17 ms·

Utilities Want to Convert Coal Plants to Nuclear; Skeptics Abound

123 points by lxm 5y ago

Gravityloss 5y ago
Ordinary nuclear reactors have cooler temperatures than coal fire. So it's not straightforward to just replace that part and keep the rest like the steam turbine and generator. One could have high temperature reactors like pebble bed, that would be a better fit but they are more exotic and experimental. Didn't read the article because I won't subscribe to WSJ. They have been an anti climate science platform.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Working fluid temperature is much lower than the coal fire, and it's limited by the material science considerations of the piping and turbine, not by the reaction temperature. You are not going to see systems employing steam hotter than 550 degrees C.
- airstrike 5y ago
  > Didn't read the article because I won't subscribe to WSJ. They have been an anti climate science platform. Sadly, the reporting side of the WSJ and "WSJ Opinion" are basically two entirely different universes lumped under the same brand / subscription umbrella. Clearly there's a significant share of subscribers who like the opinion pieces so the Journal has historically chosen not to do away with them, but I keep hoping they will kill or spin off that business. In fact, as a subscriber I was asked not too long ago to fill out a survey about WSJ Opinion and whether I think it adds or subtracts value from my subscription. I'm not sure these types of decisions are best informed by the results of online surveys but wanted to note that just FYI... I signed up for the WSJ when they had a holiday special and I think I pay something like $5 / month for a year
  - hedora 5y ago
    The WSJ is owned by the Murdochs. If anything, you should hope they spin off the news business, and keep the opinion side. Sadly, I suspect they acquired the former to lend an air of legitimacy to the latter.
    - rowls66 5y ago
      I don't believe that is the case. I have been reading the WSJ since the 1980's, before it was acquired by Murdoch, and the Op-Ed section back then was already way to the right of most mainstream media, and the WSJ news gathering organization. I don't think that Murdoch has improved the quality of the WSJ, but he has not changed Op-Ed editing.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    I believe they were extra ordinary hard to cancel, like the NYTimes, for and the best tip if you ever consider cancelling was to just cease payments through PayPal or your creditcard. This saves you the lovely trip to a sales rep and whatnot.
  - mehlmao 5y ago
    On any opinion poll, I always write that I will pay for a subscription to the first major newspaper that gives me a 'no opinion/editorial' option.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  The only integration points of the old coal plants are the transmission lines, location footprint, access to power generation employees. Steam and temperature aren't in play.
  - ars 5y ago
    Would you not reuse the generator itself? What about the turbine that drives it?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      You would. You might need to screw around with a few of the compressor stages to get peak efficiency on the cooler steam source but that's by no means rocket science.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    That's a more realistic approach. That would mean investing in new coal plant steam turbines now would be a dead end. They are very expensive things.
  - VintageCool 5y ago
    It seems to be much more common to re-use old coal plant locations as grid-scale energy storage sites.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Are you sure about that? From what I could find reactors are in the 500-1000°C [1][2] while coal turbines are in the 540-600°C range [3]. This is about the small modular reactors which I think are HTGR and run a bit hotter AFAICT (i.e. closer to 1000°C). Seems pretty close regardless. Do you have anything I can read up about regarding nuclear reactors having cooler temperatures than what coal fire generates? [1] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull26-4/26404781821.pdf https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1738573315300267 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S173857331... [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/coal-fired-thermal-power-plant https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/coal-fired-...
  - acidburnNSA 5y ago
    Yes they're right about it. Your first link says that water-cooled reactors can produce steam up to about 300 °C, which is accurate. The hottest outlet temperature today from a nuclear reactor is about 1000 °C from HTTR in Japan, but that's fairly exotic. There have been hotter outlets back in the NERVA nuclear rocket days. Also exotic. Good read is this one: https://www.iaea.org/publications/8692/advances-in-nuclear-power-process-heat-applications https://www.iaea.org/publications/8692/advances-in-nuclear-p...
    - perihelions 5y ago
      - "There have been hotter outlets back in the NERVA nuclear rocket days. Also exotic." Though, those were rocket engines with a design lifespan of several minutes. It's not possible to sustain temperatures like that, is it? (I am not an engineer). I remember reading that one of the NTR test firings saw bits of molten corium flying out in the exhaust plume.
      - rich_sasha 5y ago
        Jet engines get way hotter for sustained periods of time: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74362/how-hot-do-internal-parts-of-jet-engine-get https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74362/how-hot-d... (And the crazy thing is, if you think about it, they are also gas turbines! The bough I guess perhaps your question was more specific to the reactor itself)
- henriquez 5y ago
  - nine_k 5y ago
    AFAICT, Tesla's batteries are cobalt-free.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/samsung-panasonic-and-tesla-embracing-cobalt-free-batteries-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/samsung-panasonic-and-tesla-... According to this, only entry level batteries where range is limited.
      - DennisP 5y ago
        LFP has somewhat lower energy density but it also doesn't degrade any faster if you charge it to 100% every time, while the higher-density batteries do degrade faster if you regularly charge them over 80%. So the practical range difference isn't as much as it appears at first glance.
- DennisP 5y ago
  You can still read WSJ articles by posting the link into archive.ph.
throwanem 5y ago
https://archive.ph/i1Ox3 https://archive.ph/i1Ox3
jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
