[HN Gopher] NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design
___________________________________________________________________
NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design
Author : g0xA52A2A
Score : 302 points
Date : 2023-01-20 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.energy.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.energy.gov)
| legulere wrote:
| How much waste does it produce per electric energy produced? SMRs
| typically produce even more nuclear waste than big reactors.
|
| How fast can it be regulated up and down? We need solutions to
| step in when neither wind is blowing nor sun is shining.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Ramping down means multiplying the cost per kWh generated while
| ramped down, at a time when that kWh has depressed value. Ever
| turning it off means multiplying the cost of every kWh produced
| while on, in proportion to how much time it spends off.
|
| All this is because absolute cost is not much affected by
| whether it is producing.
| trenchgun wrote:
| Neither of these is an important variable.
|
| Nuclear waste is in general mostly a solved problem. A bunch of
| barrels less or more over the lifecycle of the plant in the
| storage site does not move a needle much, economically or
| otherwise.
|
| Initial investment dominates the equation. It mostly does not
| make sense to ramp nuclear power up and down, because of
| economical reasons. Gas costs are mostly dominatd by the fuel,
| so there ramping up and down makes sense. Nuclear costs are
| dominated by the initial investment.
|
| But even without ramping up and down, still nuclear power helps
| integrate variable renewables, since it is providing valuable
| inertia to keep the grid stable.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| [dead]
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Nuclear waste is in general mostly a solved problem. A
| bunch of barrels less or more over the lifecycle of the plant
| in the storage site does not move a needle much, economically
| or otherwise.
|
| Storage of nuclear waste was one of several issues that led
| residents around the Indian Point nuclear plant to push hard
| for its shutdown, at which they eventually succeeded.
|
| Other issues included ecological harm to the adjacent Hudson
| River due to discharge of unnaturally warm water, and
| (probably the biggest one) the risk of widespread death and
| injury in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.
|
| Indian Point is in relatively densely populated area with
| relatively low-capacity highways, and there was a pervasive
| sense that the official evacuation plans would be
| insufficient in case of a disaster.
|
| If the plan here is to make more, smaller, cheaper nuclear
| plants in or near more cities and towns, this means you are
| going to have even more towns putting up the same local
| resistance on those same issues. Advocates of nuclear will
| need to have answers.
| todd8 wrote:
| There is a lot of discussion here about renewables. I recommend a
| recent paper published in _Nature Communications_ titled
| "Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind
| power worldwide"[1]. It considers mixes of Solar and Wind, with
| or without excess capacity, and storage facilities zero, 3, or 12
| hours. The paper's model (it looks like the code is available on
| GitHub) makes optimist assumptions (e.g. no transmission losses
| within a single country and feasibility of 12hrs of storage for
| the whole country). Nevertheless, the results are interesting.
|
| Figure 3 (see[1]) indicates how much power outage must be
| tolerated across the entire country for different mixes renewable
| capacity and storage depending on the country:
|
| US -- Generation 1.5 times the capacity needed, 12 hours of
| storage, wind and solar have a power supply gap of 15% when the
| goal is to tolerate 10 hours of power outage.
|
| Germany -- Generation 3 times the capacity needed, 12 hours of
| storage, wind and solar have a power supply gap of 60% when the
| goal is to tolerate 10 hours of power outage.
|
| The larger the power supply gap, the more additional dispatchable
| power that must be provided.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
| melling wrote:
| Yes, the majority of the HN crowd has been against nuclear for
| over a decade.
|
| We've gone over this so many years times is there any more to
| say about it?
|
| In other news, it's too late to limit the temperature increase
| to 1.5 C
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/01/13/bill-gates-we-will-overs...
|
| In 2023, coal power generation still produces 20% of greenhouse
| emissions
| roomey wrote:
| Would love to know about expected failure modes or this reactor
| type. Is there any info on this?
| alexb_ wrote:
| You can read the safety evaluation here:
| https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...
| cratermoon wrote:
| https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021-07/can-small-modular-re...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU-IlqiP4sU"
|
| Well, it says its a LWR, video says "fuel rods", which means
| solid rods and meltdown risk. Eh.
|
| If it's a solid fuel rod, then if you get a runaway reaction,
| and if circumstances mean the safety systems go offline (see:
| Fukushima) then meltdown.
|
| Contrast this with something like LFTR: the liquid fuel needs
| to stay in a certain shape/containment/vessel to maintain
| criticality. If it starts overreacting/heating, the "plug" at
| the bottom of the containment melts and the liquid flows into a
| shallow distributed pool that, per nuclear physics, is
| impossible to maintain criticality.
|
| That type of system is inherently meltdown-proof, even if all
| the systems go offline, the plug will melt. You know, assuming
| gravity still works.
|
| A pebble bed, where the solid fuel rod is instead a bunch of
| solid pellets, but if they get too hot you can similarly melt a
| plug and the pellets fall into a shape that likewise wouldn't
| stay critical, might also be similarly meltdown-proof, but I
| haven't read nearly as much on pebble bed designs.
|
| But a solid fuel rod? Nope.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Nuclear engineer here. That's not quite how it all works.
|
| Solid vs. liquid fuel is not tied directly to reactivity
| stability, as quantified in the power coefficient of
| reactivity. If it goes up in power, you want the chain
| reaction to naturally go down.
|
| In solid fueled reactors, this is usually accomplished via
| the moderator. If the moderator temperature goes up, it
| reduced in density, thereby reducing the overall neutron
| moderation in the core. Thus, fewer neutrons make it to to
| the energy range that causes fission. Thus, reactivity goes
| down and the reaction stops. This is inherently stable, just
| like fuel density in a fluid fuel reactor going down and
| reducing the overall fission rate.
|
| LFTRs are pre-melted. You melt 100% of the core and then
| bring it critical. That's a lot of pretty mobile fission
| products!
|
| As for the melt plug, that's also a false solution. Given
| that achieving subcriticality is trivial in modern solid and
| fluid fuel reactors, the challenge in an accident is
| afterglow heat removal. As you may know, the plants at
| Fukushima had all rods in and were fully subcritical an hour
| before the tsunami hit). But when they lost afterglow heat
| removal, it still melted some containment barriers. Same can
| happen with fluid fuel, regardless of whether or not you've
| moved it from one tank to another.
|
| Fluid fuel is not the panacea many people want to think it
| is.
|
| Passive afterglow heat removal is the thing that lets
| reactors of any fuel form be safer than today's typical
| reactors, which generally require backup power to run the
| cooling systems. If you use certain molten salt, liquid
| sodium metal, liquid lead metal, etc. cooling configurations
| you can achieve indefinite heat removal without any external
| power. That reduces core damage frequencies by about 100x
| from modern large LWRs. Again, regardless of fuel form.
|
| That said, 100x safer than how safe current nuclear is is
| kind of just playing with very small numbers. Fossil and
| biofuel combustion kills 8 million per year from particulate
| emissions, according to the WHO, and also cause climate
| change. So we should just be building hundreds of regular
| large water cooled reactors now and then switch over to
| fancier cooling ones later, and also breeders that are
| ~infinitely sustainable for the long term.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So if the moderator fails (like Fukushima and all
| meltdowns) and the active cooling fails, what does the
| passive cooler do to drop the neutron economy/chain
| reaction in the fuel rods? It just keeps the rods cool so
| they don't melt through the floor, and they do that until
| the rods finally drop the economy?
|
| I still don't like it because nothing in the fuel rod
| safety does anything about the continued criticality. What
| are the passive cooling systems, are they big heat sinks
| and pipes? What happens if an earthquake or explosion
| disrupts the heat sinks or heat pipe connection to the
| solid rods? Makes the coolant leak out?
|
| Speed of melt of the plug doesn't seem like a big deal, you
| simply use a thinner plug if you're worried about that.
| Dumping out of the core in a liquid fuel isn't a big deal,
| if the core is intact but a dump-out occurs with a plug you
| simply replace the plug and send the liquid fuel back into
| the reactor.
|
| I mean, liquid fuel reprocessing obviously isn't simple,
| the materials around the liquid fuel and high temperature
| isn't simple.
|
| The bottom line is that you can downvote me, but I'm
| basically an example the first tier of people you need to
| convince for politically viable nuclear. This is what LFTR
| really appeals to me on:
|
| - total fuel use. Yes I know it won't be 0% waste, those
| fission products can be nasty, but ... still total fuel use
| is a big selling point to me
|
| - ability to breed / consume spent fuel waste ... clean up
| the mistakes of the past
|
| - modular : some hope to be economical
|
| - contained on single facility: no transport of waste, no
| disruption of transportation infrastructure, no risk of
| terrorism/hijacking, no Yucca mountain
|
| - closed loop economics: you see the full lifecycle. No
| hiding costs in reprocessing or transportation or storage,
| you have the facility, it's operating cost, and you know.
|
| - safety: you didn't refute that liquid fuels are safer
| than solid rods. No one really knows what at-scale
| processing of MSR fission products involves, so I could be
| wrong, but "mobile" implies "processable" to me.
|
| I've always wondered that even if LFTRs aren't economical,
| they might be an economical cleanup facility: let cheaper
| nuclear designs generate the power, then send the spent
| fuel to a LFTR facility that ... maybe ... melts the spent
| fuel and breeds/processes the products, and at least the
| processing cost is offset by the power you get from the
| LFTR and the useful/valuable products.
|
| The real issue is that nuclear isn't cost competitive with
| solar/wind, and might not be competitive with
| solar/wind+storage. Solar/wind and especially batteries are
| going to go through a decade of nonlinear cost improvement
| in the next decade that ... probably ... drops their cost
| by half.
|
| So nuclear will only be a load leveller tech, and needs to
| compete with hydro (and pumped hydro storage), geothermal,
| whatever comes out of synthfuels/"green" hydrogen.
|
| I'm of the view we need to invest in nuclear research, but
| going all-in on nuclear plants? Nope, the nuclear industry
| should have gotten off its tush 20-30 years ago with a more
| compelling design that addresses full lifecycle and safety
| and economics.
|
| Nuclear should have recognized the enormous opportunity
| global warming represented, but the nuclear industry seems
| full of "green" hostile (from the antinuke conflicts) and
| regulatory hostile people that it couldn't bring itself to
| align with left-wing environmentalism.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > Passive afterglow heat removal is the thing that lets
| reactors of any fuel form be safer than today's typical
| reactors, which generally require backup power to run the
| cooling systems.
