26 ms·

First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

• scythe 3y ago
  >With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened, and backers started pulling out of the project. I would expect this to continue limiting investment in nuclear, since the outlook for renewables just keeps getting better, and the stumbling blocks are increasingly jejune, like we can't build powerlines fast enough.
  • monero-xmr 3y ago
    I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. I am hopeful that hydrogen can be generated in the desert and moved by hydrogen-truck. Or grid-scale batteries actually exist someday. But if we write off nuclear, a lot of coal and natural gas will be burned.
    • bradbot 3y ago
      Is it possible to transport wind / solar energy across the country via high powered transmission lines?
      • monero-xmr 3y ago
        No, because of physics you lose more power the longer distance it travels. It is also very expensive and difficult to build a network that can move power great distances to where it's needed given how dense the areas that need it are (major cities).
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • baybal2 3y ago
          [dead]
        • bobthepanda 3y ago
          You can certainly get it to places closer, then shift those areas' power to farther away places, etc. China has a large network of HVDC lines. Unfortunately, due to how the Chinese power market works, they're mostly underutilized, even in times of high power stress.
      • threeseed 3y ago
        Sun Cable, formerly known as PowerLink, is an ambitious idea that involves sending solar power via an undersea cable 4,200 kilometers (2,610 miles) from Darwin, Australia, to Singapore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
      • cesarb 3y ago
        Yes, and it's already done today; for instance, in Brazil these high power transmission lines transport wind power from the northeast region (which has lots of wind due to favorable geography) to the southeast region (where most of the electricity consumption is). The total distance is on the order of 2000 km. (A fun fact: many of these high power transmission lines were originally to send power from the hydroelectric power plants in the southeast region to the water-starved northeast region. With the rapid expansion of wind power in the northeast region, the usual direction of the flow has reversed, and it's not uncommon for that wind power to provide over a quarter of the power for the whole country.)
        • monero-xmr 3y ago
          Genuinely curious - why is wind power being cancelled in the North East because it isn't cost competitive, if it's so easy to do? https://apnews.com/article/offshore-wind-orsted-cancellation-biden-new-jersey-3f2ff7c9832210ce862f6e7179fae439 https://apnews.com/article/offshore-wind-orsted-cancellation...
          • kragen 3y ago
            you're confusing the northeast of brazil, which is what cesar was talking about, with the northeast of the usa these are not just in different countries but in vastly different climates in different hemispheres the exact page you linked in your comment literally answers your question: 'due to problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain the amount of tax credits the company wanted. ... High inflation, supply chain disruptions and the rising cost of capital and building materials are making projects more expensive while developers are trying to get the first large U.S. offshore wind farms opened.' maybe you should have read it please don't post random bullshit without respect to whether it's true or not
            • monero-xmr 3y ago
              It’s strange because wind is supposedly overwhelmingly cheaper and better, yet even with tons of government subsidies and political will behind it, it still can’t be built. Wouldn’t something truly more cost effective be easy to build because it’s cheaper? Clearly something doesn’t add up.
      • iamthemonster 3y ago
        Ignore the sibling comment, it is definitely possible, typically via HVDC transmission. With 3% losses per 1000km, HVDC transmission of variable renewable energy is absolutely part of our future energy systems. Wind is especially well suited to this - to a certain extent it's always windy SOMEWHERE whereas with solar you ain't generating any at night, no matter what.
        • cesarb 3y ago
          > whereas with solar you ain't generating any at night, no matter what. Nitpicking: that's only the case for photovoltaics. Solar thermal can store the heat for a while, and keep generating even after the sun goes down.
          • kragen 3y ago
            solar thermal is dead tho just like other thermal power plants, it's too expensive to compete with pv and wind
    • NikkiA 3y ago
      It's never 'not windy' everywhere, plus gravity batteries can store power for days/weeks. Geothermal is also an 'always on' renewable.
      • monero-xmr 3y ago
        If it was this easy, gravity batteries and geothermal would be everywhere and widely used, but they remain niche.
        • voisin 3y ago
          Because there are currently cheaper options. Those are last mile, high hanging fruit solutions.
        • kragen 3y ago
          gravity batteries and geothermal are too expensive to be competitive, except in the niches of pumped hydro, district heating, very polar regions, and stranded assets from before pv and wind got so cheap
      • angiosperm 3y ago
        Incidentally, the only viable gravity batteries known today are pumped hydro reservoirs. On the up side, they only need a hill. On the down side, they need a hill. (Gravity Vault, BTW, is 100% scam.) Suspending weights from ocean platforms (e.g. scrapped supertankers), for flat places with deep sea nearby, should be a viable alternative, but it has not been done yet. Deep cave systems are another, either draining water into them or (for those below the water table) pumping air in. There are a lot of deep caves.
