 of the space startup phase with Nuclear
| tech startups.
| kodah wrote:
| I looked at the F150 Lightning and originally thought, "This
| might actually help people who are against current EVs" until
| I discovered the estimated mileage while towing. It's
| absolutely awful. That puts it squarely in the Tesla market
| as a luxury vehicle as opposed to something useful.
| https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/ford-f150-lightning-
| elect...
| twerkmonsta wrote:
| Most F-150 owners never tow anything, and if they
| frequently have the need to tow, they usually go for the
| F-250 and above.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >People will happily buy EVs if it fills the gap their
| present vehicles do and proponents of EVs will do well to
| remember that not everyone leads the same lifestyle, living
| in dense cities with lots of highway driving.
|
| Yes, but...
|
| The dense cities are where the pollution is, and is low
| hanging fruit. Converting the rural areas with much less
| dense population is not achieving much. So it makes sense to
| target those dense population centers first.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Do you have any concrete data for that? Just because urban
| areas are denser doesn't mean more number of people let
| alone it may not be more overall miles travelled
| dylan604 wrote:
| Nothing more than my personal experience of living in the
| boonies for ~20 years then moving to the "big city" for
| the remaining ~25 years, reading information online,
| looking at pollution maps, etc.
|
| Edit: here's an example of online pollution maps: https:/
| /www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/climate/drivi...
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Maybe, but rural vehicles are bigger, higher rate of diesel
| engines, and carry heavier loads (reduced fuel efficiency)
| and drive farther. That seems like an opportunity worth
| exploiting.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Maybe my personal experience is biased, but in Texas, the
| vehicles are not smaller because of being located in
| urban areas. From my experience, F150 type trucks, SUVs,
| etc are the same size no matter their location.
|
| Urban areas have way more construction going on which is
| the larger, dirtier fuel using, etc equipment. And if
| you're trying to compare farming equipment to dense
| population areas, then I'd love to see some proof of what
| you're claiming that they are producing more rurally than
| in urban centers.
| ajross wrote:
| > The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and
| making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy
| grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap
|
| How does installing the most expensive generator in the country
| not work _directly against_ that principle? Per a quick check
| on Wikipedia, it looks like the ~1.2GW Vogtle 3 /4 is going to
| cost $28.5B, which is about _eighteen times_ what an equivalent
| windfarm (at $1.3M /MW) would cost to install. And that's just
| counting construction costs, operating costs are even more
| skewed against nuclear.
|
| Sorry, but to be blunt: nuclear is snake oil being marketed to
| right-leaning tech bros who think wind and solar are something
| only granola munching hippies should love. It doesn't work on a
| balance sheet. And frankly it's not remotely close.
|
| If you genuinely care about the goals you espoused, you need to
| get off then nuclear horse. Once we've filled the channel with
| actually cheap renewables, it's time to go back and cover the
| remaining 2-5% or whatever with expensive stuff. Not now.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why do you believe people who like nuclear are right leaning?
| mh7 wrote:
| >equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW)
|
| Does that include storage costs?
|
| Because a windfarm alone cannot replace a nuclear power plant
| no matter how cheaper or how much electricity the
| windturbines generate because on days without wind they
| generate zero Wh.
| ajross wrote:
| That's simply not true, because wind output never goes to
| zero across the whole grid. Even assuming the pessimal
| case[1], wind needs to drop below 5.5% (1/18th) of its
| average capacity before nuclear even reaches break-even!
|
| What fraction of the time is whole-grid-amortized wind
| capacity running at 5% of average? Has that ever even
| happened? I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that
| this has never actually happened.
|
| What you've done is try to counter my overwhelming
| quantitative argument with a qualitative hedge ("but
| storage"). Please, (please!) look up the numbers here.
|
| Nuclear is a borderline scandal. If it was some other
| federal subsidy of an industry you disliked, you'd almost
| certainly call it fraud.
|
| [1] i.e. no use of gas peaker plants, legacy nuclear,
| solar, pumped hydro, batteries, etc... Literally trying to
| run the whole grid on wind and wind alone.
| infamia wrote:
| How do you explain the grid meltdowns in recent years in
| areas that have tilted their output towards renewables?
| California and Europe have had some pretty epic grid
| destabilizations recently, and all the analysis I've
| looked at points squarely at the unreliability of
| renewables. Base load matters, we have seen this time and
| again. Stitching together a bazaar of unreliable
| renewables with overlapping failure modes and claiming it
| is just as good as traditional base load providers has
| been proven false thus far. Either it can't be done with
| our current tech, or we don't know how to do it (and we
| should not try until we are confident we can make it work
| well).
| ajross wrote:
| I'm not sure I see the evidence you're invoking? "Grid
| meltdowns" are quite rare, actually, and on the whole
| electrical infrastructure has been getting more reliable
| over time, not less.
|
| And in any case the two biggest "meltdown" events in
| recent history in the USA were in... Texas, and had to do
| with weather effects on fossil fuel generators.
| matwood wrote:
| But you have to factor in land usage, wind variability and
| general location challenges of wind. I think wind is great
| where it makes sense, but I'm not sure it plus solar alone
| will get us over the hump and completely off fossil fuels.
|
| https://medium.com/@alkidel/the-land-footprint-of-solar-
| and-...
| epistasis wrote:
| The cost already factors all those in.
|
| Land usage or energy density or amount of materials used
| are all red herrings.
| mattwest wrote:
| Just because you say they are red herrings doesn't make
| it so. Eventually you will need to reconcile with the
| laws of physics.
| ben_w wrote:
| Land use, you're saying land use is not a red herring?