|
| NuScale does not require backup power. They solve the
| afterglow heat removal problem by running the reactors
| under millions of gallons of water. By the time it all
| boils away (about a month), passive air cooling is
| sufficient.
| Symmetry wrote:
| For people who don't know this stuff, like myself a few
| years ago:
|
| When a uranium atom is hit by a neutron some of the will
| split immediately releasing new neutrons but some of them
| will go into an unstable state and then split some period
| of time later. If the instantaneous splits are enough to
| keep the reaction going that's called a "prompt critical"
| configuration and usually seen only in atomic weapons. If
| the neutrons released by both the immediate reactions and
| the delayed reactions are enough to keep the reaction going
| that's only "critical."
|
| Because there are many atoms in the reactor that have been
| hit by neutrons and are unstable but haven't split yet a
| reactor continues to release a lot of heat even when it's
| no long critical, somewhere on the order of 10% as much
| power as when it was fully on.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I agree freeze plug isn't magic, passive heat removal can
| be much easier if you can move the fuel into a different
| contaiment with different geometry and different passive
| heat removal features.
|
| However it has to be noted that most of the companies that
| work on molten salt reactors dont use that method.
| Terrestrial Energy, Moltex Energy for example.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Meh, I dunno I think freeze plugs are really falling out
| of favor in general. They take a long time to melt,
| aren't that reliable or predictable, and can spuriously
| actuate, dumping the whole core.
|
| Why make two vessels when you already need one? Just add
| passive afterglow heat removal to the one and you're
| done. Moving stuff around for no reason doesn't add
| anything.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > That's a lot of pretty mobile fission products!
|
| https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-O
| v... (slide 23)
|
| "Gaseous Fission Products Inherently Evolve from Fuel Salt"
|
| "Many FPs have Xe or Kr precursors
|
| - Over 40% of FPs leave core
|
| - Large fraction of cesium, strontium and iodine end up in
| offgas"
| convolvatron wrote:
| I think the point about pebble-bed designs is that the
| density of reactive material in the pebbles is low enough
| that without external control it maintains a moderate
| temperature. low enough to not cause a meltdown under any
| circumstances
| VLM wrote:
| Engineered to cool by convection and gravity, yes. Somewhat
| safer than reactors that melt without continuous active
| cooling. But that comes at a cost: the good parts of low
| power density AND the bad part of low power density, such
| as being "huge" compared to a tiny little submarine reactor
| of similar power level.
|
| Really any reactor "could" be engineered this way but it
| does make them big. And "big" competes against the natural
| desire of engineers to run them at high temps thus high
| pressures to keep efficiency high. But what if lower
| efficiency results in net cheaper and safer electricity;
| its not like they're paying silicon valley prices for the
| land and nuclear fuel is stunningly cheap so burning twice
| as much is still cheaper than coal, LOL.
|
| A lot of the "old school" reactor design was based around
| the nuclear navy where both weight and volume are NOT
| cheap, not cheap at all. I don't think you could ever have
| a pebble bed reactor in an aircraft carrier.
| gene-h wrote:
| LFTRs involve onsite reprocessing which is politically
| difficult to get approved in the US and may introduce other
| risks.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Here's a presentation on their approach to safety:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhrxFCtCPUo&t=2360s
|
| They estimate that the risk of core damage is 3-5 orders of
| magnitude lower than traditional nuclear plants.
| sklargh wrote:
| I would love to see SMRs deployed at older coal fuel power plant
| sites to replace baseload power these facilities offer. These
| locations are already connected to their respective grids and are
| environmentally degraded.
| lettergram wrote:
| What does "environmentally degraded" mean?
| NegativeK wrote:
| I assume they're referring to the immediate local pollution
| that collects around a coal plant.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just Approved by US
| Regulators_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32367791 - Aug
| 2022 (229 comments)
|
| _US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32282632 - July 2022 (742
| comments)
|
| _Developers of small modular reactors hope their time has come_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787076 - March 2022 (277
| comments)
|
| _First U.S. Small Nuclear Reactor Design Is Approved_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24485962 - Sept 2020 (105
| comments)
|
| _Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety
| approval_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358850 - Sept
| 2020 (541 comments)
|
| _NuScale's small nuclear reactor is first to get US safety
| approval_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345288 - Sept
| 2020 (5 comments)
|
| Related a bit more loosely:
|
| _China leads the quest for small modular nuclear reactors-will
| the world follow?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34395892 - Jan 2023 (41
| comments)
|
| _Small Modular Reactors Exacerbate Challenges of Nuclear Waste_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639398 - June 2022 (268
| comments)
|
| _Next generation nuclear reactor to be built in Wyoming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27376834 - June 2021 (26
| comments)
|
| _Wyoming site of new nuclear power plant from Bill Gates '
| TerraPower_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27374840 -
| June 2021 (113 comments)
|
| _Small modular nuclear reactors may help polluting industries
| reduce emissions_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25791023
| - Jan 2021 (45 comments)
|
| _NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear
| reactor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16984551 - May
| 2018 (124 comments)
|
| _Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498617 - March 2018 (49
| comments)
|
| _China 's Yanlong: a small nuclear reactor strictly for district
| heating_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15967724 - Dec
| 2017 (60 comments)
|
| _Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers to
| Nuclear_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751705 - May
| 2016 (84 comments)
| garbagecoder wrote:
| I am an enormous advocate for nuclear as a transition energy
| source and I know energy geeks love decentralization, but I don't
| think nuclear and decentralization is a good mix.
|
| The basic rationale is that you are risking a few dead spots on
| the planet (Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc.) in exchange for the
| entire planet being destroyed, but that only makes sense if the
| number of places you are risking is quite small.
|
| Ideally, it would be places that are already in use for
| radiological purposes.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's easy to get certified. Now they have to get a few hundred
| customers and local planning permissions...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The first one is going into Lincoln County Wyoming in the city
| of Kemmerer. The city, county and state are all excited to get
| this reactor. They have the full support of the state. This
| state has a very diverse power production profile and provides
| power to most of the western states.
|
| The only people not so happy are the coal miners that are soon
| to be out of work. Kemmerer is also a coal mining city. Some of
| them have already started relocating.
| grecy wrote:
| Interesting that Wyoming is talking about banning the sales
| of EVs [1] to protect the oil and gas industry.
|
| By that logic, a pesky nuclear reactor would surely also
| endanger their precious oil and gas profits....
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3815311-wyoming-
| law...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I think its just virtue-signalling for the people soon to
| be out of work as the coal mines are slowly shutting down,
| also mentioned here [1] That said the state has little
| demand for EV's so probably not too many people noticed.
| Probably also to give some confidence to the oil investors
| but I am not an investment expert.
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34395111
| puffoflogic wrote:
| > a pesky nuclear reactor would surely also endanger their
| precious oil and gas profits
|
| (A), stop taking obviously unserious legislation seriously,
| it's a bad look.
|
| (B), they can comfortably rely on other jurisdictions
| having their heads shoved way too far up their own assholes
| that those other jurisdictions will not ever adopt nuclear,
| and will therefore remain reliable oil and gas customers.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's great. The issue is finding 99 more buyers so this can
| work at scale (the whole point of smr). Then you just have to
| deliver 100 reactors and do so on budget and without any
| defects.
|
| This is why I say the regulation is the EASY part. People
| were amazed when Tesla got off the ground because it was the
| first time anyone had succeeded at starting a new car maker
| in 100 years. This is the same idea, but much harder.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| You could be right. Time will tell I suppose. I will keep a
| close eye on these and submit articles here as they are
| created and add comments from the locals that end up
| working there.
| gene-h wrote:
| easy? They started the approval process in 2011 and the cost of
| approval was allegedly in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power#Corporate_histor
| ...
| coder543 wrote:
| > It's easy to get certified.
|
| Really? How many SMR designs have been certified in the last 20
| years?
| foota wrote:
| Aren't these factory built? Seems like they could start
| building and then work out buyers if they're as promising as
| people make out.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think what that person means is that to get this actually
| built, is likely going to take at least 5 to 10 years of
| regulatory and government action. On the local level. That's
| not counting anyone that might throw up roadblocks, such as
| environmental, and safety. That could easily extend this out
| another five or 10 years.
|
| If a company wanted to build this reactor today, speaking as
| a government bureaucrat, you are looking at least 10 years
| before they even break ground.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| Are there places were they'd receive less regulation, such
| as on federal land or a military base?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Federal land and less regulation are closer to antonyms
| than synonyms. Federal government contracts tend to be
| more involved than most.
|
| The military might consider a reactor like this for
| remote installations. I think they've had similar
| ideas/tests in the past. Not sure those ever panned out
| though.
| knute wrote:
| There were nuclear reactors run by the military in
| Antarctica, Greenland, and Alaska in the late 60s and
| early 70s, but they were all shut down.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program#
| Lis...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _going to take at least 5 to 10 years of regulatory and
| government action. On the local level_
|
| On the coasts, sure. In Wyoming, Texas or New Mexico, much
| quicker [1].
