17 ms·

Define short term; I think by the time a reactor you start today comes online, we are already pretty screwed

melling 6y ago
hey, we have been asking for 2 decades. Somewhere in the past year or so a lot of people have started saying “too late” Maybe you can humor the people who want nuclear while we continue to add solar and wind. The world needs a lot of electricity.
- piva00 6y ago
  I long for the day we get a breakthrough with some next level power source. Be it fusion or some other thing to come. Humanity always depended on having a leap in either: transport, communication or energy. We are going through a massive change in communication, if we get a cheap and super scalable and sustainable source of energy we might find our next leap...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
eloff 6y ago
It's trite, but it's never too late to start. Certainly starting now is better than doing nothing in this case, and nuclear may be a good option. I'm not convinced that old nuclear tech is economically viable anymore compared to batteries + renewables. New nuclear tech may be. We need investment there.
- runarberg 6y ago
  I don’t think we have time to wait for new old school plants to be built, and we certainly don’t have time for new tech to be developed, tested, regulated before we even start building it. We should start now with the tech we already have (which is renewables).
  - eloff 6y ago
    Doing one doesn't preclude doing the other, that's a false dichotomy.
- toast0 6y ago
  It could possibly be too late to start with new nuclear plants, although I'm not totally convinced. If we had them now, nuclear plants would be vastly superior to coal plants for baseload, at least in terms of emissions. The question is, if a nuclear plant takes 20-30 years from project start to being online, how will it compare with what's available then and over the design lifetime (50ish years). Of course, we can't know for sure, but if storage becomes good enough in the next 30 or so years, the lifetime economics of a nuclear plant get pretty bad. That said, maybe the economic risk isn't as important as the emissions risk. If renewable + storage doesn't work, and we are still running coal plants in 30 years, that's probably worse than if renewable + storage works and ratepayers paid for an underutilized nuclear plant.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    Why 20-30 years? Russia started building of Belarus nuclear plant at 2011. It already works and will be completely finished at 2022. Is US nuclear industry significantly behind Russia?
    - eloff 6y ago
      Yes. US construction in general takes longer and costs almost an order of magnitude more for large infrastructure. Why? Higher standards certainly. Higher pay too. But you can't tell me Russia is less corrupt with a straight face. So what accounts for the difference? I think it's disturbing that the US is forgetting how to make things in general.
    - toast0 6y ago
      From wikipedia, the most recent nuclear plant to enter operation in the US is Watts Bar reactor 2. It entered operation in 2016, while being under construction for a total of 17 years; 8 years between 1973 and 1985, then 9 more between 2007 and 2016. The Vogtle plant reactor 3 and 4 project started in 2006, construction started in 2013, and planned operation is 2021; but these things are often delayed. And that was at an existing site. 20 years may be pessimistic, but not unduly so, based on recent experience.
    - quicklyfrozen 6y ago
ci5er 6y ago
I don't know. The science and engineering has quietly moved quite a bit over the last 40 years. These [0] SMRs can, for example - there are several other approaches - can be assembled on a standard assembly line, shipped in a couple of C-Containers, and stood up on a concrete pad (well, not exactly, but close enough that I don't feel like complicating the point. [0]: https://www.nuscalepower.com/ https://www.nuscalepower.com/
- pfdietz 6y ago
  NuScale has given up assembling their reactors in their factory. https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluor-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-project/ https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluo... "In answer to a question I posed to Nuscale at the town hall we have learned that the plan to save costs by fabricating the modules at a remote factory and shipping them to the Idaho site has been abandoned. The artful response to my question said that Nuscale engaged with approximately 40 … pressure vessel fabricators worldwide and … determined that Nuscale will use existing factories … in lieu of building its own factory. The major module subcomponents will be manufactured at multiple manufacturer locations and shipped to a single location for assembly prior to installing into the facility.” This signifies the failure of one of the major cost-saving features of the Nuscale project, which was to forestall this exact scenario." The cost of that project has already escalated 70%, btw, with three towns dropping out and the output only 30% subscribed. I think there's a good chance it will never be built.
- epistasis 6y ago