|
| Replace all energy and not just what is already
| electrified, and also boost global energy use to the per-
| capita rate of Qatar (I think the highest in the world at
| about 2.5 times the average of the USA), and also boost
| world population to 10 billion, you can still do this 30
| times over with PV placed _slightly worse than if it was
| randomly scattered_.
|
| There's a lot of land on this planet of ours.
|
| That's why land use is a red herring.
| epistasis wrote:
| Which law of physics are you talking about here?
|
| I sometimes see mention "laws of physics" as a reasons
| renewables won't work, but nobody has ever, literally
| ever, been able to point to the law. Or run the numbers
| on why renewables would be be feasible for supplying all
| our power and even an order of magnitude more than we
| currently consume.
| mattwest wrote:
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536165/energy-and-
| civilizati...
| epistasis wrote:
| That doesn't answer the question.
|
| Since you say "laws of physics" prevent renewables from
| supplying out energy. I call bullshit.
|
| Name the law.
| mattwest wrote:
| Oh it certainly does. Any honestly, if you have such
| strong opinions on energy production and haven't read
| Smil's work, then all of this back and forth makes a lot
| more sense.
| proc0 wrote:
| It mainly is the output, and we've had nuclear tech for
| decades. We could have built enough to go 100% green already
| and I don't think at the moment we have the necessary tech
| for wind and solar to satisfy everything going electric, let
| alone the current consumption. If wind and solar were cheap
| and reliable, people would have switched already.
| ufmace wrote:
| The nuclear plant can be relied upon to produce its full
| rated 1.2GW 24/7/365 absent maintenance periods scheduled
| well in advance.
|
| Wind power etc will produce its rated power only when it
| feels like it with no warning or predictability. To get
| actual continuous reliable power you need either massive
| grid-scale storage that nobody's even seriously proposed
| constructing, or massive over-capacity distributed over a
| continent-sized area with enough grid capacity to transfer
| sufficient power from areas with access to areas with
| shortages, which we also don't have and don't seem to have
| seriously proposed constructing. Probably both actually.
|
| IMO there's no question that we've gotta get out metaphorical
| shit together and build lots more nuclear faster if we ever
| want to actually decrease carbon emissions in our lifetime.
| ajross wrote:
| Can you try to make that argument with price numbers and
| not rhetoric? I used to think like you did. Then I started
| looking up quantitative stuff. Please do the same.
| mattwest wrote:
| How about you provide some of this "quantitative stuff"
| you've found then.
| ajross wrote:
| I literally did, check upthread. What's happened is that
| replies are choosing to ignore those numbers, thus my
| pleading that you look them up yourself since you won't
| read what I provide.
| ufmace wrote:
| My argument is not really about price, but instead
| capability.
|
| I'm not saying that _everything_ is just great with
| nuclear now - my impression is that it 's vastly
| overpriced due to excessive regulation and red tape and
| being over-cautious. Part of my argument is that one of
| the things we need to do is cut way back on all that
| stuff to make more plants faster and for less money than
| we currently spend on them.
|
| If you total up all of the deaths from all nuclear power
| incidents that have ever happened, including Chernobyl,
| the total is orders of magnitude less than what the
| Global Warming people tell us is going to happen if we
| keep pumping out CO2. We know how to build the plants
| now, we know we need to get CO2 emissions down now, so
| let's do it.
|
| Bottom line IMO, either A) the Global Warming people are
| full of shit and they know it or B) we absolutely must
| get serious about nuclear power now, evaluating the cost
| both in dollars and lives against what unchecked CO2
| emissions will do. We should be building them fast and
| cheap and cutting corners - I don't _want_ people to die
| in nuclear accidents, but if we don 't have anybody dying
| in accidents, then we're probably not building them fast
| enough. Kind of like how Elon Musk said about his
| rockets, if you're not failing, then you're not moving
| fast enough. We've got to get it done yesterday, waiting
| on grid-scale storage and transport improvements won't be
| fast enough.
| jakswa wrote:
| combined with facebook datacenters in Georgia having energy-
| sourcing requirements, I'm hoping the Georgia grid is set to get
| a lot cleaner soon
|
| https://www.siliconranch.com/portfolio-item/snipesville-ii-s...
| breck wrote:
| This is awesome but is there a way to show things to scale?
| Currently it scales up the satellites many many OOM so it gives a
| false impression of crowding.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Sounds like you meant to comment on the LEO Visualization post
| [1], not this nuclear power plant post.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205563
| skrbjc wrote:
| I love how the disclaimer is longer than the article.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The first permit for the new units was applied for in August
| 2006:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
|
| A mere sixteen years from NRC application to coming online.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As a comparison point, the four AP1000s in China took ~9 years
| to become operational after construction began.
| kelnos wrote:
| At least construction-wise, it seems Vogtle is in the same
| ballpark, as they began construction in 2013, after
| apparently waiting 7 years for permit approval.
| cycomanic wrote:
| So people always complain that nuclear is so expensive
| because of the regulations. However wind farms take almost
| as long (despite being significantly less complex) south
| fork wind took 4 years for the approval process, that is
| quite typical. So regulations really can't explain why
| nuclear is more expensive.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-does-permitting-
| for-c...
| kube-system wrote:
| Well, closer to 17 years, because it doesn't go online until
| next year.
| elihu wrote:
| Now that the paperwork has been done once, does that mean it'll
| be a lot cheaper/easier/faster to build additional plants with
| the same design?
| acchow wrote:
| Quicker than building a condo in SF
| elFarto wrote:
| The B1M Youtube channel did a video[1] featuring this plant the
| other day which goes into some of the delays they had.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQMNVSxbNo
| samstave wrote:
| sct202 wrote:
| I can't find any mention of Pelosi being linked to Bechtel.
