47 ms·

First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation

1012 points by ano-ther 3y ago

ano-ther 3y ago
See also: "Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost" https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtle-rates-costs-75c7a413cda3935dd551be9115e88a64 https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
- apengwin 3y ago
  A good start!
- briandear 3y ago
  If we’re worried about cost overruns, then perhaps cancel the California high speed rail boondoggle. That project could buy several nuclear reactors.
  - api 3y ago
    I have a very strong impression that the perpetual money pits of California (rail, the amount spent on homelessness without progress, etc.) aren’t bugs but features… for someone. That money is going into someone’s pocket.
    - icelancer 3y ago
      As usual it's some from Column A and B. Hard to tell sometimes what is graft and what is incompetence.
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
        A little of A, B, and C. A) Idealistic voters with little interest in detail or execution. B) Hard working state employees executing in an ineffective way because they are working on over constrained problems with conflicting and sometime impossible goals. C) A number of opportunists that take advantage of poor rulemaking and bureaucratic disorganization. For what it is worth, I dont think corruption is a major driver of problems, but bad policy detached from the practical considerations. One simple example is SF parks maintenance: The city wants to keep invasive species out, so it has staff to remove them. The city also believes in livable wages, so the workers make >100K. Residents dont like pesticides, so the workers must hand weed. Hand weeding doesnt work, so the City periodically also pays outside consultants to come in and take care of the invasives (with pesticides and low paid workers).
        mlrtime 3y ago
        >The city wants to keep invasive species out... These small examples are extremely frustrating as a tax payer. What is the solution to these examples, or does one just try to ignore it as a price of living in that society?
        s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Frustrating indeed. I don't think there is a quick fix to create a political culture among voters and representatives that cares about fiscal responsibility. One consideration is having a broader tax base so that voters have more skin in the game. For example, taxes in Houston are less progressive than SF, but SF city budget per resident is more than 500% that of Huston.
        zbrozek 3y ago
        How do we get to a more decisive government that doesn't try to make everything a priority (especially things that are at odds with each other)? Is it to reduce direct participation and rely on representation (remove public hearings)? The $1.7M public toilet was a painful example showing how far off the rails we are. Should auditors and controllers have some teeth? What would they be?
    - zbrozek 3y ago
      Our electeds simply don't care what anything costs, and as a result we have (probably) the worst cost disease on the planet.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > electeds simply don't care what anything costs California has a referendum system. That so few referendums focus on cutting costs says something about its voters’ priorities.
        zbrozek 3y ago
        Sure does! That's why I used "electeds" rather than "representatives", to make really clear the connection. On the other hand, the state is losing population on an absolute basis (and relatively even more so against a backdrop of national growth). So some folks are voting with their feet. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I'm free enough to do the same.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > why I used "electeds" rather than "representatives", to make really clear the connection I’m arguing the opposite. The voters have the tools to oppose the state government’s size. That they don’t use them signals support in broad terms.
        aspenmayer 3y ago
        I’d agree with you with the caveat that such public support is mediated by regulatory capture on all sides and from all quarters: outside the government by industry and lobbyists, within the government by elected officials, and adjacent to/despite the government by a public apathetic to such issues and/or voting against its own shared/collective interests in favor of individual interests. Participation in local and state politics even in California is not common beyond voting, which is a low bar to clear. Much of media messaging in the area of referendums is focused on niche issues and special interests, and serves to highlight and promote those issues to convert NIMBYs to YIMBYs or vice-versa on those specific narrow issues. Agreement in broad terms like you mention is hard to achieve due to the difficulty in drafting referendum legislation texts such that they will withstand a challenge by the state attorney general as well as state Supreme Court, as well as having the resulting referendum achieve enough signatures to make it on the ballot and have enough recognition and support by voters to actually pass and become law. One key difference that I do like about the CA referendum process is that laws passed by referendum in California are equal to the state constitution and require 2/3 supermajority in state congress to modify or change, just like the state constitution itself. This avoids many attempts by legislature to foil or spoil the will of the voters’ referendums, in contrast to other state referendum processes which are only considered a law passed by other means and are usually able to be modified by simple majority.
  - solarpunk 3y ago
    Probably best to diversify infrastructure investment across... multiple projects.
  - danans 3y ago
    The difference is that there are many cheaper viable alternatives to the firm power that nuclear provides, including renewables+batteries ($60/MWh and dropping) and enhanced geothermal ($80/MWh and dropping). Heck, even natural gas combined-cycle + carbon capture/storage is cheaper on an LCOE basis (~$60/MWh) than nuclear ($180/MWh and rising) [1]. It would be great if nuclear could be cost competitive for equivalently firm power, but its costs are increasing, not decreasing. In contrast, the only real alternative to air travel for high speed transportation between Northern and Southern CA is high speed rail. The "Hyperloop" has been exposed (charitably) as a failure, and personal vehicle travel (even electrified) is not an equivalent to HSR in a state as big as CA. None of that is to say that the CA HSR project has been well planned/executed or that the costs have been well estimated. But that doesn't obviate the need for high speed ground transport in the state. 1. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... (pages 2 and 31)
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      Oh good grief, not that Lazard "study" again. They took the cost to build Vogtle, which is one of the most or even the most expensive outlier in terms of time/cost overruns of all time, and decided to make that the baseline for "the cost of nuclear power". When the average time to build a nuclear reactor in the world has consistently been around 7.5 years. For the last 50 years, and also for the ones that came online in 2022, lest you think these were just the bygone good old days. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
      - adrianN 3y ago
        Which new nuclear would you suggest instead? Hinkley C will cost about $160/MWh, right in the range given by Lazard.
        mpweiher 3y ago
        I would suggest we look at overall stats instead of isolated examples. Time to construct a nuclear plant takes on average 7.5 years, a number that hasn't really budged in the last 50 years. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi... And since financing (i.e. interest) is the primary cost of nuclear (~50%), time is money. Hinkley and Flamanville are examples of the EPR, a brand new reactor type that is both at the start of its learning curve, always problematic, and also apparently a design that is particularly difficult to build. And both Europe and the US haven't really built any nuclear plants for quite a long time, so the know-how to build them is just not there. Oh, and the regulators sometimes change regulations after parts of the plants have been built so they have to tear down what they have built and start again. These are obviously all solvable problems, and mostly solvable by just building more. The problem is that we didn't build enough. Just build more.
