[HN Gopher] New York to build one of first U.S. nuclear-power pl...
___________________________________________________________________
New York to build one of first U.S. nuclear-power plants in
generation
Author : melling
Score : 80 points
Date : 2025-06-23 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| melling wrote:
| https://archive.ph/0UZ1W
| idiotsecant wrote:
| We will see. It's unfortunate but there is a long list of
| attempted nuke construction that ends up billions of dollars in
| the hole before the first mwh is made.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| And, funny enough, often the utility company can raise rates to
| cover these losses! Easy money and you don't have to build a
| thing.
| Archelaos wrote:
| And if companies were obliged to insure their power plants
| properly, it would cost many, many billions more. It is the
| same old story: socialise risks and privatise profits.
| nxm wrote:
| "Bowing to anti-nuclear fears, New York chose to shut down a
| reliable and safe source of energy--and now burns more fossil
| fuels than before."
| perihelions wrote:
| The same far-sighted leaders who permanently shuttered 2 GW of
| nuclear power, in a time of low electricity prices, would like
| credit, please, for their aspirational concept of a plan for
| building 1 GW of nuclear. To alleviate high electricity prices.
| phonon wrote:
| To be fair, that was mostly Cuomo. Who knows why he was so
| dead-set on its closure.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| The article is paywalled, presumably the reactor they're
| referring to is
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center
|
| "New York City's greenhouse gas emissions from electricity have
| increased from approximately 500 to 900 tons of CO2 per MWh
| from 2019 to 2022 as a result of the closure."
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Why wouldn't the governor solicit bids for energy, and let the
| companies that actually build and run generation capacity decide
| the cheapest way to do that? Having the governor choose seems
| weird to me.
| coldpie wrote:
| The market is famously terrible at pricing in externalities and
| accounting for long-term needs. I think if you used the
| government to force bidders to account for those, you'd just
| end up in the same place.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| You might, or you might not. You might end up with tidal or
| wave, or wind+batteries, or something else. Tying yourself to
| something that's going to take decades and almost certainly
| include big cost overruns seems like a terrible idea.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Not an unreasonable choice if externalities such as carbon (and
| mining, etc. in the case of nuclear) are taken into account.
| And suppose you price carbon in, how do you actually produce a
| real carbon sink at the assumed cost and scale if nat gas wins
| the bid?
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Are you suggesting letting private companies whose entire
| purpose is to make the most amount of profit for their
| shareholders to be the ones that decide what is best for the
| people of the state?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Because it would be natural gas.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I keep hearing that solar and wind are the cheapest sources
| of new energy. Why would it be natural gas?
|
| And for that matter, if you are worried about CO2 emissions,
| you could make that be part of the requirements.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Solar and wind are cheapest when installed in ideal
| locations with ideal parts.
|
| Gas is a bit more expensive than the ideal green model, but
| cheaper on average. It also can be built anywhere on a
| comparatively small land parcel, and can provide easily
| scalable energy 24/7/365.
| belorn wrote:
| Technology neutrality is fairly important. The role of the
| government should be in controlling the requirements which has
| a collective/social cost, like emissions, grid stability and
| price variability (as those are things that voters will demand
| from the government, as has been demonstrated in EU during the
| energy crisis). As long any company is willing to provide
| similar services under similar requirements, what technology
| they choose to use may be better determined by market forces
| rather than political choices.
|
| What they should not do however is to simply look at potential
| generation capacity and have that be the only important
| criteria. Voters has clearly demonstrated that they will vote
| for politicians that can promise stable grid and stable
| pricing, rather than having those being controlled by the
| market.
| zamadatix wrote:
| NYPA does build and run generation capacity, it's just the
| state owned utility. Besides, this is a policy and strategy
| push instead of a lowest-bidder ask.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| I love that nuclear is just far too dangerous when it comes to
| powering peoples homes. Obsoleting workers with AI however.....
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Could you elaborate with sources?
|
| I suspect much of the perception of nuclear being too dangerous
| comes from the fossil fuel energy lobby.
| coldpie wrote:
| Great news! Nuclear is a critical component for the non-carbon
| energy infrastructure we're building. Yes, it's expensive, but
| the only way to make it cheaper is to invest in rebuilding the
| expertise we stupidly threw away over the past 5 decades. Paying
| for past mistakes always sucks, but it's better than not doing it
| and digging the hole even deeper.
| croes wrote:
| It was never cheap even with the expertise and such a kind of
| centralized energy generation is a bad idea.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Is it critical these days? I am by no means against nuclear
| energy, and if we had been building reactors these last 50
| years the world would be a better place. With things like
| solar, wind, geo-thermal, etc... is it still smart to invest
| this much money into nuclear power? Wouldn't it be better to
| invest in solar at this point?
| coldpie wrote:
| I have yet to see a convincing analysis that
| renewables+storage can cost-effectively power all the homes
| in Minnesota, where I live, through our 4+ month-long
| winters. The days get very short, the Earth tilts away from
| the sun, cloud-cover and snowfall is frequent, and going 24+
| hours without power for heat can be fatal, not just
| inconvenient.
|
| I'd welcome someone to try to run the numbers on this. I
| tried myself, but I just don't have the expertise. Don't
| forget to account for almost all of our current heating
| coming from natural gas burned on-premise. Then, expand your
| analysis to include all buildings in all northern climes. Is
| there even enough materials on the planet to build all those
| batteries? Do batteries even work at -40 degrees? And that's
| just one set of challenges, every area has similar but
| different problems for renewables to tackle.