| samstave wrote:
| Her husband.
| samstave wrote:
| Gosh damn what a bunch of idiots you are to not track
| these fucking oligarch criminals in our midsts
|
| Pay attention mother hecker
| tuukkah wrote:
| Olkiluoto 3 EPR in Finland (also considered Gen III+) is
| finally producing electricity in the grid after being shown
| green light in 2002:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
| vesinisa wrote:
| Interestingly both of these nuclear plants (Vogtle 3 and
| Olkiluoto 3) were built by companies (Westinghouse and Areva)
| that went bankrupt during the construction.
|
| We sorely need a safe, cost-effective and reproducible
| blueprint for manufacturing nuclear infrastructure at scale.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Other countries manage to built nuclear plants on time and
| on budget. China and South Korea are managing it.
|
| In the west, nuclear plants were more affordable when built
| at scale. It's not just reactors that are costly, specialty
| parts like steam generators and turbines are cheaper to
| produce in runs of 40 instead of 4. It's not so much the
| blueprint that makes a plant cheap. It's building two dozen
| of the same blueprint.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I've always wondered is the any reason we can't task the
| Navy with building these? They already make reactors for
| aircraft carrier and subs.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| They are extremely expensive in LCOE terms.
|
| Their core life relies on highly enriched uranium.
| Production and delivery at commercial power scale is a
| weapons proliferation risk in addition to being more
| expensive.
|
| Refueling a naval reactor is a multi-year operation that
| happens only a tiny handful of times in the life of the
| ship. Current-gen submarines don't get refueled at all.
| They can get away with this in large part because they
| aren't running at 100% power. They are shut down in port,
| and even at sea they only operate at low power most of
| the time.
|
| To reduce LCOE, commercial power reactors run at full
| power all the time. Refueling a commercial power reactor
| takes a month or so and happens every 1.5 years.
| nine_k wrote:
| The newest US nuclear aircraft carrier uses Bectel A1B
| reactors [1], which produce 125 MWe and additional 260 MW
| of mechanical turbine power, which we could
| optimistically convert into another 260 MWe. This would
| be 385 MWe.
|
| Each of the two reactors mentioned in the article
| produces 1250 MWe.
|
| OTOH maybe a row of smaller reactors could offer a better
| economy of scale for production, even if they require
| more parts and more maintenance overall.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1B_reactor
| themitigating wrote:
| What if it's not cost effective? Can we still do it for the
| environment?
| epistasis wrote:
| We could, and would have to, if we didn't have other
| options that were equally friendly to the environment.
|
| But given two options, one twice (or more) the cost of
| the other, and with the more expensive option being
| slower and less scalable, why choose the hard and
| expensive route versus the cheap and easy route?
| concordDance wrote:
| Wait, when did we solve power storage? I must have missed
| the memo...
| epistasis wrote:
| In the past few years, lithium ion battery storage has
| plummeted in cost and is seeing massive deployment all
| around the grid.
|
| Most utilities use five-year resource plans, and even
| then they tend to use out of date publications for cost
| guidance, which themselves took several years to be
| written and get through peer review.
|
| So traditional utility deployment is done on 10-year old
| info. In more open markets, like Texas, storage is a
| huuuuge amount of the capital that's being deployed on
| the grid. And in places with more active residents that
| force the utility commissions to force the utilities to
| use realistic numbers, like California, storage is
| already deployed in GW range. For example, _existing_
| storage on the grid today was a bigger player than
| nuclear during California 's recent and massive heat
| waves.
|
| And one dirty secret that they don't tell you about
| nuclear: it's also going to need storage. Nuclear is not
| dispatchable, it can't be turned down on demand, and
| can't be ramped up. But real power demand varies a huge
| amount throughout the day.
|
| The only reason France was able to get up to 70% nuclear
| energy on their grid was by using the continental grid to
| trade energy with other countries. France has a small
| number of super expensive nuclear "peakers" but they can
| only deal with very small fluctuations in demand.
|
| So if nuclear were ever going to be a really major power
| source, or the only power source, it would require lots
| of storage to balance load.
| aeternum wrote:
| The cheap and easy route is wind+solar+battery?
|
| And what about fusion, we spend a lot on R&D but it's
| pretty clear it will be even more expensive than fission,
| if you were in charge would you cancel that effort
| entirely and shift funds elsewhere?
| chess_buster wrote:
| Even Sabine would not do it.
| epistasis wrote:
| Wind+solar+battery is here today, and the faster we
| deploy it, the more we will save. Every day that we delay
| the transition is another day that we are overpaying for
| energy.
|
| If fusion can compete once it happens, bring it on. But
| it should be targeting a cost of $1-5/MWh instead of
| $50/MWh.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > We sorely need a safe, cost-effective and reproducible
| blueprint for manufacturing nuclear infrastructure at
| scale.
|
| Well, that was part of Areva's branding circa 2009:
| nuclear's nespresso and selling combustible and reactor in
| the same package. Full vertical integration: uranium
| mining, enrichment, reactor building, recycling.
| bouzouk wrote:
| And do you know what went wrong?
| tuukkah wrote:
| They sold reactors for 3 billion a piece but it cost them
| 11 billion to build the first one because they didn't
| have and couldn't find the necessary competence.
| Iv wrote:
| Areva can't really bankrupt: it is backed by the French
| government, its main owner. It still exist and is basically
| a public company that critics argue is structured in order
| to dismantle the industrial companies that were still under
| public control. But nuclear energy is very unlikely to be
| really privatized in France. That's a very touch political
| subject.