- rjbwork 3y ago
  Problem is that we don't build the damn things anymore, so each one is bespoke and expensive. Ideally we'd keep building them and develop the expertise and make it a more repeatable scalable process. I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".
  - bordercases 3y ago
    Both Ukraine and the Red Sea collapsing has produced ads for uranium mining in Saskatchewan, Canada. These kinds of ads don't run without government support; since public opinion is often extremely uninformed, I expect the pivot to nuclear to happen with or without pundits vocalizing their views.
  - corethree 3y ago
    We don't really build anything anymore. The "expertise" has transferred to Asia. Anything we build we'll build worse, slower and more expensive. Except for airplanes that's one of the few things we still do better. My overall point is I highly doubt nuclear powerplants will be built here in any major way. Will it happen in Asia? Far more likely.
    - bordercases 3y ago
      According to my sources, Hong Kong has an engineer shortage. They still want the je ne-sais quoi quality of North American trained engineers.
      - corethree 3y ago
        I would say Hong Kong doesn't illustrate the overall story.
    - mayama 3y ago
      To be specific it's airplane engines, 5th gen turbofan engines. China started building COMAC airplanes too, probably with questionable maintenance and serviceability story, that they can push with govt airlines. They are still having trouble with modern turbofan engines though.
- EduardoBautista 3y ago
  Maybe if they can continue the momentum and learn from this project, the next reactors will be cheaper?
  - sanxiyn 3y ago
    Yes it will, but experience from South Korea says it won't be cheap enough to matter. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30380897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30380897.
- perihelions 3y ago
  And also: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/top-westinghouse-nuclear-executive-charged-conspiracy-fraud-16-count-federal-indictment https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/top-westinghouse-nuclear-... ("Top Westinghouse Nuclear Executive Charged with Conspiracy, Fraud in 16-Count Federal Indictment") That's the failed project OP blithely elided over as: - "Two other Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were planned for a nuclear power plant in South Carolina, but construction was halted in 2017." I'm really, really strongly in favor of nuclear fission power; but the American attempts this decade, and this company in particular, have been a grotesque failure. We really seem to have forgotten how to build things.
  - applied_heat 3y ago
    Elon to the rescue ?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - dexwiz 3y ago
      Sure, let his companies blow up a few to learn how to build them. /s Rockets and cars are one thing. But that risk equation doesn’t work for nuclear.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - applied_heat 3y ago
        He has shook up and revitalized two industries and proven his ability to execute and get people motivated to do significant work with physics and manufacturing and project management that are complex. It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me and aligns with his sustainable energy focus but downvoters seem to disagree!
        grecy 3y ago
        Based on everything he has said to date, he would just cover a few square km with solar. In that one talk he said building enough solar to power the entire world is similar in effort to all the cars that have ever been built. So we can certainly do it.
- lawn 3y ago
  This is always the case when you build large one-off projects. If you continue to build reactors non-stop you'll learn how to make the process more efficient and be able to make better estimates. Surely we software developers should appreciate how hard making accurate estimates is? And this isn't a 2 week sprint we're talking about, but a gigantic engineering project.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    But are we going to build reactors non-stop? Is there either private-sector funding for this, or government subsidies to make it happen?
    - FredPret 3y ago
      Yes, of course. Power demand increases. Technology improves. Installed capacity ages out. There will always be a need to build new plants, might as well lean into it and be proactive.
      - afterburner 3y ago
        Unless the technology becomes obsolete. There are other ways to generate power.
        FredPret 3y ago
        > Technology improves
      - matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I found this list which shows "under construction", "planned" and "proposed". It does not look like the US is planning to build a lot of reactors. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...
        3y ago
- Exoristos 3y ago
  Surely much of the crippling cost is due to hostile lawfare and regulation.
  - BoiledCabbage 3y ago
    Damn, if only we didn't have to build them safely we could make them so cheaply.
    - sonotathrowaway 3y ago
      We build planes safely, but those same parts are 3x the cost. Safety isn’t the reason why it’s more expensive.
    - willis936 3y ago
      Safety and bureaucracy are orthogonal. Bureaucracy is a slowing force, which is sold as being correlated with safety. The more layers of abstraction needlessly added, the more likely there will be systems engineering failures.
      - bumby 3y ago
        >more layers of abstraction needlessly added I think you're betraying your bias here with the added term "needlessly". There is some (maybe even most) bureaucracy that is inefficiently applied, for sure. But it is meant to address some risk. Maybe it's a risk that you (personally) don't care about, or aren't even cognizant of, and that's when it becomes easy to declare it "needless." We should be looking to streamline our risk mitigation and align it with risks that the public cares about, not throw it out altogether.
        willis936 3y ago
        You're betraying your bias by insinuating I suggested throwing out risk mitigation. I advocated for streamlined risk mitigation by highlighting the risk of unnecessary complexity.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  Somehow all the articles criticizing Vogtle keep mentioning the cost overruns, the additional cost to consumers, but don't mention that in Georgia people pay less than the national average price per kWh (11 cents vs 12.7) while sunny California, for example pays about twice the average (24.3 cents per kWh). In my state, NY, where 2 reactors were decommissioned in 2020 and 2021, the average price is 22 cents per kWh. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    This cost premium has always existed. https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_state_electricity_prices https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_state_electricity_prices
    - credit_guy 3y ago
      Good point. Could it be that Georgia already generates a lot of power from its existing nuclear reactors, and has been doing that for a few decades?
