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FTA: New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly
by istjohn 8y ago
FTA:
New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear plants is standardization and repetition.
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Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to spend a billion dollars or more on an open- ended, all‑or‑nothing licensing process without any certainty of outcomes.” We need government on the side of this clean-energy transformation, with supportive regulation, streamlined approval, investment in research and incentives that tilt producers and consumers away from carbon.
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[I]n 60 years of nuclear power, only three accidents have raised public alarm: Three Mile Island in 1979, which killed no one; Fukushima in 2011, which killed no one (many deaths resulted from the tsunami and some from a panicked evacuation near the plant); and Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.
- pfdietz 8y agoThe US never had the ability to build affordable nuclear plants. That's a major reason the first nuclear construction boom fizzled out here.
- pdonis 8y ago> The US never had the ability to build affordable nuclear plants. Sure it has. They're just getting used by the Navy, not by civilians. There's no reason why the same methods that have been successfully used to control cost and schedule for those reactors couldn't be used for civilian reactors.
- Retric 8y agoNavy reactors are extremely expensive. They are worth it because of logistics around oil. Even when comparing to oil, Nuclear is still more expensive. “Specifically, total life-cycle costs would be 19 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear destroyers.” https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454
- village-idiot 8y agoNavy reactors are also designed differently due to the confined space in which they typically operate. This is why they use the much more expensive super grade plutonium, as it reduces the amount of heavy shielding required to protect crew who must live very close to their reactors.
- philipkglass 8y agoSuper grade plutonium is for warheads that humans will spend a lot of time near, like those in submarine launched ballistic missiles. But American naval reactors do use highly enriched uranium, which is much more expensive and needs more safeguarding than the low enriched uranium used in power reactors.
- pdonis 8y agoThey're expensive because of certain design features, yes. But their cost is predictable and we know how to build them on schedule. Those are the key skills that should be just as usable for civilian reactors.
- ianai 8y ago“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to prefer nuclear to coal.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- est31 8y agoYou shouldn't just count deaths and conclude that a nuclear catastrophy isn't that bad. Far more people had to evacuate their home, having to leave most of their belongings behind. And most times with no or too little compensation. Sure, nuclear is prefferable to coal but that doesn't mean that both shouldn't be gotten rid of.
- TomMarius 8y agoBut that kind of reactor is never going to be built again - its design was very outdated and outright bad. Today we can build reactors where any failure that would result in an explosion of any kind is physically nearly impossible.
- ianai 8y agoBingo, there’s clearly plenty of progress to be made with nuclear power and plenty made already.
- est31 8y agoMaybe we won't build those reactor types any more. But they are still operational, and this is what matters. There is a huge incentive in keeping them operational as the major cost of nuclear energy is building the reactor. Already built reactors don't incur that cost any more so they make loads of money for their operators, especially when they are old and "mortage free". Due to this gigantic incentive, every political support of new nuclear plants will be misdirected into prolonging the operational life of existing highly dangerous reactors. As to your "physically near impossible": people said about the titanic that it was unsinkable. This only led to a major shortage of lifeboats once it sank because why would a unsinkable ship need so many lifeboats.
- _ph_ 8y agoAnd as a result of the Chernobyl accident, southern Germany is sufficently contaminated, that food from the forests, like mushrooms and wild boar are still not completely safe to consume. Each killed animal has to be checked with a radiation detector, whether its radiation is low enough for it to be eaten, otherwise it has to be disposed as radioactive contaminated. With Fukushima, it was increadible luck that e.g. Tokyo didn't get contaminated. The consequences if that had happened don't need to be described. So far, most of the contamination ended up in the ocean, the pacific ocean is really large, so the contamination got quite diluted. We don't know though, whether it doesn't come back to haunt us in some so far unexpected way.
- acidburnNSA 8y agoCan we get a citation on the unsafe food in Germany from Chernobyl? That flies in the face of a lot of current progress in understanding the health effects of low-dose radiation. Precisely how high above natural background radiation levels is the stuff in Germany?
- _ph_ 8y agoSure, here you are: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-wildbret/pilze-wildbret.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w... The short version is, that mushrooms accumulate cesium-137 which contaminates the soil in Bavarian forests. Equally affected are animals eating the mushrooms, mainly wild boar.
- acidburnNSA 8y agoCan you read it? I'm looking for quantitative data and see: "Belastung von 0,008 Millisievert zur Folge." If this is 8 microsieverts... what's the timescale? 8 microsieverts is quite small compared to everyday things like cosmic rays [1]. [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- detaro 8y ago
- timthorn 8y ago> In 60 years of nuclear power, only three accidents have raised public alarm I think Windscale would count amongst such accidents, too.
- lstodd 8y agoThen you'd have to count all the accidents on every scientific and military reactor, not discounting naval reactors and especially in the early times, up until ~1975. Can I remind you that that's almost 60 years ago and we're not talking about military?
- timthorn 8y agoI disagree. In the public mind, Windscale isn't distinguished as a military accident; a power station was on the same site and the accident caused great public concern. It might be 60 years ago but it is still part of the PR legacy that affects nuclear energy in the UK today.
- godelski 8y agoTwo points: 1: France is 75% nuclear and has some of the cheapest electricity. 2: there are a ton of small reactor designs that would be substantially cheaper and quicker to build. Problem is that you can't get them out of research labs.
- systemBuilder 8y agoFrance always also consumes 80% of the known uranium reserves in the world. we just don't have enough uranium to have two Frances!
- jacques_chester 8y agoThe way mining works is that when the price goes up due to demand, mines are opened on new and existing deposits. Uranium is not very expensive right now, so a lot of mines have closed or mothballed. That doesn't mean there's any shortage of the stuff. Australia's known reserves are enormous. Throw a dart at a map of northern Australia and you'll probably hit an orebody.
- jhayward 8y agoFrance is phasing out its nuclear fleet and plans to have retired 1/3 of it by 2025. Its only new NPP under construction, Flammanville, is 9 years over schedule and over 300% over budget. It is still not certain when it will open due to safety defects that are still being evaluated.
- realusername 8y agoThat's because it's a next-gen project, that's what happens with R&D.
- flgb 8y agoThat’s not what happens with next-gen renewables —- they are modular and can be built much faster and much cheaper. New build nuclear is not cost competitive with new build wind and solar (even when you account for firming costs), and the cost of wind and solar is still falling at an astonishing rate.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoOthers were buried like the SSFL. No doubt many more events buried like soviet submarines. Deaths within a few weeks don’t count all the cancer deaths in the area for generations. I’m in favor of nuclear research and improvements, but let’s be honest.
- jhayward 8y agoIf you keep comparing nuclear to coal, you have declared yourself the loser. You have to compare nuclear against the best alternative, not the worst. This is just kindergarten-level debate.
- ljf 8y agoThis! Totally correct. Check out the a mount of coal the UK is using for energy generation right now: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk - tiny amounts and that will only get smaller.
- eigenvector 8y agoSo in other words, nuclear is the faster way to slash GHG emissions... if you can reform the US nuclear regulatory regime. And how long do you suppose that will take to push through Congress? In the meantime, we can put out an RFP for a new wind project today and have it online in a year. Something that depends on hypothetical political developments in a country that shuts down its government because of political gridlock a couple of times a year cannot reasonably be described as the fastest way to do anything.