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/uranium/production/annual/uemplysta
| te.ph...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's fine if you have a few 10s of billions to risk
| building products that might never be bought.
|
| There are 2 key issues here: you have to convince people
| these will work for a decade plus without issue despite being
| new AND you have to convince a large number of people
| (companies, municipalities etc) (>100 to make the factory
| viable and get the economies of scale) who actually have the
| cash to buy them.
|
| This is a key moat for a lot of tech: anyone could design a
| decent airliner. Can you convince enough airlines to order
| them to make it viable to mass manufacturer them, despite
| having no name or track record? Hence Boeing and Airbus
| remain the only games in town (and Airbus only got there with
| a lot of state assistance).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Meh, old reactor tech with new "engineered" safety features. I
| would have liked to see stuff more like FAST or slow wave
| reactors with inherent physics based safety features.
| aclatuts wrote:
| Making it smaller does add physics based safety features that
| couldn't be achieved otherwise.
| Retric wrote:
| US's biggest nuclear accident in terms of lives lost was on a
| tiny reactor.
|
| At best the worst case downside is limited, but so to is the
| amount of power generated.
| fr0sty wrote:
| This accident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
|
| "Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, also known as
| SL-1 or the Argonne Low Power Reactor (ALPR), was a United
| States Army experimental nuclear reactor in the western
| United States at the National Reactor Testing Station
| (NRTS), later the Idaho National Laboratory, west of Idaho
| Falls, Idaho. It experienced a steam explosion on the night
| of January 3, 1961, killing all three of its young military
| operators, and pinning one of them to the ceiling of the
| facility with a reactor vessel plug. The event is the only
| reactor accident in U.S. history that resulted in immediate
| fatalities.
| gpm wrote:
| Personally I'm not worried about the biggest nuclear
| accident so far. I'm worried about the potential future
| very unlikely but very severe nuclear accident that kills a
| non-negligible fraction of the population. An accident that
| makes Chernobyl look small.
| nomel wrote:
| This needs to be balanced with any loss of life from
| global warming. Some would want to consider non-human
| life in that calculation, as well.
|
| (I don't know enough about this to know if nuclear will
| have a large impact, in the grand scheme).
| gpm wrote:
| Sure, it's a risk vs reward thing and my comment was just
| focusing on the risk - a risk that I think is continually
| downplayed because we are bad at appreciating the costs
| of extremely unlikely but extremely bad events that have
| never occurred before.
|
| If the reward is high enough the risk might be justified.
| Personally I doubt it (mostly because economically solar
| + wind + power storage seems like a better bet), but
| that's a whole other discussion.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A big part of the problem with today's reactors is that they
| are full of water which requires huge heat exchangers (often
| bigger than the reaction vessel but still safety critical) and
| have a huge steam turbine.
|
| Even if heat were free you'd have a hard time making the steam
| turbine powerset competitive in 2023.
|
| Nuclear might be able to compete if we can get rid of the
| water. In Japan they are talking about producing hydrogen
| directly with thermochemistry, no powerset at all. There is
| also talk about coupling fast reactors or molten salt reactors
| to this kind of powerset
|
| https://www.powermag.com/what-are-supercritical-co2-power-cy...
|
| The claimed price of a NuScale reactor isn't going to beat a
| large LWR but it might possibly be able to build at the quote
| that NuScale quotes, whereas the large LWR struggles.
|
| If you want "the power to save the Earth" you have to get costs
| down and reactors that can do that are still a decade + out.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'll have to look up the hydrogen one. I know the only DOE
| work I've heard of in the US is still hydrolysis.
|
| I thought they have small scale modupar FAST reactors. I
| would hope they would be similar on price, or at least quote
| accuracy.
| scythe wrote:
| Thermochemical hydrogen -- solar or nuclear -- has been
| studied for a while. The simulation thermodynamic
| efficiency numbers are excellent (beating electricity
| generation by 1.5-2x), but the reaction cycles in practice
| tend to leak process chemicals or corrode equipment too
| quickly to be sustainable (even losing, e.g., 0.1% of your
| iodine per cycle is unacceptable). I believe Japan is
| considering a reactor made of _tantalum_. Canada started
| such a project in 2010 that was supposed to be online by
| 2016ish but has continued hitting roadblocks.
| Retric wrote:
| The steam loop is a tiny fraction of current nuclear reactors
| costs. If you didn't need to worry about nuclear safety etc
| then a pure steam loop would be wildly profitable.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Have you seen how big the steam turbine is?
|
| There is a table here that estimates that only 28% of the
| cost is the "nuclear island"
|
| https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-
| aspec...
|
| the steam turbine and other systems that are bloated by low
| temperature overhead comprise much of the rest. Also some
| of the "nuclear island" such as the steam generators is
| also bloated by low temperature overhead.
|
| It is no accident that _we stopped building coal-burning
| power plants at the same time we stopped building LWRs_ and
| that is because gas turbine power plants with much lower
| capital cost became available.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Have you seen how big the steam turbine is?"_
|
| If your intuition was correct, I think we'd see a trend
| towards much smaller steam turbines with fewer stages.
| It's a deliberate choice to engineer them at the size
| scale they are: the marginal efficiency gains from
| largest [0], lowest-pressure stages has to justify their
| cost.
|
| [0] https://power.mhi.com/products/steamturbines/lineup/t
| hermal-... (diagram showing relative sizes of HP / IP /
| LP turbine stages)
| Retric wrote:
| 28% of construction costs not total costs. If we are
| assuming magic such that you don't need fuel then you
| also don't need armed security, nuclear decommissioning
| etc etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A story I've been gathering bits and pieces of evidence
| for but haven't put together completely is that nuclear
| decommissioning projects, unlike construction projects,
| frequently end up completed ahead of schedule and under
| budget.
|
| This is even true in cases where the situation is
| unprecedented and people are having to develop new
| techniques.
| Retric wrote:
| As is so often the case it isn't any one issue like
| decommissioning that's the problem alone. It's that
| nuclear has such a wide range of costs that they
| collectively become expensive even if each cost in it's
| own isn't prohibitive.
|
| Aka if we only needed to pay for fuel rods and waste
| management then nuclear would be wildly profitable.
| Similarly if the only cost was a large workforce and
| expensive maintenance then again it would be wildly
| profitable. Being forced to act as base load generation
| with long periods offline for refueling isn't a deal
| killer. If it was just the long construction times and
| NIMBY issues that would be fine. Etc.
|
| Unfortunately because there is such a diverse range of
| costs there isn't a single silver bullet that's going to
| solve all problems with nuclear power. At best by
| addressing individual issues we might increase the
| percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power.
| That's very realistic and IMO a worthwhile goal.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Construction costs are the big cost in nuclear power.
| Uranium comprises between $0.0015/kWh and $0.000015/kWh.
|
| You don't really need armed security, but a couple guys
| with guns in America are a dime a dozen.
|
| Decomissioning is $300-400M after a 30-50Y lifecycle and
| operators are generally allowed to collect that money
| over the plant life. [1] That's compared to the $17B in
| construction costs for Vogtle.
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
| sheets/d...
| Retric wrote:
| Uranium costs are the kind of meaningless fact that's
| true and wildly misleading. Fuel rods are not simply long
| sticks of unprocessed uranium.
|
| Refueling is expensive because of many separate costs.
| Even simply being forced to take a power plant offline
| for a long period is inherently expensive. Similarly
| building a cooling pond and equipment to move extremely
| high level nuclear waste is costly. Add up all those
| individual costs and fuel represents a significant
| faction of the total lifetime costs for a nuclear
| reactor.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So why don't they just build a ton of un-safe nuclear
| reactors where they used to test nukes and use long-
| distance high-voltage lines to transfer the power?
|
| If you can test Tsar Bomba somewhere - why can't you build
| a nuclear reactor there that might melt down?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| This is currently a big problem with renewable energy in
| the UK and other places. One reason you see negative
| wholesale costs for electricity in some places is you
| have a lot of generating capacity but no power lines to
| get it to demand.
|
| It turns out the lead time to build long power lines is
| long and it is a politically difficult proposition
| because you have to get permits for a whole line from
| Point A to Point B.
|
| One of the ways where the sticker price of renewables is
| higher than what is quoted is the cost of transporting it
| and one advantage of nuclear is it could be sited closer
| to demand in some cases.
| loufe wrote:
| Nuclear weapons use and nuclear meltdown don't have
| comparable radiation fallout. It's not even remotely
| similar. Nuclear bombs release radiation in a bang
| (usually disappearing in a couple days, IIRC), but
| nuclear melt downs release materials that continue to be
| radioactive (for an eternity).
|
| Think about Chernobyl vs Hiroshima. Chernobyl is
| uninhabitable and will remain so for a very long time.
| Hiroshima was rebuilt in the exact same spot that was
| destroyed and is a healthy, thriving city, by all
| accounts.
|
| Even in some far out place, nuclear fallout in some far
| out place will eventually make its way into the air and
| water of the world, count on it.
| arcticbull wrote:
| They can't even get people to put nuclear waste in Yucca
| Mountain which just so happens to be adjacent to the
| Nevada Test Site. That's one of the most contaminated
| locations in the entire United States. The US government
| detonated 928 nuclear weapons there between 1951 and
| present.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a difference of dropping a bomb in the desert vs
| hauling nuclear waste across federal highways through
| people's "land" to get to Yucca Mountain. It's not
| exactly apples to apples of a comparison you're making
| here.
|
| While it is definitely full of NIMBYism, there is a bit
| more complexity to the Yucca Mountain decision.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't know to what extent the public is aware of it but
| another problem with Yucca Mountain is that used LWR fuel
| is by no means waste and it doesn't make sense at all to
| dispose of it in its current form.
|
| At best the LWR gets 2% of the energy out of natural
| uranium. A fuel cycle that removes the small fraction of
| fission products and feeds plutonium and uranium can
| extract vast amounts of energy from today's "nuclear
| waste". It is the plutonium that is radioactive for tens
| of thousands of years, if you use it as fuel the
| remaining fission products decay quickly and are less
| radioactive than the original ore in less than 1000
| years.
|
| So Yucca Mountain makes no sense from the viewpoint of
| the nuclear industry (it isn't going to fight for it) so
| if some people don't like it there is no point in
| pursuing it.
| Retric wrote:
| Even if you don't care about public safety, worker safety
| is going to be expensive. You can't pay someone enough to
| handle fresh from the core fuel rods by hands because it
| will quickly kill them.
|
| Similarly, you need a design that's likely to last long
| enough to pay back construction costs.
|
| Finally there's logistic issues in locating power plants
| in the middle of nowhere. You need massive quantities of
| water and large massive workforce plus dedicated power
| transmission to someone in need of power etc.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| I guess this would be the logical place for them to start, but
| hopefully it's just a start.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Reminds me of what we humorously learn from The System
| Bible[0]: "When a fail-safe system fails, it fails by failing
| to fail safely."
|
| The book mentions 3-miles island, where a problem in a
| secondary system (an added safety system) spread and caused the
| system as a whole to fail. This is a tongue-in-cheek way of
| illustrating a serious issue when designing systems, though I
| wonder if the interpretation of what happened at 3-miles island
| is a bit of a stretch? (And I may misremember the book.)
|
| "The accident to unit 2 happened at 4 am on 28 March 1979 when
| the reactor was operating at 97% power. It involved a
| relatively minor malfunction in the secondary cooling circuit
| which caused the temperature in the primary coolant to
| rise..."[1]
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-
| Large/d... [1]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-
| library/safety-and-sec...