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        I mean, all that data is also from when California and New York both had operational reactors. In 2013, CA generated 17 out of 200 GW from nuclear. GA generated 32/120 GW. NY generated 44/136GW. So at least in the case of New York, it generated more power from nuclear as a percentage than GA, and had higher electricity prices, so there doesn't seem to be a correlation. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/ It probably has more to do with the fact that electricity is deregulated in CA and NY, where implementations were infamously botched: https://truenergy.com/deregulated-energy-states/ https://truenergy.com/deregulated-energy-states/
        WillPostForFood 3y ago
        This is how your link describes deregulation in California: "very limited and is conducted by a lottery system called DirectAcccess" There was a semi-deregulation in 1996, but it was largely rolled back in 2001. So any price data post data 2001 should be bucketed in regulated.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  It seems like up-front monetary 'cost' is continually used to bash nuclear. And 100% from the perspective of human beings. To put it into context, nuclear * total human deaths due to nuclear since its inception is in the low thousands at worst, for the entire industry. * total animal deaths due to nuclear since its inception is minimal, in fact, for example, wildlife around Chernobyl has flourished * damage to the environment is minimal * waste is tiny by volume, zero CO2, and can be buried deeply where no human will ever get to it. Versus fossil fuels: * has killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of humans * has killed millions if not hundreds of millions of animals through climate change, oil spillage, fires and so on * has destroyed thousands of square miles of land for open cast mining, oil slicks, and so on * waste dumps thousands of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day plus other byproducts So, what's the actual monetary cost of the usage of fossil fuels? How much money needs to be spent to mitigate climate change? Or figuring out how to de-extinct species? Or restoring habitats after cleaning up oil slicks? Or attempting to the put the land 'right' after open cast mining? How much money are we going to spend on figuring out 'energy storage' for green power, when nuclear power is already stored in the uranium, in a tiny volume? In fact how much money could we have saved by going long on nuclear in the 60s and 70s, had it not been for ill-educated, and ill-informed campaigns by CND and Greenpeace, for example? And how much better would the environment be right now?
  - pmayrgundter 3y ago
    The actuarial account for fossil fuels is important, but I've come across this set of summary items many times and it ignores the positive effects of CO2, which have been substantial. This is a great benefit for many ecosystems and also improves crop yields, to your monetary cost point. The overall phenomenon is well documented, so I'll give just one highly credible account: "The greening [over the last 35 years] represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States… Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect" - NASA Apr 2016, https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green... I'm not wanting to rehash the climate debate, nor am I implying how much it offsets negatives and would grant all of your points otherwise. I do think it's wise to do whatever we can to move towards cleaner carbon burning to remove toxic and particulate emissions, and limiting CO2 emissions as well, but also within fair economic tradeoffs. I also support developing nuclear, fission and fusion.
colechristensen 3y ago
This power plant and related Westinghouse bankruptcy were major contributors to Toshiba’s problems and sale recently discussed here. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67757333.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67757333.amp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38706547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38706547
MichaelNolan 3y ago
If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for nuclear to compete. The world will be installing a terawatt of solar capacity per year soon. *excluding research or military reactors of course.
- UberFly 3y ago
  I would take that bet. Nuclear tech will also continue to improve.
  - stetrain 3y ago
    Nuclear does not seem to be on the mass production curve that solar and batteries are. Even if you could design a reactor that itself can be mass produced at that scale, you still need to do the same with selecting and getting environmental and public safety approval for installation sites and production, transportation, and disposal of the fuel and waste. I'm not against nuclear from a technological perspective, but I just don't see it being economically competitive with effectively printable devices like solar and batteries given the current direction of the cost curves on each.
    - the8472 3y ago
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-power-generation-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-po...
      - stetrain 3y ago
        How do costs compare? What's the site approval process like in China vs the US?
      - _aavaa_ 3y ago
        Compare this graph with more than nuclear, and notice how lagging nuclear is compared to any other renewable. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption
AdamJacobMuller 3y ago
> Georgia Power expects another similar-sized fourth reactor, Vogtle Unit 4, to begin operation sometime between November 2023 and March 2024. The timelines here are so crazy that they accidentally a whole year.
- evilos 3y ago
  That's a 5 month range chief.
- mburns 3y ago
  The dates are correct. They expect it to be operational in Q1 of this coming year. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Vogtle-4-start-up-moved-to-2024 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Vogtle-4-start-u...
OliverJones 3y ago
It would be great to get a straightforward assessment of the improvements in reactor tech in this new plant. "Passive safety features" sound pretty good to my untrained ear. But how much of this is marketing bullshytt?
- p1mrx 3y ago
  AP1000 has a water tank above the reactor, and can cool itself for 72 hours without electrical power or human action. This design probably would've prevented the Fukushima meltdowns. Ideally, reactors should be designed to transition all the way to air cooling without any help. The high temperature designs (e.g. TRISO and molten salt) should be able to do this, if we ever build them. After Fukushima, the FLEX program was created to protect existing US reactors from a similar scenario: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/49/066/49066583.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
stetrain 3y ago
The article is dated Dec 26, 2023 but the linked announcement from Georgia Power is dated July 31, 2023.
- topspin 3y ago
  Yes, it's old news. It's not solar/wind so it's not a priority for EIA et al. More recent news in nuclear power is commercial operation of a high temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor in China. Their first HTR-PM reactor went online a couple weeks ago[1]. [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-HTR-PM-Demo-begins-commercial-operation https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-HTR-PM-D...
evilos 3y ago
We paid the first-of-a-kind costs, we should reap the Nth-of-a-kind rewards. Replace all the coal capacity with AP1000s.
- philipkglass 3y ago
  There's no Federal agency that can decree that sort of policy. Coal generator retirement happens on a state-by-state or even business-by-business basis. Some states are going to cling to coal power past its economically rational lifespan because important parts of state politics are linked to coal businesses. States where coal retires for economic reasons will go for least-cost replacement (a blend of solar, wind, and natural gas). States where environmental concerns trump cost concerns have little if any coal generating capacity left to replace at this point.
  - evilos 3y ago
    There is potential in the federally owned TVA which has around 35 GW in its portfolio. Also Georgia has a lot of coal and is the state with these new NPPs. Plus the federal government doesn't need to mandate it. It can simply incentivize these plants to be built like it did with Solar/Wind.
- jerry1979 3y ago
  I have head that molten salt is much safer but also more expensive. Would there be a reason not to go with molten salt?
  - evilos 3y ago
    It will likely take a minimum of ten years to get a non light water reactor certified by the NRC. And that is very optimistic. Then you have to build the first of a kind plant which is always more expensive and takes longer. Then you have to get good at operating these new kinds of plants. It's true that MSR and Breeder reactors have lots of potential benefits over traditional LWRs but the truth is, LWRs are more than good enough for right now and we literally can't build enough of them if even if we tried. You wouldn't want to power all of human society off of LWRs simply because they only access ~5% of the energy in the fuel. But we're so far away from that being a constraint. Build LWRs today and keep developing Breeder/MSR tech.
erngkejr 3y ago
I was a nuclear engineer for eight years and I left the industry because I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Every time someone says "nuclear is the only practical solution for climate change, it's not possible to build solar or wind fast enough or cheaply enough", you can point them to this press release. All the nuclear supporters I know deal heavily in magical thinking, completely ignoring the factual reality of the industry.