    • pixl97 3y ago
      Deserts don't tend to have much water, so where do you expect to get the hydrogen from? Getting water to the desert takes a pile of energy as it is, and typically once it gets there people want to turn it into plants.
      • kragen 3y ago
        you can use the hydrogen an arbitrarily large number of times once you get it there, and the amount of water needed is so small that this is not a major part of the cost of a grid-scale storage system system even if you have to truck it in, which you don't because even deserts have groundwater please do the math instead of posting random bullshit without respect to whether it's true or not specifically hydrogen is 142 MJ/kg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density and is 1/9 of water by mass, so each kg of water you drill, truck in, or collect from cisterns can store 15.8 MJ as hydrogen. a square meter of 21% efficient pv panel produces 210 watts nameplate, or 52 watts derating for the 25% capacity factor typical for deserts. that is 4.5 MJ per day. the water needed to store the panel's daily production weighs much less than the panel itself and is therefore much cheaper to truck in obviously it would be stupid to truck it back out again unless you decided to do your grid-scale storage somewhere else
      • angiosperm 3y ago
        Deserts all have way more humidity than you could ever need for your hydrogen production. Extracting hydrogen from atmospheric water vapor is a win because it is cleaner than ground water, and has already been vaporized.
    • cesarb 3y ago
      > I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. You are making it harder by adding that "cleanly" requirement, because the simple answer is going to be "natural gas". Unlike coal or nuclear, natural gas power plants are fast to start and stop (hydroelectric is even faster, but depends on favorable geography), so they can be left powered down (using no fuel) until they're necessary; and both overbuilding wind and solar, and spreading them over a wider area, can reduce the amount of time where that natural gas (or hydroelectric) backup is necessary. By requiring a perfect solution (100% clean), you are excluding the 90% solution which is already possible, and which can be incrementally enhanced to get closer and closer to that 100% goal (by adding more wind and solar, by strengthening the interconnections so the generation is spread over a wider area, by sprinkling a bit of storage like batteries or reversible hydroelectric, and even by dynamically reducing consumption when there's a generation shortage).
      • bobthepanda 3y ago
        Reversible hydro is actually pretty possible in much of the world, particularly the US, because all you need is something bowl-shaped at a high elevation. Pumped hydro for the most part needs storage measured in hours or days, and something like the size of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam is overkill. It's also more advantageous than regular hydro, because it does not need to be in the path of flowing water, so you avoid issues with silting up, lack of suitable locations, it's much less environmentally destructive, etc.
      • StillBored 3y ago
        funded by backdoor taxes if texas is any indication. Prop 7 passed, which is basically just shifting the cost of grid reliability from the energy companies to the tax payers. So now you get to pay top dollar for the energy which is 50%+ carbon sources, while also paying to keep the plants operating from the general budget. Its like a wet dream for those energy traders. https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_Proposition_7,_Creation_of_State_Energy_Fund_Amendment_(2023) https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_Proposition_7,_Creation_of_Sta...
      • camel_gopher 3y ago
        The problem with this 90% solution is that the more renewables are added, the more natural gas capacity is required to cover the capacity. Good problem for the natural gas industry. Going clean with nuclear isn’t cheap right now, and it shouldn’t be. It wasn’t at the start of renewables when solar was expensive. Cheap, reliable, clean; pick two.
    • atoav 3y ago
      The thing about cloudy no wind days is: 1. These are conditions that don't coincidence as often as one would think 2. If they do happen at the same time they are limited to certain places Now the only thing you need to have your solar and wind installations not in one place and make sure it is unlikely enough to have all of them inoperational at once. If you have the proper energy storage and a big enough grid that can balance itself this is totally doable.
    • vegetablepotpie 3y ago
      It’s possible to build mostly renewable grids today with existing technology without nuclear. For example Marin Clean Energy generates over 90% of its energy from carbon free sources [1]. Storage and batteries are the key. Although lithium ion has limitations in the use case of long term discharge and storage, new chemistries are becoming commercially available that are appropriate for grid scale power. Iron Air batteries are made out of cheap, common materials, can discharge for up to 100 hours and can store power for long periods of time. Form Energy is building a plant in West Virginia that will produce these batteries and will open in 2024 [2]. Renewables are getting increasingly cheaper. Storage is increasingly more available. The writing is on the wall. Renewables are going to win out and it’s going to happen much sooner than conventional wisdom says. [1] https://www.mcecleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021_MCE_Impact-Report_FINAL.pdf https://www.mcecleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/20... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/form-energy-build-long-duration-battery-plant-west-virginia-2022-12-22/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/form-energy-build-lo...