|
| The answer is both: put huge money into renewables and into
| nuclear. Nuclear is a proven tech. It works. We understand
| it. We stupidly threw away all of our skill to build it, and
| put up huge regulatory roadblocks. But those are solvable
| human problems, if we care to do it.
|
| Storage for renewables is still a huge question mark, which
| we should also dump a ton of money into, but we need a
| solution today. Nuclear is here.
| pedrocr wrote:
| Why would you model Minnesota specifically when that state
| is part of a larger region that can tradeoff power over
| time? Canada's hydro is much more "here" than the
| hypothetical new nuclear plants Minnesota would have to
| build.
|
| Splitting up the world in areas and then claiming you need
| to solve a different problem in each is throwing away
| probably the most cost effective way to get cheaper energy,
| more grid interconnection and more price mechanisms to
| shape supply and demand.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Minnesota has 8 hydro plants already... in addition to 2
| nuclear plants and a host of coal, gas, solar, wind, etc.
|
| They generate 57 Twh right now. That's about 10% of the
| current production of the entire nation of Canada just
| for one US state.
|
| I think you are greatly underestimating the scale of the
| United States compared to Canada.
| pedrocr wrote:
| Canada isn't small, it produces almost 10x the electrical
| energy that Minnesota does. But I wasn't even giving it
| as an example of total capacity just of a neighbor that
| has a bunch of hydro that can be useful in some moments.
| And it works both ways too. When Minnesota has excess
| wind Canada can benefit. The same exercise needs to be
| modelled with all demand and capacity within viable
| transmission range. And with the advancements in HVDC
| that range keeps increasing.
| coldpie wrote:
| I admit this is a poor and hand-wavey response, but I'll
| try anyway. If we agree that solar+storage is off the
| table, then the question is what should we build instead?
| And I would guess that the people who make these
| decisions _do_ consider hydro and importing power, but
| still decide that nuclear is the right answer. Given they
| 're the experts and have all the info, and I don't, I'd
| defer to them in deciding what the best option is given
| all the inputs. As an example of downsides for Canadian
| hydro power, I would be thinking about our current
| geopolitical nonsense, and also transmission losses.
| Perhaps nuclear is the winner when you account for those?
| But like I said, I don't know.
| pedrocr wrote:
| I'm confused. Who has agreed that solar+wind is off the
| table? Approximately no one has effectively decided
| nuclear is the right answer for a long time. If the proof
| is in what the market is actually building, solar and
| wind are the winners by huge margins.
|
| What's commonly done in these arguments, and you did some
| of that, is declare that from first principles nuclear is
| the solution and we aren't only doing it for other
| reasons. Yet while there are plenty of simulations of
| doing full grids with only solar, wind and batteries
| there's never one where a full nuclear roll-out actually
| makes sense economically.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I'm confused. Who has agreed that solar+wind is off the
| table?
|
| Ah okay! That's our disconnect. Do go run the numbers on
| how much natural gas we're burning up here. It's a lot,
| like seriously a lot. How many batteries will we need to
| ensure that amount of energy is available for (say) 2
| weeks of continuous cloud cover at -10 ~ -40 degrees F?
| Keep in mind that if it fails, people will die. I don't
| feel confident enough in my own analysis to share it, but
| do try it out yourself for an exercise. It's pretty eye-
| opening.
|
| > Yet while there are plenty of simulations of doing full
| grids with only solar, wind and batteries
|
| I would love to see this! Can you share some? Do they
| account for converting Minnesota's heating needs from
| natural gas?
| pedrocr wrote:
| You're again talking about simulating only Minnesota I
| suspect. If you want a realistic simulation there are
| others in the thread and RethinkX has had a whole-US
| simulation for a long time. What I've never seen is a
| nuclear roll-out simulation that argues that's a good
| option. Do you have one of those?
| coldpie wrote:
| > What I've never seen is a nuclear roll-out simulation
| that argues that's a good option. Do you have one of
| those?
|
| I don't know what a "nuclear roll-out simulation" is,
| exactly. As stated earlier, my position is that we should
| be building both nuclear and renewables. We should build
| whatever makes sense for the area in question. If
| renewable+storage can solve all of an area's needs, then
| that's fantastic and we should absolutely do that.
|
| If I understand right, you are arguing we should not be
| building any nuclear, even in Minnesota. I'm unconvinced
| that renewables+storage alone can solve the Minnesota
| winter problem. I'm asking if you can provide a link to
| an analysis showing that we can feasibly and cost-
| effectively solve the Minnesota winter problem without
| any nuclear power. Can you please link to one?
| pedrocr wrote:
| > I don't know what a "nuclear roll-out simulation" is,
| exactly.
|
| Any simulation where building nuclear power plants makes
| economic sense would do.
|
| > I'm unconvinced that renewables+storage alone can solve
| the Minnesota winter problem.
|
| You're again asking for simulations about Minnesota
| specifically which doesn't make sense. Unless you're
| thinking of seceding from the union and closing the
| borders to energy trade, as long as the US as a whole can
| do it Minnesota in particular can be a net energy
| importer in winter if that's what's needed. Here's the
| RethinkX simulation of that:
|
| https://www.tonyseba.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/11/Rethinki...
|
| "Our analysis makes severely constraining assumptions,
| and by extrapolating our results from California, Texas,
| and New England to the entire country we find that the
| continental United States as a whole could achieve 100%
| clean electricity from solar PV, onshore wind power, and
| lithium-ion batteries by 2030 for a capital investment of
| less than $2 trillion, with an average system electricity
| cost nationwide of under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour if 50%
| or more of the system's super power is utilized."