- kranke155 3y ago
  Could you elaborate? Having read the press release I’m not sure what you mean
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    From the linked article, we get how much power it generates 1,114 MW (or 1.114 Gigawatts), how long it took to build that reactor (started in 2009, so 14 years), and how much it cost (planned $14 billion, final $30 billion): > The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor > Construction at the two new reactor sites began in 2009. Originally expected to cost $14 billion and begin commercial operation in 2016 (Vogtle 3) and 2017 (Vogtle 4), the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns. The total cost of the project is now estimated at more than $30 billion. Meanwhile: "Utility-scale solar capacity in the U.S. electric power sector increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to data from our Electricity Power Monthly. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022."[1] So solar increased 10 Gigawatts last year and wind grew 8 Gigawatts. About 18x that one nuclear reactor we've managed to complete since 2016. In a single year. Also wind and solar is cheaper than the cost of nuclear energy now: "Nuclear energy is generally more expensive than wind and solar energy. The IEA report estimates the cost of electricity from new nuclear plants to be between $60 and $70 per MWh (megawatt-hour), while the cost of electricity from onshore wind and solar PV is estimated to be between $30 and $60 per MWh."[2] So wind and solar is faster and cheaper. The only main benefit is a nuclear plant can still keep generating power in inclement weather (which is still important, but doesn't make it cheaper or faster than wind and solar). [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 [2]: https://medium.com/@liam.m.obrien/nuclear-vs-wind-and-solar-energy-a-comprehensive-comparison-of-costs-and-benefits-15ef13b04657 https://medium.com/@liam.m.obrien/nuclear-vs-wind-and-solar-...
klipklop 3y ago
Seems to me the people saying solar and battery only future do not live in areas that can be cloudy for multiple weeks. I didn’t run the math but I’m guessing it’s not feasible to build a battery pack large enough to ride out winter in some areas. The SF Bay Area, sure, but I suspect blackouts will be common in solar+battery only areas. A preferred solution would be a mix of both with nuclear handling disruptions due to weather. One technology for power generation should not “win”. Employing a variety of power generation methods will give you the most stable power grid.
- slashdev 3y ago
  Batteries are not for riding out winter, they're for evening out the daily load. You have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation, as well as make long-distance interconnects. Pumped hydro is also extremely interesting for obvious reasons. Nuclear as it exists today is not cost competitive. But that's mostly an artificial problem caused by regulation. Can we solve that without sacrificing safety? Can we even solve it at all? Bloated regulatory agencies seem to have infiltrated and poisoned every aspect of society with no relief in sight.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation At which point it ceases to be as cheap.
    - loandbehold 3y ago
      Not necessarily.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      That sounds like a kneejerk response. Got a source for it? It's not like we didn't know about it all the time, yet the large solar systems were built.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
baby 3y ago
Interestingly a year after fusion worked
- p1mrx 3y ago
  Fusion has worked since 1952, just not in power plants.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    It has worked since over 13 billion BC, just not on Earth.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      The fusion reactions in stars are different than the ones to be used in fusion reactors (or used in bombs).
      - p1mrx 3y ago
        I'm sure stars have smashed together all the isotopes we've considered, at some point or another.
        pfdietz 3y ago
        In small (sometimes very small) amounts. But the energy producing reactions that power the stars are disjoint from the ones we'd exploit on Earth.
  - baby 3y ago
    https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energ...
    - p1mrx 3y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike
a_saidi 3y ago
Now copy exactly hopefully at much reduced costs
gretch 3y ago
I see a lot of the arguments from all sides on “the future is X, it cannot be Y!” To me, this is a false dichotomy. In my opinion energy is one of the most important pillars of society. It is so important that it must be hedged. I don’t think we can afford to put all of eggs in 1 basket, no matter how confident we are in a single basket. I support all forms of sustainable energy advancement and research. We need more nuclear plants AND more solar/wind. And probably also geothermal, and tidal, and other things I don’t even personally know about.
- _ph_ 3y ago
  Yes, we need a mix of technologies. But at the current state of things, nuclear shouldn't be something to invest into. Yes, existing reactors should be used for their full life time, but there is far too much speaking against building new ones.
  - viknesh 3y ago
    Other than the practical reality of it being expensive to construct nuclear facilities (which may or may not be solvable), what is speaking against building new ones?
    - _ph_ 3y ago
      Several reasons: - it takes way to long to finish them, renewables can be set up much quicker - as they are too expensive, they are binding money which could be used more efficiently somewhere else. - we haven't solved the waste problem - nuclear is the worst companion to renewables, as nuclear power plants are limited in their regulation capacity and you cannot afford to keep them not running at a high load or the electrictiy would become even more expensive.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    I think it still makes sense to do R&D on nuclear, for example new reactor types, just as insurance. There's a low bar to justify R&D.
wait_a_minute 3y ago
Oh yeah baby. I love to see it.
sgu999 3y ago
Goodonya! Meanwhile we're still waiting for our infamous EPRs over here. [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) > The first EPR unit to start construction, at Olkiluoto in Finland, originally intended to be commissioned in 2009, started commercial operation in 2023, a delay of fourteen years.[3] The second EPR unit to start construction, at Flamanville in France, is also facing a decade-long delay in its commissioning (from 2013 to 2024).[4] Two units at Hinkley Point in the United Kingdom received final approval in September 2016; the first unit is expected to begin operating in 2027.[5][6]
amateuring 3y ago
kudos. we need moaaar of these
simonw 3y ago
This caught my eye: "Prior to Vogtle Unit 3, the last nuclear reactor to start in the United States was Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee. Construction on Watts Bar 2 began in 1973 but was suspended in 1985. Work resumed in 2007, and the reactor came online in 2016." More on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant#Unit_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant#Unit_2
- arcfour 3y ago
  Jeez. Imagine walking into a construction site from 2 decades ago.
  - HankB99 3y ago
    Makes me wonder how much effort went into mothballing partial construction and then unwinding all of that to get it going again. Seems like it would have cost a lot.
    - lallysingh 3y ago
      You don't have to worry about disposing of any copper pipe!
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Check out Satsop, Washington: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5
  - saltminer 3y ago
    The A-35 (a highway in Quebec) has been under construction since 1966. When finished, it will be 34 miles/55 km long. Two decades isn't very long for an infrastructure project, which is unfortunate since long-term planning benefits greatly from political stability, and many areas are seeing large shifts for the worse in that regard.
