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Vogtle, the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the US, is privately funded. The only info I see about government involvement is the guaran

Vogtle, the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the US, is privately funded. The only info I see about government involvement is the guarantee of about $8B of construction loans, with a total cost of around $25B paid for by a few regional power companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

beat 8y ago
If it was economically viable, it would be done. Forget the US and complaining about the darn treehuggers. Look at countries that don't particularly care about the environment. Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. India gets only 3% from nuclear, and new development will get that to maybe 5%. China gets less than 4% of its power from nuclear, and is backing off from new construction plans as well. If nuclear were really cheap, and environmentalist resistance was really the problem, we'd see much more nuclear power in these countries, both existing and under construction.
- lstodd 8y ago
  > Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. Citation needed on scaling back. Any way you slice it, Russia can't rely on renewables, it's either fossil or nuclear since most of hydroelectric is already harnessed. Edit: I just had a cursory look of Moscow energy needs. It has about 12GWe installed capacity in city limits, all natural gas. Up to twice that is used in distict heating in winter. I did not dig up how much energy is imported, but given how many high-voltage transmission lines come in it can't be trivial. Replacing that with "renewables" is not possible.
  - beat 8y ago
    12Gw == 12,000Mw. Off a quick lookup, 2Mw of wind requires 1.5 acres of land. A little arithmetic, some rounding up, and we need, say, 10,000 acres of wind power, around 15 square miles. But you'll raise an objection, so double that. And then you'll raise another objection, so double it again, and sooner or later, we're up to 100 square miles of windmills. The city of Moscow alone is 970 square miles. For point of comparison, Minnesota produced 3500Mw of wind in 2016, from wind farms mostly in the southwest part of the state. There's lots and lots of land left for more wind farms.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      If Russia has plenty of anything, it's land. USA is in a similar situation. If politics didn't intervene, they both would naturally use more wind power than more densely populated nations.
  - godelski 8y ago
    >> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. > Citation needed on scaling back. [0] says 11% btw [0] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy- https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy-
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Don't forget that many power plants are thermal combined-heat-and-power that utilize waste heat from power generation. If you replace them all with renewables, you'd have to compensate for that heat output, not just electricity.
- godelski 8y ago
  France is 50% nuclear. Sweeden is 22%. Both have two of the lowest carbon footprints in Europe. https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/energy-consumption.... https://www.worlddata.info/europe/sweden/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/sweden/energy-consumption....
  - thatfrenchguy 8y ago
    France is more like 80% nuclear.
    - godelski 8y ago
      Good catch, I posted 2014 numbers. WNA says as of November 2018 that France uses 75%[0]. They note two important things though. 1) France is one of the largest net exporters of energy in the world (citing the low cost.) 2) That they will reduce nuclear output to 50% by 2035. Bonus 3) 17% of energy is purely from RECYCLED nuclear fuel. [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
- lixtra 8y ago
  > China gets less than 4% of its power from nuclear, and is backing off from new construction plans as well. Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia states that China plans to increase nuclear more than 30 times by end of the century [1]: As of March 2019, China has 46 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 42.8 GW [...] By mid-century fast neutron reactors are seen as the main technology, with a planned 1400 GW capacity by 2100. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
- hairytrog 8y ago
  Fact 1: Physics says it should be cheaper, because of massive energy density, as you need less stuff, and so less human effort to juice the energy source. Event history: 1. lots of reactors in the 60s and 70s 2. reactors are water cooled and designed essentially like normal power reactors, meaning they are similar size and operate with little margin 3. accidents happen - accidents that were conceivable though beyond the design basis 4. environmental and mass resistance heats up in response to 3 - rightfully so 5. 3. also leads to pressure to make current reactors safer by adding safety systems 6. reactors turn into giant jumble of safety systems with massive man power and maintenance costs, costs that similar sized coal or natural gas do not have. The increase in safety systems enhances safety superficially, and costs increase until the plant is barely break even. The key is that the accidents created a new and higher demand for safety that could not be economically met by the previous designs. But those previous designs were in place and had to operate, so they back-engineered a bunch of crap to make them "safe" at huge cost - a cost that basically annihilates all of nuclear's energy density benefits. At the same time, resistance was too high to build new reactor design concepts that could match the new safety paradigm, and so gen IV was not achieved. What you say is true - "it is not economically viable." But you shouldn't bundle all of nuclear into that category. The crap from the past was not economically viable with safety standards we have today. What's coming is.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    This all makes sense, but the public has been through this cycle with the nuclear power industry enough to be wary. "We'll get it right this time!" Maybe you would, but since we have options now, why would we take the risk?
bilbo0s 8y ago
Vogtie is the example that proves the rule. Originally, it was supposed to cost right around USD14 Billion. Cost overruns have pushed that, not to USD25 Billion, but USD28 Billion. (And the online date has been pushed back from this year, to 2022.) Keep in mind, the DoE was supposed to back USD8 Billion of the original USD14 Billion price tag. So needless to say, the financials have changed considerably. So much so that the consortium behind Vogtie nearly fell apart due to the latest cost overrun combined with the fact that they could not pass any more cost overruns on to their customers. (The customers under state law are not allowed to switch energy suppliers.) Vogtie is a slow motion train crash. When it comes online, the customers will be forced to pay more than wind power customers BECAUSE the government intervened and prohibited any customers from changing suppliers. And I suspect that's gonna go over about as well as a fart in church.