| retzkek wrote:
| > a problem in a secondary system (an added safety system)
|
| "Secondary" in nuclear parlance for a PWR refers to the loop
| of water that cycles through the steam generators and
| turbines, while the "primary" loop cycles through the reactor
| and steam generators.
|
| Not to detract from your point, which is a good one, and the
| pressurizer relief valve that stuck open and through which
| the cooling water escaped was indeed an added safety system.
| p1mrx wrote:
| NuScale's main safety feature is an enormous pool of water, so
| the reactors can cool down without human intervention. That's
| more physics than engineering.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Plenty of such stuff is going on. [1] is the list of reactors
| designs the Department of Energy is working on.
|
| [2] is the legwork the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is doing
| to prepare for the approval process on non light water reactor
| designs.
|
| As for the slow wave reactors, it looks like that idea was put
| on a back burner. Fast reactors are much more exciting anyway.
|
| [1]
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2020/05/f74/Advan...
|
| [2] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/advanced.html
| pfdietz wrote:
| NuScale recently announced large cost increases at the project
| with UAMPS. The cost per unit of capacity is now on par with the
| new reactors at Vogtle (~$20/W). This is outside the range at
| which the project could be competitive.
|
| https://ieefa.org/resources/eye-popping-new-cost-estimates-r...
| prottog wrote:
| To put in other units: a rise from previous targets of $58/MWh
| to $89/MWh, more than 50%, not including a $30/MWh subsidy (so
| the true cost is actually $119/MWh).
|
| To be fair, it says the cost increases are mainly due to the
| rise in construction material prices as well as financing
| costs; nothing inherent to nuclear power or the novel
| technology itself.
| Krasnol wrote:
| There is one thing nuclear never runs out of: excuses why it
| gets more expensive and takes longer.
| timerol wrote:
| Producer price index on steel pipe and structural steel are
| bonkers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU3312103312100
| and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU33231233231211
| cinntaile wrote:
| > To be fair, it says the cost increases are mainly due to
| the rise in construction material prices as well as financing
| costs; nothing inherent to nuclear power or the novel
| technology itself.
|
| The problem is mostly cost. Now that we're entering a higher
| interest environment, the situation is unlikely to improve.
| coder543 wrote:
| To provide more context, wind and solar were both in the low
| $30's/MWh of LCOE (levelized cost of energy) 3 years ago[0],
| with that number predicted to continue falling rapidly.
|
| Combined cycle (natural gas) is a bit higher[1] than solar
| and wind, with that number expected to rise over time, and
| I'm fairly sure the current numbers don't really reflect the
| substantial cost of the carbon emissions, which we will all
| have to pay for sooner or later. Either way, the number
| utilities see is currently much lower than SMRs.
|
| I'm pretty sure every prediction I've ever seen for how
| quickly the cost of wind and solar will fall has
| underestimated the speed in retrospect.
|
| That's the kind of thing these reactors have to compete with.
|
| Grids have also repeatedly been shown to handle more
| renewables than every previous prediction would make, and we
| haven't hit the limit. At this point, fossil fuel sources
| more frequently a source of blackouts than than renewables
| from everything I've seen, despite certain people blaming
| renewables at every turn.
|
| What we _need_ is more energy storage, whether that 's in the
| form of traditional batteries or more novel forms of energy
| storage.
|
| I think nuclear is a fine source of energy if you have it,
| but evidence over the last several decades shows that it is
| virtually impossible to build for myriad reasons. The Vogtle
| nuclear reactors have been one giant boondoggle. New nuclear
| is not cost competitive, unfortunately.
|
| This was also an interesting article yesterday:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/19/michael-bloomberg-
| backs...
|
| [0]: https://www.eenews.net/articles/doe-heres-where-
| renewable-co...
|
| [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46856
| arcticbull wrote:
| > What we need is more energy storage, whether that's in
| the form of traditional batteries or more novel forms of
| energy storage.
|
| Batteries are a nightmare at grid scale from an
| environmental perspective.
|
| Other forms of storage are needed (pumped hydro for
| example), or nuclear plus renewable on top of a smart-grid
| capable of adjusting demand instead.
|
| It's fundamentally far more difficult and costly to adjust
| supply (or to buffer with storage) than it is to reduce
| demand during periods of low renewable generation. As more
| EVs and their chargers come online, instantaneous load
| reductions become cheap and easy - and possible.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't know anything about the electric grid, but I'm
| surprised we don't have more pumped hydro. Seems like a
| great way to suck up energy from solar during the day and
| release it when it's needed. Guess capital costs are high
| compared to "oh we'll just borrow some power from your
| electric car if we need it"?
| coder543 wrote:
| Many of the geographically-convenient spots to do pumped
| hydro in are already being used, which makes this hard to
| scale beyond what we currently have.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > Batteries are a nightmare at grid scale from an
| environmental perspective.
|
| More tired lies.
|
| Diurnal storage provided via LFP requires around a kg of
| lithium to serve 1kW.
|
| 1kg of natural Uranium can provide around 1kW
|
| The battery lasts 12-20 years. The Uranium lasts 3-6.
|
| Mining a kg of lithium has less environmental impact than
| mining a kg of Uranium.
|
| Meanwhile, in reality, Sodium Ion and Iron batteries are
| fully abundant and far closer to mass commercialisation
| than an SMR or even new traditional nuclear.
| jfengel wrote:
| Plain old combined cycle can handle a lot of the demand
| peaks. We already have that in place.
|
| If they operate 1% or even 5% of the time, we've still
| cut vast amounts of carbon. There would be much lower
| hanging fruit than trying to replace that last fraction
| with nuclear. We have a solution already in place.
|
| That doesn't mean all research on modular reactors should
| stop. It would have a niche if it worked. It's just not
| the thing holding back decarbonization, and not an excuse
| to hold back as much renewables as possible as fast as
| possible.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And if they have to operate 1% of the time, they can do
| that with hydrogen, and the fuel cost will be
| inconsequential.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Batteries are a nightmare at grid scale from an
| environmental perspective.
|
| Which part[0], exactly? I think most people dramatically
| overestimate the level of "nightmare", and battery
| contents are _highly_ recyclable. We don 't have a ton of
| battery recycling right now because there aren't enough
| failing batteries yet to support the necessary
| facilities, but several companies are starting to ramp
| up.
|
| Also worth considering that even after a battery is "too
| old" to use in an EV, it is perfectly fine to use in
| stationary storage applications for quite awhile longer
| ("reuse") even before it is time to recycle and rebuild
| those components into a new battery.
|
| > It's fundamentally far more difficult and costly to
| adjust supply (or to buffer with storage) than it is to
| reduce demand during periods of low renewable generation.
| As more EVs and their chargers come online, instantaneous
| load reductions become cheap and easy - and possible.
|
| I completely agree with this, and most people either
| can't or won't see this point in discussions about
| renewables. The more predictable load that comes online,
| the easier it is to justify more production. Even if that
| production is using so-called "intermittent" renewables,
| when the need arises, asking people to voluntarily avoid
| charging for a day would be equivalent to adding a huge
| amount of production suddenly, just by removing load.
| (And EVs have enough range for a week of normal commuting
| for most people, easily. The few people who _need_ to
| charge desperately would be able to charge without
| problems.) If you pay people for volunteering to
| participate in Demand Response, you will get plenty of
| volunteers.
|
| "Demand response" is a critical part of the grid of the
| future.
|
| [0]: https://cen.acs.org/content/dam/cen/97/28/WEB/09728-
| cover-sc...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Comparing renewables _without storage_ with a non-
| intermittent source is comparing apples to oranges. Until
| said storage system is developed, renewables have to be
| paired with a dispatchable source - usually fossil fuels.
| Existing batteries are nowhere near the scale required to
| capture and re-release intermittent energy production.
|
| Nuclear power is cheaper when built at scale [1]. When
| dozens of plants were being built of the same few designs,
| costs were less than a quarter of what they are now. Most
| nuclear plant construction is first-of-a-kind in the
| country it's being built. These have always cost more.
|
| 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S03014
| 2151...
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Your link literally shows reactor costs going up in price
| over 20% per year for reactors finished before TMI, many
| of which were NOAK. Prices only went down before reactors
| had been operated commercially, and that's only because
| the fixes to stop them catching fire or being offline the
| vast majority of time hadn't been invented (and
| retrofitting them to existing reactors cost just as much
| as adding them to new ones).
| coder543 wrote:
| > Most nuclear plant construction is first-of-a-kind in
| the country it's being built. These have always cost
| more.
|
| I don't see how this is relevant. The Vogtle reactors are
| here in the US. The US has plenty of experience building
| nuclear reactors, no? I would love it if nuclear were
| cost effective to build, but I would like to see _any_
| recent examples of that, _anywhere_ in the world. Even
| NuScale is predicting that they won 't be cost
| competitive with Combined Cycle gas plants.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Vogtle 3 and 4 are the first AP1000 reactors built in the
| US. That means most of the parts and components used in
| this plant are the first attempt at building and
| integrating such components. It's a lot cheaper to retain
| all this knowledge and churn out a run of, say, 2 dozen
| steam generators [1] instead of building them as a one-
| off every time. There's many such components where
| there's no market outside of nuclear power plants, and so
| there's no economy of scale to be had if we're only
| building 1 or 2 nuclear plants at a time.
|
| > I would love it if nuclear were cost effective to
| build, but I would like to see any recent examples of
| that, anywhere in the world
|
| South Korea has been consistently building nuclear power
| comparatively cheaply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucl
| ear_power_in_South_Korea#:....
|
| France did so as well during the Messmer plan: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
|
| Of course it's probably not as cost competitive with
| fossil fuels. The whole point is to get _off_ of fossil
| fuels. This is where wind and solar really struggle: they
| 're great at reducing fossil fuel use by ~40% by shutting
| down gas plants when wind and sun are available. But it's
| ultimately still fossil fuels forming the backbone of the
| grid. Nuclear provides a path towards actually removing
| fossil fuel generation entirely, instead of just
| opportunistically supplementing it with intermittent
| renewables.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear
| _power....