    - adastra22 3y ago
Dah00n 3y ago
[flagged]
renewiltord 3y ago
NRC missed one, eh? That's the thing with regulatory commissions, once you put them in you're never getting the thing done. But we should always remember, regulations are written in blood. But this is the classic technique of how to slow down something. Infiltrate by agreeing, and then kill it with committee. At least one W3C anti-ad group is currently hamstrung with this technique. It's pretty good. And the best part is that the suckers you're exploiting will argue for you after a point because they'd have to justify why they couldn't get something done otherwise.
techscruggs 3y ago
This is a win for the environment and for human rights. A lot of people on here are talking about how solar and wind are better alternatives. The problem with that is that they typically need to be stored in batteries made of cobalt. The vast majority of cobalt mines exist in the Congo where modern day slavery exists to extract it. This affects everything from your Tesla to your iPhone.
- edent 3y ago
  Good thing uranium doesn't need mining! And it is only found in countries with strong human rights records!
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    Largest reserves are in Australia. Canada also has quite a bit.
dkobia 3y ago
As exciting as this should be, the soaring cost overruns on this project means we Georgians have been left holding the bag. There’s now a “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” line item on my bill, so electricity costs more rather than less.
- BeefWellington 3y ago
  "Cost overruns" is underselling it - according to what I can find online it seems like the cost nearly doubled from 14B to 27B. I've never seen a public/private setup like this actually yield benefit for the consumer.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    Arguably, the benefit is "less coal and CO2 in your family's lungs". The military doesn't make you money, it makes you safe. The post office doesn't make you money, it ensures communication and logistics. Roads don't make you money, they undergird the economy. Nuclear power doesn't save you money on your power bill. It establishes energy independence for our country and clean power for our atmosphere.
    - BeefWellington 3y ago
      You don't need private enterprise to be involved to obtain those things though, is my point.
      - unethical_ban 3y ago
        The military and road construction is loaded with public private partnerships, contractors.
- Bubbadoo99 3y ago
  Unfortunately, this more the rule than the exception. Same thing happened on Long Island, NY with Lilco's Shoreham reactor that took years to build (construction was riddled with all sorts of problems, theft, etc.)and when finally finished, people realized if something went wrong, the narrow, 128 mile island would be impossible to evacuate. After completion, it was never put online and despite the mass incompetence, no one was fired. In fact, management bonuses were as big as ever. Rate payers on LI are still paying for this debacle 40 years later thanks to then Gov. Mario Cuomo. LI utilities, like many utilities, are so poorly managed.
exabrial 3y ago
In my mind, the only allowable carbon offset should be an investment fund for new nuclear reactors. A truly unlimited energy source with solve everything from poverty to wars over oil.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
What is the lcoe?
happytiger 3y ago
I really want nuclear reactors and clean energy but I’m keenly aware that we are rushing headlong and with pathetic levels of self-control into AI. A global environment filled with nuclear reactors and AIs operating only in the lower interests of individual nation states is a risk I haven’t seen much discussion about, but it’s not a great scenario. There is a distinct possibility that no security system design will be impervious to AGI: a weird-to-consider existential risk.
- tills13 3y ago
  It's fine to think about this scenario but I hate that people take this train of thought, dig their feet in, and block ANY progress forward based on "what ifs" What if AGI + nuclear is our key to unlocking infinite potential? At least, to me, that's a more likely scenario than the Hollywood-inspired robots-enslave-the-human-race trope.
apexalpha 3y ago
1.1GW for 30 BILLION dollars? Jeez, that's an insane amount of money for this little power. Probably pretty high cost per kWh, too, which has to be guaranteed by the government I guess. For comparison in my country they built a 1,6GW off-shore windfarm in 2 years with 0 government subsidy. I understand that a nuclear plant provides power 24/7, so it's not an entirely fair comparison. But the cost of nuclear power is just insane compared to wind and PV. It's just setting up your country for higher energy cost than needed for the next 40 years, while the government takes all the risk.
- klysm 3y ago
  It’s hard to compare given the intermittency, but I do agree the cost is a bit absurd. It’s painful because it doesn’t have to be this way but we’ve cornered ourselves via regulation into bad designs
- iwallace 3y ago
  I like to compare this to Site C in British Columbia https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/projects/site_c.html#:~:text=Site%20C%20will%20provide%201%2C100,homes%20per%20year%20in%20B.C https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/projects/site_c.html#:~.... If you are lucky enough to be blessed with remote untapped rivers that can be dammed in somewhat unpopulated mountain valleys (that's another story again), it seems to be far cheaper and safer. I would imagine that Nuclear power's main issue is first and foremost cost. If you could pull off completely safe nuclear power, it just winds up costing too dang much.
- ZeroCooly 3y ago
  It's a reactor design and project that started in 1976 and was delayed for tens of years at a time. It's not exactly the nuclear post child, but that is largely the problem with nuclear in the United States, it, as it currently stands, could not operate at an economy of scale. If the US committed to building say 3,000 of a standardized design across the US, things would likely be very different. (Even if it is not the latest and greatest design, or the most efficient design reactor. Just mass producing parts would drive down the cost.) Basically, like my ex, it's a commitment issue and I hate this on again off again relationship we have that has me wasting money. Edit based on the rest of the comments I'm going to stop cap a reddit cascade: No I am not against solar.
rareitem 3y ago
Pretend I’m country’s government A. Am I incentivized to make sure that country B doesn't get access to nuclear energy, since that is the precursor to a nuclear program? Therefore, I have to make sure that nuclear energy stays unpopular
- tills13 3y ago
  Please correct me if I'm wrong but a) it's not possible to convert spent nuclear fuel into nuclear weapons (or am I misunderstanding your point?) and b) I'm pretty sure you can just Google how to make a nuclear bomb at this point so what are you really protecting against.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    It is possible (especially if you have access to tritium for boosting), it's just more difficult. Japan's reactor grade Pu stockpile, ostensibly for a now-cancelled fast reactor program, is likely there as deniable insurance in case the US withdraws the nuclear umbrella.
flr001 3y ago
did the end of cold war killed nuclear reactor constructions?
merpnderp 3y ago
Weird how it’s take the US decades to do what Japan used to do in three years.
swader999 3y ago
How many more until net zero?