|
| This is almost 5 years old at this point. Others have
| linked other such analysis. At this point asking people
| to show them simulations for renewables while trying to
| argue for nuclear is disingenuous. Renewables are the
| ones being built out at scale all over the world while
| nuclear struggles to deliver new projects and doesn't
| seem to have a viable path to being cheap.
| coldpie wrote:
| > You're again asking for simulations about Minnesota
| specifically which doesn't make sense.
|
| No I'm not, I have no idea how you are getting that idea.
| I'm asking for an analysis showing that Minnesota's
| winter needs can be met without building nuclear plants.
| That's it. You can solve that problem in any way you
| like, including importing power from other states and
| nations.
|
| > Here's the RethinkX simulation of that
|
| Thanks for the link. I focused on the New England
| scenario, as it's the most similar to Minnesota of the 3
| scenarios. It doesn't seem to account for heating. This
| is the problem I keep coming to in these analyses. See
| page 25:
|
| > Our model takes as inputs each region's historical
| hourly electricity demand ... For the New England region,
| our analysis applies to the ISO New England (ISO-NE)
| service area which provides 100% of grid-scale
| electricity generation for the states of Connecticut,
| Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and
| Vermont.
|
| Our heating is not supplied by electricity. I definitely
| believe that our current _electricity_ demand may be met
| by renewables in a feasible timescale, but that leaves
| out the massive hole of heating our buildings.
|
| The only reference I could find to New England's heating
| is this little note at the bottom of page 46:
|
| > If New England chose to invest in an additional 20% in
| its 100% SWB system, for example, then the super power
| output could be used to replace most fossil fuel use in
| the residential and road transportation sectors combined
| (assuming electrification of vehicles and heating).
|
| But I don't see any actual numerical analysis backing
| this up. Given their analysis earlier only spoke about
| electricity usage, I'm not super convinced by this one
| sentence.
|
| Additionally, the New England scenario suggests they need
| 1,232 GWh of storage to supply only 89 hours of
| electricity for the area. Even if we agree that's a
| sufficient amount of time, the currently largest energy
| storage facility on the planet is only 3 GWh[1]. We would
| need 410 such facilities for New England alone. Can we
| really scale battery tech up that much, especially given
| resource constraints like Lithium and copper? Maybe!
| Hopefully! But it's a big question. Meanwhile, nuclear is
| here now, and it works. I don't think we should be
| betting our future on unproven tech.
|
| [1] https://electrek.co/2023/08/03/worlds-largest-
| battery-storag...
| pedrocr wrote:
| > No I'm not, I have no idea how you are getting that
| idea. I'm asking for an analysis showing that Minnesota's
| winter needs can be met without building nuclear plants.
| That's it. You can solve that problem in any way you
| like, including importing power from other states and
| nations.
|
| If that's your assumption then this is a non issue.
| Minnesota is currently less than 2% of total winter
| electricity demand in the US. Lets be pessimistic and
| assume that because it needs more heating in winter than
| average those 2% become 5% with electrification of
| heating nationwide. Even if 100% of that electricity
| needed to be imported from other states that's still a
| very small amount of the total. You could import all that
| solar and wind energy from other states if you can't
| produce any at all locally. The scenario is obviously
| much better than that, you'd only need to cover the
| shortfall which is what already naturally happens in
| joint grids all over the world.
|
| > Meanwhile, nuclear is here now, and it works. I don't
| think we should be betting our future on unproven tech.
|
| I'm still waiting for a link that shows that nuclear can
| be built at anything approaching reasonable cost. In all
| these discussions that's always presented as a given and
| then all the discussion is on the shortfalls of
| renewables. Meanwhile the actual reality on the ground is
| that the renewable roll-out is rising exponentially and
| nuclear projects are practically non existant.
| coldpie wrote:
| Please double-check my math here. Minnesota delivers
| about 70,000 million cubic feet of natural gas to
| customers in the coldest months[1]. 70,000,000,000 cf of
| NG is about 72,730,000,000,000 BTUs[2]. That's equivalent
| to 21,315 GWh[3] of energy created by NG per month.
| Divide that by 31 days and you're looking at 687 GWh of
| natural gas per day or 29 GW of continuous generation.
| Minnesota's current entire electricity generation
| capacity is 17 GW[4], so we're looking at roughly
| tripling our current capacity. Nearby states are about on
| the same order, so we would be sucking down a whole lot
| of their power during low-generation periods. If we want
| to prepare for 7 days of no electricity generation, we
| would need 4,809 GWh of energy storage solely for
| heating, which is about 1600 instances of the currently
| largest battery-storage system on the planet, just for
| heating Minnesota.
|
| Some combination of nuclear and solar/wind feels much
| more realistic to me to meet this demand, than building
| out that many batteries.
|
| This is all napkin-math-y, so feel free to fudge it up
| and down a bit. But I just can't get the numbers to feel
| reasonable to me.