I really would like to know the solution for how to prevent nuclear meltdown induced by a hostile airstrike to the cooling system, generators, electric grid, or the reactor itself. For the pedantic nuclearphiles, it doesn't have to be an airstrike. Domestic terrorism is a real thing as well.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  it's called "negative void coefficient"!
  - acidburnNSA 5y ago
    That won't prevent afterglow heat from causing problems if all cooling systems are lost. https://whatisnuclear.com/decay-heat.html https://whatisnuclear.com/decay-heat.html
- mrosett 5y ago
  Huh? What air force has the motivation and ability to destroy a nuclear power plant but not the ability to just drop a nuclear weapon?
  - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
    I would refer you to the Taliban's air force.
    - hedora 5y ago
      What air force? You mean the 1 to 3 pilots that used the anti-hijacking doors to help them commit suicide by intentionally crashing passenger airliners? It’s a stretch to blame the taliban for that, and 9/11 was over twenty years ago.
      - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
        The Taliban has gained control of helicopters that were left behind during the US' retreat from the country. Additionally, they seem to have a budding relationship with China, who are capable of manufacturing more advanced aircraft.
tlb 5y ago
The abounding skeptics don't seem to have any specific criticisms. Overall it seems like a good idea to reuse the heat-to-electricity machinery and grid connection of existing coal plants, since that's a good fraction of the capital required.
- Retric 5y ago
  Coal power plants operate at different temperatures than nuclear reactors, so it’s going to be less efficient to try an reuse that infrastructure. Cost wise, it’s unclear how much actual savings will take place.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  The "good fraction of the capital required" is for the nuclear part and nuclear plants also have stratospheric operating costs, which this doesn't address. This also doesn't really address the fact that nukes require a fuckton of power to bring up that coal plants don't; nukes also require that fuckton of power when they're not generating, because reactors have to be cooled continuously, even when not "on". Or the lack of qualified labor to run the plants. Or geological stability to assure the plant, and its waste storage, are safe. Nuclear has the highest opex of any electrical generation method; it's also estimated by some to have a greenhouse gas impact worse than natural gas. Wind costs a fraction of any other electricity generation method, solar isn't far behind, and continuing to drop around 10% a year. This is why you see wind and solar replacing decommissioned nukes at a ratio of 6:1 (not including commercial or residential capacity) in the US and growing, and coal plants being decommissioned. There are now multiple technologies for recycling turbine blades, and solar panels are recycleable (or just resellable in the secondhand market where people don't care that they've lost 20% of their capacity.) Storage is also plunging in cost, and additional technologies are already in commercial use (iron flow, for example.) HVDC transmission is spreading, with higher capacity, lower cost, and higher efficiency for moving electricity greater distances (in other words, it's less of a deal if it's really windy in one spot and not in another, and ideally-suited wind sites can be further from where electricity is needed.) Fanboys who think it's as simple as "if only we could work past the NIMBY issue" are ignoring the fact that nuclear power has not been economically viable for three quarters of a century (it has only been viable because of the military applications of nuclear power), while wind and solar keep getting more economically viable, and our grid keeps leaning more and more toward being distributed. Nobody needs the slow-reacting, base load generation nuclear provides. Wind and solar are as distributable and scaleable as you want. Wind and solar have significantly simpler supply chains, regulations, and maintenance/repair/inspection needs. You don't need to worry about geological stability with wind and solar. Wind and solar don't require tens or hundreds of megawatts of cold-start / post-operation (cooling) power. Wind and solar have little/no security concerns nor do you need to worry about area social/political/economic stability. Wind/solar don't generate waste that is weaponizeable. You don't need a highly trained workforce to install, operate, repair, and decommission wind/solar.
acidburnNSA 5y ago
Here's a fun and almost forgotten fact. In the early 1960s, the US government built a prototype nuclear reactor that was cooled with liquid metal sodium but had graphite moderators to slow the neutrons down. This reactor could start up with very low enriched uranium (as opposed to sodium cooled fast-neutron reactors which need quite high enrichments to start up) and make superheated steam at the exact same conditions as a coal plant. Well the local utility just SW of Lincoln Nebraska needed the power one way or the other, and didn't know if the new type of reactor was going to work or not. So they decided to build an equivalent power coal plant on the other side of the turbo-generator building! The idea was that when the nuclear reactor was in an outage, the coal plant could spin the turbine. Two plants, one turbine-generator! Wild. So anyway the nuclear plant did have a few troubles. The vendor, Atomics International, had them figured out and was planning to fix, but the utility declined it's option to purchase the plant in the end. Today, a grassy outline of a nuclear reactor can be seen right next to the still-operating coal plant down in Hallam, NE. Honestly it was an awesome reactor concept and I want to see it brought back. I visited this site a few months ago and got a little tour. Very fun. https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html#the-hallam-sodium-graphite-reactor-in-nebraska https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html#the-hallam-so... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility Google maps view of the outline: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hallam,+NE+68368/@40.5586409,-96.785054,297m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8796f30cb6f05711:0x3abdf7c827f6b224!8m2!3d40.5376381!4d-96.7868565?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hallam,+NE+68368/@40.55864...
- cardy31 5y ago
  Bill Gates’ nuclear play uses liquid sodium
  - acidburnNSA 5y ago