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Only one model of US reactor has ever gone down in price
| after repeated builds (and then not by much), South
| Korea's 'cheap' reactors are suddenly $10/W net when they
| built one somewhere else and couldn't get creative with
| the accounting. And the Messmer plan reactors turned out
| just great (in addition to going up in price with each
| reactor and having many hidden costs that make them not
| comparable to a privately funded project).
|
| > This is where wind and solar really struggle: they're
| great at reducing fossil fuel use by ~40% by shutting
| down gas plants when wind and sun are available
|
| I love how this number that renewables can't possibly go
| beyond keeps going up every month but is said with the
| same level of ridiculous overconfidence every time
| (you've got to update it to 60% now for NE Brazil, South
| Australia and a few other generation grids, and much of
| Europe has also crossed your 40% threshold too). Any
| realistic analysis puts the limit in the mid 70% range
| with no storage or overprovision and well above the
| threshold where biogas and existing hydro can cover the
| rest once you add diurnal storage and 3 day dispatchable
| loads like EV charging and electrolysis.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You've got to update it to 60% now for NE Brazil, South
| Australia and a few other generation grids
|
| Most of that is hydroelectricity, not wind and solar. Why
| stop at 60%? Norway produces 100% (or very close to it)
| of its electricity from hydro.
|
| Of course, the answer is that _geographically dependent_
| energy sources aren 't very useful outside places that
| have the right geography. Most places with hydroelectric
| potential are already making use of it. The question is,
| how do we decarbonize the rest of the grid?
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| China's reactors are cheap in China Bux. But we just got
| to see how 'cheap' South Korea's $2.50/W reactors are
| when they exported one and let slip the 'service'
| contract that put the final price at $10/W (net)
| pfdietz wrote:
| ... in a place where solar is coming in at less than
| $0.014/kWh.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| The most reliable output of the nuke industry is shown,
| _again_ , to be dishonesty. Never trust a figure
| delivered by the nuke industry, or by someone who
| believes the nuke industry.
| robomartin wrote:
| > Comparing renewables without storage with a non-
| intermittent source is comparing apples to oranges.
|
| Absolutely correct. There are a lot of magical hand-wavy
| arguments and false stats used when comparing solar to
| nuclear.
|
| My 13kW array went down to 600 W (yes, six hundred Watts)
| peak, not constant, during the last few weeks of rains in
| Los Angeles. I cannot possibly imagine an entire city
| relying on this for energy.
|
| At some point we have to get real. Solar isn't the
| solution. Nuclear is. Solar can help, yet it is very far
| from being a reliable solution.
|
| I'll post power output graphs when I get a moment.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You can back up solar with hydrogen at $1/W of generating
| capacity for those rare prolonged outages. Because they
| are rare, the fuel cost is inconsiderable. At the same
| time, the backup generators are 1/10th (or, if you use
| simple cycle instead of combined cycle, 1/20th) the cost
| of building a new nuclear power plant, per unit of
| output.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _back up solar with hydrogen_
|
| There are myriads of better energy-storage solutions than
| hydrogen, particularly at the periphery.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Quite possibly, but to 100% and for use cases with few
| charge/discharge cycles? In any case, hydrogen provides
| an existence proof that renewables can get to 100%, and
| probably more cheaply than nuclear.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You can back up solar with hydrogen
|
| No, you can't, because nobody is offering hydrogen
| electricity storage. If you're okay with energy plans
| involving heretofore unused technology, then I've got a
| fusion plant to sell you.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ah yes, your old "if no one is offering it, it cannot
| ever exist" argument.
|
| Yes, I am perfectly comfortable imagining the future will
| be using technologies that we are not currently using.
| Hydrogen is not much of a stretch, as it involves
| integrating technologies that already exist.
| infoseek12 wrote:
| Solar and wind are great! I'm sure they'll be a huge part
| of the future. However, there are places that don't have
| good conditions for either and applications that they
| struggle with like providing large amounts of power for
| things like refining aluminum or casting steel. Not to
| mention how useful it would be if you fit one in a Super
| Galaxy and power a military base with it or quickly connect
| one and get it pumping power into a grid that's
| experiencing blackouts. Wind and solar will probably be
| cheaper but this kind of tech could still be very useful in
| quite a few places.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Wind and solar will probably be cheaper but this kind
| of tech could still be very useful in quite a few places.
|
| I agree, and I would love to see SMRs succeed. But, the
| latest developments in the cost of NuScale don't get my
| hopes up very high.
|
| Related, I have no idea if UNSC is going to go anywhere,
| but I really like their website[0]. Probably the best SMR
| company website in existence.
|
| [0]: https://www.usnc.com
| infoseek12 wrote:
| Cost estimates for novel nuclear designs have a track
| record of being all but worthless. I wish I could dismiss
| your pessimism but the flip side of the economics, that's
| a large part of what makes this so difficult, is that if
| they do succeed and make SMRs a real thing the cost could
| go down dramatically.
| coder543 wrote:
| This was also an interesting and relevant analysis if you
| want to read more on the subject:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/18/the-nuclear-fallacy-
| why...
|
| Like I said, I do hope that SMRs succeed, and I want them
| to succeed cost effectively, not just by subsidization.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| There's a lot of pressure on the industry to emphasize
| that the designs are "new" and not like ones that failed.
| Innovation is good, I think, but the reason nuclear is
| even in the conversation now is because it already has
| been done, mostly safely, and could be scaled with
| existing tech. This makes it a decent player for a
| transition energy source. High cost shoot-the-moon future
| designs hopefully will never be necessary.
|
| I say this as an absolutely fervently pro-nuclear person.
| Comparing France and Germany is really all the
| information you need for this kind of case.
|
| But I don't understand this push for small reactors
| outside of niche military applications etc.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Small reactors are being pushed because new big reactors
| in the US are stone cold dead. This is why I call them
| HMRs, "Hail Mary Reactors". They're nuclear's last
| desperate chance in the US.
| evancox100 wrote:
| Sorry but it is very misleading to say that fossil fuels
| sources are a bigger cause of blackouts than renewables.
| Without dispatchable generation, like nat gas plants but
| also hydroelectric, the grid would black out every single
| night.
|
| Yes dispatchable generation may fail to materialize at
| times, but renewables "fail" to provide consistent power
| every single day, when the sun stops shining at night or
| wind stops blowing. Future battery deployments may be able
| to smooth these out over long enough timescales, but we are
| nowhere near that point right now.
| coder543 wrote:
| >> Grids have also repeatedly been shown to handle more
| renewables than every previous prediction would make, and
| we haven't hit the limit.
|
| > Yes dispatchable generation may fail to materialize at
| times, but renewables "fail" to provide consistent power
| every single day, when the sun stops shining at night or
| wind stops blowing.
|
| As I said. You're just repeating the old arguments.
| People thought that small percentages of renewables would
| destabilize the grid, then that didn't happen, so then
| they said a slightly larger percentages would do it, and
| it didn't. This tired theme has been repeated ad nauseam
| for the last decade or two.
|
| I agree that you need some amount of Base Load, but
| renewables haven't been the problem yet, and energy
| storage _is_ the solution, long term, along with Demand
| Response. Small amounts of grid energy storage have been
| shown[0] to have disproportionately high effects on
| improving grid stability. We might need less than you
| predict.
|
| As it is, since we are still successfully adding more and
| more renewables to the grid, and renewables _aren 't_
| being the source of blackouts, SMRs have to compete with
| renewables on cost, and they simply don't. SMRs also
| don't compete with Combined Cycle plants in terms of cost
| either, so which one are utilities going to choose?
|
| Peak demand for the grid is in the late afternoon / early
| evening, so the amount of battery storage needed to
| "shift" solar production by a few hours is not as much as
| you would think.
|
| Wind power produces more power at night than during the
| day, and it produces more in winter than summer, which is
| quite convenient given how solar produces more in the
| summer and during the day.[1] They make quite a
| complementary pair of power sources.
|
| There are seasonal concerns, which is where some combined
| cycle plants come into play, even if they don't operate
| for most of the year, but that's _also_ not SMRs.
| Combined Cycle is way cheaper than these nuclear SMRs. If
| you over-build on wind and solar, you can go a long way
| even in times of year with "less" wind and less
| sunshine, and with the low cost of wind and solar... lots
| of people are looking to overbuild as a partial solution
| that doesn't require batteries.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserv
| e#Benefi...
|
| [1]: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1368867
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The _overwhelming majority_ of electricity demand is base
| load. Usually on the order of 70-80% [1]. We don 't need
| "some" base load, almost all our demand is base load.
|
| Electricity storage is nowhere near the scale required to
| make a dent in the electricity grid. To put this in
| perspective, the US alone uses about 500 GWh of
| electricity every hour. Worldwide this figure is about
| 2,500 GWh per hour. The storage facility you linked to
| was the biggest facility in the world when it was first
| constructed, and it stored only 129 MWh of electricity.
|
| At our current rate of battery production it'd take us a
| century of dedicating 100% of our battery output to grid
| storage to reach 1 day's worth of storage. Battery
| production is expected to increase, but it's unclear
| whether raw material inputs can keep up with
| manufacturing demands [2].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
|
| 2. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
| coder543 wrote:
| > The overwhelming majority of electricity demand is base
| load. Usually on the order of 70-80% [1]. We don't need
| "some" base load, almost all our demand is base load.
|
| The article you linked doesn't really back this up, at
| least in the way this discussion means it. It shows that
| with flexible production, you can drastically scale back
| on "traditional" base load power sources, and that is
| representing a _real_ power grid in Germany. Nothing
| about the graph actually says "this is as much
| renewables as you can pack into this power grid".
|
| If you look at the graph closely, you'll notice that
| solar is big during the day, and wind is big during the
| night. With greater installed wind production capacity,
| the fossil fuel lines would drop drastically in the
| graph. It's that simple. We would still need to have
| "peaker plants" available until there is enough grid
| energy storage capacity, but combined cycle natural
| plants work fine for that. We can keep pushing down the
| time they need to on by building more renewables even
| without batteries.
|
| > The storage facility you linked to was the biggest
| facility in the world when it was first constructed, and
| it stored only 129 MWh of electricity.
|
| I specifically linked that one because it talks about how
| ridiculously profitable it has been, and how much of an
| impact it has had on the local grid. If it can save money
| for a traditional grid, then it is a no-brainer for
| utilities to install bigger and bigger grid batteries.
| More demand for batteries means more battery production
| facilities, increasing global production capacity over
| time.
|
| However, the world is also transitioning to Electric
| Vehicles, and most EV manufacturers are offering V2G
| (vehicle to grid) solutions, so millions of EVs can
| contribute a portion of their battery capacity to the
| grid in the future, and the grid can compensate them for
| their contribution.