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      Why would you move the hydrogen? It would be generated near a storage cavern, stored there, then brought up and burned in turbines there. Also, moving hydrogen by truck is a nonstarter. Pipelines are much better.
  • gravitronic 3y ago
    A harder stumbling block compared to nuclear is land mass requirements per Mwh: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
    • threeseed 3y ago
      There are many parts of the world that are uninhabitable because it is too hot. The perfect location for solar installations.
      • fao_ 3y ago
        And the world production of food far exceeds the world's population, yes. The difficulty, as always, is logistics and economics.
      • downvotetruth 3y ago
        You used the word inhabitable. I do not think it means what you think it means.
        • readthenotes1 3y ago
          I think they confused "hot" with "wet"
          • CRConrad 3y ago
            That happens all too often in other contexts too.
        • threeseed 3y ago
          I have edited to mean uninhabitable. e.g. places like outback Australia where it reaches 50C and is a long distance from water.
          • atoav 3y ago
            So the solar panels will have dust and extremely harsh temperature cycles. I don't have any source on that, but I don't think the gained efficiency from the hot sun is going to outweigh the pain (and efficiency loss) from maintaining that efficiency in such an environment.
  • Ericson2314 3y ago
    The problem is those prices are wrong; they are pricing the hard thing. Renewable sells when it wants to, for dirt cheap. And they don't sell when they don't want to. At that point, today, typically natural gas picks up the ball. Other storage is as much in its infancy as SMRs, as is "demand response". The pricing people compare so favorably isn't pure renewables, it's that renewables + fall back fossil mix.
    • matthewdgreen 3y ago
      This is true. And it also highlights what the part I don't understand about these nuclear investments. Absent massive government subsidies, any nuclear-based solution has to compete against the renewable + fossil mix, which is dramatically cheaper than any nuclear solution. That means any nuclear investments will have to operate in a pretty unfavorable market until renewables reach a saturation point (maybe 50% of energy generation or more.) That point is still somewhere in the future. It's not clear when that saturation point will arrives (or if it will), but when that happens today's nuclear investors will also have to "bet" that storage costs won't have dropped to the point where storage eats a big chunk of the market for nuclear generation. And finally: in the course of taking this risky long term bet, nuclear manufacturers will have to build out huge amounts of manufacturing capacity so they can actually meet market demand. Anyway, the whole thing seems like a pretty risky bet. Maybe not such a risky bet if the technology was mature, but very risky given the fact that storage is relatively mature and basically needs a lot of manufacturing and process tweaks to wipe out the benefits of nuclear.
    • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      Renewables have a lumpy profile of energy provided. Nuclear has a flat profile. But demand is also lumpy, so the issues of matching supply to load are basically identical. What do you think France uses all the gas on its grid for? Why do they have excess electricity in the middle of the night that they need to tempt people to use domestically or export to other countries?
      • Ericson2314 3y ago
        My understanding is that newer nuclear is better and ramping up and down? Perhaps SMRs can also help with this too? (e.g. turning on and off individual SMRs as a sort of "dithering".)
• pfdietz 3y ago
  This was entirely foreseeable. Notes from the Feb. 2023 meeting of the Idaho Falls Power Board (one of the utilities in UAMPS, and the place where the reactors would have been built.) https://www.idahofallsidaho.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minute https://www.idahofallsidaho.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minute... NuScale still needed to get costs down by $700 M to reach the promised $89/MWh. Without that, it would be $105/MWh. This is also after federal subsidies. "GM Prairie said that the CFPP would need to come down by 55% to be competitive with the market." "CFPP is not inflation protected because cost increases above projections are borne by the developer which is UAMPS and its members in the project." "GM Prairie commented that he has been to many meetings recently, including CFPP sales meetings and notices that utilities are still not subscribing, but instead wishing the project well. He said it was his opinion that even if the project gets to $89 LCOE and 80% subscribed by November, that it still is not an attractive deal for Idaho Falls [...]." "GM Prairie [...] pointed out that all the big utilities have left the project but the smaller utilities stay in because they are trusting UAMPS." "GM Prairie said [...] that the $89 LCOE is based on 40-50 modules being sold." "GM Prairie said the UAMPS’ resolution states that the project has to come in/or under $89 LCOE and be subscribed at least by 80% and if UAMPS fails to do that, then just one member of the PMC can vote to terminate the project."