    Yes. That is the more traditional fast neutron version. We have 450 reactor years of experience w those.
    - formerkrogemp 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
If small nuclear reactors are so great, why isn't China building them? There's one under construction in Hainan, as an experimental project. Larger reactors are being built in quantity.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Small nuclear reactors aren't great - people are only proposing them because there's so much disdain for the normal PWRs that have been in operation successfully for decades. Reactors scale better with size: A pressure vessel's cost largely scales with surface area but its power capacity scales with volume. China is building large PWRs just fine, with nuclear output nearly quadrupling in the last decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
  - sliken 5y ago
    Actually, from what I've read reactors scale poorly. Huge, complex, and each site is unique. Each plant is custom and requires many experts on that specific site. Sure the original plan might be attractive, and 10x the power is less than 10x the cost. But then the delays, cost overruns, and inevitable changes to the design add up, delays of a decade are not uncommon. Even refueling the reactor is a huge project, substantial downtime, etc. The promise of the small reactors is lego like building blocks that are very safe, idiot proof, can be carried on a train, and you return them to the factory for maintenance or refueling. Site integration is literally a cement pad, water in/out, steam in/out, data connection, and some power. If any of those in/outs fail the reactor shuts down. That way the factory builds 1000s, becomes an expert on them, and you get the efficiency of higher volumes. That way you don't need 24/7 coverage by a large team of PhDs just to produce power. That's the dream anyways, will be interesting to see if anyone can get it to work.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      Each plant does not require custom designs for each specific site when the same design is built in series. This is big reason why nuclear plants built in the last few decades have been so expensive: they're usually the first one of their kind build in that country. That first build is when a lot of the design quirks are worked out, and construction teams gain experience. Furthermore, sub-components like steam-generators[1] and heat exchangers can't benefit from economies of scale. By comparison, when plants of the same design are built in series they're much cheaper. Nuclear plants that started construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s were some of the most effective clean energy investments, delivered at a cost of $1-2 billion per gigawatt. Check out the costs in the historical list and there's a large stretch of plants that were built at this price point [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
ethereal-haze 5y ago
Do we have a long term solution for nuclear waste? Or are we just going from one bad output to another?
- ThrustVectoring 5y ago
  Nuclear waste is a tiny problem. You just stick it somewhere that people aren't, preferably underground.
  - zik 5y ago
    Nuclear waste disposal is normally outsourced to specialist companies. It turns out that many of those companies have been illegally dumping it in the ocean near Africa. In the last decade or so it's been washing ashore and causing huge harm. https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-radioactive-waste-found-on-somalias-coast/ https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-... Any time you outsource disposal of such a dangerous substance you're pretty much guaranteeing that it'll all be dumped improperly. That's why it's not a tiny problem at all.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      > Project Censored and Boing Boing have been reporting on this horrific situation that is unfolding in the African country: Uh, Project Censored and Boing Boing? I'm not finding any reporting on this purported nuclear waste dumping in Somalia. I'm seeing reports of toxic waste, but not nuclear waste. Furthermore, The USSR and United Kingdom both dumped massive amounts of nuclear waste into the Arctic and Atlantic oceans respectively [1]. There are no observed adverse effects of this. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
    - Lazare 5y ago
      That's blogspam; it's quoting reporting it claims to be from Boing Boing, but actually came from a poorly sourced editorial in the Independent from back in 2009, which in turn is just retelling the allegations from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27... Allegedly, back in the 80s and 90s, organised crime in Italy was involved in the improper disposal of toxic and radioactive waste. Much of it was dumped around Italy, but some was said to have been dumped in Somalian waters. Attempts to verify this have proven difficult; the main informant hasn't proven reliable, and a UN mission to Somalia in 2005 wasn't able to find anything. Still, it does seem like some toxic waste was dumped in or around Somalia back in the 1980s or early 1990s, and that's certainly terrible. That being said, it seems to have happened thirty years ago, and although there was concern the 2005 tsunami could have stirred it up, that doesn't seem to be happening, and there's no evidence it's causing any harm at all. (And remember, most of the waste was in the Med off the coast of Italy, where it would be much easier to detect any impact than in Somalia.) > Any time you outsource disposal of such a dangerous substance you're pretty much guaranteeing that it'll all be dumped improperly. That seems to be the opposite of what your link is suggesting?
whatever1 5y ago
Very cute the promotion of nuclear power, while we are in the middle of a war where the nuclear infrastructure of a country is leveraged to to blackmail the entire planet [1], [2] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61048256 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61048256 [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-in-chernobyl-to-suffer-effects-of-radiation-ukraine-official-2022-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-in-chernobyl-to-suf...
- shlurpy 5y ago
  They have nuclear weapons. The reactor stuff is just embarrassing incompetence, and not nearly as scary as the news makes out.
jgod 5y ago
This discussion always leaves out LFTR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY Top comment: "Advantages of thorium: Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable Thorium is of little use for weapons If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
- goda90 5y ago