mlsu 3y ago
Lots of disfavorable comparisons being made here between nuke and solar. Let's do some math. There is a total of around 10 GWh of deployed grid storage in the US. The US consumed about 4,000 TWh of electricity in 2022. (10GWh/ 4000TWh) * (31,536,000 seconds) == 78 seconds. So, net, there is about a minute and a half of energy storage across the entire grid. (Most, about 90%, is pumped hydro, not battery). Of course, not really. Most regional areas have roughly 10-30 seconds until the gas peakers absolutely unequivocally must be turned on before brownouts occur. Hours? Minutes? We are not talking about hours and minutes. We are talking about seconds. Look at the price of a powerwall. That's for the energy needs of a residential home. What happens to your AWS bill if us-east-1 was to buy a powerwall? Let alone steel, chemical, paper, mineral processing industries. What would happen to our economy if capacity for every one of those was cut by 1/3rd (or more depending on local climate)? Never mind your power bill. This is the problem that I have with these solar capacity discussions. The number on the tin misrepresents things in just such a fundamental way that these cost discussions don't make sense. The reason, of course, is because fossil fuels are the big batteries we turn on at night when solar is not working. If you actually care about making the grid green, you must solve this problem. Either with transmission, with battery manufacturing (the cost and environment friendliness curve on that is a bit less rosy compared to solar power...), or with nuclear. There is simply no other way.
- flgb 3y ago
  Every power generation technology needs ‘backup capacity’ and energy storage. If your transmission line to your nuclear power station trips, you need reserve capacity elsewhere to serve the load. Gas and coal generation all need storage to run reliably. If you are going to be an armchair power system designer and you want to ‘gross up’ the cost of capacity and storage into the cost of renewable generation, then be consistent.
  - Slava_Propanei 3y ago
    [dead]
  - mlsu 3y ago
    Solar is unique in that it reliably "trips" for extensive periods every day and seasonally. It is also unique in that it does not take fuel that can be stored. Solar cannot act as the backup to a nuclear power plant. Whereas a nuclear power plant can (and does) act as the backup to solar. I'm grossing up to make the point that after about 60-70% solar penetration, the circle cannot be squared without massive investment either in batteries or in distribution, a fact which seems to never quite fully make it into cost comparisons between nuclear and solar such as those being made in this thread.
laszlojamf 3y ago
Could have been worse, hehe. Finland had a (in)famous nuclear power plant project which went years and billions over budget only to be effectively terminated after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Rosatom was a major investor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
indysigners 3y ago
Since the usual arguments pro RE are being made: One of the main downsides of RE is a) its need of fossil backup and b) profits of solar / wind goes into the pockets of its owners while c) the costs of fossil backup and increased network capacities are to be borne by the general public so that d) wealth is distributed from the bottom to the top whose e) RE systems a being subsidized by the public too. In conclusio, the bottom half pays for the profit of top earners who can afford to invest in RE. That’s the green „revolution“ for ya.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  There is no need for fossil backup. Renewables can scale to 100% and will work fine (and probably cheaper than nuclear) in a post-fossil world.
throwaway2990 3y ago
Mind blowing that people think wind or solar is good lol
jgalt212 3y ago
Not actually both "robust passive safety systems", but the original safety systems in Fermi's reactor were certainly robust. > In case of emergency, such as Weil becoming incapacitated or failure of the automatic control rod, Norman Hilberry stood on the balcony with an improbable nuclear safety device: an axe. In an emergency, he would cut a rope that ran up to the balcony, releasing another emergency control rod into the pile. The last line of defense consisted of a "liquid-control squad" that stood on a platform, ready to flood the pile with a cadmium-salt solution. Taken together, these safety precautions were a strange combination of the high-tech and the ad hoc. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1944_pu/cp-1_critical.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...
shortsunblack 3y ago
This is a win for science-based energy policy.

1012 points by ano-ther 3y ago

See also: "Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost" https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtle-rates-costs-75c7a413cda3935dd551be9115e88a64 https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

apengwin 3y ago
A good start!
briandear 3y ago
If we’re worried about cost overruns, then perhaps cancel the California high speed rail boondoggle. That project could buy several nuclear reactors.
- api 3y ago
  I have a very strong impression that the perpetual money pits of California (rail, the amount spent on homelessness without progress, etc.) aren’t bugs but features… for someone. That money is going into someone’s pocket.
  - icelancer 3y ago
    As usual it's some from Column A and B. Hard to tell sometimes what is graft and what is incompetence.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      A little of A, B, and C. A) Idealistic voters with little interest in detail or execution. B) Hard working state employees executing in an ineffective way because they are working on over constrained problems with conflicting and sometime impossible goals. C) A number of opportunists that take advantage of poor rulemaking and bureaucratic disorganization. For what it is worth, I dont think corruption is a major driver of problems, but bad policy detached from the practical considerations. One simple example is SF parks maintenance: The city wants to keep invasive species out, so it has staff to remove them. The city also believes in livable wages, so the workers make >100K. Residents dont like pesticides, so the workers must hand weed. Hand weeding doesnt work, so the City periodically also pays outside consultants to come in and take care of the invasives (with pesticides and low paid workers).
      - mlrtime 3y ago
        >The city wants to keep invasive species out... These small examples are extremely frustrating as a tax payer. What is the solution to these examples, or does one just try to ignore it as a price of living in that society?
        s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Frustrating indeed. I don't think there is a quick fix to create a political culture among voters and representatives that cares about fiscal responsibility. One consideration is having a broader tax base so that voters have more skin in the game. For example, taxes in Houston are less progressive than SF, but SF city budget per resident is more than 500% that of Huston.
        zbrozek 3y ago
        How do we get to a more decisive government that doesn't try to make everything a priority (especially things that are at odds with each other)? Is it to reduce direct participation and rely on representation (remove public hearings)? The $1.7M public toilet was a painful example showing how far off the rails we are. Should auditors and controllers have some teeth? What would they be?
  - zbrozek 3y ago
    Our electeds simply don't care what anything costs, and as a result we have (probably) the worst cost disease on the planet.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > electeds simply don't care what anything costs California has a referendum system. That so few referendums focus on cutting costs says something about its voters’ priorities.