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3060mn2m.htm
|
| [2] 1 cf ng = 1039 btu
| https://www.nrg.com/resources/energy-tools/energy-
| conversion...
|
| [3] https://www.convertunits.com/from/British+thermal+uni
| t/to/gi...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_
| in_Minn...
| pedrocr wrote:
| You've now ignored the simulations others have done,
| after insisting on those repeatedly, and have started
| making your own to again conclude solar and wind must not
| be viable and nuclear necessary. Meanwhile I'm still
| waiting on any kind of study that says nuclear can be
| built at anything approaching a viable cost. This is not
| a reasonable way to discuss something.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Solar + storage has to buffer three kinds of variation:
|
| (1) Diurnal. You need to store maybe 12 hours of
| production to get through the night. It's believable that
| this could be affordable with batteries.
|
| (2) Seasonal. In a place like Minnesota you either need
| to overbuild solar panels by a factor of 3 or so, or you
| need _a lot_ of storage, probably not batteries, but
| maybe some kind of chemical or thermal storage. Casey
| Handmer would point out that you could use excess energy
| in the summer for industrial activities but that could be
| easier said than done because the capital cost of a
| factory that runs 1 /3 of the time is 3x that of one that
| runs all the time.
|
| (3) Dunkelflaut. Sometimes you have a rough patch of
| cloudy weather and little wind, so the requirements are
| worse than (1).
|
| It's rare to see credible analysis of the grid-scale cost
| of a solar + storage system because of (3) -- you can
| quote a reasonable price for batteries that will supply
| power "almost" all the time, but costs rise explosively
| as you increase "almost". With different requirements for
| reliability the cost of a storage-based system could be
| "a bit less" than "nuclear power plants built without
| bungling" or it could be much more. It also has to vary
| with your location though people talking about the
| subject don't seem to talk about that which contributes
| to people talking past each other. (In upstate NY I could
| care less about Arizona)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Credible analysis doesn't go to 100%.
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-
| electricity-e...
|
| The cheapest grid is 90-97% renewable (depending on
| location) in 2025. As battery prices go down, that number
| gets higher.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Expand the analysis to anyone above 40deg latitude with
| wintertime average temperature below freezing. Show your
| work. That's fine.
|
| 40deg lat includes a _lot_ of the world.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| How do you handle growth in demand over time? Anywhere
| with good economics to build hydro has been done before.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The minnesota problem always comes up in this discussion
| and realistically if we replaced all viable capacity
| outside of cold dark areas of the world it would be fine to
| continue burning gas there, we're not even close to
| renewable saturation to even think about minnesota
| coldpie wrote:
| Well, our power needs are going up, and so we have to
| build new capacity. The question is what to build? These
| make for interesting discussions because there are many
| options on the table for places like Minnesota. No one's
| discussing the article about Texas's 500th successful
| solar farm deployment :)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| So, the entire nation of Canada gets a free pass to burn
| all the gas they want?
|
| And Russia? And the northern EU? And many parts of China,
| Japan, northern US (NYC!? Buffalo?). Northern Italy,
| Germany, Switzerland? Does everyone who dips below 0 deg
| F get to burn gas? -10F? If the infra remains in place
| with that kind of demand, don't you see the costs being
| low enough that people elsewhere will want to do that
| rather than transition to carbon-free for the fun of it?
|
| It's hand waved away like this, but did anyone _do the
| analysis_ as suggested? My guess is the results will not
| be as easy to wave away as you suggest. But OTOH, maybe
| heat pumps + overcapacity solar arrays will do it. Who
| _knows_?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I'm not sure why I have to repeat myself, but yes, if we
| had 100% capacity for renewables in non-cold areas (which
| we're not even close to, even 80% would be miraculous) we
| would have decades of more time to solve these issues in
| cold areas. They don't have to be of equal priority.
|
| We could ignore them completely and focus on the most
| viable areas and have years and years of work to be done.
| We are not building nearly as fast as we should.
|
| Minnesota, Russia, Buffalo, et al are not a reason to
| delay significantly ramping up renewables in other
| places.
|
| This is not a worthwhile subject to discuss in this
| context. It's rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You have to repeat yourself because you're adding
| information when you state it again. Compare:
|
| > if we replaced all viable capacity outside of cold dark
| areas of the world it would be fine to continue burning
| gas there
|
| with
|
| > we would have decades of more time to solve these
| issues in cold areas
|
| As in: Ignore vs Delay. It's clear in hindsight, but
| wasn't on first reading.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| ignore vs delay is irrelevant, if saying "lets ignore it
| forever" lets us build capacity in other areas faster
| then let's say "lets ignore it forever"
|
| the point is that it's not a problem that should slow
| down adoption of renewables everywhere else, we don't
| need to debate nuclear vs renewables because of cold
| while non-cold areas are still burning tons of fossil
| fuels constantly
|
| saying "but what about cold!" only serves to add further
| fuel to the constant drag created by the fossil fuel
| industry, they love these arguments because it sows
| consumer doubt -- they go as far as to fund anti-
| renewable activism under the guise of environmentalism to
| a similar effect
| coldpie wrote:
| > Minnesota, Russia, Buffalo, et al are not a reason to
| delay significantly ramping up renewables in other
| places.
|
| Wait, what? Who in this discussion suggested it was?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Nobody did. GP is dodging the question of what to do in
| MN by saying it's not important and might require future
| tech.
|
| Edit: it's less important to worry about that at the
| moment.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's not important _right now_ and if we accelerate
| building renewables elsewhere we may find that it 's
| never important
| coldpie wrote:
| Is your argument that new generation capacity in cold
| climates should be built with fossil fuel plants because
| it's cheaper, and the saved funds should be directed to
| areas that are more friendly to renewables?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It makes sense but triggers false dichotomy antibodies
| and dodges the question OP had, that's all.