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • kragen 3y ago
    note that 89 dollars per megawatt hour is three to five times what solar energy usually costs as i have said before, if small modular reactors were cheaper energy sources than diesel engines, they would power every ship in the navies of the usa, france, the uk, russia, and china, instead of just the aircraft carriers, some of the submarines, and a few other russian ships (and note that diesel engines are too expensive to compete with solar and wind) one day nuclear energy will be cheaper than solar and wind, but for now the humans' manufacturing is too primitive
    • imadierich 3y ago
      [dead]
• 8bitsrule 3y ago
  Nothing has changed since the early days. A helluva complicated and expensive way to boil water. "At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy … This is expensive power, not cheap power as the public has been led to believe." — C. G. Suits, Director of Research, General Electric, who was operating the Hanford reactors, 1951. ( Ref: Power from the Atom - An Appraisal, Nucleonics, Feb. 1951 ) https://www.ieer.org/pubs/atomicmyths.html https://www.ieer.org/pubs/atomicmyths.html Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: https://ieer.org/projects/carbon-free-nuclear-free/ https://ieer.org/projects/carbon-free-nuclear-free/
  • apatheticonion 3y ago
    Turkey is set to get 10% of its grid electricity from the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant [1] The build cost has been 22B (excluding loans) and it will have a capacity of 4456MW meaning it's $4.9/W. On average the cost per Watt for solar is 27 cents (excluding loans and costs for storage) [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkuyu_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkuyu_Nuclear_Power_Plant [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices EDIT: incorrect calculation
    • Retric 3y ago
      That project isn’t finished they are targeting 2026 and hope it’s only ~10% over budget. Your solar numbers are wildly inflated because that’s per watt not per watt hour. Over 2/3 of nuclear power plants costs occur after you build the things. It would be comparable if 22B was the total cost and if nuclear didn’t need ~1,000 full time employees, fuel, decommissioning etc. Those costs delay how quickly you can pay back loans which then drives up how much interest nuclear pays over the plants lifetime. Companies have signed solar power purchase contracts at 2c/kWh. Adding solar redundancy and batteries for 24/7 power is actually more flexible and cheaper than nuclear because you can cheaply follow the demand curve. Meanwhile nuclear power plants need to go offline for multiple weeks every ~2 years and really want to sit at 100% the rest of the time. PS: Even just looking at construction costs is misleading because solar starts producing power so much sooner. You’re paying interest from day 1 of construction not day 1 of operations. So if you take 6 years to build that’s 5 years of interest on the first years construction costs without any revenue. Meanwhile solar’s been producing power for ~5 years and paying down debt.
• sciencesama 3y ago
  Used to work in utah, warren buffet is damn close with the mayor and team and threatened to use his full power if state starts using more renewable energy, he has huge coal mining shares fyi !!
  • kragen 3y ago
    it's news to me that utah's head of state is a mayor i would be surprised if your information about warren's position on renewable energy turns out to be more accurate than your information about how he spells his name https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-19/buffett-s-berkshire-proposes-3-9-billion-wind-solar-project https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-19/buffett-s...
• Retric 3y ago
  The US has actually tried small nuclear reactors before… “All components limited to packages measuring 7.5 by 9 by 20 feet (2.3 m × 2.7 m × 6.1 m) and weighing 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg)” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
• jmclnx 3y ago
  >The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project no longer had enough additional utility partners I cannot help but to think the Fossil Fuel Industry had their hands in this.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • kagakuninja 3y ago
    No, it turns out that SMRs are not yet economically viable, just as us skeptics have been claiming. SMRs are continually hyped by the pro-nuclear crowd online. They aren't cost efficient vs renewables.
    • donny2018 3y ago
      Nuclear tech hasn't had a luxury of having renewables-like subsidies though. Who knows what the prices could have been had nuclear got the same level of subsidies. Nuclear energy (especially fast neutron tech that can use the abundant U-238 and nuclear waste from existing NPPs) isn't getting attention it deserves. Only Russia, China and India are investing in it, but it's neglected in the West because there is no immediate profit to gain from this.
      • kragen 3y ago
        nuclear tech had the biggeet subsidies program in human history in the 01940s and 50s, continuing to a significant extent into the 80s, which is how the humans got it in the first place some historians argue that subsidizing nuclear tech too heavily was a major factor in the collapse of the ussr
        • CRConrad 3y ago
          > 01940s Numbers just aren't written that way. I don't know if you realise it, but that silly affectation is offputting enough to hinder your cause more than help it.
• throw0101b 3y ago
  Ontario announced one GE Hitachi BWRX-300 in December 2022, and three more in July 2023: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-darlington-nuclear-plant-1.6899969 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-darlington-nu... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300 This is in addition to a new large-scale plant: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-new-nuclear-build-1.6897701 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-new-nuclear-bu...