|
| > Battery production is expected to increase, but it's
| unclear whether raw material inputs can keep up with
| manufacturing demands [2].
|
| Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious. But, various alternative chemistries are
| being explored which could help in different ways.
|
| > At our current rate of battery production it'd take us
| a century of dedicating 100% of our battery output to
| grid storage to reach 1 day's worth of storage.
|
| How did you determine that we need a full day's worth of
| energy storage? We can drastically decarbonize the grid
| (and lower electric costs for consumers) with a lot less
| than that, based on what I've seen, but this is a highly
| speculative part of the discussion so it's interesting to
| hear how that number came to be.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We can get a handle on how much storage needed by
| optimization based on real weather data, minimizing costs
| based on various assumptions on cost of wind, solar,
| batteries, and long term storage. This web site lets you
| do that to obtain "synthetic baseload", the equivalent of
| what a nuclear plant could provide:
|
| https://model.energy/
|
| If we do this for Germany with 2030 cost assumptions and
| 2011 weather data, 6 hours of batteries are needed and
| 289 hours of hydrogen storage. Hydrogen storage is quite
| cheap, if nowhere near as efficient. It's very useful
| here, reducing the optimal cost by nearly a factor of 2.
|
| For the US as a whole, the optimum solution uses 6 hours
| of batteries again, but 106 hours of hydrogen. For just
| Texas, 2 hours of batteries and 254 hours of hydrogen.
| California alone is 16 hours of batteries and 70 hours of
| hydrogen (likely due to wind optimizing to zero under
| those assumptions.)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I plugged this in with existing storage technologies and
| existing energy demand for just the USA (500 GW). It
| turns out we'll only need... 6,000 GWH of battery
| storage!
|
| https://imgur.com/TGRMOBw
|
| By comparison, the entire world only produces ~400 GWh of
| batteries each year. So it'd _only_ take a decade and a
| half of _global_ battery production to satisfy the
| storage demands of _just_ the USA. The rest of the world
| would be left with zero EV or electronics production for
| a decade and a half and no grid storage to show for it.
|
| Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just
| how unfeasible energy storage really is.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Obviously production would have to be scaled up. It's
| dishonest to present this as some sort of insurmountable
| barrier, for all potential battery chemistries or other
| storage modes.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Batteries are not transistors. Their input costs are
| skyrocketing, and sure enough the end costs of batteries
| are now starting to rise, too [1]. It's dishonest to
| pretend that continued exponential growth is guaranteed.
|
| The cost of an automobile shrank from a million dollars
| inflation adjusted to a hundred thousand over the course
| of the 1900s. Assembly line manufacturing continued to
| shrink this down to $10,000 by 1920. Would it be safe to
| assume that a car would cost $1 by the end of the century
| given the past rate of a 10x drop in price every two
| decades?
|
| The reality is that most products are not transistors.
| They don't get better when you make them smaller. A car
| will always contain a certain mass of metal, and will not
| cheaper than the cost of that input. Manufacturing
| already accounts for under a quarter of a battery's cost.
| The rest is dominated by cathode and anode material [2].
| Battery manufacturing had already become a resource
| extraction problem.
|
| 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-...
|
| 2. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-
| cost-of-a...
| coder543 wrote:
| You could not be more wrong about batteries. You made a
| huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes
| up. It's possible -- just possible -- that other people
| have researched batteries too, and maybe they have a
| better sense of where the industry is going.
|
| It makes no sense to assume that we've reached "peak
| battery", at all.
|
| Continuing this argument is pointless, and really does
| seem like you're choosing to ignore reality. I'm done
| with this conversation.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You made a huge error about the cost percentage that
| lithium makes up.
|
| Care to explain? I'm always intrigued by commenters
| asserting that an error has been made, yet neglect to
| explain the error.
| coder543 wrote:
| I already responded to you elsewhere. Perhaps you ignored
| it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846
|
| Cathodes are not a giant chunk of elemental lithium, as
| you believe.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| But lithium still dominates the cost of the cathode. Iron
| is not the main driver of battery expenses.
| coder543 wrote:
| 13% is not 50%. It makes a huge difference in the cost
| scaling under discussion.
|
| In fact, nickel dominates the cost of the cathode, in
| case you missed what I had posted. But there are nickel-
| free chemistries out there.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| And as per my response, nickel is also experiencing
| shortages and cost spikes. My core assertion remains
| true: battery production has become a resource extraction
| problem, rather than a manufacturing problem. Unless we
| find a way to somehow make mining exponentially more
| efficient, we're not going to be seeing exponential
| growth in battery production.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate
| just how unfeasible energy storage really is.
|
| It's amazing how clearly you can see the trees without
| realizing there's a forest.
|
| Battery production capacity has been scaling like crazy
| and will continue to scale like crazy:
| https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-
| ion-ba...
|
| It doesn't matter if battery prices increase some, as you
| have made that the cornerstone of your argument. Many
| many comments ago, I linked to the Hornsdale battery.
| Based on the revenue, you can do the math: the batteries
| could cost a lot more, and it would still have been
| profitable. Batteries also don't make up the entire cost
| of grid scale storage: the inverters, the transformers,
| even the cabinets and control computers cost money.
|
| As it is, mining is a lagging indicator. Once mining
| scales up, the cost of the commodities will naturally go
| back down. While there is profit to be made, too many
| people will open mines, which will bring the
| profitability back down to earth. It's a tale as old as
| supply chains.
|
| This same inability to imagine how quickly solar and wind
| would drop in price led to numerous "experts" making
| absurd claims about solar and wind being economically
| infeasible at _any_ scale. The battery supply chain is
| scaling. There will be price volatility, but the volume
| is growing by leaps and bounds.
|
| It will take years for the world to transition, but it
| also takes years to build and install the necessary wind
| and solar. Battery production won't remain constant, and
| it won't even increase slightly. It has and will increase
| drastically.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Predictions and actual capability are two vastly
| different things. Outside the realm of predictions, back
| here in reality, battery costs are actually increasing
| rather than declining [1].
|
| "Just scale up mining" is easier said than done. Steel is
| a widely used commodity. If we could "just scale up
| mining" and exponentially decrease the cost of materials,
| why haven't we been able to do this with steel? Care you
| explain why "just scale up mining" will work for lithium
| when it hasn't for plenty of other commodities?
|
| 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-...
| coder543 wrote:
| I said prices would be volatile. Scaling has worked for
| plenty of other commodities. As I said, I'm out.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious. But, various alternative chemistries are
| being explored which could help in different ways."
|
| Lithium is abundant as far as its total share in the
| Earth's crust goes, but it is my impression that mineable
| concentrations are rather rare, unless you are willing to
| spend obscene amounts of energy on purification. That is
| why only a few countries in the world actually produce
| lithium commercially.
|
| We have some reserves of lithium in Czechia, but they
| would only be economically mineable if the bulk price
| rose significantly (as in, ten times or so), plus the
| mining methods would introduce a lot of poisons into the
| environment. Mining is usually seriously dirty.
| coder543 wrote:
| Until recently, there wasn't much demand for lithium.
| That's the main reason for limited mining, in my opinion.
|
| The cost of lithium was 9% of the cost of a lithium ion
| battery cell according to one analyst last year. Battery
| packs cost more than just the sum of the cells.
|
| If lithium rises in price, it will affect battery prices,
| but a 10x increase would "only" double the cost of the
| battery cells, and the packs would be slightly less
| affected than that.
|
| Realistically, there should be plenty of lithium for less
| than that, but it takes time to ramp, and lithium mining
| does not have to be destructive. The mining can be as
| simple as evaporation ponds in the desert[0]. (You'll
| need refining either way.)
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2019-02-24-the-big-picture-
| lithium-...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What is the origin of the claim that lithium makes up 9%
| of the cost of a battery cell? Anode material is the
| majority of the cost, according to this:
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-
| of-a...
|
| In reality it's 50% of the cost, so a 10X increase in
| input price would amount to a 5x increase in cost.
| Battery production has become a resource extraction
| problem.
| coder543 wrote:
| https://www.newsweek.com/precious-metal-values-are-
| raising-b...
|
| > In 2021, lithium comprised 9 percent of the cost of a
| battery cell. Nickel represented 12 percent of the cost.
| But for 2022, those numbers have risen to 13 percent and
| 21 percent, respectively.
|
| I had just glanced at the Google summary, so I only saw
| the first part. Call it 13%, then.
|
| It is not anywhere close to 50%. The cathode is made of
| more than just lithium. 50% is an incorrect
| interpretation of the graphic in the article you linked.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Great, so we have to solve shortages of lithium _and_
| nickel. Nickel 's cost is also up ~3x over the past few
| years: https://ycharts.com/indicators/nickel_price#:~:tex
| t=Nickel%2....
|
| My point remains: battery production has become a
| resource extraction problem. Even completely optimizing
| manufacturing to the point that it costs nothing would
| only reduce the cost of batteries by a quarter.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Look at the the lowest point of energy demand. That's
| base load. How big is it relative to the peak of energy
| demand? Depends on the season, but it's usually 70-80% of
| peak demand. So, the vast majority of energy demand is in
| fact base load. I'm really confused about why renewable
| proponents talk about base load all the time - it's
| really not relevant to decarbonization of the grid.
|
| Intermittency of wind and solar aren't just daily: you
| also have longer-term periods of cloud weather blocking
| solar and lower wind speed hampering wind power. Actually
| running a majority renewable grid requires either
| hydroelectricity, or fossil fuels.
|
| The majority of Germany's electricity comes from fossil
| fuels [1]. It's not a mostly renewable grid, occasionally
| supplemented by peaker plants. It's a majority fossil
| fuel grid supplemented by renewables. By comparison,
| here's France's electricity production [2]. One of these
| is a mostly decarbonized grid. The other is a primarily
| fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables here and
| there.
|
| > However, the world is also transitioning to Electric
| Vehicles, and most EV manufacturers are offering V2G
| (vehicle to grid) solutions, so millions of EVs can
| contribute a portion of their battery capacity to the
| grid in the future, and the grid can compensate them for
| their contribution.
