12 ms·

Converting coal power plants to nuclear gains steam

141 points by SongofEarth 4y ago

barney54 4y ago
Maybe, but not until the permitting gets fixed for small nuclear plants. It took NuScale over $1 billion dollars to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to okay its design. And it hasn’t built an small reactor that is even operating yet. Some of these have to get built before we can say whether they can go at old coal plants.
- epistasis 4y ago
  $1B for the design of a power source that is going to scale, at a minimum level of success, to 10s to 100s of GW, isn't that much. So IMHO the scale of power that nuclear needs to operate at in order to be efficient, $1B doesn't seem like much. Nonetheless, where did that cost come from? Does it really take that many hours of engineering? Is there a $950M payment to the regulators to evaluate the design?
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    The NRC bills hourly.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      I'm not sure if you are joking, but just in case if not... A 100 person team working for 4 years at $200/hour is only $160M. Really curious how a billion dollar could be spent on something like this.
      - zbrozek 4y ago
        https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-362 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-362
        epistasis 4y ago
        I've read about a dozen pages of this report and I'm no closer to understanding what's going on. I care about this working well, but definitely don't care enough to wade through a seemingly tangentially related report. My problem with nuclear, besides it seeming to be an outdated tech, is that proponents seem to have an extremely shallow understanding of the tech and the difficulties it faces. I find that I, a mere amateur just poking into energy as an hobby, often know an order of magnitude more than any proponent I've ever encountered. And the more I poke into the details on my own, the more convinced I am that nuclear is a terrible technology without a future. It's time for somebody with knowledge to make the case to me, rather than me doing more and more homework that entrenches my existing dim view of nuclear. But I just need to find someone who advocates for nuclear who has deeper knowledge and can make that case.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rmason 4y ago
I like the fact that the Greens are finally considering nuclear. One other option is geothermal. Most areas of the United States can reach geothermal by drilling 300-800 feet down. Using traditional drilling techniques this is not economically feasible. But there's a company using MIT research to drill using what's called millimeter waves to blast through the rock. The company commercializing the MIT research is called https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/ Quaise Energy doesn't sell drilling equipment but instead they sell the end product of steam. They plan on locating next to say a coal plant and then feeding steam to the plants turbines. The company raised a $52 million dollar Series A this summer. https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628 https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628 The only negative from this type of drilling is localized small earthquakes similar to those created from fracking. So there will be opponents, but nowhere near the number of nuclear critics. There should also be a much quicker (and cheaper) approval process than nuclear.
- chii 4y ago
  > I like the fact that the Greens are finally considering nuclear. it's more likely that the electorate is now finally capable of accepting nuclear. The greens are merely trying to get votes and attempt to make their policies match what their electorates would vote for. I think the previous fear about nuclear is mostly misinformed, and bad PR from high profile accidents isn't helping. Nuclear is fairly clean, cheap, and available. We really should consider it as a viable source for the long term future.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Except it’s not remotely cheap. Guaranteeing rates on new build nuclear is like 6x more expensive than wind resources and at least 4x higher than say combined cycle natural gas. If the new reactor at Hinkley is ever completed, it’s going to cost over $0.15/kWh wholesale which is more than I’m paying retail at the moment.
    - tcoff91 4y ago
      Man I’m paying 0.33 to $0.52 per kWh. I’d love to pay 0.15
jillesvangurp 4y ago
As the article mentions towards the end, just because it's technically feasible does not mean a lot of coal plants will be converted to nuclear. Fundamentally this is about reducing cost. The question is if it is enough. Nuclear plants are expensive and making them slightly less expensive helps. But they might still be too expensive overall to make it worth the trouble, Also, time is a factor. A lot of coal plants have already been decommissioned and more are going offline in the next few years. Mothballed/decommissioned coal plants are plentiful but their infrastructure is not going to maintain itself and is probably actively being decommissioned instead. And even if it's not, it's probably not getting any better just sitting there unmaintained. And if anything, nuclear is a very slow moving industry. Ten years is nothing. Ten years from now, a lot of these coal plants will be history.
- epistasis 4y ago
  The expensive part of nuclear isn't the parts that coal plants provide, either. All those miles upon miles of precision welding made to withstand decades of harsh conditions with out a single leak? Coal doesn't need that. Large, high precision concrete pours? Coal doesn't need that. Containment structures? Coal doesn't need that. Nuclear is inherently an extremely complex technology that requires construction techniques that are advanced and expensive. The steam turbines and cooling towers are the only parts that are easy and standard construction with well-contained costs.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If it's a functioning economically viable steam turbine, why not put a gas turbine in front of it and burn hydrogen (or no change if it is already a pulverised coal turbine)?
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    Hydrogen is not an energy source as such. You have to use energy to make it, incurring losses, then incur still more losses when you burn it. It is, at best, an energy storage mechanism, not a source.
BurningFrog 4y ago
This is the core of how the system is broken: > A specific challenge would-be-conversions must face is that the NRC’s standards—both for atmospheric pollution and for the amount of radiological material a reactor can release—are much tighter than federal standards for coal plants.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  But that's not such a challenge. Nuclear power plants don't release atmospheric pollution. As for the radiological material they release, that is generally Tritium; that's in minute quantities, and they have experience dealing with the NRC in this regard.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    I read that as saying this is why coal plants are so popular, we’ve been grading on a curve.
  - ars 4y ago