  • ksec 3y ago
    Also much more interested in BWRX300 as well. Old and proven working technology fine tuned. And will continue to get cheaper as they are much more standardised.
  • preisschild 3y ago
    But why build them in Darlington, when there's a big grid that could make use of new CANDU reactors, for which most of the supply chain is from Canada and its higher energy output makes it more competitive? BWRX-300 makes more sense in smaller communities.
    • tonyarkles 3y ago
      One of the perks of building them in Darlington is that the regulatory approval process is simpler since there's already nuclear facilities on site. Saskatchewan is currently going through the site selection and approval process and will be doing that for a while while the BWRX-300 units are going up in Darlington. The build in Darlington and lessons learned will be applied directly to the SK BWRX-300 builds.
    • _aavaa_ 3y ago
      Building them in a new site will make their already questionable economics even more questionable. Too little power for too much fixed cost.
• BasilPH 3y ago
  David Roberts from Volts talked about why he thinks SRMs are overhyped last week. Here's the transcript[^0], but his main points are _(I fed the whole transcript the new GPT-4 128k token model for this)_: - SMRs are not yet delivering on their promised benefits and cost savings due to challenges in scaling and production. - The SMR concept is yet to prove itself with efficient and cost-effective factory-made parts and repeatable construction practices. - Concern exists that the enthusiasm around SMRs could lead to more unfocused subsidies for the nuclear industry without addressing the industry's deeper issues of inefficiency and historical missteps. - SMRs are seen as one option among many for balancing renewable energy, and they should not be considered the only solution. - Their capabilities are mostly theoretical at this stage, and there's uncertainty if they can bridge the gap between their promise and reality in terms of cost and deployment hurdles. - SMRs might receive undue favor over other equally promising technologies for providing firm power. In conclusion, David believes SMRs are getting more attention and investment than warranted by their current capabilities and progress, potentially detracting from other solutions that may offer better returns or efficiency for transitioning to a renewable energy grid. [^0]: https://transcripts.volts.wtf/the-volts-catalyst-pod-crossover-you-didn-t-know-you-were-waiting-for https://transcripts.volts.wtf/the-volts-catalyst-pod-crossov... (starts at around 26:13)
• throw0101b 3y ago
  Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast had an episode on nuclear October 23: > The US is taking a fresh look at nuclear power. After a dearth of construction, and de-commissioning of working nuclear plants, people are talking, yet again, about it as a source of steady, affordable, carbon-free electricity. But of course, nuclear has its drawbacks, particularly on the financial side, as new plants have been plagued by cost over-runs, contributing to utility bankruptcies. So what would need to happen to get the economics working again? On this episode we speak with Mark Nelson, the founder of Radiant Energy Group, to discuss the state of the industry, the state of the technology, and what it would take to bring nuclear back into the mix. * https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/whats-really-standing-in-the-way-of-a-nuclear-rena https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/whats-really-standing-in-the-... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d084PIspUwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d084PIspUwk * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-really-standing-in-the-way-of-a-nuclear-renaissance/id1056200096?i=1000632249980 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-really-standing-...
• Laaas 3y ago
  > The decision to cancel the project followed an update from NuScale this year regarding the cost of building the reactors, which had soared to $9.3 billion from $5.3 billion because of rising interest rates and inflation. Even $5.3B seems very expensive. For reference, (the new Finnish) Olkiluoto-3 was €11 billion, for 1600 MW. The article says 6 * 77 MW = 539 MW! How is it that we've become so bad at building?
  • cykros 3y ago
    OSHA was established in 1970. It didn't exist prior, and it took some time for rules to get more stringent, and for the risks and liabilities it represented to be realized as additional costs.
  • seec 3y ago
    It's that we are bad per se. But there is no money for that anymore. Most of the money goes to bullshit jobs or secondary things that are mostly about enabling the mentioned bullshit jobs. If you look at most western countries almost half the economic output is directed to those things. You really can't build a future when most of the ressource goes to satisfy this and the relentless needs of the elderly who do not even contribute meaningfully. When a lot of your ressource goes to satisfy the ones who are dying, nothing forward looking gets done, it's pretty logical, they are dying they do not have to care. In many countries there is political fragmentation and a lot of unease related to this. Personally, I blame feminism, socialism, and boomers. I know it is not a politically correct opinion, but I think time will tell soon enough. Many recent events substantiate that. My opinion doesn't matter anyway, the reality is that even in France that was a leader and highly successful in nuclear technology; new reactors do not get built or/and take forever. It has nothing to do with skill, it is pretty much a systemic and political problem. Remove the political opinions, remove the feminist bullshit and things will get done. In the meantime, I suggest enjoying the fall, because nothing will happen until it gets so bad there will be no choice.