  I've heard the liquid salts are quite corrosive which is a hard issue to deal with.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Yes, but high-temp corrosive liquids are something we have literally 100+ years in building big pots for in other industries. Compared to extracting lithium and other rare metals from batteries/circuits/dead-solar/dead-electronics this is effectively a solved problem.
pabs3 5y ago
Would coal to geothermal be more feasible?
- avernon 5y ago
  Quaise wants to use old coal plants. So yes if you can drill down super deep to hot enough temperatures.
elevaet 5y ago
It's hard to price in the cost of the very long tail of nuclear waste. This is my greatest hesitation with nuclear power. I'm sure someone will point to bleeding-edge tech with waste that has shorter half-life, but nuclear power as we build it now generally produces waste that is hazardous for hundreds or thousands of years, afaik. The other objection will be: yes but what about the price of heating the planet? It's a strong point, but it's still a very hard calculation to balance. How do we least burden future humanity?
- fastaguy88 5y ago
  This argument suggests that only nuclear waste has a long half-life. I suppose this is true if you require a half-life, but coal plants also produce heavy metal and ash waste that never decays.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Did you know that all the nuclear waste ever produced by the US would fit in about a dozen Olympic pools? This isn’t some massive amount of fuel we’re talking about here.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Reusing existing infrastructure makes a lot of sense. Some solar and wind and battery projects are sited to take advantage of disused or in some cases shared infrastructure (e.g. floating solar on hydro dams). Data centers in old powerplants that use the infrastructure in reverse to buy electricity (and sometimes for cooling) are also a thing. But anything that uses steam is probably not going to be competitive with renewables even with the savings this adds (particularly if you could have used the infrastructure for something else).
xyzzy21 5y ago
A heat engine is a heat engine - the source of heat doesn't actually matter much.
nickdothutton 5y ago
The UK’s Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor was designed specifically as a “drop in” replacement for coal fired boilers as it produced the same steam pressure at the outlet and so could be connected to the same turbine/generator set. Absolutely nobody wanted to buy it, I don’t think we sold a single one for export.
- iwwr 5y ago
  That one had some fundamental problems due to the choice of graphite moderator. Another selling point: the ability to refuel while the plant is running also did not pan out. In the end these reactors had somewhere around 50% capacity factor, compared to more mainstream designs that used water (light or heavy) at 90%. They are also being decommissioned early, again, due to graphite cracking over time. That said, it's not unfeasible to imagine these problems being ironed out in the end, but rollout coincided with the Thatcher Era, which deprioritized industrial developmend and fundamental R&D. It was not a good deal to buy one of these 1st gen UK reactors, compared to a GE/Westinghouse LWR/HWR.
daniel-cussen 5y ago
People talk about nuclear accidents like that means we have to stop nuclear energy. Contrariwise. Nuclear LESSONS! They are absolutely essential, and in fact I would hire an engineer who participated in the Chernobyl fuckup with some amount of blame for the catastrophe NO QUESTION, that man learned something with the hide on his back! The only way to learn is the hard way. Suffering and defeat, failure. I have a high opinion of trauma because it has a biological purpose it is harmful to deny. you remember everything perfectly and vividly so you can bear witness against what happens reliably and accurately, and that sharp memory combined with reliving it over and over reveals little clues that just might solve perfect crimes. Trauma is the only form of memory that can survive a lobotomy.
rllearneratwork 5y ago
how there can be any skeptics about nuclear after Germany's fantastically disastrous decision to abandon it and instead become servant to and funder of 21st century facism is beyond me.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
There are far too many counties and entities wanting to start building nuclear power plants and keep old ones running. Present economically viable sources of uranium will last 150 - 300 years. This article from 2009 puts the number at at least 200 years. [1] [ ] With the number of new reactors coming online (being constructed now), old ones keep running, and new plant construction would cut that number significantly. There is a lot of be claimed from the ocean, current that is not economical. (and I thibnk it wouldl be horrible for the ocean ecosystem to sift through such volumes). So usually the argument is a) That reactors will use torium so it wont be a problem. b) We will build fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors already has enough fuel to run for a billion years. As far as I know (and on this I might well be), there are no big commercial thorium or fast breeder reactors in commercial use. If true that means a) we cannot build them today, if we want nuclear power fast the reactors will be tried and true LWRs b) if we wait for research to finish up it might take a while. So, the immediate need for power cannot reasonably be met by nuclear. Waiting for it to replace coal and fossile fuels will not do much in the immediate future. Now building a nuclear plant in a democracy filled with bureaucracy is an extremely long process anyways. Getting all the permits required for where to build, how to build it, all the protests because nobody wants it close to them. When the plant is ready to start construction of a is fast breeder reactor that is economically, scientifically and environmentally viable. It would be dumb for all the countries to start building Gen 1. That is more of a beta best. Get at least a decade of metrics to learn what works, what does not work, how could it be optimized, what went wrong? Plus, scientific progress would make Gen2 a better alternative as a template. After all after Chernobyl and Fukushima I have heard "Well, those were old plants and we dont build them like that anymore. The new ones are much safer". Then building a fast breeder or thorium should be given time to learn from the process. I might be totally wrong about how far along the research for fast breeders and thorium is, and that would make most of the above pointless. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