      - zbrozek 3y ago
        Sure does! That's why I used "electeds" rather than "representatives", to make really clear the connection. On the other hand, the state is losing population on an absolute basis (and relatively even more so against a backdrop of national growth). So some folks are voting with their feet. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I'm free enough to do the same.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > why I used "electeds" rather than "representatives", to make really clear the connection I’m arguing the opposite. The voters have the tools to oppose the state government’s size. That they don’t use them signals support in broad terms.
        aspenmayer 3y ago
        I’d agree with you with the caveat that such public support is mediated by regulatory capture on all sides and from all quarters: outside the government by industry and lobbyists, within the government by elected officials, and adjacent to/despite the government by a public apathetic to such issues and/or voting against its own shared/collective interests in favor of individual interests. Participation in local and state politics even in California is not common beyond voting, which is a low bar to clear. Much of media messaging in the area of referendums is focused on niche issues and special interests, and serves to highlight and promote those issues to convert NIMBYs to YIMBYs or vice-versa on those specific narrow issues. Agreement in broad terms like you mention is hard to achieve due to the difficulty in drafting referendum legislation texts such that they will withstand a challenge by the state attorney general as well as state Supreme Court, as well as having the resulting referendum achieve enough signatures to make it on the ballot and have enough recognition and support by voters to actually pass and become law. One key difference that I do like about the CA referendum process is that laws passed by referendum in California are equal to the state constitution and require 2/3 supermajority in state congress to modify or change, just like the state constitution itself. This avoids many attempts by legislature to foil or spoil the will of the voters’ referendums, in contrast to other state referendum processes which are only considered a law passed by other means and are usually able to be modified by simple majority.
- solarpunk 3y ago
  Probably best to diversify infrastructure investment across... multiple projects.
- danans 3y ago
  The difference is that there are many cheaper viable alternatives to the firm power that nuclear provides, including renewables+batteries ($60/MWh and dropping) and enhanced geothermal ($80/MWh and dropping). Heck, even natural gas combined-cycle + carbon capture/storage is cheaper on an LCOE basis (~$60/MWh) than nuclear ($180/MWh and rising) [1]. It would be great if nuclear could be cost competitive for equivalently firm power, but its costs are increasing, not decreasing. In contrast, the only real alternative to air travel for high speed transportation between Northern and Southern CA is high speed rail. The "Hyperloop" has been exposed (charitably) as a failure, and personal vehicle travel (even electrified) is not an equivalent to HSR in a state as big as CA. None of that is to say that the CA HSR project has been well planned/executed or that the costs have been well estimated. But that doesn't obviate the need for high speed ground transport in the state. 1. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... (pages 2 and 31)
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    Oh good grief, not that Lazard "study" again. They took the cost to build Vogtle, which is one of the most or even the most expensive outlier in terms of time/cost overruns of all time, and decided to make that the baseline for "the cost of nuclear power". When the average time to build a nuclear reactor in the world has consistently been around 7.5 years. For the last 50 years, and also for the ones that came online in 2022, lest you think these were just the bygone good old days. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
    - adrianN 3y ago
      Which new nuclear would you suggest instead? Hinkley C will cost about $160/MWh, right in the range given by Lazard.
      - mpweiher 3y ago
        I would suggest we look at overall stats instead of isolated examples. Time to construct a nuclear plant takes on average 7.5 years, a number that hasn't really budged in the last 50 years. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi... And since financing (i.e. interest) is the primary cost of nuclear (~50%), time is money. Hinkley and Flamanville are examples of the EPR, a brand new reactor type that is both at the start of its learning curve, always problematic, and also apparently a design that is particularly difficult to build. And both Europe and the US haven't really built any nuclear plants for quite a long time, so the know-how to build them is just not there. Oh, and the regulators sometimes change regulations after parts of the plants have been built so they have to tear down what they have built and start again. These are obviously all solvable problems, and mostly solvable by just building more. The problem is that we didn't build enough. Just build more.
rjbwork 3y ago
Problem is that we don't build the damn things anymore, so each one is bespoke and expensive. Ideally we'd keep building them and develop the expertise and make it a more repeatable scalable process. I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".
- bordercases 3y ago
  Both Ukraine and the Red Sea collapsing has produced ads for uranium mining in Saskatchewan, Canada. These kinds of ads don't run without government support; since public opinion is often extremely uninformed, I expect the pivot to nuclear to happen with or without pundits vocalizing their views.
- corethree 3y ago
  We don't really build anything anymore. The "expertise" has transferred to Asia. Anything we build we'll build worse, slower and more expensive. Except for airplanes that's one of the few things we still do better. My overall point is I highly doubt nuclear powerplants will be built here in any major way. Will it happen in Asia? Far more likely.
  - bordercases 3y ago
    According to my sources, Hong Kong has an engineer shortage. They still want the je ne-sais quoi quality of North American trained engineers.
    - corethree 3y ago
      I would say Hong Kong doesn't illustrate the overall story.
  - mayama 3y ago
    To be specific it's airplane engines, 5th gen turbofan engines. China started building COMAC airplanes too, probably with questionable maintenance and serviceability story, that they can push with govt airlines. They are still having trouble with modern turbofan engines though.
EduardoBautista 3y ago
Maybe if they can continue the momentum and learn from this project, the next reactors will be cheaper?
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  Yes it will, but experience from South Korea says it won't be cheap enough to matter. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30380897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30380897.
perihelions 3y ago
And also: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/top-westinghouse-nuclear-executive-charged-conspiracy-fraud-16-count-federal-indictment https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/top-westinghouse-nuclear-... ("Top Westinghouse Nuclear Executive Charged with Conspiracy, Fraud in 16-Count Federal Indictment") That's the failed project OP blithely elided over as: - "Two other Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were planned for a nuclear power plant in South Carolina, but construction was halted in 2017." I'm really, really strongly in favor of nuclear fission power; but the American attempts this decade, and this company in particular, have been a grotesque failure. We really seem to have forgotten how to build things.
- applied_heat 3y ago
  Elon to the rescue ?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dexwiz 3y ago
    Sure, let his companies blow up a few to learn how to build them. /s Rockets and cars are one thing. But that risk equation doesn’t work for nuclear.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - applied_heat 3y ago
      He has shook up and revitalized two industries and proven his ability to execute and get people motivated to do significant work with physics and manufacturing and project management that are complex. It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me and aligns with his sustainable energy focus but downvoters seem to disagree!