|
| This is an idea that no sane grid operator would ever
| accept. First of all, most of these vehicles actually
| lose energy in cold weather [3]. And if people leave to
| go on vacation, then we have blackouts because our energy
| storage solution drove away for a week? No to mention,
| plenty of people drive their cars around during the day
| doing chores or work and charge them at night. Those
| people are going to be a net drain on the grid.
|
| > Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious. But, various chemistries are being
| explored.
|
| The market demonstrates otherwise. At the end of the day,
| if there's a shortage of lithium and the price goes it up
| it doesn't really matter what people are writing on tech
| forums.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media
| /File:...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/
| File:F...
|
| 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34120237
| coder543 wrote:
| > Look at the the lowest point of energy demand. That's
| base load. How big is it relative to the peak of energy
| demand? Depends on the season, but it's usually 70-80% of
| peak demand. So, the vast majority of energy demand is in
| fact base load. I'm really confused about why renewable
| proponents talk about base load all the time - it's
| really not relevant to decarbonization of the grid.
|
| I think this is just a confusion of terminology. What
| "renewable proponents" are talking about is _baseload
| power plants_. To quote the Wikipedia article that you
| linked to:
|
| "Power plants that do not change their power output
| quickly, such as large coal or nuclear plants, are
| generally called baseload power plants."
|
| If you've been missing that key piece of terminology, I
| can see the source of the confusion. People just call
| this "base load" to be short, for various reasons. You
| can criticize this if you want to, but that is what is
| happening.
|
| > The majority of Germany's electricity comes from fossil
| fuels [1]. It's not a mostly renewable grid, occasionally
| supplemented by peaker plants. It's a majority fossil
| fuel grid supplemented by renewables. By comparison,
| here's France's electricity production [2]. One of these
| is a mostly decarbonized grid. The other is a primarily
| fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables here and
| there.
|
| This has nothing to do with my previous comment. I have
| no idea what point you're trying to get at.
|
| > This is an idea that no sane grid operator would ever
| accept. First of all, most of these vehicles actually
| lose energy in cold weather [3].
|
| You're really confused about a lot of things in this part
| of the discussion. EVs have less range in winter because
| more of the energy is being used to heat the cabin, and
| that was done with resisitive heating until recently
| (more vehicles are starting to use heat pumps). The grid
| operator would not be insane, except from the point of
| view of a very traditionalist grid operator. The future
| is dynamic.
|
| > The market demonstrates otherwise.
|
| It really doesn't? The market demonstrates that demand
| has risen sharply, and it will take time for production
| to catch up. Every demand spike results in a "shortage".
| Manuel_D wrote:
| "base load power plant" is a meaningless term. Base load
| is a feature of energy demand. Power plants produce
| energy, the same power plant might serve peak load, base
| load, or both.
|
| EVs are not a solution to energy storage. Even ignoring
| the challenge of getting people to hook their cars up to
| the grid, the battery production figures aren't remotely
| close to what we need.
|
| People have been assuming that battery cost will continue
| to decline exponentially. We'll need a century to
| provision just 18 hours of battery storage at current
| rates. Renewable activists hand wave this saying that
| battery production will increase a hundred fold. In
| reality, prices are rising:
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-....
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _People have been assuming that battery cost will
| continue to decline exponentially._
|
| I think the incredible success of the transistor industry
| has created some very unrealistic expectations about the
| pace of technological advance more generally. I know this
| is a fallacy I used to fall for. If a pocket sized
| computer today can beat out a supercomputer the size of a
| small building from when I was a kid, anything seems
| possible. But in reality, the rapid miniaturization of
| transistors is an extraordinary outlier.
| mbesto wrote:
| > EVs have less range in winter because more of the
| energy is being used to heat the cabin, and that was done
| with resisitive heating until recently (more vehicles are
| starting to use heat pumps).
|
| I thought it was this PLUS the fact that lithium
| batteries degrade quicker in freezing temps?
|
| https://www.livescience.com/61334-batteries-die-cold-
| weather...
| coder543 wrote:
| I agree cold has _some_ effects on batteries, but the
| main impact on EV range is related to heating, so linking
| an article on EVs is not very useful when talking about
| stationary storage.
|
| Batteries generate heat when charging and discharging, so
| grid batteries should naturally keep themselves warm, but
| maybe in extreme climates it would be worth adding some
| heat pumps to keep them in the optimal temperature range
| for longevity. It all depends on how the cost
| calculations work out, but it is not some major obstacle.
| fulafel wrote:
| "Base load" is just a description of how demand is
| behaving currently, its now high as we are using fossils
| unsustainably and keeping intra day price variations
| artificially low. It can dip much lower and hourly
| pricing and spot market means the usage adapts to
| production without blackouts. (this also makes storage
| profitable to build where needed)
| scq wrote:
| Hornsdale Power Reserve was nowhere even _close_ to being
| the biggest energy storage facility, even when it was
| constructed. At that time, the biggest facility was the
| Bath County Pumped Storage Station at 24,000 MWh, which
| has since been surpassed again.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Or just take any hydro electric dam. The Swedish hydro
| power currently stores 17.7 TWh.
|
| It is not a battery in how it can fluctuate due to
| natural flow concerns, but some fluctuations are fine.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Dams are geographically limited. You can't just build
| more of them. A fully decarbonized grid's ability to
| build renewables is largely determined by the
| availability of hydroelectricity for dispatchable power.
| Sweden gets ~40% of its electricity from hydro, another
| 40 from nuclear, and 20 from intermittent sources.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _500 GWh of electricity every hour_
|
| GWh/h, or simply 500 GW ;)
| Gare wrote:
| Not quite the same thing. Watts are power. Watt-hours per
| hour (or jules per hour) are average energy consumption
| during one hour.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Yes, but in practice Watts are almost always an average
| over some sample period. Generation capacities for power
| plants are given in Watts, not Wh/h. Wh/h gives you a
| hint that the sample period was an hour, but that isn't
| necessarily the case. I don't think Wh/h is the correct
| way to describe the sample period.
| didericis wrote:
| This is highly geographically dependent, but water
| displacement "batteries" that pump water to an elevated
| basin when power is on and then let it run through
| turbines back down to a lowered basin seem like a really
| simple, effective solution that can work at scale.
| pydry wrote:
| A near 100% renewable grid doesnt require as much storage
| as you'd think:
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-
| renewables-g...
|
| This model projects that a 98% renewable grid is possible
| for Australia by building 450GWh of storage or a bit less
| than one and a third of the existing snowy 2 (350GWh).
| evancox100 wrote:
| Every fact you are saying may be true, but "fossil fuels
| are a bigger cause of blackouts than renewables" doesn't
| follow from the facts your gave, you're just assuming it
| is true. That is the last thing I will say on this.
| coder543 wrote:
| > you're just assuming it is true
|
| I'm not assuming it. I'm referring to the very real,
| major blackouts that have occurred in the US over the
| past couple of years. These events have plenty of
| reliable sources that tell exactly what happened.
|
| In the Texas blackouts, the problems were coal and gas
| plants going offline due to the cold that they weren't
| winterized against. It had nothing to do with Wind or
| Solar failing unexpectedly, despite the governor's claims
| early in the blackouts.
|
| In the recent rolling blackouts in the Southeast, TVA and
| Duke Energy reported that the cause was their coal and
| gas plants freezing up. Nothing to do with renewables
| again.
|
| I cannot recall any major blackouts caused by the fossil
| fuel plants operating normally while renewables failed to
| produce on schedule. I would love to see some examples,
| if they exist.
|
| The Cleantechnica article that I linked to earlier (which
| you surely didn't read) also provided quotes on this
| exact topic, and that analysis agrees with my own, FWIW.
|
| I could dig into the specifics of these events and
| provide more sources, but you don't seem likely to care.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I agree with most of what you say, but renewables can't
| be counted on, so they can never be blamed. This is
| tautologically true and yet a meaningless point.
|
| If a hospital loses power to lifesaving equipment, 100%
| of the time it is due to a failure of backup generators.
| coder543 wrote:
| > I agree with most of what you say, but renewables can't
| be counted on, so they can never be blamed.
|
| Renewables are fairly predictable, so they _can_ be
| counted on. The production is variable, but not
| unreliable or unpredictable. It 's an important
| distinction, and it gives more time for the grid to
| coordinate with Demand Response (or peaker plants) to
| match load and production.
|
| Obviously the weather models involved are still
| improving, but for solar especially, it's easy to predict
| when the sun will go down. Cloud coverage and wind
| forecasting are active areas of development to make
| things easier and more predictable for everyone.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Perhaps unintentionally, you changed your argument from
| "fossil fuels are responsible for blackouts" to " I
| cannot recall any major blackouts caused by the fossil
| fuel plants operating normally while renewables failed to
| produce on schedule". These are different arguments.
|
| I am very much on team renewable, but the only reason
| those fossil fuel plants are needed in the first place is
| because of the very nature of renewables. So it's
| disingenuous to say that fossil fuels are responsible for
| blackouts when it's the dispatchability of renewables
| that required fossil fuel burning in the first place.
|
| I don't think the GP meant anything other than this.
| coder543 wrote:
| > So it's disingenuous to say that fossil fuels are
| responsible for blackouts when it's the dispatchability
| of renewables that required fossil fuel burning in the
| first place.
|
| No... as I recall, in the Texas blackouts, the renewables
| actually generated _more_ power than originally
| forecasted. If the natural gas and coal plants go offline
| completely, that has nothing to do with the
| dispatchability of renewables. The fossil fuel plants
| would be part of the grid regardless, because it takes
| decades for those plants to reach the end of their
| lifecycle and be decommissioned.
|
| The grid _relies_ on every type of power doing what it
| says it will do. It is possible to predict when solar and
| wind will deliver power, and how much they will deliver.
| The stability of the grid relies on that. The fossil fuel
| plants were the ones that had problems. If they had
| produced power as they normally do, there would have been
| no blackout.
|
| > These are different arguments.
|
| Do you still think I changed my argument? I'm fairly sure
| I didn't, but I can see how you reached that conclusion
| without the clarifications above.
| mbesto wrote:
| Energy is fungible, so if both fossil and renewables are
| both online and producing energy how can you blame one
| over the other? My understanding is that neither source
| of energy was winterized to _transmit_ the energy to the
| grid, not that they were unable to produce. So blaming
| one or the other is a red herring.
|
| > But unlike utilities under traditional models, they
| don't ensure that the resources can deliver power under
| adverse conditions, they don't require that generators
| have secured firm fuel supplies, and they don't make sure
| the resources will be ready and available to operate.[0]
|
| The question should squarely be "can renewables create
| the same base load and peak load required to run the
| entire demand of the grid"? From there than we can talk
| about the other topics such as what is required to
| deliver the energy, which is cheaper to operate, etc.
|
| [0] https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-
| for-the-b...
| coder543 wrote:
| > My understanding is that neither source of energy was
| winterized to transmit the energy to the grid, not that
| they were unable to produce.
|
| Transmission was not the problem in any of these
| blackouts that I'm referring to. Powerlines failing
| affects extremely localized parts of the distribution
| network, but the coal and gas plants literally stopped
| producing. It was a production failure.