| vesinisa wrote:
| Olkiluoto 3 definitely bankrupted Areva. The company ran
| out of money and the liability from that one project
| became a risk for all the other (healthy) branches. They
| restructured it to different companies with only the
| problematic Olkiluoto 3 project staying in the original
| French state-owned Areva. Once this project is complete
| Areva will be defunct.
| logifail wrote:
| > We sorely need a safe, cost-effective and reproducible
| blueprint for manufacturing nuclear infrastructure at scale
|
| Maybe. Or maybe nuclear is actually just too expensive, and
| we need to stop pretending it's a commercially-viable
| technology.
| bullen wrote:
| I think it's still not pushing anything to the grid, it has
| just reached crusing power: "Regular production is expected
| to begin in December 2022."
| Gwypaas wrote:
| It is pushing to the grid, but short stints validating
| different modes of operation. Easier, and more economical,
| to use the generators than cooling another 30% thermal
| capacity.
| tuukkah wrote:
| "The electricity production of Olkiluoto's third nuclear
| power plant unit started on Saturday, 12 March 2022, at
| 12.01 p.m."
|
| "The reactor achieved its design output power 30 September
| 2022."
|
| Regular production will mean all tests have been completed.
| They are currently ongoing and yes we can notice it in the
| electricity price when they test shutdowns and 1600 MW (15%
| nation-wide) disappears from the supply.
| melling wrote:
| Yes, can anyone explain the problem in any detail? ie more than
| "regulations"
|
| Decades ago the United States didn't get to 20% electricity
| from nuclear power by being so inefficient.
| aliqot wrote:
| I'd rather the process not be rushed. These things are supposed
| to run a very long time, let's get it right.
| bilsbie wrote:
| But maybe we strive to find a balance. There are real costs
| to dragging our feet too.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Fun trivia: did you know that the control room GUI for the
| French/Finish EPR was designed for 4/3 displays, and by the
| time the actual control room was built, there were few of
| the such displays on the market, forcing them to find and
| approve new suppliers ...
| seventytwo wrote:
| True... but the world keeps moving regardless. The growing
| demand doesn't stop once the permit is issued, so if we can't
| build these fast enough to keep up, other potentially more
| polluting forms of energy will fill the void.
| aliqot wrote:
| Demand does not incur a debt to indulge. Consume less, make
| less people, and use less power.
|
| Ask yourself if those things are possible in your life and
| whether that means perfect should be the enemy of good when
| bringing in a responsible solution demands responsible
| care. Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not
| supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny.
|
| From the outside looking in, valuing current demand over
| the lives of our children is what got us in this mess.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Consume less, make less people, and use less power._
|
| Yes, people should consume less oil (but big corporations
| don't).
|
| Yes, people should use less power (but big corporations
| just count power as a cost of doing business).
|
| Yes, people should make less people (but big corporations
| need manpower).
|
| > _Ask yourself if those things are possible in your life
| and whether that means perfect should be the enemy of
| good when bringing in a responsible solution demands
| responsible care. Your needs for immediate satisfaction
| do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny._
|
| I have no intention of creating progeny in this fucked up
| world. Moreover, nuclear power is far safer, per watt
| produced, than coal or oil.
|
| > _From the outside looking in, valuing current demand
| over the lives of our children is what got us in this
| mess._
|
| It's not individual people who've got us in this mess. Or
| rather, it is... individual people working for individual
| corporations who don't consider individual people
| anything other than feedstock for corporation profits.
| codegrappler wrote:
| I tend to have a more optimistic view of life and I have
| 3 kids. I want to support a world that makes things
| better for them. I've always found the "make less people"
| claim overly patronizing. It's fine if you don't want
| kids, but the kids today will be running the nursing
| homes, fixing the infrastructure and running the country
| when we're retired. I want to help raise this next
| generation with good moral values and work ethics. I
| should be able to make that choice.
| samstave wrote:
| andsoitis wrote:
| I agree with you, even though I'm not having children.
|
| My partner and I just need to figure out who can support
| us when we're old... (e.g. help us steer our finances in
| case we can't ourselves)
| samstave wrote:
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the idea isn't for everyone to stop having kids,
| but to reduce reproduction down to something near
| replacement rate, so population _growth_ slows or stops.
|
| There's nothing inherent about society that requires
| _more_ people than the current workforce to run things in
| 20+ years, though admittedly, generations are not of
| equal size (booms and busts in the birth rate over time)
| and there are often demographic issues as particular
| generations age out of the workforce.
|
| I too support people's desire and right to make choices
| about reproduction, but at some point it just becomes
| irresponsibly selfish for a couple to have more than some
| replacement-level N number of kids. Not just for the
| planet, but at a smaller level, too, when considering a
| family's financial resources, etc. I wish more would-be
| parents would take this sort of thing into account before
| choosing (or unintentionally not-actually-choosing) to
| have a(nother) kid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _to reduce reproduction down to something near
| replacement rate, so population growth slows or stops_
|
| Most of the rich world is already doing this [1]. The
| change was enforced by rising living standards and costs
| of living. Not proselytising.
|
| [1] https://data.oecd.org/pop/fertility-rates.htm
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Consume less, make less people, and use less power._
|
| Game theory (and several economic theories) suggest that
| relying on voluntary collective sacrifice is never going
| to work. People simply will not do it, at least not in
| numbers large enough to be effective.
|
| I do try to consume less, but I'm sure I'm still above
| average consumption-wise, and I'm not sure what other
| cuts I could make while still maintaining the lifestyle I
| like. At the very least, I have decided I won't
| reproduce, so I guess that's something.