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty eye opening to see how much more power
| our home's solar array puts out during the summer vs. the
| winter. It's like 3-4x, on average, while our power demand
| is actually highest in winter, due to the higher deltas
| between outdoor temps and reasonable indoor temps. As we
| shift more and more heating to electric heat pump, base
| load power capability is going to become more and more
| important.
|
| And yeah, we need to decarbonize ASAP.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'd like to reverse the location specific question and ask:
| what is the correct number of nuclear reactors for Iran to
| have?
| coldpie wrote:
| Huh? This seems like a non-sequitur, but if you want the
| answer I guess you'd want to ask someone familiar with
| Iranian weather patterns, which ain't me.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| LWRs don't need weapons grade uranium and don't produce
| weapons grade plutonium. Iran could have civil nuclear
| energy and not have a nuclear weapons program.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think solar plus storage will likely be the better play.
|
| I think nuclear is a thing we should have done fifty years
| ago in spades.
|
| I'm not sure it's a thing we should do today when the
| economics behind solar are just so, so much stronger.
|
| I'd really love to see this investment go to storage projects
| instead.
|
| Battery tech finally seems to be moving, and I'd like to see
| the US be able to make plays on the LFP/Sodium battery fronts
| far more than I want overpriced power from nuclear.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I suspect solar + batteries will be dominant (but should
| not be the exclusive source) in places which get relatively
| good sun even in the winter. California and Hawaii, for
| example, will do pretty well with a mix that is heavy on
| those technologies. But if you're in North Dakota or Alaska
| and want to electrify your grid, you might not have a good
| time in December and January.
|
| There's arguments to be made about having more transmission
| so you can move electricity from one place to another, but
| that's also expensive and difficult to build and comes with
| downsides like vulnerability to natural disasters and
| attack along a much longer path. Or, as in California, the
| transmission is its own latent source of disaster that can
| immolate the state.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The unsolved problem with solar and wind is storage. You
| still need electricity at night or when the wind isn't
| blowing.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I suspect there will be a few driving
| use cases. Electrifying places far from the equator means
| heat pumps and/or district heating and providing for their
| power demand in the dark. In some places wind can do that,
| but not everywhere.
|
| There are also loads that want very large, high-availability
| power and/or process heat. Reactors would pair well with
| things like metal refining or electrolysis to get the
| hydrogen for ammonia production.
|
| At the end of the day, there's never one source of energy
| which is a silver bullet for everything and the best approach
| is probably a diverse mix of supply.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Electrifying heat far away from the equator is challenging.
| My area is largely heated by natural gas furnaces. During a
| cycle called a polar vortex, the utility company sent out a
| call to people to lower their thermostats because they were
| struggling to keep the lines pressurized with how much
| demand there was.
|
| The wind chill would drop below -40 most nights, sometimes
| significantly lower. Wind power won't help much because
| they need to shut down at the worst times- either too windy
| or icy.
|
| As much as I love heat pumps, having thousands upon
| thousands of homes switching to resistive heating because
| the pumps can't keep up in the evening is going to get
| ugly.
|
| District heating won't save you; the metro doesn't actually
| burn enough stuff to heat the cities and a significant part
| of the population is in semi or very rural areas that
| wouldn't benefit anyway.
|
| Edit: that same metro just put together a fund to renovate
| a few blocks of an underserved area. It's in the millions
| of dollars. I can't imagine the cost of converting the
| entire area to district heating; it would surely eclipse
| the entire government budget. This is the sort of thing
| that will only happen if you have the kind of fiat power of
| an imaginary wand.
| belorn wrote:
| It is always good to look at current grids and prices to see
| how things are. In Sweden, the sunny days around may-juli
| have made those months almost free. Solar and the reduced
| need for heating, in combination of very limited use of AC,
| means that you don't need much beyond solar, wind and some
| base load from nuclear/hydro power. I contrast, 75% of the
| yearly energy bill comes from the 3 winter months, where
| solar has around 10% (and often less) of the generative
| capacity. This mean that the energy bill is very variable,
| and bad weather during those few critical months will results
| in unreasonable bills (as in bankruptcies and voters that ask
| the government for bailout).
|
| Under market forces, the electric company have no quarrel in
| sending people a bill that is 12 times the average month for
| a single month. There is also very luke warm interest in
| reducing the cost for the consumer by building out storage.
| The economics has so far not been that great outside of using
| government subsidizes, and as northvolt demonstrated, not
| that interested in using loans when the subsidizes run out.
|
| That said, the Finish project of storing hot water for
| district heating looks like one of the more interesting
| storage solution. They are also investing into nuclear, so it
| seems like time will show how the economics will pan out.
| Heat exchangers are very effective at generating heat for
| district heating, so the heat storage has some steep
| competition.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Side consideration - my local utility has a program
| (targeted at lower income households - but there is no
| restriction on who can enroll) that average out the annual
| costs. For the first year they look at your total annual
| cost and divide by 12 for a flat monthly. Every year after
| that, they also true it up with cred/debit on the
| difference. For example if they overcharged by $120, they
| will take the average and then subtract $10 for the new,
| adjusted monthly bill that resets annually. I still look at
| the bills since I'm interested in their benchmarking data
| on how much power I'm using relative to the community - but
| I don't really need to care about seasonal fluctuation.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| If one were cynical one would wonder why the push for
| directing resources towards nuclear energy right when solar
| and wind are not just significantly cheaper than nuclear but
| also cheaper than fossil fuels.
|
| If one were not being cynical it makes sense to some degree
| in order to simply diversify our non fossil fuel energy
| sources.
|
| An all of the above approach to decarbonizing makes sense,
| and nuclear will be a useful part of that.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| For whatever reason, utilities don't have a ton of storage.