    He's saying that a coal plant is permitted to (and actually does) release more radiation than a nuclear plant is. Either tighten the standards for coal, or loosen them for nuclear, but the current situation is not logical.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Nuclear power plants don't emit radiation, so it's really not an issue that those standards are tighter as far as I know. We just need to end coal plants, immediately. Coal plants kill 25 people per TWH generated and spread nuclear radiation all over the nearby area. Nuclear plants kill 0.03 people per TWh (between wind and solar), including Chernobyl (killed 4000) and Fukushima (killed 1). [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 4y ago
AIrtemis 4y ago
Could the coal steam turbine system also be reused for deep geothermal? Seems less a regulated space than Nuclear
- DeWilde 4y ago
  Deep geothermal isn't practical as it seems due to the small conductivity of heat for rocks that are cooled off to produce steam.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This is the pitch of Quaise Energy. https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/ Like the nuclear plan, it doesn't really save any money as you can already reuse the transmission lines for solar/battery/energy-intensive-industry.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Why not use the much cheaper option of a H2 or ammonia first stage turbine and somesolar panels?
  - AIrtemis 4y ago
    could you link to the research on that? I am really curious in mapping out all the energy alternatives we could have available (since fusion is not coming anytime )
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      I'd need to dig through my downloads folder a bit, but here is one (very simple) model. Note that lazard is claimed to have an anti-nuclear bias from many. https://www.lazard.com/media/451779/lazards-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen-analysis-vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451779/lazards-levelized-cost-o... https://model.energy https://model.energy allows you to play with the numbers. Note that there are existing solar projects with lower whole sale prices than their 2030 projections in low latitude areas. You can explore different scenarios like 'what if the hyasa 95% efficient electrolyser is commercialisable without needing platinum' or put in figures for ammonia in the h2 electrolyser column (just tweak the h2 capital and efficiency costa until price per kg of the 'hydrogen' is equivalent to a price you like for green ammonia keeping in mind H2 is about 7x the energy per mass) Additionally keep in mind that nuclear lcoe figures tend to have very low discount rates (so compare like for like) and they also ignore build time. Here's a press releasehttps://h2-ccs-network.com/blog/verdagy-hits-lcoh-below-3-00-kg-with-commercial-aem-electrolyzer-module/ https://h2-ccs-network.com/blog/verdagy-hits-lcoh-below-3-00... Note they do not mention energy cost, so grain of salt. $2/kg (including storage) is roughly the magic number where you stop thinking about nuclear at all. $3-5 means you need to think about how little time you can runthe turbine and how much it costs you when it's off. H2 is more efficient and cheaper, Ammonia can be moved and stored more easily (and used in deisel engines as long as you can increase fuel tank size). LMK if you want anything specific and/or you know of a good way to text search a folder full of pdfs on android. Here's a slightly more sceptical take https://www.science-climat-energie.be/2021/07/16/the-present-and-future-green-hydrogen-production-cost/ https://www.science-climat-energie.be/2021/07/16/the-present... Another https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148122014720 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammonia-lcoa/ https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammon... Another optimistic one https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/solr.202100487 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/solr.202100487 Keepin mind it's a lobbying body https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammonia-lcoa/ https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammon...
viksit 4y ago
here to say how much i love that headline :))
- kiawe_fire 4y ago
  I’ll admit, I read the article solely to see if they acknowledge the pun. They don’t, leaving me to wonder if the pun was even intended. Had to be, right?
  - elevaet 4y ago
    Definitely!
radu_floricica 4y ago
> Either option will be an uphill battle. In the United States, any new reactor must gain the blessing of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a process that can take up to five years and drive up costs in a sector already facing rising prices. Only one nuclear power plant is currently under construction in the United States, in eastern Georgia. Which is why building in US is not the best option. There's a deal made last year to build small modular reactors in Romania (by a US company). I think they may actually have been talking about using old coal plants as well. I'm normally skeptical about my country being used in this kind of experiments (I still remember you, Pepsi, with your reusable plastic bottle!), but I'm very much on board with this one.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
I still have yet to hear a solution to the problem of nuclear with human nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla... And its still better then coal.
LatteLazy 4y ago
The real advantage to this is that it bypasses discussion about where to put the plant. It's a nice way of sneaking nuclear into peoples back yards, and likely into the sort of areas that couldn't stop a coal power plant, so wont be able to stop a nuclear one...
- weberer 4y ago
  If there were a coal plant in my back yard, I'd be a lot happier if it were converted to nuclear. The small risk of a nuclear accident is much more preferable to the guaranteed constant mercury and sulfide pollution in the air from coal.
a3w 4y ago
"Fast sodium", a.k.a not the safest way to build a fission reactor. But a good way to build a conventional, water/sodium-based bomb.
- a3w 4y ago
  If you want nuclear: Bill Gates says small reactors will be safer soon. Wait for those. I do hope they use pebble-beds, and are not just "sealed" to be more secure.
huijzer 4y ago
> "But in the future, not all reactors might be so large. Many still-speculative small modular reactor designs might deliver just a few hundred megawatts. (In Hainan, China, Linglong One—the world’s first small modular reactor plant—is now under construction.) Depending on the design, these could be cooled with less water or even air, making them far more feasible fits for coal sites." > "Either option will be an uphill battle. In the United States, any new reactor must gain the blessing of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a process that can take up to five years and drive up costs in a sector already facing rising prices. Only one nuclear power plant is currently under construction in the United States, in eastern Georgia." The article completely seems to miss the existence of NuScale. NuScale SMRs design has already been approved by the NRC [1, 2]. [1]: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-029.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-... [2]: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-certifies-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-design-SMR-nuclear-us/628519/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-certifies-nuscale-small...
jollyllama 4y ago
There have been nuclear power plants going offline in my state in recent years, due to age and cheap fossil fuels. Which is better, retrofitting old nuke plants, or converting old coal plants? I would imagine the former.
sul_tasto 4y ago
no pun intended