123 points by lxm 5y ago

Ordinary nuclear reactors have cooler temperatures than coal fire. So it's not straightforward to just replace that part and keep the rest like the steam turbine and generator. One could have high temperature reactors like pebble bed, that would be a better fit but they are more exotic and experimental. Didn't read the article because I won't subscribe to WSJ. They have been an anti climate science platform.

xyzzyz 5y ago
Working fluid temperature is much lower than the coal fire, and it's limited by the material science considerations of the piping and turbine, not by the reaction temperature. You are not going to see systems employing steam hotter than 550 degrees C.
airstrike 5y ago
> Didn't read the article because I won't subscribe to WSJ. They have been an anti climate science platform. Sadly, the reporting side of the WSJ and "WSJ Opinion" are basically two entirely different universes lumped under the same brand / subscription umbrella. Clearly there's a significant share of subscribers who like the opinion pieces so the Journal has historically chosen not to do away with them, but I keep hoping they will kill or spin off that business. In fact, as a subscriber I was asked not too long ago to fill out a survey about WSJ Opinion and whether I think it adds or subtracts value from my subscription. I'm not sure these types of decisions are best informed by the results of online surveys but wanted to note that just FYI... I signed up for the WSJ when they had a holiday special and I think I pay something like $5 / month for a year
- hedora 5y ago
  The WSJ is owned by the Murdochs. If anything, you should hope they spin off the news business, and keep the opinion side. Sadly, I suspect they acquired the former to lend an air of legitimacy to the latter.
  - rowls66 5y ago
    I don't believe that is the case. I have been reading the WSJ since the 1980's, before it was acquired by Murdoch, and the Op-Ed section back then was already way to the right of most mainstream media, and the WSJ news gathering organization. I don't think that Murdoch has improved the quality of the WSJ, but he has not changed Op-Ed editing.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  I believe they were extra ordinary hard to cancel, like the NYTimes, for and the best tip if you ever consider cancelling was to just cease payments through PayPal or your creditcard. This saves you the lovely trip to a sales rep and whatnot.
- mehlmao 5y ago
  On any opinion poll, I always write that I will pay for a subscription to the first major newspaper that gives me a 'no opinion/editorial' option.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
The only integration points of the old coal plants are the transmission lines, location footprint, access to power generation employees. Steam and temperature aren't in play.
- ars 5y ago
  Would you not reuse the generator itself? What about the turbine that drives it?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    You would. You might need to screw around with a few of the compressor stages to get peak efficiency on the cooler steam source but that's by no means rocket science.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  That's a more realistic approach. That would mean investing in new coal plant steam turbines now would be a dead end. They are very expensive things.
- VintageCool 5y ago
  It seems to be much more common to re-use old coal plant locations as grid-scale energy storage sites.
vlovich123 5y ago
Are you sure about that? From what I could find reactors are in the 500-1000°C [1][2] while coal turbines are in the 540-600°C range [3]. This is about the small modular reactors which I think are HTGR and run a bit hotter AFAICT (i.e. closer to 1000°C). Seems pretty close regardless. Do you have anything I can read up about regarding nuclear reactors having cooler temperatures than what coal fire generates? [1] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull26-4/26404781821.pdf https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1738573315300267 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S173857331... [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/coal-fired-thermal-power-plant https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/coal-fired-...
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  Yes they're right about it. Your first link says that water-cooled reactors can produce steam up to about 300 °C, which is accurate. The hottest outlet temperature today from a nuclear reactor is about 1000 °C from HTTR in Japan, but that's fairly exotic. There have been hotter outlets back in the NERVA nuclear rocket days. Also exotic. Good read is this one: https://www.iaea.org/publications/8692/advances-in-nuclear-power-process-heat-applications https://www.iaea.org/publications/8692/advances-in-nuclear-p...
  - perihelions 5y ago
    - "There have been hotter outlets back in the NERVA nuclear rocket days. Also exotic." Though, those were rocket engines with a design lifespan of several minutes. It's not possible to sustain temperatures like that, is it? (I am not an engineer). I remember reading that one of the NTR test firings saw bits of molten corium flying out in the exhaust plume.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      Jet engines get way hotter for sustained periods of time: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74362/how-hot-do-internal-parts-of-jet-engine-get https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74362/how-hot-d... (And the crazy thing is, if you think about it, they are also gas turbines! The bough I guess perhaps your question was more specific to the reactor itself)
henriquez 5y ago
- nine_k 5y ago
  AFAICT, Tesla's batteries are cobalt-free.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/samsung-panasonic-and-tesla-embracing-cobalt-free-batteries-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/samsung-panasonic-and-tesla-... According to this, only entry level batteries where range is limited.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      LFP has somewhat lower energy density but it also doesn't degrade any faster if you charge it to 100% every time, while the higher-density batteries do degrade faster if you regularly charge them over 80%. So the practical range difference isn't as much as it appears at first glance.
DennisP 5y ago
You can still read WSJ articles by posting the link into archive.ph.