| Presumably it's not profitable with their business models. So
| in California where I live you'll run into issues when the
| sun isn't shining (or it's 4pm and sunny but solar panels are
| less effective because the sun is more oblique) and it's not
| windy. Right now they make up the gap by spinning up a bunch
| of natty gas generators in the afternoon. If nuclear helps
| take some of the load off, seems like a step in the right
| direction. Especially since I imagine the weather in NY is
| less consistent than CA
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Battery rollout in California has changed this situation
| over the last few years
|
| https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
|
| > In the figure above, what was previously a defined peak
| in natural gas generation each evening has eroded into a
| plateau in 2024. That is because batteries are assisting
| with the predictable, but large, swings in solar output
| each day. These rapid ramps have been largely managed by
| natural gas units to date, but now batteries are taking on
| much of that responsibility.
|
| https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-solar-storage-spring-2025/
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Nuclear is a very poor complement for solar & wind. To
| complement solar & wind, you need dispatchable power to supply
| power while the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
|
| Most nuclear plants can't do that, they need to run 24/7. Some
| can, but they're horrendously inefficient and expensive to run
| that way.
| coldpie wrote:
| > you need dispatchable power to supply power while the sun
| isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing
|
| Fair. What do you suggest instead?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| For New York State, right next door to the Hydro
| electricity abundant Quebec, and with access to trade winds
| in the Atlantic Ocean? Solar, Wind & Batteries for 97% of
| power, send the excess to Quebec so they can idle their
| Hydro while the sun is shining, and then use Quebec Hydro
| for the last 3%.
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-
| electricity-e...
| zdragnar wrote:
| What benefit does Quebec get from idling their hydro
| power?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They idle it while the sun is shining and power is almost
| worthless, and sell it while it isn't and prices are
| high.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Idling a hydro plant doesn't save them money, though.
| They're designed for efficient operation, and idling will
| actually induce more strain on the equipment.
|
| There's just no motivation for them to take the excess
| energy by throttling their own.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We're comparing to nuclear here. Yes, it might cost more
| money to run a hydro plant intermittently. It'll still be
| cheaper than nuclear.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Idling a hydro plant doesn 't save them money,
| though._
|
| When you're running you more create wear-and-tear and
| increase the depreciation rate: this can be costed.
| There's also probably increased staffing costs during
| higher levels of operations; also costable.
|
| Depending on the prices offered to the hydro-plant, it
| may or may not be profitable to run.
| sxg wrote:
| Can you clarify? I thought the idea was to run nuclear 24/7
| to provide a steady, base rate of power while solar and wind
| provide complementary power that can be quickly ramped up or
| down.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If you need something to supply power when the sun isn't
| shining and the wind isn't blowing, you need it to supply
| _peak_ power needs, not base power needs. And if nuclear
| can supply peak power needs, then you might as well just
| have a grid that is 100% nuclear.
|
| If nuclear can't supply peak power needs, then you need
| batteries or something else to do that. And if you're using
| batteries, it's a lot cheaper to charge them with solar
| than with nuclear.
| preisschild wrote:
| You are not thinking about the big picture.
|
| If just running nuclear power plants 24/7 is cheaper than
| running Solar/Wind when the weather is perfect and
| backup/storage when not, then why should we scale
| solar/wind up that much to begin with?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > If just running nuclear power plants 24/7 is cheaper
|
| It's not cheaper, it's about 20x as expensive. Running
| nuclear intermittently is more than 20x as expensive.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _It 's not cheaper, it's about 20x as expensive._
|
| Not according to the Ontario Energy Board, which sets
| wholesale rates; see Table 2:
|
| * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-
| report-2024...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 10s of billions of dollars of costs have been uploaded
| from the electricity wholesalers to taxpayers in Ontario.
| Excluding those makes Ontario numbers misleading.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Talk to Mike Harris about privatizing stuff in Ontario:
| there's no reason why Ontario Hydro could not have been
| kept 100% in public hands and the debt serviced
| 'internally' instead of being assigned to OEFC.
|
| At the end of the day it's still electrical rate payers
| paying the bill. (Just like ratepayers are paying for the
| failed experiment of McGuinty's Energy Green Act: what's
| the cost of that?)
|
| As it stands all current nuclear refurbishments are being
| done with commercial rates, as is dealing with nuclear
| waste (per the NFWA).
| ericd wrote:
| I thought that they were quite throttleable, and it was
| because they needed to run near full power to pencil out
| economically/amortize their huge capex - that their fuel
| costs are relatively insignificant by comparison. Is that not
| the case?
| preisschild wrote:
| Yes, they definitely can do load following.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yes, that's what I meant by "but they're horrendously
| inefficient and expensive to run that way."
| ericd wrote:
| Ah ok, sounded to me like there was some big ongoing
| inefficiency/inability, more than an opportunity cost
| thing.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, fuel (uranium) is cheap, capital expenditures are not,
| so it makes sense to just run it at full bore all the time,
| even if you could bring it up and down quickly (which you
| really can't).
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| You need continuous baseband generation to keep an electrical
| grid stable.
|
| If not nuclear, then it's going to be coal, gas, hydro, etc.
| Of the list, nuclear is the cleanest and least ecologicially
| destructive (by far).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| DC power sources (aka batteries) with smart inverters are
| the cheapest and fastest sources of grid stability in
| 2025t.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| The largest battery storage system in use today is 2
| orders of magnitude too small to even handle it's local
| baseband, covers 22 acres, and has already caught fire
| once. Batteries are decades away from large scale usage.
|
| Scale is what will nail you... every time.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| How large a volume of battery is needed to power nyc if
| the wind and sun are out for 5 hours?
|
| In units of Walmart parking lots please :)
|
| (Answer: 10)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not necessarily true if you have enough storage AND your
| renewables have grid-forming inverters. That may be quite a
| lot of storage.
|
| > least ecologicially destructive (by far)
|
| On average. The long tail doesn't look so great.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Hydro is the most ecologically damaging for the site (it
| tends to wipe out an entire ecosystem for many miles).