141 points by SongofEarth 4y ago

Maybe, but not until the permitting gets fixed for small nuclear plants. It took NuScale over $1 billion dollars to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to okay its design. And it hasn’t built an small reactor that is even operating yet. Some of these have to get built before we can say whether they can go at old coal plants.

epistasis 4y ago
$1B for the design of a power source that is going to scale, at a minimum level of success, to 10s to 100s of GW, isn't that much. So IMHO the scale of power that nuclear needs to operate at in order to be efficient, $1B doesn't seem like much. Nonetheless, where did that cost come from? Does it really take that many hours of engineering? Is there a $950M payment to the regulators to evaluate the design?
- zbrozek 4y ago
  The NRC bills hourly.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I'm not sure if you are joking, but just in case if not... A 100 person team working for 4 years at $200/hour is only $160M. Really curious how a billion dollar could be spent on something like this.
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-362 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-362
      - epistasis 4y ago
        I've read about a dozen pages of this report and I'm no closer to understanding what's going on. I care about this working well, but definitely don't care enough to wade through a seemingly tangentially related report. My problem with nuclear, besides it seeming to be an outdated tech, is that proponents seem to have an extremely shallow understanding of the tech and the difficulties it faces. I find that I, a mere amateur just poking into energy as an hobby, often know an order of magnitude more than any proponent I've ever encountered. And the more I poke into the details on my own, the more convinced I am that nuclear is a terrible technology without a future. It's time for somebody with knowledge to make the case to me, rather than me doing more and more homework that entrenches my existing dim view of nuclear. But I just need to find someone who advocates for nuclear who has deeper knowledge and can make that case.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rmason 4y ago

I like the fact that the Greens are finally considering nuclear. One other option is geothermal. Most areas of the United States can reach geothermal by drilling 300-800 feet down. Using traditional drilling techniques this is not economically feasible. But there's a company using MIT research to drill using what's called millimeter waves to blast through the rock. The company commercializing the MIT research is called https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/ Quaise Energy doesn't sell drilling equipment but instead they sell the end product of steam. They plan on locating next to say a coal plant and then feeding steam to the plants turbines. The company raised a $52 million dollar Series A this summer. https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628 https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628 The only negative from this type of drilling is localized small earthquakes similar to those created from fracking. So there will be opponents, but nowhere near the number of nuclear critics. There should also be a much quicker (and cheaper) approval process than nuclear.