  • Pat_Murph 3y ago
    We've gotten better at billing than building.
• BasilPH 3y ago
  David Roberts from Volts talked about why he thinks SRMs are overhyped last week. Here's the transcript[^0], but his main points are _(I fed the whole transcript to GPT-4-turbo model for this)_: - SMRs are not yet delivering on their promised benefits and cost savings due to challenges in scaling and production. - The SMR concept is yet to prove itself with efficient and cost-effective factory-made parts and repeatable construction practices. - Concern exists that the enthusiasm around SMRs could lead to more unfocused subsidies for the nuclear industry without addressing the industry's deeper issues of inefficiency and historical missteps. - SMRs are seen as one option among many for balancing renewable energy, and they should not be considered the only solution. - Their capabilities are mostly theoretical at this stage, and there's uncertainty if they can bridge the gap between their promise and reality in terms of cost and deployment hurdles. - SMRs might receive undue favor over other equally promising technologies for providing firm power. In conclusion, David believes SMRs are getting more attention and investment than warranted by their current capabilities and progress, potentially detracting from other solutions that may offer better returns or efficiency for transitioning to a renewable energy grid. [^0]: https://transcripts.volts.wtf/the-volts-catalyst-pod-crossov https://transcripts.volts.wtf/the-volts-catalyst-pod-crossov... (starts at around 26:13)
  • krupan 3y ago
    It feels like most of those bullet points, if not all, could be applied to any fledgling new energy source, or actually any new technology in general. I hope there's more to this analysis than just these bullet points
  • SiempreViernes 3y ago
    That link is just a 404 to me
    • kalleboo 3y ago
      It seems like it's been truncated from https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-voltscatalyst-pod-crossover-you https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-voltscatalyst-pod-crossover-you
  • 3y ago
• javier_e06 3y ago
  The article: By Ivan Penn and Brad Plumer Published Nov. 8, 2023Updated Nov. 9, 2023, 3:42 a.m. ET A developer of small nuclear reactors announced on Wednesday that it was canceling a project that had been widely expected to usher in a new wave of power plants. NuScale Power, a company in Portland, Ore., said it lacked enough subscribers to advance the Carbon-Free Power Project, which had been expected to deliver six of the company’s 77-megawatt reactors. Although more than two dozen utilities had signed up to buy electricity from the reactors, which would be in Idaho, that number fell short of what NuScale said it needed to move forward. The Carbon-Free Power Project was the result of an agreement between NuScale and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, which supplies electricity to public power providers in seven Western states, including California. The project was first proposed in 2014. “This decision is very disappointing given the years of pioneering hard work,” said Mason Baker, chief executive of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems. “We are working closely with NuScale and the U.S. Department of Energy on next steps to wind the project down.” The decision to cancel the project followed an update from NuScale this year regarding the cost of building the reactors, which had soared to $9.3 billion from $5.3 billion because of rising interest rates and inflation. NuScale had needed to triple the number of customers for the Carbon-Free Power Project by February. The company, which also has an agreement to deliver its technology to Romania, told investors that it would repurpose materials developed for the Carbon-Free Power Project for other customers. NuScale’s stock price fell more than 20 percent, to $2.37, in after-hours trading. Its value has declined more than 70 percent in the past 12 months.
• bitter_old_man_ 3y ago
  I'm so glad I left the nuclear industry thirteen years ago! I worked in nuclear power for about eight years. I felt like I was taking crazy pills. There's a strong vein of cognitive dissonance running through the industry relating to its economic viability. Nuclear power has always been the most expensive available energy production method. So every time I hear talking heads say "nuclear power is the only power production method that can be built fast enough to address climate change" my blood starts to boil. Every nuclear power plant in history has been pitched as "sure it's stupid expensive up front, but the power it produces will be too cheap to meter". And then they cost 5x as much and take 5x as long as predicted to be built and also cost more than predicted to operate. But the next generation won't have any of the problems that all previous generations had? It's like listening to silicon valley people rave about AI or humanoid robots or driverless cars. "Sure, the past six generations didn't deliver what they promised, don't worry about that, don't think about that, the next one is going to be amazing!" Goodbye nuclear.
  • codersfocus 3y ago
    Why do areas with nuclear power around the world have cheaper than average electricity costs, then?
    • ViewTrick1002 3y ago
      Because they were built using subsidies. Nuclear has a competitive OPEX cost when the plant has been paid off. We are 50 years from that point for any potential new builds.