  The best time to build nuclear would have been in the 1980s. However, when we tried to build again back in 2008, it turned to failure. In areas with highly supportive populations that want the nuclear jobs in their community, with an NRC that changed processes to try to make it easier to get approval, we are still 12 years in, way behind schedule, and 2-3x over budget, without a solid feel for when we will star pushing electrons with the new reactors. Last I heard, NuScale is hoping to hit a cost of $55/MWh. That's about the current cost of wind/solar and the storage to make it dispatchable. Meaning that by the time they finally ship, it will be a more expensive option for firm low-carbon energy than the current options we have. So not only is NuScale aiming at a not-so-desirable target, by the time it can deliver its first 10GW, it's quite likely that the renewables will be curtailed for much of the year, meaning that we have extra generation capacity that goes unused, which is likely to spur a huge round of economic innovation for that energy. I would hate to get stuck with the path dependence of nuclear. Renewables are so cheap that they open up a ton more doors for society.
BurningFrog 6y ago
If this is a reference to the "we only have 12 years to save the planet" meme, that is just a thing that went viral. There is no science behind it.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  It is a reference to how quickly we are depleting our carbon budget to avert certain levels of warming.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Because there is no clear line between saving and not saving. It's just degrees of badness the longer we wait. I heard there are some inflection points when it becomes warm enough for methane to escape from the tundra in Siberia.
DennisP 6y ago
It's clear that right now we should roll out wind and solar as fast as we can. However, once those reach high penetration, costs increase rapidly as you attempt to reach 100% clean energy. At that point it helps a lot to have clean dispatchable power. Nuclear plants we start today can fill that role, in areas without available hydro. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435118303866 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
- est31 6y ago
  Nuclear power isn't very "dispatchable", it takes long times to be turned on vs off. But it might be useful for seasonal use in the winter when there is less sun.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    No. Unless you run your nuclear power plant at high capacity factor, the cost of power from it inflates unacceptably. It's an economic issue, not a technical issue.
    - piva00 6y ago
      That's the whole point of nuclear, hydro or coal though, they need to be run at high capacity to be economically viable, have long spin up and down times and are costly to maintain. You use them as the basis of the grid and use wind and solar that are more prone to fluctuations to fill up the demand when necessary, less batteries needed as the base load can always be delivered by nuclear/hydro. Coal is basically dead in the next decade or so.
      - dTal 6y ago
        >use them as the basis of the grid and use wind and solar that are more prone to fluctuations to fill up the demand when necessary Er, how does this work? You can't control when wind and solar produce power, so how can you use them to "fill up the demand when necessary"? If anything, using a fluctuating source on top of already fluctuating demand just increases the amount of power storage you need. A power source that ramps up and down quickly is more convenient than one that ramps up and down slowly, but both are miles more convenient than one which ramps up and down uncontrollably.
rayiner 6y ago
It’s really already too late. Even if we the developed world decarbonizes in the next 20 years, India, China, and Africa will not. That means what we really need to be looking at is technology to power carbon capture.
- nickpp 6y ago
  I guess you need energy for carbon capture too.
- sofixa 6y ago
  India is nuclear heavy, China has a serious nuclear focus and is actively decarbonising, so what are you talking about? Various African countries can be helped to pick/prefer carbon-free energy options.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    India gets about 2% of their power from nuclear. They are not "nuclear heavy."
bccdee 6y ago
Yeah I'm a big fan of nuclear energy, but it just takes forever to get reactors online. We just don't have that kind of time. By all means, let's invest in nuclear, but we need to be building acres and acres of solar panels NOW. "We've got some reactors on the way" is not enough.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  If the alternative is the end of the human species I think we might find some motivation to build them a bit faster and better. Just saying.
speleding 6y ago
Rosatom will sell you a floating reactor you can tow into a harbour and hook up to your grid [1]. So short term can be pretty short if you want. And don't worry about the fuel, they simply tow it back to St. Petersburg when the fuel is expired and keep the dirty stuff there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...