|
| As long as you don't care about proliferation danger (by
| militarizing staff and the site), you can reprocess and
| burn spent nuclear fuel in breeder reactors/reprocessors.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's easy to say but not so easy to do.
|
| The two Western designs built in the last generation are the EPR
| and the AP1000. The EPR is so unconstructable that it could have
| been designed by Amory Lovins to put the nails in the coffin of
| nuclear power. The supply chain for the AP1000 is centered in
| China. If it wasn't for problems of war and peace the rational
| thing to do might be ask the Russians to come in and built a
| VVER.
|
| GE is pushing the BWRX300 which might get some cost reductions
| because it doesn't need a steam generator, but the small size
| doesn't help the economics and the cost numbers they are talking
| about are amazingly low.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Smaller scale can make construction more practical though, even
| if the economics are worse than the theoretical best. Billions
| have been lost on unfinished large-scale nuke plants more than
| once, because they take too long, are too complex, and get more
| and more mired in politics as the years drag out. A small plant
| that could be online in months or at most a year or two from
| start of construction is way more pragmatic.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The concrete benefit I see for the small LWR is this: it is
| possible to build a pressure vessel by welding segments
| together but most economical to build one in a superheavy
| forge that can pound one out of a single piece of steel.
| There are no superheavy forges in North America (although
| there are many in various Asian and European countries)
| although the BWRX300 is small enough that it can be made in
| Canada.
|
| As for simpler construction it has to be proven. The AP1000
| was a "modular reactor" in that they tried to make it out of
| large modules that could be built in a factory and stuck
| together on site. The factories struggled to make those
| modules and when they arrived they often needed major rework.
| The ACP100 was recently completed in China
|
| https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/INPRO/df13/Presentations/011_.
| ..
|
| and press releases boasted that it was one of the most
| complex construction projects of all time -- what I wanted to
| hear was "this is one of the most simple construction
| projects of all time!"
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Let's hope the plan incorporates cutting-edge advancements,
| like molten salt and liquid thorium designs..
|
| https://www.livescience.com/technology/engineering/chinese-s...
|
| I'm also hopeful there's a resurgence of interest in Small
| Modular Reactors (SMRs).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| People forget that we quit building coal burning power plants
| at the same time we quit building nukes... For the same
| reason. The capital cost of the steam turbine is atrocious.
|
| Molten salt, HTGR and LMFBR designs could all be coupled to a
| supercritical-CO2 powerset which would fit in the employee
| break room of the turbine hall of an LWR. The steam
| generators for a PWR are larger than the reactor vessel
| itself, but a higher temperature reactor could miniaturize
| them [1].
|
| You still see old literature that claims the LMFBR has a
| higher capital cost than the LWR but a lot of that comes from
| the expensive powerset and heat exchangers which have to be
| doubled to prevent a water-sodium reaction in the primary
| loop.
|
| So yeah, 4th generation reactors could be a revolution but
| they are not a bird in the hand and it won't be a matter of
| "we'll write a check to build a 1 GW reactor" whether you are
| New York State or Google, it will be matter of "we'll build a
| test reactor" and it could be another 15 years at least
| before we get to the TRL 7 stage.
|
| [1] https://www.precisionmicro.com/understanding-printed-
| circuit...
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Let 's hope the plan incorporates cutting-edge
| advancements, like molten salt and liquid thorium designs.._
|
| Let's hope not. At least not for the first few new nuclear
| plants.
|
| There is a lot of operating experience with 'traditional'
| designs and lessons learned over the decade. There are also
| new lessons learned with the Vogtle AP1000s. Any new
| construction (in the US) should be AP1000s to take advantage
| of those lessons.
|
| Once people are familiar nuclear again _then_ perhaps look at
| different designs. But you should learn to crawl and walk
| before trying to run.
|
| (A lot of nuclear construction is the civil works, and is the
| same for any type of design, and getting that down to cookie
| cutter output would help any different designs as well.)
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| There's also the incredible cheap and easy to mass produce
| submarine and shipboard reactor designs.
|
| Going smaller and build lots more brings costs down
| tremendously. Combined with breeder reactors plus reprocessing
| to deal with waste.
|
| You'd have to miltarize all staff to deal with profilieration
| risks and then license out delivery to private corps (utility
| companies).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's kinda the opposite. Submarine reactors burn like a
| cigarette which is great from the viewpoint of rapidly
| changing power output and dealing with
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit
|
| but terribly uneconomical. Optimizing economics is about
| optimizing power output from a given volume of pressure
| vessel. The power of a nuclear reactor is limited by the
| ability to get heat out of the fuel rods and into the coolant
| so good economics requires producing energy evenly throughout
| the whole core, which commercial reactors do and submarine
| reactors do not.
|
| Submarine reactors are worth it, however, because being able
| to go around the world over and over again without surfacing
| is of great military value. It's insane how fast a nuclear
| aircraft carrier can travel, there's enough uncertainty over
| where it will be in 15 minutes that an attack with a
| reasonably sized nuclear warhead could fail to kill it so, so
| china developed maneuverable hypersonic weapons that could
| punch a hole in the deck with a conventional weapon
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_(CSS-5_Mod-4)_Ant.
| ..