    • Kon5ole 3y ago
      >Why do areas with nuclear power around the world have cheaper than average electricity costs, then? Frankly it's because much of the cost of nuclear energy is not labelled "electricity costs" and is instead paid for using general taxes from current and future taxpayers. In the US the defence budget covers some of it for example.
  • ComplexSystems 3y ago
    "It's like listening to silicon valley people rave about AI or humanoid robots or driverless cars." That's a very interesting statement to make, given what's happening right now with AI, humanoid robots and driverless cars.
• pradn 3y ago
  It looks like the biggest problem with nuclear is not the safety or whatnot, it's just that as a civilization, we just can't build them without cost overruns and massive delays. And this is a loss, because we need non-variable energy sources to augment wind/solar/tidal. Perhaps the other way to solve the energy transition is to lean heavily into mass storage of variable energy sources. If you have enough energy storage, you don't need so much of the base energy suppliers like gas/coal/nuclear.
  • thescriptkiddie 3y ago
    This problem isn't confined to nuclear energy either. Just about the only thing our society is still able to build quickly and cheaply are roads.
    • jdechko 3y ago
      Not exactly. I work as a project manager in the transportation field, and I can tell you that inflation has doubled (or more) the cost of several of my projects in the past few years. Most of the increases can be attributed to rising costs, and not necessarily scope changes. Combined with limited funding, the projects continue to get delayed.
  • bluefirebrand 3y ago
    Wonder if it's worth digging into why that's the case. It seems like it's a lot more than just the cost of materials + labour that's the problem.
    • panick21_ 3y ago
      There is lots of research on that for transport infrastructure at least. https://transitcosts.com/ https://transitcosts.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/
    • tomatocracy 3y ago
      There's been some work done on this in the US context (eg [0]) but not really enough. It seems like general large project issues (need to adapt to site specific conditions as they are discovered, difficulty ensuring work stays properly scheduled so that construction workers don't sit idle for large amounts of time, etc.) are a big part, and these are made worse because of the knock on impact when these interact with safety regulations/processes. There's some hope that making designs smaller and more modular might enable less chance of big overspend at a slightly higher expected cost but that's speculation until we actually do it. 0. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512030458X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512...
• jes5199 3y ago
  I think it's time to give up on nuclear. Solar+Wind+Batteries continue to get cheaper. Nuclear doesn't seem to have a detectible learning curve at all
  • chrischattin 3y ago
    No one has done more to harm the environment than environmentalists that advocate against nuclear power.
    • barbazoo 3y ago
      > No one has done more to harm the environment than environmentalists that advocate against nuclear power. I mean we all learn from our mistakes, I surely was against nuclear power when I was young but I think for ok reasons. Now the world is in a worse spot than it was so I changed my mind a little. Still, it's silly to pretend that that caused more "harm to the environment".
    • jes5199 3y ago
      that may be historically true, but today you can build much more KW of solar+batteries than KW of nuclear for the same price. Continuing to advocate for nuclear is throwing away money that could be spent on the green transition.
    • datatrashfire 3y ago
      What about the energy sector and their political allies' 50 year campaign gaslighting the public about the dangers posed by climate change?
  • barbazoo 3y ago
    Solar+Wind+Tides+Hydro+Geothermal+... it's also beautifully decentralized and low risk if done on a local, small, scale.
  • ViewTrick1002 3y ago
    The learning curve has been negative all throughout nuclear powers 70 year lifespan.
• IceHegel 3y ago
  This should not be allowed to happen.
• proee 3y ago
  Musk claims we can run the entire US off a 100 square mile solar arry + battery storage. Does it make economic sense to just start working on this as a country, or is this still too cost prohibitive? Seems like a system that you could upgrade over time as the tech gets better. What are the downsides of such a concept?
  • angiosperm 3y ago
    The right place to stop reading is right after "Musk claims". Somebody told him a 100-mile-square array, i.e. 10,000 square miles, would suffice. Of course you build much smaller farms close to where the power is needed, instead. And, of course, solar farms are being built today. We should build them faster.
• lacrosse_tannin 3y ago
  what do you guys thing about cleaning up the defunct ones? Like the one in San Diego is just going to be there for the next 10000 years?