hey, we have been asking for 2 decades. Somewhere in the past year or so a lot of people have started saying “too late” Maybe you can humor the people who want nuclear while we continue to add solar and wind. The world needs a lot of electricity.

piva00 6y ago
I long for the day we get a breakthrough with some next level power source. Be it fusion or some other thing to come. Humanity always depended on having a leap in either: transport, communication or energy. We are going through a massive change in communication, if we get a cheap and super scalable and sustainable source of energy we might find our next leap...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

eloff 6y ago

It's trite, but it's never too late to start. Certainly starting now is better than doing nothing in this case, and nuclear may be a good option. I'm not convinced that old nuclear tech is economically viable anymore compared to batteries + renewables. New nuclear tech may be. We need investment there.

runarberg 6y ago
I don’t think we have time to wait for new old school plants to be built, and we certainly don’t have time for new tech to be developed, tested, regulated before we even start building it. We should start now with the tech we already have (which is renewables).
- eloff 6y ago
  Doing one doesn't preclude doing the other, that's a false dichotomy.
toast0 6y ago
It could possibly be too late to start with new nuclear plants, although I'm not totally convinced. If we had them now, nuclear plants would be vastly superior to coal plants for baseload, at least in terms of emissions. The question is, if a nuclear plant takes 20-30 years from project start to being online, how will it compare with what's available then and over the design lifetime (50ish years). Of course, we can't know for sure, but if storage becomes good enough in the next 30 or so years, the lifetime economics of a nuclear plant get pretty bad. That said, maybe the economic risk isn't as important as the emissions risk. If renewable + storage doesn't work, and we are still running coal plants in 30 years, that's probably worse than if renewable + storage works and ratepayers paid for an underutilized nuclear plant.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Why 20-30 years? Russia started building of Belarus nuclear plant at 2011. It already works and will be completely finished at 2022. Is US nuclear industry significantly behind Russia?
  - eloff 6y ago
    Yes. US construction in general takes longer and costs almost an order of magnitude more for large infrastructure. Why? Higher standards certainly. Higher pay too. But you can't tell me Russia is less corrupt with a straight face. So what accounts for the difference? I think it's disturbing that the US is forgetting how to make things in general.
  - toast0 6y ago
    From wikipedia, the most recent nuclear plant to enter operation in the US is Watts Bar reactor 2. It entered operation in 2016, while being under construction for a total of 17 years; 8 years between 1973 and 1985, then 9 more between 2007 and 2016. The Vogtle plant reactor 3 and 4 project started in 2006, construction started in 2013, and planned operation is 2021; but these things are often delayed. And that was at an existing site. 20 years may be pessimistic, but not unduly so, based on recent experience.
  - quicklyfrozen 6y ago

ci5er 6y ago

I don't know. The science and engineering has quietly moved quite a bit over the last 40 years. These [0] SMRs can, for example - there are several other approaches - can be assembled on a standard assembly line, shipped in a couple of C-Containers, and stood up on a concrete pad (well, not exactly, but close enough that I don't feel like complicating the point. [0]: https://www.nuscalepower.com/ https://www.nuscalepower.com/