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| If nuclear is going to work, it cannot be commercial. The
| economics won't work out. It has to be federally owned and
| operated (preferably by military staff so they are under
| UCMJ) and run as a public good and not for profit.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Finland tried the VVER option as well, and it was even worse
| than EPR. Between 2013 and 2022, the Russians proved incapable
| of providing sufficient documentation that a construction
| permit could be issued.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The supply chain for the AP1000 is centered in China._
|
| Vogtle Units 3 and 4 started a supply chain in the US.
| Especially Unit 3, which is one of the reasons it was so
| expensive: a lot of things had to be learned. Unit 4 was (IIRC)
| 30% cheaper than Unit 3 because a bit of a workflow was
| developed.
|
| Any future US AP1000 units should be better than Vogtle--if
| people don't try to re-invent the wheel and use the same trail
| used in that project.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I am hoping they build this in Oswego on top of the other
| reactors being built in 9 mile. Lake Ontario has an inexhaustible
| amount of cold water, and there's plenty of space up there.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This needs to be in Western New York. The existing plant for
| the region is operating on an an extension that expires the
| earliest of the bunch in 2029. When it goes, electricity rates
| are going to skyrocket without a replacement.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Ill admit I am saying this out of only regional loyalty and
| have no idea about the status of other plants in upstate NY.
| I am also not sure on how much the power generated in Upstate
| NY goes to say Toronto vs NYC, and how much that reactor
| being in Buffalo or Rochester would even matter for that vs
| Oswego being 100 miles closer to NYC.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There is almost no way this doesn't end up wasting an enormous
| amount of money, while only having a slim chance of ever coming
| online, while only having a slim chance of actually lowering
| energy costs.
|
| If you are gonna blow $10 Billion on a 10 year nightmare project,
| just buy a ton of solar, wind, and batteries to get 2GW in 5
| years.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _actually lowering energy costs_
|
| isn't green energy _worth_ higher energy costs?
| evklein wrote:
| Additionally, renewables have their own drawbacks - their
| volatility makes reliability more challenging and thus brings
| energy prices higher. Nuclear has the benefit of providing
| consistent base load, something that's needed more now than
| ever. That kind of thing might be worth the investment, but
| until now no one has wanted to put up the kind of money
| needed for that level of reliability.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| In a state the size of New York, the sun is always shining
| or the wind always blowing somewhere in the state. You then
| use battery back-up to fill the gaps and gas to fill the
| gaps of the filled gaps.
|
| The latest nuclear plant in the US was the completion of
| the Vogtle plant in Georgia, _which ran a staggering $22B
| over budget_. Twenty Two Billion Dollars over budget!
|
| $22B, is enough to build the largest solar plant in the US
| 10 times over (total 5GW). Or about 7 of the largest wind
| farm (total 10.5GW). Or 33 of the largest battery storage
| plant. With $2B left over for logistics.
|
| _And $14B left over for anything else because the total
| cost was $36B!_
|
| The current state of nuclear doesn't make sense anyway you
| cut it.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The latest nuclear plant in the US was the completion
| of the Vogtle plant in Georgia,_ which ran a staggering
| $22B over budget. _Twenty Two Billion Dollars over
| budget!_
|
| And Unit 4 was (IIRC) 30% cheaper than Unit 3. Because
| with Unit 3 they had to learn everything about building a
| nuclear power plant from scratch (from a practical,
| steel-toed boots on the ground perspective).
|
| Now that there's (a) an actual supply chain (brought up
| from scratch), and (b) people with a workflow on how to
| build AP1000s, future units will decrease costs over
| time. During the 1990s and into the 2000s Japan was
| bringing up nuclear plants in 4-5 years like clockwork:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclea
| r_rea...
|
| Turns economies of scale work as well for 900MW power
| plants as for $9 widgets.
|
| The _Decouple_ podcast has a four-part series on Vogtle
| and what they did wrong (and right):
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyouH0mkPJXHR0hK
| W_iLk...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Perhaps, but we don't need to and shouldn't pay more for
| green energy.
|
| In 2025 the cheapest 24/7 energy grid is 90% green, up to 97%
| green in sunny locations.
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-
| electricity-e...
| eej71 wrote:
| No. Lower energy costs saves lives. Energy is the life blood
| of civilization.
| exiguus wrote:
| no,nuclear-power is much more expensive but it gets
| subvention on company level. That's why the end-user pay less
| for now.
| asacrowflies wrote:
| Wrong
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| my grandma lived by the old plant, there were sort of endless
| signs around to get rid of it. now we get another one.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| ... because AI.
|
| Love it or hate it, the AI hype has at least lit a fire on
| nuclear power. If AI winter comes, we at least get to keep the
| powerplants and receive clean power for decades.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If AI winter comes, we at least get to keep the powerplants
| and receive clean power for decades.
|
| When the AI winter comes, it's not going to mean the energy
| devoted to AI applications decreases, it'll mean the perception
| of rapid future expansion in profits fueling VC interest in AI
| goes away. It's not like we cut back the aggregate energy
| cohsumption of systems running, say, rule-based expert systems
| during the last AI winter.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > If AI winter comes
|
| But what happens to the AI in the nuclear winter?
| disambiguation wrote:
| Previous Attempt:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant
|
| tl;dr it was commissioned, constructed, and closed due to local
| safety concerns in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident.
|
| Interesting excerpt from the wiki:
|
| In 2004, the Long Island Power Authority erected two 100-foot, 50
| kW wind turbines at the Shoreham Energy Center site,[18] as part
| of a renewable-energy program.[19][20] At a ceremony, chairman
| Kessel stated, "We stand in the shadow of a modern-day
| Stonehenge, a multibillion-dollar monument to a failed energy
| policy, to formally commission the operation of a renewable
| energy technology that will harness the power of the wind for the
| benefit of Long Island's environment." The turbines generate 200
| MWh per year, or 1/35,000th of the energy the nuclear plant would
| have produced.[21]
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