|
| Political solutions can force people to do things they
| wouldn't otherwise voluntarily do, but politicians who
| make their constituents miserable tend to be replaced
| with politicians who will... not do that.
|
| I think the only feasible solution is the one we are
| already pursuing: continue consumption growth, but find
| and build cleaner, renewable ways to fuel that
| consumption. It's not happening nearly fast enough,
| though, is hindered by special-interest groups who have
| an incentive to fight change, and it's unclear if we'll
| be able to dig ourselves out of the hole we've made for
| our species' future generations.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Game theory (and several economic theories) suggest
| that relying on voluntary collective sacrifice is never
| going to work
|
| It doesn't necessarily involve sacrifice though. Will
| your life be worse if you have 2 children rather than 3.
| Or even none instead of 2. For _some_ people it will, but
| for many it won 't. Will it be worse if your house is
| insulated and requires less energy to heat/cool? Will it
| be worse if we replace highways with public transit in
| cities? No, it'll likely actually better (even if you
| still need to drive, because they'll be less traffic).
|
| It also doesn't need to be voluntary. We could mandate
| these changes, or strongly incentivise them through tax
| structures. Many countries have already started doing
| this in some limited cases.
|
| We should certainly try to find cleaner ways to fuel
| consumption, because we're of course still going to need
| to consume a lot. But much like the easiest way (and
| often the only way) to make software faster is to make it
| do less work (while still achieving an equivalent or
| close enough to equivalent result), the easiest way to
| meet our energy needs in a clean way is to reduce our
| energy needs.
| lazide wrote:
| If it doesn't work, it's because we're not trying hard
| enough/mandating everyone do it?
|
| Authoritarianism on the march again.
| themitigating wrote:
| That doesn't work because most people don't care and
| don't want to remove comforts.
| MikeCapone wrote:
| Agreed if what is taking so long makes a difference.
|
| I suspect a lot of it is red tape without a real benefit...
| CabSauce wrote:
| If you can identify red tape without a benefit and useful
| red tape, let me know. We'll be rich.
| concordDance wrote:
| We can see how useful it is by comparing the 1970s
| accident and death rate with todays. Doing that we'll
| find that we're spending over a billion dollars per life
| saved from radiation poisoning. Which is ludicrously
| inefficient.
| logifail wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-
| plan...
|
| "a paper [..] provides some empirical evidence that
| safety changes have contributed to the cost of building
| new nuclear reactors. But the study also makes clear that
| they're only one of a number of factors, accounting for
| only a third of the soaring costs. The study also finds
| that, contrary to what those in the industry seem to
| expect, focusing on standardized designs doesn't really
| help matters, as costs continued to grow as more of a
| given reactor design was built."
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Trust me. A lot of people benefit (jobs, jobs, jobs!) from
| these delays. :)
|
| Former commercial nuclear fuel vendor employee here. I did
| my time with the NRC being part of my life.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You could have said the same thing if it took 3 years or 35
| years.
|
| There's nothing magically "right" or calculated about 16
| years, it's just the time it took the gears of apathetic
| bureaucracy to turn. It's a fallacy to use this as a
| guidepost for a "responsible" amount of time.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Is the bureaucracy really apathetic? It sounds more like
| active hostility to me.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I think that grants them too much agency.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Imagine waiting 16 years for a PR :/
| toast0 wrote:
| Imagine having good enough specifications that a 16 year old
| change was still valid. :P
|
| I've seen 16 year old bugs get fixed though. Usually just
| need to get them retriaged as a security bug, and then all
| things are fixable.
| kelnos wrote:
| Funny you mention that; a couple weeks ago I fixed a
| 16-year-old bug that I myself wrote, in some open source
| software I started maintaining again after a long hiatus.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Imagine waiting 16 years for a PR :/
|
| Imagine writing bug-free code put in continuous, mass
| population-critical use for the better part of a century.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > Imagine writing bug-free code
|
| Can't possibly go tits up. These new reactors are surely
| infallible, right?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Nuclear power has been in use in the United States for
| over 70 years without a single fatality to a member of
| the general public. Better than any other energy source.
|
| A few plant and supply chain workers have been killed,
| but again, fewer than with any other source (mining coal
| and climbing on roofs and towers to install wind and
| solar is dangerous, yo).
|
| Since I've been muzzled again:
|
| > Climbing on the roof of a two story house to install
| solar panels is considerably less dangerous than building
| a nuclear power plant. Yo.
|
| In terms of workers killed per watt-hour generated?
|
| No, it isn't. It's not even close. Yo.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > In terms of workers killed per watt-hour generated?
|
| > No, it isn't. It's not even close. Yo.
|
| This source says you are wrong.
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-
| energy-p...
|
| What source were you using when making your claim?
| philipkglass wrote:
| The rate used to be higher for solar, because it used to
| be the case that most solar modules were installed in
| small rooftop systems. Now most solar power comes from
| large ground level solar farms. In 2020, 68% of US solar
| generation came from utility-scale farms [1]. Over time
| the solar PV deaths-per-TWh ratio has decreased in 3
| ways:
|
| 1) Ground level installations have a greatly diminished
| risk of dangerous falls during construction/maintenance
| and have come to account for more wattage than rooftop
| systems.
|
| 2) Installing a solar panel in a large farm instead of on
| a roof yields more energy output per year, since it
| usually has mechanical sun tracking [2] and will be
| oriented for optimum output even if installed with a
| fixed tilt.