throwanem 5y ago

https://archive.ph/i1Ox3 https://archive.ph/i1Ox3

jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago

I really would like to know the solution for how to prevent nuclear meltdown induced by a hostile airstrike to the cooling system, generators, electric grid, or the reactor itself. For the pedantic nuclearphiles, it doesn't have to be an airstrike. Domestic terrorism is a real thing as well.

fennecfoxen 5y ago
it's called "negative void coefficient"!
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  That won't prevent afterglow heat from causing problems if all cooling systems are lost. https://whatisnuclear.com/decay-heat.html https://whatisnuclear.com/decay-heat.html
mrosett 5y ago
Huh? What air force has the motivation and ability to destroy a nuclear power plant but not the ability to just drop a nuclear weapon?
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  I would refer you to the Taliban's air force.
  - hedora 5y ago
    What air force? You mean the 1 to 3 pilots that used the anti-hijacking doors to help them commit suicide by intentionally crashing passenger airliners? It’s a stretch to blame the taliban for that, and 9/11 was over twenty years ago.
    - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
      The Taliban has gained control of helicopters that were left behind during the US' retreat from the country. Additionally, they seem to have a budding relationship with China, who are capable of manufacturing more advanced aircraft.

tlb 5y ago

The abounding skeptics don't seem to have any specific criticisms. Overall it seems like a good idea to reuse the heat-to-electricity machinery and grid connection of existing coal plants, since that's a good fraction of the capital required.

Retric 5y ago
Coal power plants operate at different temperatures than nuclear reactors, so it’s going to be less efficient to try an reuse that infrastructure. Cost wise, it’s unclear how much actual savings will take place.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
The "good fraction of the capital required" is for the nuclear part and nuclear plants also have stratospheric operating costs, which this doesn't address. This also doesn't really address the fact that nukes require a fuckton of power to bring up that coal plants don't; nukes also require that fuckton of power when they're not generating, because reactors have to be cooled continuously, even when not "on". Or the lack of qualified labor to run the plants. Or geological stability to assure the plant, and its waste storage, are safe. Nuclear has the highest opex of any electrical generation method; it's also estimated by some to have a greenhouse gas impact worse than natural gas. Wind costs a fraction of any other electricity generation method, solar isn't far behind, and continuing to drop around 10% a year. This is why you see wind and solar replacing decommissioned nukes at a ratio of 6:1 (not including commercial or residential capacity) in the US and growing, and coal plants being decommissioned. There are now multiple technologies for recycling turbine blades, and solar panels are recycleable (or just resellable in the secondhand market where people don't care that they've lost 20% of their capacity.) Storage is also plunging in cost, and additional technologies are already in commercial use (iron flow, for example.) HVDC transmission is spreading, with higher capacity, lower cost, and higher efficiency for moving electricity greater distances (in other words, it's less of a deal if it's really windy in one spot and not in another, and ideally-suited wind sites can be further from where electricity is needed.) Fanboys who think it's as simple as "if only we could work past the NIMBY issue" are ignoring the fact that nuclear power has not been economically viable for three quarters of a century (it has only been viable because of the military applications of nuclear power), while wind and solar keep getting more economically viable, and our grid keeps leaning more and more toward being distributed. Nobody needs the slow-reacting, base load generation nuclear provides. Wind and solar are as distributable and scaleable as you want. Wind and solar have significantly simpler supply chains, regulations, and maintenance/repair/inspection needs. You don't need to worry about geological stability with wind and solar. Wind and solar don't require tens or hundreds of megawatts of cold-start / post-operation (cooling) power. Wind and solar have little/no security concerns nor do you need to worry about area social/political/economic stability. Wind/solar don't generate waste that is weaponizeable. You don't need a highly trained workforce to install, operate, repair, and decommission wind/solar.

acidburnNSA 5y ago

Here's a fun and almost forgotten fact. In the early 1960s, the US government built a prototype nuclear reactor that was cooled with liquid metal sodium but had graphite moderators to slow the neutrons down. This reactor could start up with very low enriched uranium (as opposed to sodium cooled fast-neutron reactors which need quite high enrichments to start up) and make superheated steam at the exact same conditions as a coal plant. Well the local utility just SW of Lincoln Nebraska needed the power one way or the other, and didn't know if the new type of reactor was going to work or not. So they decided to build an equivalent power coal plant on the other side of the turbo-generator building! The idea was that when the nuclear reactor was in an outage, the coal plant could spin the turbine. Two plants, one turbine-generator! Wild. So anyway the nuclear plant did have a few troubles. The vendor, Atomics International, had them figured out and was planning to fix, but the utility declined it's option to purchase the plant in the end. Today, a grassy outline of a nuclear reactor can be seen right next to the still-operating coal plant down in Hallam, NE. Honestly it was an awesome reactor concept and I want to see it brought back. I visited this site a few months ago and got a little tour. Very fun. https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html#the-hallam-sodium-graphite-reactor-in-nebraska https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html#the-hallam-so... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility Google maps view of the outline: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hallam,+NE+68368/@40.5586409,-96.785054,297m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8796f30cb6f05711:0x3abdf7c827f6b224!8m2!3d40.5376381!4d-96.7868565?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hallam,+NE+68368/@40.55864...

cardy31 5y ago
Bill Gates’ nuclear play uses liquid sodium
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  Yes. That is the more traditional fast neutron version. We have 450 reactor years of experience w those.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

If small nuclear reactors are so great, why isn't China building them? There's one under construction in Hainan, as an experimental project. Larger reactors are being built in quantity.