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-
| power-st...
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-
| turbines-...
|
| On the other question, that goes back to how we
| desperately need energy storage and demand response.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| You may not have intended to change your argument, but I
| think you were assuming evancox100 was arguing against
| renewables where I thought they were just making a point
| about your language. I can't speak for them or you, but I
| think their comment was fair in the absence of the
| clarity you've now provided.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| > the renewables actually generated more power than
| originally forecasted.
|
| They were forecasted to produce 6% and actually made 8%,
| vs 41% from the prior week. You can't blame renewables in
| this case, but you aren't presenting facts in an unbiased
| way.
| coder543 wrote:
| My primary point is that renewables are working the way
| that they say they will work. Certain people refuse to
| admit that fossil fuel plants struggle in adverse
| conditions, but then rant about renewables being somehow
| unreliable.
|
| Renewable integration into the grid is heavily dependent
| on forecasting. You may think it is biased, but I see
| that statistic as things going better than forecasted.
| With proper forecasting, you can overbuild and make up
| for lower production. With proper forecasting, you can
| employ demand response.
|
| When the fossil fuel plants turn off completely and
| unexpectedly, there's nothing you can do, because no one
| planned for that. The grid was relying on the power
| plants, and they weren't there. If the grid had planned
| for the unreliability of those plants, the grid might've
| had more renewables to make up for it, who knows.
|
| People building renewables plan for the variability. As
| I've mentioned, energy storage is essential for the long
| term.
| criley2 wrote:
| 95% of stored energy in the US is hydro-electric pump
| storage. People really have no understanding of how the
| grid works. We don't just run gas plants all night.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Gas plants aren't "stored energy", you're comparing
| apples to oranges. 95% of stored energy amounts to little
| more than bupkis, the US grid doesn't run off stored
| energy at night.
| barney54 wrote:
| Natural gas in pipelines is stored energy. A pile of coal
| at a coal plant is stored energy. Nuclear fuel roads are
| stored energy.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| These are not stored energy in the "stored energy" sense,
| you can't feed solar power into a gas plant and get it
| back out at night.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage
| epistasis wrote:
| > cost increases are mainly due to the rise in construction
| material prices as well as financing costs; nothing inherent
| to nuclear power or the novel technology itself.
|
| I would argue that construction is inherent to nuclear power,
| and is in fact the biggest draw back about nuclear power.
|
| SMRs were _the_ attempt to mitigate most of the disadvantages
| of a constructed product, versus a manufactured product.
|
| There's still significant work needed to convert nuclear into
| a technology that has a learning curve. I think this work has
| some of the best insights about which technologies do or do
| not experience learning curves with price drops:
|
| https://www.volts.wtf/p/learning-curves-will-lead-to-
| extreme...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| huijzer wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of NuScale to get a plant in production
| to produce reactors and then have economies of scale deal with
| the price?
| scythe wrote:
| The report cites recent large increases in the price of
| structural steel and copper wire as driving the cost increases,
| together with higher interest rates. It would seem to follow
| that other sources of power which rely on steel and copper, and
| which are financed by loans in dollars -- most of them, last I
| checked -- would be similarly affected. Nuclear power does
| usually involve a lot more concrete than alternatives, but this
| was not cited as a cost driver.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| What other, renewable, sources being constructed rely on much
| steel?
|
| Solar just now uses a lot of aluminum. Wind uses a lot of
| fiberglass.
|
| Both use a far bit of copper, although aluminum works in wind
| turbines and transmission lines.
| scythe wrote:
| Source? I would imagine rooftop panels use aluminum, but
| I'd be surprised if the solar farms did, since it's more
| expensive and there's no particular advantage. Wind turbine
| _blades_ are fiberglass, but it seems likely the towers
| themselves would be steel (although there are relatively
| few towers, making this less important), since again it has
| excellent cost-to-strength ratio.
|
| But I was also referring to natural gas, coal, hydro, etc
| -- steel is ubiquitous.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Wind towers use a surprisingly large amount of zinc. I
| assume this is sacrificial, to protect the steel against
| corrosion. But, yes, a wind turbine tower is a steel pipe
| bolted to a concrete base.
|
| Solar panel mounting rail hardware I priced were all
| aluminum. On a solar farm it would not be surprising if
| the uprights were steel. Floating on a reservoir,
| supports are probably fiberglass.
|
| It would be a mistake to build most solar farms not
| floating, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.
| gene-h wrote:
| And the article notes that the cost increases were due to
| factors such as the price of steel and steel fabrication
| increasing. Perhaps the cost of building new reactors like
| Vogtle has gone up similarly?
| mindslight wrote:
| Does this qualify for the 30% residential energy tax credit?
| Asking for a friend.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| If by 30% tax credit you mean they are being handed enough
| money to pay for 3x the net capacity in renewables and then
| having their energy price subsidized by an amount higher than
| the total cost of unsubsidized renewables on top of that, and
| that rate payers must pay however much they spend on it no
| matter how far over budget it goes, then yes.
| pkaye wrote:
| This video is a tour of a NuScale facility and control room.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brr5j50umYA
| programd wrote:
| Looking at the control room displays they use imperial units
| all over the place - lb/ft/F. I'm very surprised that none of
| that stuff is metric. I wonder if this is part of some
| regulatory requirement.
| alexb_ wrote:
| Stupid question: the article says that each module can produce 50
| megawatts. What is the time of that number? Like how many people
| can have their energy needs met by one module?
| credit_guy wrote:
| One way to think about this is that the maximum power of a
| Tesla Supercharger is 250 kW. So with one such SMR you can
| supply the electricity to power 200 EVs at the maximum possible
| power.
|
| Also notice that 50 MW is only the approved level. Each module
| can actually produce more, but NRC only approved 50 MW so far.
| Towards the end of the article you can see that NuScale is
| applying for uprating the modules to 77 MW, and it's expected
| the NRC will review this in 2024.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| A typical household uses something on the order of 1-2 MWh of
| power a month. This is something like 2-3 KW on average. 1 MW
| can thus support something like 300-500 households, and 50 MW
| can support 15000-25000 households, i.e. small to medium size
| town.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That may suffice for where they are installing the first one.
| [1] The county has 19k people. I assume it will be tied into
| the grid to shed some load from the other power plants.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County,_Wyoming
| e12e wrote:
| 50 MW should be able to power a small town (aroud 80 000
| people) AFAIK. (ed: or half that, see sibling comment - i saw
| that an avg us house use up a kwh in 50 minutes - but that
| might be with gas heating etc. So "full electric might very
| well be more in the 30-40k ppl range).
| nynx wrote:
| Watts is a measure of energy over time.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| [deleted]
| coder543 wrote:
| Technically, the person you replied to is correct. Energy /
| time (energy over time) is power. Power * time is energy.
|
| If you had a battery with 20kWh and it was empty after two
| hours, you would know that it was providing 10kW, which is
| a measure of the energy released over time, aka. average
| power.
|
| I don't think nynx's comment made things much clearer to
| anyone, though.
| kube-system wrote:
| Ah, yeah, I interpreted it differently as well.
| Emerson_Vento wrote:
| 1W=1J/s ... energy per unit time.
| coder543 wrote:
| Watts are power, Watt-hours or Joules are energy.
|
| 50 megawatts (MW) of power is (perhaps obviously) able to
| supply 50 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy every hour.
|
| According to a google search, the average US residential
| customer consumes 886kWh (0.9MWh) of energy per month.
|
| 50MW -> approximately 36.5GWh / month
|
| 36.5GWh / (886kWh/home) -> 41196 homes
|
| So, about 42,000 homes worth of power could be supplied each
| month in theory, but there are a lot of asterisks on that. (One
| example of an asterisk: residential load factors are really
| low. Another quick google search suggests Phoenix, AZ homes
| have a load factor of 33%, so 50MW might only be good for
| 16,000 homes if you want to avoid blackouts. There are other
| factors that would affect the number further, but 16k is
| probably a good approximation.)
| coolspot wrote:
| In the future, with electric cars and gas cooking ban,
| average energy consumption of a household will go up
| significantly, but perhaps will be somewhat offset by local
| solar/wind generation and/or battery storage.
| jsight wrote:
| If you think in terms of electric semi trucks, that's enough to
| charge 40 of them at a time.
| panick21_ wrote:
| While I don't really think PWR in a module is that huge of an
| improvment. They did help to develop some certification that will
| help many other SMR companies.
|
| Congrats on getting this certification threw. Its a huge
| achievment even with a PWR.
|
| Sadly if it wasnt a PWR it would essentially have been impossible
| in the US.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I had to google PWR and it stands for pressurized water reactor
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor
|
| What are the alternatives?
| hangonhn wrote:
| The other common alternative are boiling water
| reactors:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor
| credit_guy wrote:
| The Department of Energy is working with a number of startups
| on various reactors designs (including NuScale). [1] is a
| very nice summary.
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2020/05/f74/Ad
| van...
| sofixa wrote:
| For instance my favourite reactor type - lead bismuth cooled
| fast reactors. They've only been actually used once, on the
| Soviet "Alfa" class submarines, and have some interesting
| advantages (lead naturally blocks gamma radiation, in case of
| a leak temperatures will go down and the coolant will
| solidify thus preventing radiation leaks, high efficiency due
| to the high temperatures, etc.), but are pretty expensive and
| impractical (the coolant solidifies if temperatures get lower
| than expected, thus you need specialised equipment to keep
| them hot/operate them 24/7).
|
| There's also thorium, molten salt reactors.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| NaK cooled reactors have an advantage of not freezing when
| you shut them down since NaK freezes at -12C. However Nak
| explodes when mixed with water...
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