7 ms·

That is incredible! If this project actually went into production, we would be living in a very different world right now...

Mistletoe 3y ago
People always say this, but if it was so great wouldn’t someone have bought some? The money never seems to work out.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  There were at least some confounding factors beyond how good of an idea this was. The primary expected electricity customer was oil refineries off the New Jersey coast. The Atlantic Generating Station was to be the first of these power plants. But after the 1973 oil shocks, oil refinery energy demand fell more than expected. By the time things were looking up again, Three Mile Island happened in 1979 and the general sentiment was turning against nuclear.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    The primary thing that happened in the 1970s to ruin the US market for nuclear was PURPA, the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act. This act began the opening of US electricity markets to non-utility providers. It turned out there was very large potential for this: cogeneration, and just low overhead fossil generation, especially as natural gas became seen as more abundant and combustion turbines improved. Those oil refineries you mention became prime targets for cogeneration. Instead of burning fuel to provide process heat (for distillation, for example), a refinery could instead add a combustion turbine topping cycle ahead of that and produce electric power at near 100% marginal efficiency. This reflects the large second law losses involved in burning a fuel to produce relatively low temperature process heat. Basically any industrial process that used low or moderate temperature process heat could become a source of electric power via cogeneration after PURPA was enacted.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      Interesting comment! But wouldn't swapping in a nuclear reactor allow for the same cogeneration setup? So it would be still be about the cost of the fuel they're burning versus the cost of managing a nuclear reactor.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        Combustion turbines operate at a much higher temperature (as much as 1300 C) than a nuclear reactor, especially a LWR (about 325 C), so the exhaust temperature can be much higher. Also, a turbine is much cheaper: a simple cycle combustion turbine is maybe $500/kW(e), vs. perhaps 20x that for a NPP. The reason a combustion turbine can be so hot is that the heat is produced in the working fluid itself, by a chemical reaction. There is no need to conduct that heat from a solid material at higher temperature. All the solid parts that might be heated by the gas can be cooled by actively flowing a cooler fluid through them (air, steam).
        mindslight 3y ago
        But if the main thing they want is low temperature process heat, then the specific method of generating electricity shouldn't actually matter? NPPs also produce electricity plus lower temperature 'waste' heat. Unless the waste heat put out by the NPP is too low temperature to be used for process heat? Or the real advantage is that the refineries ramped up their electricity generation (turning waste fractions into electricity), with the process heat becoming a secondary concern?
        pfdietz 3y ago
        Direct use of nuclear heat had nothing to do with PURPA. PURPA wouldn't have made it more likely to be considered, since it wasn't putting power onto the grid. If nuclear wasn't being used for industrial heat before that, it wouldn't suddenly have become reasonable afterwards. Instead, PURPA would have made that less likely, since it would have improved the economics of the competing technology of burning fuels for process heat (since a valuable and saleable additional product, power at very high marginal efficiency, could now be produced and sold to the grid.) There is the question of why nuclear had not and has not penetrated the market for industrial heat. I suspect it has something to do with nuclear not scaling down well, not being suited to industrial applications that may require more flexibility, and concerns about nuclear requirements bleeding over into design and operation of otherwise non-nuclear industrial processes. Where will process heat come from in the future? Possibly heat pumps. The thermal energy from these (or from resistive heaters, at high temperature) is much cheaper to store, per unit of energy, than electrical energy in batteries, so this would provide a large, cheap source of dispatchable demand to ease renewable integration.