beat 8y ago

If it was economically viable, it would be done. Forget the US and complaining about the darn treehuggers. Look at countries that don't particularly care about the environment. Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. India gets only 3% from nuclear, and new development will get that to maybe 5%. China gets less than 4% of its power from nuclear, and is backing off from new construction plans as well. If nuclear were really cheap, and environmentalist resistance was really the problem, we'd see much more nuclear power in these countries, both existing and under construction.

lstodd 8y ago
> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. Citation needed on scaling back. Any way you slice it, Russia can't rely on renewables, it's either fossil or nuclear since most of hydroelectric is already harnessed. Edit: I just had a cursory look of Moscow energy needs. It has about 12GWe installed capacity in city limits, all natural gas. Up to twice that is used in distict heating in winter. I did not dig up how much energy is imported, but given how many high-voltage transmission lines come in it can't be trivial. Replacing that with "renewables" is not possible.
- beat 8y ago
  12Gw == 12,000Mw. Off a quick lookup, 2Mw of wind requires 1.5 acres of land. A little arithmetic, some rounding up, and we need, say, 10,000 acres of wind power, around 15 square miles. But you'll raise an objection, so double that. And then you'll raise another objection, so double it again, and sooner or later, we're up to 100 square miles of windmills. The city of Moscow alone is 970 square miles. For point of comparison, Minnesota produced 3500Mw of wind in 2016, from wind farms mostly in the southwest part of the state. There's lots and lots of land left for more wind farms.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    If Russia has plenty of anything, it's land. USA is in a similar situation. If politics didn't intervene, they both would naturally use more wind power than more densely populated nations.
- godelski 8y ago
  >> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. > Citation needed on scaling back. [0] says 11% btw [0] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy- https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy-
- int_19h 8y ago
  Don't forget that many power plants are thermal combined-heat-and-power that utilize waste heat from power generation. If you replace them all with renewables, you'd have to compensate for that heat output, not just electricity.
godelski 8y ago
France is 50% nuclear. Sweeden is 22%. Both have two of the lowest carbon footprints in Europe. https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/energy-consumption.... https://www.worlddata.info/europe/sweden/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/sweden/energy-consumption....
- thatfrenchguy 8y ago
  France is more like 80% nuclear.
  - godelski 8y ago
    Good catch, I posted 2014 numbers. WNA says as of November 2018 that France uses 75%[0]. They note two important things though. 1) France is one of the largest net exporters of energy in the world (citing the low cost.) 2) That they will reduce nuclear output to 50% by 2035. Bonus 3) 17% of energy is purely from RECYCLED nuclear fuel. [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
lixtra 8y ago
> China gets less than 4% of its power from nuclear, and is backing off from new construction plans as well. Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia states that China plans to increase nuclear more than 30 times by end of the century [1]: As of March 2019, China has 46 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 42.8 GW [...] By mid-century fast neutron reactors are seen as the main technology, with a planned 1400 GW capacity by 2100. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
hairytrog 8y ago
Fact 1: Physics says it should be cheaper, because of massive energy density, as you need less stuff, and so less human effort to juice the energy source. Event history: 1. lots of reactors in the 60s and 70s 2. reactors are water cooled and designed essentially like normal power reactors, meaning they are similar size and operate with little margin 3. accidents happen - accidents that were conceivable though beyond the design basis 4. environmental and mass resistance heats up in response to 3 - rightfully so 5. 3. also leads to pressure to make current reactors safer by adding safety systems 6. reactors turn into giant jumble of safety systems with massive man power and maintenance costs, costs that similar sized coal or natural gas do not have. The increase in safety systems enhances safety superficially, and costs increase until the plant is barely break even. The key is that the accidents created a new and higher demand for safety that could not be economically met by the previous designs. But those previous designs were in place and had to operate, so they back-engineered a bunch of crap to make them "safe" at huge cost - a cost that basically annihilates all of nuclear's energy density benefits. At the same time, resistance was too high to build new reactor design concepts that could match the new safety paradigm, and so gen IV was not achieved. What you say is true - "it is not economically viable." But you shouldn't bundle all of nuclear into that category. The crap from the past was not economically viable with safety standards we have today. What's coming is.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  This all makes sense, but the public has been through this cycle with the nuclear power industry enough to be wary. "We'll get it right this time!" Maybe you would, but since we have options now, why would we take the risk?

bilbo0s 8y ago

Vogtie is the example that proves the rule. Originally, it was supposed to cost right around USD14 Billion. Cost overruns have pushed that, not to USD25 Billion, but USD28 Billion. (And the online date has been pushed back from this year, to 2022.) Keep in mind, the DoE was supposed to back USD8 Billion of the original USD14 Billion price tag. So needless to say, the financials have changed considerably. So much so that the consortium behind Vogtie nearly fell apart due to the latest cost overrun combined with the fact that they could not pass any more cost overruns on to their customers. (The customers under state law are not allowed to switch energy suppliers.) Vogtie is a slow motion train crash. When it comes online, the customers will be forced to pay more than wind power customers BECAUSE the government intervened and prohibited any customers from changing suppliers. And I suspect that's gonna go over about as well as a fart in church.