Manuel_D 5y ago
Small nuclear reactors aren't great - people are only proposing them because there's so much disdain for the normal PWRs that have been in operation successfully for decades. Reactors scale better with size: A pressure vessel's cost largely scales with surface area but its power capacity scales with volume. China is building large PWRs just fine, with nuclear output nearly quadrupling in the last decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
- sliken 5y ago
  Actually, from what I've read reactors scale poorly. Huge, complex, and each site is unique. Each plant is custom and requires many experts on that specific site. Sure the original plan might be attractive, and 10x the power is less than 10x the cost. But then the delays, cost overruns, and inevitable changes to the design add up, delays of a decade are not uncommon. Even refueling the reactor is a huge project, substantial downtime, etc. The promise of the small reactors is lego like building blocks that are very safe, idiot proof, can be carried on a train, and you return them to the factory for maintenance or refueling. Site integration is literally a cement pad, water in/out, steam in/out, data connection, and some power. If any of those in/outs fail the reactor shuts down. That way the factory builds 1000s, becomes an expert on them, and you get the efficiency of higher volumes. That way you don't need 24/7 coverage by a large team of PhDs just to produce power. That's the dream anyways, will be interesting to see if anyone can get it to work.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Each plant does not require custom designs for each specific site when the same design is built in series. This is big reason why nuclear plants built in the last few decades have been so expensive: they're usually the first one of their kind build in that country. That first build is when a lot of the design quirks are worked out, and construction teams gain experience. Furthermore, sub-components like steam-generators[1] and heat exchangers can't benefit from economies of scale. By comparison, when plants of the same design are built in series they're much cheaper. Nuclear plants that started construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s were some of the most effective clean energy investments, delivered at a cost of $1-2 billion per gigawatt. Check out the costs in the historical list and there's a large stretch of plants that were built at this price point [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...

ethereal-haze 5y ago

Do we have a long term solution for nuclear waste? Or are we just going from one bad output to another?

ThrustVectoring 5y ago
Nuclear waste is a tiny problem. You just stick it somewhere that people aren't, preferably underground.
- zik 5y ago
  Nuclear waste disposal is normally outsourced to specialist companies. It turns out that many of those companies have been illegally dumping it in the ocean near Africa. In the last decade or so it's been washing ashore and causing huge harm. https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-radioactive-waste-found-on-somalias-coast/ https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-... Any time you outsource disposal of such a dangerous substance you're pretty much guaranteeing that it'll all be dumped improperly. That's why it's not a tiny problem at all.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    > Project Censored and Boing Boing have been reporting on this horrific situation that is unfolding in the African country: Uh, Project Censored and Boing Boing? I'm not finding any reporting on this purported nuclear waste dumping in Somalia. I'm seeing reports of toxic waste, but not nuclear waste. Furthermore, The USSR and United Kingdom both dumped massive amounts of nuclear waste into the Arctic and Atlantic oceans respectively [1]. There are no observed adverse effects of this. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
  - Lazare 5y ago
    That's blogspam; it's quoting reporting it claims to be from Boing Boing, but actually came from a poorly sourced editorial in the Independent from back in 2009, which in turn is just retelling the allegations from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27... Allegedly, back in the 80s and 90s, organised crime in Italy was involved in the improper disposal of toxic and radioactive waste. Much of it was dumped around Italy, but some was said to have been dumped in Somalian waters. Attempts to verify this have proven difficult; the main informant hasn't proven reliable, and a UN mission to Somalia in 2005 wasn't able to find anything. Still, it does seem like some toxic waste was dumped in or around Somalia back in the 1980s or early 1990s, and that's certainly terrible. That being said, it seems to have happened thirty years ago, and although there was concern the 2005 tsunami could have stirred it up, that doesn't seem to be happening, and there's no evidence it's causing any harm at all. (And remember, most of the waste was in the Med off the coast of Italy, where it would be much easier to detect any impact than in Somalia.) > Any time you outsource disposal of such a dangerous substance you're pretty much guaranteeing that it'll all be dumped improperly. That seems to be the opposite of what your link is suggesting?

whatever1 5y ago

Very cute the promotion of nuclear power, while we are in the middle of a war where the nuclear infrastructure of a country is leveraged to to blackmail the entire planet [1], [2] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61048256 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61048256 [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-in-chernobyl-to-suffer-effects-of-radiation-ukraine-official-2022-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-in-chernobyl-to-suf...

shlurpy 5y ago
They have nuclear weapons. The reactor stuff is just embarrassing incompetence, and not nearly as scary as the news makes out.

jgod 5y ago

This discussion always leaves out LFTR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY Top comment: "Advantages of thorium: Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable Thorium is of little use for weapons If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI

goda90 5y ago
I've heard the liquid salts are quite corrosive which is a hard issue to deal with.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Yes, but high-temp corrosive liquids are something we have literally 100+ years in building big pots for in other industries. Compared to extracting lithium and other rare metals from batteries/circuits/dead-solar/dead-electronics this is effectively a solved problem.