- Certhas 3y ago
  Also: Renewables have downsides, but they are vastly cheaper and more proven. There is no reason to assume that the downsides of various other techs are in any way more manageable. (And ironically some of the solutions proposed for the downsides of nuclear are also what you need for renewables, i.e. storage to maximize use of expensive infrastructure with low opex.)
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > And ironically some of the solutions proposed for the downsides of nuclear are also what you need for renewables, i.e. storage to maximize use of expensive infrastructure with low opex. It's exhausting to see this claim see the light so often, despite being debunked so frequently. Nuclear doesn't require storage. Some people claim that economies could be made with storage because then you wouldn't need to build production equivalent to 100% of your peak consumption. The dishonest discourse happens when renewables proponent claim that this small potential optimization means nuclear needs storage just as much as renewables do. Actually, losing your power source is not equivalent to shaving a few %s of budget. This idea also completely ignores the fact that power grids don't optimize for efficiency, but for stability. We want redundant production, and the ability to move as many cursors as possible on the grid, in order to balance for issues. The ability to ramp up a power plant isn't just useful to produce peak load, it also helps mitigating e.g. losing a power line or a power transformer.
    - Gwypaas 3y ago
      Assume a capacity factor of 50% then to handle peak loads? Now the nuclear costs $240-440/MWh. That is ridiculous costs, worse than Europe during the last winters Russian war induced gas crisis. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
      - pyrale 3y ago
        It's hard to give numbers for 100% nuclear since no one does that, but yes, France has load factors between 60 and 80% depending on the reactor type. https://www.iaea.org/fr/newscenter/news/contribution-du-nucleaire-a-la-securite-energetique-en-augmentant-la-production-delectricite-en-2021 https://www.iaea.org/fr/newscenter/news/contribution-du-nucl... The report you quote already cites load factor around 90% for new builds, a 50% load factor wouldn't double the costs. That being said, 90% load factor for a grid with a high share of nuclear is probably extremely optimistic. The reason such high capacity factors can be reached in countries that have a low nuclear share is that nuclear has an extremely low marginal cost, and is always picked over plants that require fuel.
- zo1 3y ago
  I doubt it was the money that killed this. Probably regulatory and environmental concerns. Imagine the headlines and phrasing of news articles. Instead we got this crap that is a floating barge of environmental ruin: https://karpowership.com/en/global-presence https://karpowership.com/en/global-presence Notice how it's only been installed in 3rd world countries.
  - kortex 3y ago
    Wow they really bury the lede on what fuel they run on. They say "dual fuel" but don't say which those fuel are, but external searching suggests natural gas or low-sulfur heavy fuel oil. Not sulfur-free, so I'm sure these are great for emissions.
  - acidburnNSA 3y ago
    You might think that, but OPS went through an astounding amount of regulatory review. They got an actual license from the NRC to build the first 8. This article goes into detail of you have access: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/05/12/the-atlantic-generating-station https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/05/12/the-atlantic-g...