|
| 3) Newer panels generate more annual energy output per
| panel, per kilogram, and per square meter. That means
| that the same number of full time solar installation
| workers now produce more energy over the system's
| lifetime than in the past.
|
| [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81325.pdf page 9
|
| [2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2017/09/20/trackers-
| dominate-u-s...
| tchaffee wrote:
| The claim was not "relatively safe compared to other
| forms of energy". The claim was bug free. Which -- if you
| want to use past history -- is false.
|
| > climbing on roofs and towers to install wind and solar
| is dangerous, yo
|
| Climbing on the roof of a two story house to install
| solar panels is considerably less dangerous than building
| a nuclear power plant. Yo.
|
| > without a single fatality to a member of the general
| public.
|
| No _immediate_ fatality is the only accurate claim you
| can make. Over 150,000 people were evacuated from the
| Three-Mile Island disaster. Due to the stress, there were
| some increases in consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and
| tranquilizers immediately following the accident. The
| eventual long term effects of those behaviors surely
| resulted in shorter life spans for at least some of the
| people.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003
| 801...
|
| > for over 70 years
|
| That's a short time. Unless you can show the US is
| somehow exceptional in its quality controls compared to
| Japan, then a huge disaster like Fukushima is inevitable,
| and life will be lost.
|
| No one complains about the dangers of the neighbors who
| use solar energy. No one wants a reactor in their
| backyard. And it has fair reasoning behind it. You'll
| never have to evacuate 150,000 people due to your
| neighbors' solar panels failing.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That would be the analog of a fully autonomous power
| station. Plenty of people in current ones to watch and
| patch things!
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Imagine all the dependency rot in the 16 years.
| epistasis wrote:
| The delays have not come from approval reasons, but from
| construction mess ups, as well as design flaws (ie
| unconstructable designs, not designs that would be unsafe if
| constructed).
| sroussey wrote:
| Actually, the rules change every couple of years, which
| requires change to things already constructed. It's amazing
| that the team was able to deal with that and still get it
| done.
| epistasis wrote:
| What rules have changed in the past five years, when
| there have been the announcements of delays?
|
| I have been following closely, and never once have I
| heard of a delay because of regulation changes. Not once!
| It's all construction.
|
| And with the costs of delays, blaming this on an external
| party like the NRC would be an essential thing to do to
| explain it to the backers.
|
| If you have any knowledge of regulations that caused the
| big delays, I would love to know, and would be very
| surprised.
| themitigating wrote:
| It's not a change to an existing system It's building the
| entire thing. Also the consequences are significantly worse
| than a software bug in most cases
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| It says:
|
| "These units are important to building the future of energy and
| will serve as clean, emission-free sources of energy for
| Georgians for the next 60 to 80 years."
|
| Do nuclear power plants have an expected lifetime of 60 to 80
| years? Then must be shut down, with all the radioactive problems
| that present and a new one must be built?
|
| That seems like a short time to make good on the investment of
| building it. (from an environmental standpoint, based on the lack
| of reuse of the real estate it was / is sitting on top of)
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Realistically, the site can be re-used for another power plant.
| Or cleaned up and used for something else. It's not
| particularly different from any other industrial activity that
| deals with hazardous materials.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Realistically, the site can be re-used for another power
| plant. Or cleaned up and used for something else.
|
| Re-used for another power plant, sure. But cleaned up and
| used for something else? Has that even been done once?
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Shippingport, although much of the site was used for a new
| nuclear plant because of all of the shared infrastructure.
| Yankee Rowe is largely clean empty land, with a small
| storage site for dry fuel casks.
|
| It doesn't happen much because it's economically smarter to
| keep operating a plant or replace it with another plant
| given that the site is already prepared for a nuclear power
| station.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I believe "these units" refer only to the nuclear reactors, not
| to the plant as a whole. The plant will likely need ongoing
| replacements, and more, newer reactors can be added over time.
| The same plant/real estate could serve as a power plant for
| many times that amount of time.
|
| It is also quite feasible to move the spent fuel and any other
| radioactive material to another location... there are politics
| involved, but the physics are pretty straight forward.
| elihu wrote:
| > Once operating, the two new units, which will be clean energy
| sources that produce zero air pollution, are expected to power
| more than 500,000 homes and businesses.
|
| I wondered how much actual power that was. More context is on
| wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
|
| The site has two nuclear reactors already, in use since the 80's.
| 3 and 4 are each 1250 MWe reactors.
|
| By way of comparison, the Zaporizhzhia NPP (largest in Europe)
| has 6 950 MWe reactors. (Edit: that's six 960 MWe reactors, not
| 6,950 MWe reactors.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla...
| dcdc123 wrote:
| > (Edit: that's six 960 MWe reactors, not 6,950 MWe reactors.)
|
| That is why I almost always prefer to write out single-digit
| numbers.
|
| e.g. Zaporizhzhia NPP (largest in Europe) has six 950 MWe
| reactors
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > Zaporizhzhia NPP (largest in Europe) has 6 950 MWe reactors.
|
| It's not 6950, but 5700. And 5700 is the total output (950x6
| reactors).
|
| 1250 is among the most powerful reactor in the world. I think
| the most powerful is the EPR (French tech), but this has been
| delayed, and delayed, and ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| >It's not 6950, but 5700.
|
| this is what the OP is saying, there are six 950 MWe
| reactors. might be a cultural difference on how we'd read "6
| 950MWe"
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I read it as 6950 too. Maybe spell out 6 or use something
| as a separator (- or x or *) maybe.
| [deleted]
| surfsvammel wrote:
| How interesting. An actual delimiter/locale issue happening
| IRL. I exclusively see them in code.