pabs3 5y ago

Would coal to geothermal be more feasible?

avernon 5y ago
Quaise wants to use old coal plants. So yes if you can drill down super deep to hot enough temperatures.

elevaet 5y ago

It's hard to price in the cost of the very long tail of nuclear waste. This is my greatest hesitation with nuclear power. I'm sure someone will point to bleeding-edge tech with waste that has shorter half-life, but nuclear power as we build it now generally produces waste that is hazardous for hundreds or thousands of years, afaik. The other objection will be: yes but what about the price of heating the planet? It's a strong point, but it's still a very hard calculation to balance. How do we least burden future humanity?

fastaguy88 5y ago
This argument suggests that only nuclear waste has a long half-life. I suppose this is true if you require a half-life, but coal plants also produce heavy metal and ash waste that never decays.
thehappypm 5y ago
Did you know that all the nuclear waste ever produced by the US would fit in about a dozen Olympic pools? This isn’t some massive amount of fuel we’re talking about here.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Reusing existing infrastructure makes a lot of sense. Some solar and wind and battery projects are sited to take advantage of disused or in some cases shared infrastructure (e.g. floating solar on hydro dams). Data centers in old powerplants that use the infrastructure in reverse to buy electricity (and sometimes for cooling) are also a thing. But anything that uses steam is probably not going to be competitive with renewables even with the savings this adds (particularly if you could have used the infrastructure for something else).

xyzzy21 5y ago

A heat engine is a heat engine - the source of heat doesn't actually matter much.

nickdothutton 5y ago

The UK’s Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor was designed specifically as a “drop in” replacement for coal fired boilers as it produced the same steam pressure at the outlet and so could be connected to the same turbine/generator set. Absolutely nobody wanted to buy it, I don’t think we sold a single one for export.

iwwr 5y ago
That one had some fundamental problems due to the choice of graphite moderator. Another selling point: the ability to refuel while the plant is running also did not pan out. In the end these reactors had somewhere around 50% capacity factor, compared to more mainstream designs that used water (light or heavy) at 90%. They are also being decommissioned early, again, due to graphite cracking over time. That said, it's not unfeasible to imagine these problems being ironed out in the end, but rollout coincided with the Thatcher Era, which deprioritized industrial developmend and fundamental R&D. It was not a good deal to buy one of these 1st gen UK reactors, compared to a GE/Westinghouse LWR/HWR.

daniel-cussen 5y ago

People talk about nuclear accidents like that means we have to stop nuclear energy. Contrariwise. Nuclear LESSONS! They are absolutely essential, and in fact I would hire an engineer who participated in the Chernobyl fuckup with some amount of blame for the catastrophe NO QUESTION, that man learned something with the hide on his back! The only way to learn is the hard way. Suffering and defeat, failure. I have a high opinion of trauma because it has a biological purpose it is harmful to deny. you remember everything perfectly and vividly so you can bear witness against what happens reliably and accurately, and that sharp memory combined with reliving it over and over reveals little clues that just might solve perfect crimes. Trauma is the only form of memory that can survive a lobotomy.

rllearneratwork 5y ago

how there can be any skeptics about nuclear after Germany's fantastically disastrous decision to abandon it and instead become servant to and funder of 21st century facism is beyond me.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

There are far too many counties and entities wanting to start building nuclear power plants and keep old ones running. Present economically viable sources of uranium will last 150 - 300 years. This article from 2009 puts the number at at least 200 years. [1] [ ] With the number of new reactors coming online (being constructed now), old ones keep running, and new plant construction would cut that number significantly. There is a lot of be claimed from the ocean, current that is not economical. (and I thibnk it wouldl be horrible for the ocean ecosystem to sift through such volumes). So usually the argument is a) That reactors will use torium so it wont be a problem. b) We will build fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors already has enough fuel to run for a billion years. As far as I know (and on this I might well be), there are no big commercial thorium or fast breeder reactors in commercial use. If true that means a) we cannot build them today, if we want nuclear power fast the reactors will be tried and true LWRs b) if we wait for research to finish up it might take a while. So, the immediate need for power cannot reasonably be met by nuclear. Waiting for it to replace coal and fossile fuels will not do much in the immediate future. Now building a nuclear plant in a democracy filled with bureaucracy is an extremely long process anyways. Getting all the permits required for where to build, how to build it, all the protests because nobody wants it close to them. When the plant is ready to start construction of a is fast breeder reactor that is economically, scientifically and environmentally viable. It would be dumb for all the countries to start building Gen 1. That is more of a beta best. Get at least a decade of metrics to learn what works, what does not work, how could it be optimized, what went wrong? Plus, scientific progress would make Gen2 a better alternative as a template. After all after Chernobyl and Fukushima I have heard "Well, those were old plants and we dont build them like that anymore. The new ones are much safer". Then building a fast breeder or thorium should be given time to learn from the process. I might be totally wrong about how far along the research for fast breeders and thorium is, and that would make most of the above pointless. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...