Mistletoe 3y ago

People always say this, but if it was so great wouldn’t someone have bought some? The money never seems to work out.

acidburnNSA 3y ago
There were at least some confounding factors beyond how good of an idea this was. The primary expected electricity customer was oil refineries off the New Jersey coast. The Atlantic Generating Station was to be the first of these power plants. But after the 1973 oil shocks, oil refinery energy demand fell more than expected. By the time things were looking up again, Three Mile Island happened in 1979 and the general sentiment was turning against nuclear.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  The primary thing that happened in the 1970s to ruin the US market for nuclear was PURPA, the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act. This act began the opening of US electricity markets to non-utility providers. It turned out there was very large potential for this: cogeneration, and just low overhead fossil generation, especially as natural gas became seen as more abundant and combustion turbines improved. Those oil refineries you mention became prime targets for cogeneration. Instead of burning fuel to provide process heat (for distillation, for example), a refinery could instead add a combustion turbine topping cycle ahead of that and produce electric power at near 100% marginal efficiency. This reflects the large second law losses involved in burning a fuel to produce relatively low temperature process heat. Basically any industrial process that used low or moderate temperature process heat could become a source of electric power via cogeneration after PURPA was enacted.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Interesting comment! But wouldn't swapping in a nuclear reactor allow for the same cogeneration setup? So it would be still be about the cost of the fuel they're burning versus the cost of managing a nuclear reactor.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Combustion turbines operate at a much higher temperature (as much as 1300 C) than a nuclear reactor, especially a LWR (about 325 C), so the exhaust temperature can be much higher. Also, a turbine is much cheaper: a simple cycle combustion turbine is maybe $500/kW(e), vs. perhaps 20x that for a NPP. The reason a combustion turbine can be so hot is that the heat is produced in the working fluid itself, by a chemical reaction. There is no need to conduct that heat from a solid material at higher temperature. All the solid parts that might be heated by the gas can be cooled by actively flowing a cooler fluid through them (air, steam).
      - mindslight 3y ago
        But if the main thing they want is low temperature process heat, then the specific method of generating electricity shouldn't actually matter? NPPs also produce electricity plus lower temperature 'waste' heat. Unless the waste heat put out by the NPP is too low temperature to be used for process heat? Or the real advantage is that the refineries ramped up their electricity generation (turning waste fractions into electricity), with the process heat becoming a secondary concern?
        pfdietz 3y ago
        Direct use of nuclear heat had nothing to do with PURPA. PURPA wouldn't have made it more likely to be considered, since it wasn't putting power onto the grid. If nuclear wasn't being used for industrial heat before that, it wouldn't suddenly have become reasonable afterwards. Instead, PURPA would have made that less likely, since it would have improved the economics of the competing technology of burning fuels for process heat (since a valuable and saleable additional product, power at very high marginal efficiency, could now be produced and sold to the grid.) There is the question of why nuclear had not and has not penetrated the market for industrial heat. I suspect it has something to do with nuclear not scaling down well, not being suited to industrial applications that may require more flexibility, and concerns about nuclear requirements bleeding over into design and operation of otherwise non-nuclear industrial processes. Where will process heat come from in the future? Possibly heat pumps. The thermal energy from these (or from resistive heaters, at high temperature) is much cheaper to store, per unit of energy, than electrical energy in batteries, so this would provide a large, cheap source of dispatchable demand to ease renewable integration.
Certhas 3y ago
Also: Renewables have downsides, but they are vastly cheaper and more proven. There is no reason to assume that the downsides of various other techs are in any way more manageable. (And ironically some of the solutions proposed for the downsides of nuclear are also what you need for renewables, i.e. storage to maximize use of expensive infrastructure with low opex.)
- pyrale 3y ago
  > And ironically some of the solutions proposed for the downsides of nuclear are also what you need for renewables, i.e. storage to maximize use of expensive infrastructure with low opex. It's exhausting to see this claim see the light so often, despite being debunked so frequently. Nuclear doesn't require storage. Some people claim that economies could be made with storage because then you wouldn't need to build production equivalent to 100% of your peak consumption. The dishonest discourse happens when renewables proponent claim that this small potential optimization means nuclear needs storage just as much as renewables do. Actually, losing your power source is not equivalent to shaving a few %s of budget. This idea also completely ignores the fact that power grids don't optimize for efficiency, but for stability. We want redundant production, and the ability to move as many cursors as possible on the grid, in order to balance for issues. The ability to ramp up a power plant isn't just useful to produce peak load, it also helps mitigating e.g. losing a power line or a power transformer.
  - Gwypaas 3y ago
    Assume a capacity factor of 50% then to handle peak loads? Now the nuclear costs $240-440/MWh. That is ridiculous costs, worse than Europe during the last winters Russian war induced gas crisis. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
    - pyrale 3y ago
      It's hard to give numbers for 100% nuclear since no one does that, but yes, France has load factors between 60 and 80% depending on the reactor type. https://www.iaea.org/fr/newscenter/news/contribution-du-nucleaire-a-la-securite-energetique-en-augmentant-la-production-delectricite-en-2021 https://www.iaea.org/fr/newscenter/news/contribution-du-nucl... The report you quote already cites load factor around 90% for new builds, a 50% load factor wouldn't double the costs. That being said, 90% load factor for a grid with a high share of nuclear is probably extremely optimistic. The reason such high capacity factors can be reached in countries that have a low nuclear share is that nuclear has an extremely low marginal cost, and is always picked over plants that require fuel.
zo1 3y ago
I doubt it was the money that killed this. Probably regulatory and environmental concerns. Imagine the headlines and phrasing of news articles. Instead we got this crap that is a floating barge of environmental ruin: https://karpowership.com/en/global-presence https://karpowership.com/en/global-presence Notice how it's only been installed in 3rd world countries.
- kortex 3y ago
  Wow they really bury the lede on what fuel they run on. They say "dual fuel" but don't say which those fuel are, but external searching suggests natural gas or low-sulfur heavy fuel oil. Not sulfur-free, so I'm sure these are great for emissions.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  You might think that, but OPS went through an astounding amount of regulatory review. They got an actual license from the NRC to build the first 8. This article goes into detail of you have access: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/05/12/the-atlantic-generating-station https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/05/12/the-atlantic-g...