4 ms·

*could be the last of its kind built in the US

by ortusdux 4y ago

manfre 4y ago
Hard to tell if it's purely for the clickbait or leaning heavily on shortening the title.
- wesoff 4y ago
  Headlines limited to ~70 characters.
_hcuq 4y ago
Thanks. Saved me a click.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nosianu 4y ago
The article further explains why that may not work out. To quote: > the industry is betting on advanced nuclear reactors to save the day. > It’s a bad bet. The main points: > The advanced and small modular reactors (SMRs) under development face a raft of economic, regulatory, technological and temporal risks. and > The advanced reactor closest to market in the U.S. is being developed by NuScale, which has a nonbinding agreement to build a first-of-its-kind SMR project in Idaho. The company has already raised its projected power cost from $58 per megawatt-hour to $89, even though it’s still years away from even beginning construction. and > Advanced reactors such as TerraPower’s Natrium, which are significantly different in design from existing light-water reactors, face an even steeper regulatory climb. And they’ll have to contend with broken or nonexistent supply chains because the more highly concentrated uranium fuels used by most advanced reactors are currently unavailable in large quantities outside of Russia. Which leads to this summary at the end: > Regardless of rosy messaging from DOE and the industry, it’s almost certain that Vogtle 3 and 4 are going to be the last big nuclear reactors coming online in the U.S. for a long time.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Yeah here in Holland they have the same pipe dream. They want to start new reactors rise should come online by 2040, delays obviously not included. It's a big bullet point for the hard right party VVD that think this way they can continue business as usual. But it'll come way too late for that. All the hard choices will already have been made by that. I'm sure their buddy's corporations will have some nice pork from it though. Such prestige projects always tend to double their budget at least. And then we have the fuel, waste storage and the cleanup which are usually not even factored into the cost but absorbed by society.
  - belorn 4y ago
    We will see in 2040 if countries who made a different decision has lower carbon footprint. There is seemingly a lot of countries betting that green hydrogen will become energy storage solution in 20-30-50 years, and thus they can use natural gas/coal while waiting and continue with business as usual. Only time will tell which bets in the energy grid was good and which was bad for the environment. The last bet that many countries did on buying natural gas from Russia ended up being quite bad for Europe.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      Hydrogen is just as much of a pipe dream IMO. Producing, compressing is all very inefficient and it leaks through its tanks quickly. Which is a real big problem not only because of the energy wasted but because it's a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 is! The bet on buying natural gas was a bad one for the environment for the start obviously, no matter whom we bought it from.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        There's a lot of bad faith pearl clutching over hydrogen, but industry already makes and uses 700 cubic kilometers (if measured at STP) of the gas each year, so obviously the problem of manipulating it is solvable. I read that the cost of a hydrogen pipeline might be about 8% higher than the cost of a natural gas pipeline, per unit of energy transportation capacity.
megaman821 4y ago
It could easily be the last of its generation and its size built in the US. Is there any non-SMR on the horizon?
melling 4y ago
Yes, next comes Gen-4 reactors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  2040? 2050? Which problem are we solving?
  - melling 4y ago
    From the SAME sentence: “suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030”
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Why did you skip half the sentance? > The first commercial plants are not expected before 2040–2050,[3] although the World Nuclear Association in 2015 suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030.[4] An optimistic 2030 from 8 years ago, with about zero progress to date.
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        The US shouldn't have shut down the FFTF. Had we not shut down advanced reactor development we could be 15-20 years ahead of where we are. Talk about Gen 4 reactors started around 2000, test reactors and development projects for Gen 4 reactors are going into high gear. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-s... It would be nice if these were coming online in the next 10 years but don't think our need for energy suddenly expires in 2030 or that we'll be completely happy with renewables by 2040.
        Andrex 4y ago
        We'd be 15-20 years further down a dead-end, possibly.
_hypx 4y ago
I'm going to come out and say, not even the last of its kind. Support for nuclear power is directly proportional to real, intellectually motivated support for clean energy (this is not related to the people that make dumb protests). And as that continues, we will see more conventional nuclear reactors being built.
- joseph_grobbles 4y ago
  Nuclear is catastrophically expensive. Nuclear stagnated not because of those "dumb protests", but because economically it turned out that they made very little sense. Projects always went massively over budget, and then had a lifespan cost multiples idealist notions. Are they expensive because of overbearing safety requirements? Partly, sure. On the flip side, Fukushima has now cost hundreds and hundreds of billions in direct costs. If nuclear power plants didn't have a civil exemption where governments bore the potential liability of damage (which is almost infinite), they would be unbuildable.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    And yet still cheaper than doing nothing. Same is true of half-solutions or pretend solutions. In reality nuclear is more than cheap enough to do the job. If upfront costs is really an issue, then we should subsidize it. And even with all nuclear disasters included, it is still cheap enough to do the job. If it is uninsurable, then government should insure it. Again, still cheaper than anything else.
Zigurd 4y ago
i recently had a VC in a couple new gen reactor companies call me a Negative Nancy. I'm not. I follow the developments. There is one venture, TerraPower that isn't just making another run at fast or pebble bed reactors, generally at a smaller scale. Only TerraPower has the vast risk capital backing needed to try what they are doing, but even they might license a technology to get to market sooner than they can by developing their TWR. It seems like PBRs have the most readily fixable problems, but even those are probably decades away from putting power on the grid. I would bet a number of the venture funded reactors will die of a "liquidity mismatch" with their investors. Some appear to be leaning on developing technologies and patents in anticipation of encountering that problem.