| disillusioned wrote:
| Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station just _cooks_ at 1,310 x
| 3 reactors here in Arizona.
| remorses wrote:
| Wood -> Coal -> Oil/Gas -> Uranium
|
| This is the most straightforward way to progress energy
| generation, increase fuel energy density
|
| Renewable energy will find its place after batteries decrease 10x
| in price
| kube-system wrote:
| I doubt chemical batteries will ever be cheap enough for grid
| scale power. There are other cheaper forms of energy storage
| that work better in bulk. Batteries are mainly useful for being
| self-contained and dense. Neither of these are hard
| requirements for fixed grid-scale installations. Pumped storage
| is pretty cheap already in the geographies where it works, and
| geothermal storage has a lot of interest and potential at the
| moment.
| runarberg wrote:
| Never is a long time. There hasn't really been any demand for
| a chemical battery capable of large scale storage with
| frequent drain-recharge cycles. That is until we build out
| large scale renewable power plants. So if somebody has ever
| invented a cheap chemical battery that fulfills grid needs,
| that invention was ahead of its time and has been lost in
| obscurity.
|
| So even if pumped hydro remains our best technology for large
| scale storage at the moment, I still remain optimistic that
| in a decade we will have market ready chemical batteries that
| rivals pumped hydro in places where geography does not favor
| the latter. I'm particularly looking at molten salt (or
| liquid metal) batteries here, with some storage facilities
| being under construction already.
| mattwest wrote:
| Be careful with physics-backed statements! It seems many in
| this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of
| modern baseload. Don't want to crush their solarpunk dreams.
| ben_w wrote:
| Energy _density_ is important for transport, I don 't see how
| current limitations in that can be important for base-load.
|
| Cost, sure, but LiIon is already on par with nuclear in that
| regard despite not being the cheapest storage.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| It's not one dimensional.
|
| Energy density can be both important for transportation and
| also be important for the ability to accelerate energy
| production without a proportional growth in mining/resource
| harvesting that harms the planet.
|
| A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier
| of the US navy for over 2 decades while it circumnavigates
| the globe hundreds of times, launching aircraft off its
| deck and powering remarkable levels of energy demand from
| on board systems.
|
| For comparison, a single trip around the pacific for a
| conventionally fueled aircraft carrier costs 125 MILLION
| GALLONS of fuel.
|
| It's incredibly hard to wrap one's head around what 20
| years x 125 Million Gallons x Num_trips per year looks
| like.
| ben_w wrote:
| > important for the ability to accelerate energy
| production without a proportional growth in
| mining/resource harvesting that harms the planet.
|
| I agree.
|
| > A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft
| carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades ... a single
| trip around the pacific for a conventionally fueled
| aircraft carrier costs 125 MILLION GALLONS of fuel.
|
| Are you sure you didn't add a few zeros in there? I think
| the real energy density difference there is about a
| million, but you're at least 200 times more than that,
| depending on Num_trips?
|
| (But yes, to the core point, transport is the one thing
| where energy density matters, and a nuclear powered
| aircraft carrier, or sub, is totally a thing where atomic
| power shines. Subs especially. Just that they're not a
| major part of the problem, and while this is a fun
| diversion I had been more interested in baseload here).
| mattwest wrote:
| Energy density is important for storage, which transport
| falls under.
| ben_w wrote:
| Context of this thread is nuclear, which isn't useful for
| most forms of transport.
| mattwest wrote:
| Aren't you the one that brought up transportation? This
| is the most pedantic, exhausting thread I've ever seen on
| HN. So many surface level opinions that I feel like I'm
| on reddit
| ben_w wrote:
| The reason I brought transport up was to say that that
| transport, _and not baseload_ , is the only situation in
| which density matters.
|
| You wrote:
|
| > It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the
| energy density requirements of modern baseload.
|
| Density _does not matter_ for baseload. It is a red
| herring.
| peyton wrote:
| There's also little appetite for degrowth/solarpunk in the
| global south. I don't see a path forwards that doesn't
| involve use of force.
| [deleted]
| logifail wrote:
| > It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy
| density requirements of modern baseload.
|
| It's more about nuclear being too expensive. If nuclear's
| great value and doesn't need the state to underwrite
| everything from the disaster liability insurance on
| downwards, great, go knock yourself out; get finance, get
| approvals, build a plant, go sell your product on the market.
|
| Just don't expect consumers to sign up for a multi-decade
| deal to guarantee to buy your output at a higher price than
| any other provider before you'll even pour any
| concrete.[0][1][2]
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609
| [1] https://www.iisd.org/story/the-united-kingdom-is-to-
| subsidiz... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/945d8b79-ba82-4ebc
| -894e-73eec3892...
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > nuclear's great value and doesn't need the state to
| underwrite everything from the disaster liability insurance
| on downwards, great, go knock yourself out; get finance,
| get approvals,
|
| Every significant solar energy installation in the world
| was built with massive government subsidies.
| mattwest wrote:
| Cost is a separate issue/argument from simply being able to
| provide baseload energy to modern society. Let's imagine we
| generate enough renewable energy to power modern society.
| What is the cost of overhauling our grid to dynamically
| distribute it in a way that avoids rolling blackouts? We're
| talking about reinventing our society to revolve around
| several transient energy sources. Nuclear stays on
| essentially 24/7, has enormous output, and the input cost
| is so insignificant that even if the cost of uranium
| increased 5x, it would barely change the cost of energy for
| consumers.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The cost of generation is not the same thing as the net
| cost of transitioning an energy grid to a different energy
| source. Wind and solar have cheap generation, but have much
| greater infrastructure costs than nuclear.