• naruhodo 3y ago
  This was the poster child for conservative/regressive political forces in Australia. The leader of the Liberal Party (that's Economic Liberalism, but the opposite of social liberalism), Peter Dutton, has been talking up Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), as has Murdoch's "Sky News" (think Fox) and right-wing think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs (think "mouthpiece for mining billionaires"). The Liberal Party had government from 2013 to 2022, and there was nary a peep out of them about nuclear power. The fact of the matter is that it's not economic for Australia to build one of these, for $40 billion, with an estimated delivered cost per MWh of AU$130 (IIRC) when renewables already cost only about $30 per MWh and we have abundant sunshine and wind in Australia. The essence of the right-wing plan is to latch on to a technology that will take a decade or two to come to fruition, to hold back the renewable tide, so that fossil fuel companies can continue to rake in the profits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism [2] https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/right-climate-for-nuclear-power https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/right-climate-for-nuc...
• Fischgericht 3y ago
  There is that small sentence in this report, which basically should end any discussions and disagreements about a come-back of nuclear power: "With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened." No matter if you disregard the problem of storing nuclear waste for a couple thousand years, and disregard that no insurance company in the world will give you insurance for your project, and that from time to time you may cause parts of your country to become uninhabitable, etc etc - it simply longer matters. You just can't beat renewables when it comes to long-term cost. Because they are... well, ...renewable. In Germany, even with the conservative parties spreading FUD and sabotaging projects, we are now covering 50% of our power usage with renewables. Even the worst politics simply could not beat capitalism: Wind and sun provided for free by the Universe simply makes a good business case. Over here, the biggest challenge now is that the NIMBYs are preventing new power transmission lines to get built to be able to distribute from where there is most renewable energy, the north, to where the biggest power consumption is, in the south. If we would quickly build this grid, we could be at 100% renewables in a couple of years. In Germany, Bavaria is NIMBY heaven. They refuse to invest into the grid, wanted to keep running nuclear, but absolutely refused to have nuclear waste storage in their state. Instead they pushed for the states that have 0% nuclear to take their waste. Also, in Germany the power market is regulated that the price must be the same in all parts of Germany. This is why the north is now finally starting to raise their voices because they are subsidizing the expensive nuclear from Bavaria. If we'd just cut the grid and disconnect Bavaria, our energy prices would instantly drop by 30%. Given all that, the tendency in the US of "We want to burn more coal! We want to burn more oil! We want to burn everything we have (with the exception of our forests, they are burning down on their own now)!" from a distance really starts to look silly. Where does that strong desire of having to BURN stuff come from? ;)
• silexia 3y ago
  Nuclear is way overregulated. It is the safest form of power generation by far now, but oil funded environmental groups have demonized it.
  • tstrimple 3y ago
    Ah the classic “Nuclear power is safe! We just need to get rid of these pesky regulations ensuring safety so we can make it cost competitive!” It’s like you’ve never seen companies cutting literally whatever corners they can get away with every chance they think they can get away with it.
• weatherlight 3y ago
  The architect's rendering looks like something from Cities Skylines :)
• JauntTrooper 3y ago
  Can someone explain the appeal of =small= nuclear reactors to me? Are the manufacturing cost savings the article cites really that much of a game changer? I'd love to see us use more nuclear power. I would think =large= power plants would be more efficient though, and would save on things like personnel, security and regulatory costs. I feel like the biggest risks to a nuclear power plant are the tiny chances for catastrophic failure -- terrorism, earthquakes, tsunamis and human error. Having 50x these plants seeded close to population centers seems like it would make it more difficult to protect against these risks. I would also imagine most projects would face NIMBY resistance, which would lead to lots of lawyer fees and lengthy permitting timelines if they even get off the ground. What am I missing?
  • fragmede 3y ago
    There's a certain amount of difficulty in making a nuclear reactor, so going from zero to one (of your specific design of reactor) is going to be very hard. In order for that one to work, there's going to be a ton of mistakes and learning, and after all that, you have one working, very expensive power plant. But because you put your eggs all in one basket, that's basically all you can build for the next few decades. There's no going from 1 -> 10. there's no money, no political will to, and no demand for it, the one plant is just so big. If instead we concentrate on going from 1 -> 10 by building multiple smaller reactors, we get good at building them, and we're forced to productize it just a little bit. Make the machine that makes the machine, as it were. After proving 1 -> 10, then going from 10 -> 100 becomes possible; viable, so other people and places that need it can get one, affordably (well, relatively).
• euroderf 3y ago
  Some years ago it looked like the future of small reactors might be so-called pebble bed modular reactors (PBMR). I wonder what ever happened to them. IIRC the most salient outstanding issue seemed to be that there way no clear way to handle a graphite fire.
• raarts 3y ago
  Interesting video from a Danish Company that claims to be able to produce seacontainer-size thorium reactors by 2028 (1 per day) https://youtu.be/27IntvWo4mo?si=Z4zP8_lI_0ygUNz2 https://youtu.be/27IntvWo4mo?si=Z4zP8_lI_0ygUNz2