*could be the last of its kind built in the US

manfre 4y ago

Hard to tell if it's purely for the clickbait or leaning heavily on shortening the title.

wesoff 4y ago
Headlines limited to ~70 characters.

_hcuq 4y ago

Thanks. Saved me a click.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nosianu 4y ago

The article further explains why that may not work out. To quote: > the industry is betting on advanced nuclear reactors to save the day. > It’s a bad bet. The main points: > The advanced and small modular reactors (SMRs) under development face a raft of economic, regulatory, technological and temporal risks. and > The advanced reactor closest to market in the U.S. is being developed by NuScale, which has a nonbinding agreement to build a first-of-its-kind SMR project in Idaho. The company has already raised its projected power cost from $58 per megawatt-hour to $89, even though it’s still years away from even beginning construction. and > Advanced reactors such as TerraPower’s Natrium, which are significantly different in design from existing light-water reactors, face an even steeper regulatory climb. And they’ll have to contend with broken or nonexistent supply chains because the more highly concentrated uranium fuels used by most advanced reactors are currently unavailable in large quantities outside of Russia. Which leads to this summary at the end: > Regardless of rosy messaging from DOE and the industry, it’s almost certain that Vogtle 3 and 4 are going to be the last big nuclear reactors coming online in the U.S. for a long time.

wkat4242 4y ago
Yeah here in Holland they have the same pipe dream. They want to start new reactors rise should come online by 2040, delays obviously not included. It's a big bullet point for the hard right party VVD that think this way they can continue business as usual. But it'll come way too late for that. All the hard choices will already have been made by that. I'm sure their buddy's corporations will have some nice pork from it though. Such prestige projects always tend to double their budget at least. And then we have the fuel, waste storage and the cleanup which are usually not even factored into the cost but absorbed by society.
- belorn 4y ago
  We will see in 2040 if countries who made a different decision has lower carbon footprint. There is seemingly a lot of countries betting that green hydrogen will become energy storage solution in 20-30-50 years, and thus they can use natural gas/coal while waiting and continue with business as usual. Only time will tell which bets in the energy grid was good and which was bad for the environment. The last bet that many countries did on buying natural gas from Russia ended up being quite bad for Europe.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Hydrogen is just as much of a pipe dream IMO. Producing, compressing is all very inefficient and it leaks through its tanks quickly. Which is a real big problem not only because of the energy wasted but because it's a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 is! The bet on buying natural gas was a bad one for the environment for the start obviously, no matter whom we bought it from.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      There's a lot of bad faith pearl clutching over hydrogen, but industry already makes and uses 700 cubic kilometers (if measured at STP) of the gas each year, so obviously the problem of manipulating it is solvable. I read that the cost of a hydrogen pipeline might be about 8% higher than the cost of a natural gas pipeline, per unit of energy transportation capacity.

megaman821 4y ago

It could easily be the last of its generation and its size built in the US. Is there any non-SMR on the horizon?

melling 4y ago

Yes, next comes Gen-4 reactors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

Gwypaas 4y ago
2040? 2050? Which problem are we solving?
- melling 4y ago
  From the SAME sentence: “suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030”
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Why did you skip half the sentance? > The first commercial plants are not expected before 2040–2050,[3] although the World Nuclear Association in 2015 suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030.[4] An optimistic 2030 from 8 years ago, with about zero progress to date.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      The US shouldn't have shut down the FFTF. Had we not shut down advanced reactor development we could be 15-20 years ahead of where we are. Talk about Gen 4 reactors started around 2000, test reactors and development projects for Gen 4 reactors are going into high gear. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-s... It would be nice if these were coming online in the next 10 years but don't think our need for energy suddenly expires in 2030 or that we'll be completely happy with renewables by 2040.
      - Andrex 4y ago
        We'd be 15-20 years further down a dead-end, possibly.

_hypx 4y ago

I'm going to come out and say, not even the last of its kind. Support for nuclear power is directly proportional to real, intellectually motivated support for clean energy (this is not related to the people that make dumb protests). And as that continues, we will see more conventional nuclear reactors being built.

joseph_grobbles 4y ago
Nuclear is catastrophically expensive. Nuclear stagnated not because of those "dumb protests", but because economically it turned out that they made very little sense. Projects always went massively over budget, and then had a lifespan cost multiples idealist notions. Are they expensive because of overbearing safety requirements? Partly, sure. On the flip side, Fukushima has now cost hundreds and hundreds of billions in direct costs. If nuclear power plants didn't have a civil exemption where governments bore the potential liability of damage (which is almost infinite), they would be unbuildable.
- _hypx 4y ago
  And yet still cheaper than doing nothing. Same is true of half-solutions or pretend solutions. In reality nuclear is more than cheap enough to do the job. If upfront costs is really an issue, then we should subsidize it. And even with all nuclear disasters included, it is still cheap enough to do the job. If it is uninsurable, then government should insure it. Again, still cheaper than anything else.

Zigurd 4y ago

i recently had a VC in a couple new gen reactor companies call me a Negative Nancy. I'm not. I follow the developments. There is one venture, TerraPower that isn't just making another run at fast or pebble bed reactors, generally at a smaller scale. Only TerraPower has the vast risk capital backing needed to try what they are doing, but even they might license a technology to get to market sooner than they can by developing their TWR. It seems like PBRs have the most readily fixable problems, but even those are probably decades away from putting power on the grid. I would bet a number of the venture funded reactors will die of a "liquidity mismatch" with their investors. Some appear to be leaning on developing technologies and patents in anticipation of encountering that problem.