chii 4y ago
> I like the fact that the Greens are finally considering nuclear. it's more likely that the electorate is now finally capable of accepting nuclear. The greens are merely trying to get votes and attempt to make their policies match what their electorates would vote for. I think the previous fear about nuclear is mostly misinformed, and bad PR from high profile accidents isn't helping. Nuclear is fairly clean, cheap, and available. We really should consider it as a viable source for the long term future.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Except it’s not remotely cheap. Guaranteeing rates on new build nuclear is like 6x more expensive than wind resources and at least 4x higher than say combined cycle natural gas. If the new reactor at Hinkley is ever completed, it’s going to cost over $0.15/kWh wholesale which is more than I’m paying retail at the moment.
  - tcoff91 4y ago
    Man I’m paying 0.33 to $0.52 per kWh. I’d love to pay 0.15

jillesvangurp 4y ago

As the article mentions towards the end, just because it's technically feasible does not mean a lot of coal plants will be converted to nuclear. Fundamentally this is about reducing cost. The question is if it is enough. Nuclear plants are expensive and making them slightly less expensive helps. But they might still be too expensive overall to make it worth the trouble, Also, time is a factor. A lot of coal plants have already been decommissioned and more are going offline in the next few years. Mothballed/decommissioned coal plants are plentiful but their infrastructure is not going to maintain itself and is probably actively being decommissioned instead. And even if it's not, it's probably not getting any better just sitting there unmaintained. And if anything, nuclear is a very slow moving industry. Ten years is nothing. Ten years from now, a lot of these coal plants will be history.

epistasis 4y ago
The expensive part of nuclear isn't the parts that coal plants provide, either. All those miles upon miles of precision welding made to withstand decades of harsh conditions with out a single leak? Coal doesn't need that. Large, high precision concrete pours? Coal doesn't need that. Containment structures? Coal doesn't need that. Nuclear is inherently an extremely complex technology that requires construction techniques that are advanced and expensive. The steam turbines and cooling towers are the only parts that are easy and standard construction with well-contained costs.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
If it's a functioning economically viable steam turbine, why not put a gas turbine in front of it and burn hydrogen (or no change if it is already a pulverised coal turbine)?
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  Hydrogen is not an energy source as such. You have to use energy to make it, incurring losses, then incur still more losses when you burn it. It is, at best, an energy storage mechanism, not a source.

BurningFrog 4y ago

This is the core of how the system is broken: > A specific challenge would-be-conversions must face is that the NRC’s standards—both for atmospheric pollution and for the amount of radiological material a reactor can release—are much tighter than federal standards for coal plants.

credit_guy 4y ago
But that's not such a challenge. Nuclear power plants don't release atmospheric pollution. As for the radiological material they release, that is generally Tritium; that's in minute quantities, and they have experience dealing with the NRC in this regard.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  I read that as saying this is why coal plants are so popular, we’ve been grading on a curve.
- ars 4y ago
  He's saying that a coal plant is permitted to (and actually does) release more radiation than a nuclear plant is. Either tighten the standards for coal, or loosen them for nuclear, but the current situation is not logical.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Nuclear power plants don't emit radiation, so it's really not an issue that those standards are tighter as far as I know. We just need to end coal plants, immediately. Coal plants kill 25 people per TWH generated and spread nuclear radiation all over the nearby area. Nuclear plants kill 0.03 people per TWh (between wind and solar), including Chernobyl (killed 4000) and Fukushima (killed 1). [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
4y ago

AIrtemis 4y ago

Could the coal steam turbine system also be reused for deep geothermal? Seems less a regulated space than Nuclear