pfdietz 6y ago
NuScale has given up assembling their reactors in their factory. https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluor-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-project/ https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluo... "In answer to a question I posed to Nuscale at the town hall we have learned that the plan to save costs by fabricating the modules at a remote factory and shipping them to the Idaho site has been abandoned. The artful response to my question said that Nuscale engaged with approximately 40 … pressure vessel fabricators worldwide and … determined that Nuscale will use existing factories … in lieu of building its own factory. The major module subcomponents will be manufactured at multiple manufacturer locations and shipped to a single location for assembly prior to installing into the facility.” This signifies the failure of one of the major cost-saving features of the Nuscale project, which was to forestall this exact scenario." The cost of that project has already escalated 70%, btw, with three towns dropping out and the output only 30% subscribed. I think there's a good chance it will never be built.
epistasis 6y ago
The best time to build nuclear would have been in the 1980s. However, when we tried to build again back in 2008, it turned to failure. In areas with highly supportive populations that want the nuclear jobs in their community, with an NRC that changed processes to try to make it easier to get approval, we are still 12 years in, way behind schedule, and 2-3x over budget, without a solid feel for when we will star pushing electrons with the new reactors. Last I heard, NuScale is hoping to hit a cost of $55/MWh. That's about the current cost of wind/solar and the storage to make it dispatchable. Meaning that by the time they finally ship, it will be a more expensive option for firm low-carbon energy than the current options we have. So not only is NuScale aiming at a not-so-desirable target, by the time it can deliver its first 10GW, it's quite likely that the renewables will be curtailed for much of the year, meaning that we have extra generation capacity that goes unused, which is likely to spur a huge round of economic innovation for that energy. I would hate to get stuck with the path dependence of nuclear. Renewables are so cheap that they open up a ton more doors for society.

BurningFrog 6y ago

If this is a reference to the "we only have 12 years to save the planet" meme, that is just a thing that went viral. There is no science behind it.

matthewdgreen 6y ago
It is a reference to how quickly we are depleting our carbon budget to avert certain levels of warming.
kmonsen 6y ago
Because there is no clear line between saving and not saving. It's just degrees of badness the longer we wait. I heard there are some inflection points when it becomes warm enough for methane to escape from the tundra in Siberia.

DennisP 6y ago

It's clear that right now we should roll out wind and solar as fast as we can. However, once those reach high penetration, costs increase rapidly as you attempt to reach 100% clean energy. At that point it helps a lot to have clean dispatchable power. Nuclear plants we start today can fill that role, in areas without available hydro. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435118303866 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...

est31 6y ago
Nuclear power isn't very "dispatchable", it takes long times to be turned on vs off. But it might be useful for seasonal use in the winter when there is less sun.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  No. Unless you run your nuclear power plant at high capacity factor, the cost of power from it inflates unacceptably. It's an economic issue, not a technical issue.
  - piva00 6y ago
    That's the whole point of nuclear, hydro or coal though, they need to be run at high capacity to be economically viable, have long spin up and down times and are costly to maintain. You use them as the basis of the grid and use wind and solar that are more prone to fluctuations to fill up the demand when necessary, less batteries needed as the base load can always be delivered by nuclear/hydro. Coal is basically dead in the next decade or so.
    - dTal 6y ago
      >use them as the basis of the grid and use wind and solar that are more prone to fluctuations to fill up the demand when necessary Er, how does this work? You can't control when wind and solar produce power, so how can you use them to "fill up the demand when necessary"? If anything, using a fluctuating source on top of already fluctuating demand just increases the amount of power storage you need. A power source that ramps up and down quickly is more convenient than one that ramps up and down slowly, but both are miles more convenient than one which ramps up and down uncontrollably.

rayiner 6y ago

It’s really already too late. Even if we the developed world decarbonizes in the next 20 years, India, China, and Africa will not. That means what we really need to be looking at is technology to power carbon capture.

nickpp 6y ago
I guess you need energy for carbon capture too.
sofixa 6y ago
India is nuclear heavy, China has a serious nuclear focus and is actively decarbonising, so what are you talking about? Various African countries can be helped to pick/prefer carbon-free energy options.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  India gets about 2% of their power from nuclear. They are not "nuclear heavy."

bccdee 6y ago

Yeah I'm a big fan of nuclear energy, but it just takes forever to get reactors online. We just don't have that kind of time. By all means, let's invest in nuclear, but we need to be building acres and acres of solar panels NOW. "We've got some reactors on the way" is not enough.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
If the alternative is the end of the human species I think we might find some motivation to build them a bit faster and better. Just saying.

speleding 6y ago

Rosatom will sell you a floating reactor you can tow into a harbour and hook up to your grid [1]. So short term can be pretty short if you want. And don't worry about the fuel, they simply tow it back to St. Petersburg when the fuel is expired and keep the dirty stuff there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...