|
| Storage is a huge one, we don't have effective means of
| storage besides hydroelectric dams which are geographically
| limited. Lithium ion batteries still take over $500/KWh to
| install (the <$200 figures are for the battery cells
| themselves, omitting the cost of installation,
| transformers, maintenance, etc.). And they're set to
| increase as raw materials are strained [1][2]. This is why
| plans to transition to a majority renewable grid typically
| assume that hydrogen, or some other form of storage will
| provide storage at a fraction of the cost of existing
| storage methods. Nobody has actually built commercial
| hydrogen storage, though, so this is a big assumption.
|
| There's also the cost of transmission. Energy dense sources
| like nuclear power can be placed close to electricity
| demand. But low-density sources by definition need to be
| spread out and distributed. Decentralized generation is not
| a good thing, as it requires more transmission
| infrastructure to support. It's not uncommon for renewable
| projects to be denied because the infrastructure can't
| handle the transmission requirements [3].
|
| Nuclear avoids these issues. It's a non-intermittent source
| with the greatest capacity factor of any generation system.
| Downtime is usually scheduled. This eliminates the need for
| storage. It's also energy dense. It can be used in place of
| existing fossil fuel heat engines, avoided in the need to
| make large build-outs of transmission infrastructure.
|
| 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/7/7/lithiums-
| insane-c...
|
| 2. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
|
| 3. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-
| clean-ene...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| > The baseload[1] (also base load) is the minimum level of
| demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for
| example, one week. This demand can be met by unvarying power
| plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of
| smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which
| approach has the best mix of low cost, availability and high
| reliability in any particular market.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
|
| "Base load" on the power generation side has only ever been a
| side effect of economics, not an intrinsic property of the
| electrical grid.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| It's the minimum specification of the grid.
|
| Not economic, but functional.
|
| For a grid to serve "production traffic" or be used in the
| real world, there is a minimum amount of power it must
| reliably deliver 24x7 ;
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Exactly, that is demand side. For the generation side
| coal and nuclear got the label "base load" plants, but
| that is simply a function of them being inflexible and
| that they used to be cheaper.
|
| Nothing intrinsic to functioning of the grid, simply an
| economic consequence.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| <facepalm>
|
| It isn't simply economic. I don't think you understand
| the fundamental purpose of an energy grid.
|
| It isn't just a bunch of wires existing on their own. It
| is the energy delivery infrastructure for all of society.
|
| "Baseload" is an attribute of the grid itself that
| indicates the minimum energy capacity these wires at
| present carry.
|
| Baseload is NOT a constant value or a constant
| consumption pattern across time of day/day of week alone.
|
| Baseload reflects the consumption of energy by society
| that the grid is DESIGNED to serve at any time.
|
| In other words, were one to use your definition, the grid
| would no longer be considered a functioning grid anymore
| but one that is broken since it is incapable of meeting
| its minimum design specifications.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| I think you misunderstand "base load".
|
| > The base load[1] (also baseload) is the __minimum__
| level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
|
| It is a constant value. The rest used to be filled by
| peaker-plants or hydro. While slowly regulating the
| inflexible "base load" plants to follow the seasonal
| cycles.
|
| There is nothing inherent to this definition that it must
| be slow inflexible plants that provide it. More
| interesting discussions comes from how do you provide
| system strength, frequency regulation and so on when you
| decrease the synchronous components in the grid, because
| those are actual hard questions.
|
| For example, there is ongoing research in grid-forming
| inverters. This is what you do if you run your solar-
| powered home in island mode, and as anyone who has done
| it knows starting electrical engines sucks. It becomes a
| much more complex problem with destabilizing factors in
| continent-scale grids.
|
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/29/grid-forming-
| inverter...
| runarberg wrote:
| > Wood -> Coal -> Oil/Gas -> Uranium
|
| I'm not sure how these kind of over simplified look at
| technological progress are useful at all (except as a fun
| exercise and maybe as a tech tree in a video game).
|
| In reality this is never this simplistic, and you actually run
| the risk of whitewashing history or whole industries. There are
| still very good use cases for wood energy (and there will be
| for all foreseeable future) while coal energy is pretty much
| just legacy at this point and will probably only be used
| recreationally in a decade or two. Natural gas on the other
| hand might get a boost with on-site carbon capture technology
| and might actually end up cleaner [in some cases] then nuclear
| or renewables + batteries. You also completely skipped hydro-
| power which has existed longer then coal and is still on a good
| run.
| kelnos wrote:
| Nice to see new nuclear generation go online. Given that it'll be
| quite a long time (if ever) that we can completely run off
| renewables + battery storage, I think nuclear is a great fit to
| fill that gap. It's just a shame that most of the US and Europe
| (and others?) are so hell-bent against nuclear power.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Cheap access to plentiful energy has been one of the main
| drivers of innovation for all of human history.
|
| It is very surprising in that context that Governments haven't
| pushed harder to secure their energy security more
| aggressively.
| kelnos wrote:
| Agreed; the mess with Russia has revealed how negligent many
| European countries have been in ensuring the stability of
| their energy sources.
| rrss wrote:
| I think the HN title is missing a " ... in the US" qualifier -
| looks like China has had several of these same model running for
| several years.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Yeah, here's the list:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Lists_o...
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "The first Gen III+ Nuclear plant begins
| fuel loading". We've changed it to what the article says.
|
| Submitters: " _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lucb1e wrote:
| The original title was more descriptive, fwiw. The current
| one means nobody has any idea what makes this fuel loading
| newsworthy, unless they already know and then they don't need
| to read about it on HN
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