DeWilde 4y ago
Deep geothermal isn't practical as it seems due to the small conductivity of heat for rocks that are cooled off to produce steam.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This is the pitch of Quaise Energy. https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/ Like the nuclear plan, it doesn't really save any money as you can already reuse the transmission lines for solar/battery/energy-intensive-industry.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Why not use the much cheaper option of a H2 or ammonia first stage turbine and somesolar panels?
- AIrtemis 4y ago
  could you link to the research on that? I am really curious in mapping out all the energy alternatives we could have available (since fusion is not coming anytime )
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    I'd need to dig through my downloads folder a bit, but here is one (very simple) model. Note that lazard is claimed to have an anti-nuclear bias from many. https://www.lazard.com/media/451779/lazards-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen-analysis-vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451779/lazards-levelized-cost-o... https://model.energy https://model.energy allows you to play with the numbers. Note that there are existing solar projects with lower whole sale prices than their 2030 projections in low latitude areas. You can explore different scenarios like 'what if the hyasa 95% efficient electrolyser is commercialisable without needing platinum' or put in figures for ammonia in the h2 electrolyser column (just tweak the h2 capital and efficiency costa until price per kg of the 'hydrogen' is equivalent to a price you like for green ammonia keeping in mind H2 is about 7x the energy per mass) Additionally keep in mind that nuclear lcoe figures tend to have very low discount rates (so compare like for like) and they also ignore build time. Here's a press releasehttps://h2-ccs-network.com/blog/verdagy-hits-lcoh-below-3-00-kg-with-commercial-aem-electrolyzer-module/ https://h2-ccs-network.com/blog/verdagy-hits-lcoh-below-3-00... Note they do not mention energy cost, so grain of salt. $2/kg (including storage) is roughly the magic number where you stop thinking about nuclear at all. $3-5 means you need to think about how little time you can runthe turbine and how much it costs you when it's off. H2 is more efficient and cheaper, Ammonia can be moved and stored more easily (and used in deisel engines as long as you can increase fuel tank size). LMK if you want anything specific and/or you know of a good way to text search a folder full of pdfs on android. Here's a slightly more sceptical take https://www.science-climat-energie.be/2021/07/16/the-present-and-future-green-hydrogen-production-cost/ https://www.science-climat-energie.be/2021/07/16/the-present... Another https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148122014720 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammonia-lcoa/ https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammon... Another optimistic one https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/solr.202100487 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/solr.202100487 Keepin mind it's a lobbying body https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammonia-lcoa/ https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/topics/levelized-cost-of-ammon...

viksit 4y ago

here to say how much i love that headline :))

kiawe_fire 4y ago
I’ll admit, I read the article solely to see if they acknowledge the pun. They don’t, leaving me to wonder if the pun was even intended. Had to be, right?
- elevaet 4y ago
  Definitely!

radu_floricica 4y ago

> Either option will be an uphill battle. In the United States, any new reactor must gain the blessing of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a process that can take up to five years and drive up costs in a sector already facing rising prices. Only one nuclear power plant is currently under construction in the United States, in eastern Georgia. Which is why building in US is not the best option. There's a deal made last year to build small modular reactors in Romania (by a US company). I think they may actually have been talking about using old coal plants as well. I'm normally skeptical about my country being used in this kind of experiments (I still remember you, Pepsi, with your reusable plastic bottle!), but I'm very much on board with this one.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

I still have yet to hear a solution to the problem of nuclear with human nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla... And its still better then coal.

LatteLazy 4y ago

The real advantage to this is that it bypasses discussion about where to put the plant. It's a nice way of sneaking nuclear into peoples back yards, and likely into the sort of areas that couldn't stop a coal power plant, so wont be able to stop a nuclear one...

weberer 4y ago
If there were a coal plant in my back yard, I'd be a lot happier if it were converted to nuclear. The small risk of a nuclear accident is much more preferable to the guaranteed constant mercury and sulfide pollution in the air from coal.

a3w 4y ago

"Fast sodium", a.k.a not the safest way to build a fission reactor. But a good way to build a conventional, water/sodium-based bomb.

a3w 4y ago
If you want nuclear: Bill Gates says small reactors will be safer soon. Wait for those. I do hope they use pebble-beds, and are not just "sealed" to be more secure.

huijzer 4y ago

> "But in the future, not all reactors might be so large. Many still-speculative small modular reactor designs might deliver just a few hundred megawatts. (In Hainan, China, Linglong One—the world’s first small modular reactor plant—is now under construction.) Depending on the design, these could be cooled with less water or even air, making them far more feasible fits for coal sites." > "Either option will be an uphill battle. In the United States, any new reactor must gain the blessing of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a process that can take up to five years and drive up costs in a sector already facing rising prices. Only one nuclear power plant is currently under construction in the United States, in eastern Georgia." The article completely seems to miss the existence of NuScale. NuScale SMRs design has already been approved by the NRC [1, 2]. [1]: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-029.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-... [2]: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-certifies-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-design-SMR-nuclear-us/628519/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-certifies-nuscale-small...

jollyllama 4y ago

There have been nuclear power plants going offline in my state in recent years, due to age and cheap fossil fuels. Which is better, retrofitting old nuke plants, or converting old coal plants? I would imagine the former.

sul_tasto 4y ago

no pun intended