      - grecy 3y ago
        Based on everything he has said to date, he would just cover a few square km with solar. In that one talk he said building enough solar to power the entire world is similar in effort to all the cars that have ever been built. So we can certainly do it.
lawn 3y ago
This is always the case when you build large one-off projects. If you continue to build reactors non-stop you'll learn how to make the process more efficient and be able to make better estimates. Surely we software developers should appreciate how hard making accurate estimates is? And this isn't a 2 week sprint we're talking about, but a gigantic engineering project.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  But are we going to build reactors non-stop? Is there either private-sector funding for this, or government subsidies to make it happen?
  - FredPret 3y ago
    Yes, of course. Power demand increases. Technology improves. Installed capacity ages out. There will always be a need to build new plants, might as well lean into it and be proactive.
    - afterburner 3y ago
      Unless the technology becomes obsolete. There are other ways to generate power.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        > Technology improves
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      I found this list which shows "under construction", "planned" and "proposed". It does not look like the US is planning to build a lot of reactors. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...
      - 3y ago
Exoristos 3y ago
Surely much of the crippling cost is due to hostile lawfare and regulation.
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago
  Damn, if only we didn't have to build them safely we could make them so cheaply.
  - sonotathrowaway 3y ago
    We build planes safely, but those same parts are 3x the cost. Safety isn’t the reason why it’s more expensive.
  - willis936 3y ago
    Safety and bureaucracy are orthogonal. Bureaucracy is a slowing force, which is sold as being correlated with safety. The more layers of abstraction needlessly added, the more likely there will be systems engineering failures.
    - bumby 3y ago
      >more layers of abstraction needlessly added I think you're betraying your bias here with the added term "needlessly". There is some (maybe even most) bureaucracy that is inefficiently applied, for sure. But it is meant to address some risk. Maybe it's a risk that you (personally) don't care about, or aren't even cognizant of, and that's when it becomes easy to declare it "needless." We should be looking to streamline our risk mitigation and align it with risks that the public cares about, not throw it out altogether.
      - willis936 3y ago
        You're betraying your bias by insinuating I suggested throwing out risk mitigation. I advocated for streamlined risk mitigation by highlighting the risk of unnecessary complexity.
credit_guy 3y ago
Somehow all the articles criticizing Vogtle keep mentioning the cost overruns, the additional cost to consumers, but don't mention that in Georgia people pay less than the national average price per kWh (11 cents vs 12.7) while sunny California, for example pays about twice the average (24.3 cents per kWh). In my state, NY, where 2 reactors were decommissioned in 2020 and 2021, the average price is 22 cents per kWh. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  This cost premium has always existed. https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_state_electricity_prices https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_state_electricity_prices
  - credit_guy 3y ago
    Good point. Could it be that Georgia already generates a lot of power from its existing nuclear reactors, and has been doing that for a few decades?
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      I mean, all that data is also from when California and New York both had operational reactors. In 2013, CA generated 17 out of 200 GW from nuclear. GA generated 32/120 GW. NY generated 44/136GW. So at least in the case of New York, it generated more power from nuclear as a percentage than GA, and had higher electricity prices, so there doesn't seem to be a correlation. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/ It probably has more to do with the fact that electricity is deregulated in CA and NY, where implementations were infamously botched: https://truenergy.com/deregulated-energy-states/ https://truenergy.com/deregulated-energy-states/
      - WillPostForFood 3y ago
        This is how your link describes deregulation in California: "very limited and is conducted by a lottery system called DirectAcccess" There was a semi-deregulation in 1996, but it was largely rolled back in 2001. So any price data post data 2001 should be bucketed in regulated.
DrBazza 3y ago
It seems like up-front monetary 'cost' is continually used to bash nuclear. And 100% from the perspective of human beings. To put it into context, nuclear * total human deaths due to nuclear since its inception is in the low thousands at worst, for the entire industry. * total animal deaths due to nuclear since its inception is minimal, in fact, for example, wildlife around Chernobyl has flourished * damage to the environment is minimal * waste is tiny by volume, zero CO2, and can be buried deeply where no human will ever get to it. Versus fossil fuels: * has killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of humans * has killed millions if not hundreds of millions of animals through climate change, oil spillage, fires and so on * has destroyed thousands of square miles of land for open cast mining, oil slicks, and so on * waste dumps thousands of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day plus other byproducts So, what's the actual monetary cost of the usage of fossil fuels? How much money needs to be spent to mitigate climate change? Or figuring out how to de-extinct species? Or restoring habitats after cleaning up oil slicks? Or attempting to the put the land 'right' after open cast mining? How much money are we going to spend on figuring out 'energy storage' for green power, when nuclear power is already stored in the uranium, in a tiny volume? In fact how much money could we have saved by going long on nuclear in the 60s and 70s, had it not been for ill-educated, and ill-informed campaigns by CND and Greenpeace, for example? And how much better would the environment be right now?
- pmayrgundter 3y ago
  The actuarial account for fossil fuels is important, but I've come across this set of summary items many times and it ignores the positive effects of CO2, which have been substantial. This is a great benefit for many ecosystems and also improves crop yields, to your monetary cost point. The overall phenomenon is well documented, so I'll give just one highly credible account: "The greening [over the last 35 years] represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States… Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect" - NASA Apr 2016, https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green... I'm not wanting to rehash the climate debate, nor am I implying how much it offsets negatives and would grant all of your points otherwise. I do think it's wise to do whatever we can to move towards cleaner carbon burning to remove toxic and particulate emissions, and limiting CO2 emissions as well, but also within fair economic tradeoffs. I also support developing nuclear, fission and fusion.

colechristensen 3y ago

This power plant and related Westinghouse bankruptcy were major contributors to Toshiba’s problems and sale recently discussed here. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67757333.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67757333.amp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38706547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38706547

MichaelNolan 3y ago

If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for nuclear to compete. The world will be installing a terawatt of solar capacity per year soon. *excluding research or military reactors of course.

UberFly 3y ago
I would take that bet. Nuclear tech will also continue to improve.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Nuclear does not seem to be on the mass production curve that solar and batteries are. Even if you could design a reactor that itself can be mass produced at that scale, you still need to do the same with selecting and getting environmental and public safety approval for installation sites and production, transportation, and disposal of the fuel and waste. I'm not against nuclear from a technological perspective, but I just don't see it being economically competitive with effectively printable devices like solar and batteries given the current direction of the cost curves on each.
  - the8472 3y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-power-generation-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-po...
    - stetrain 3y ago
      How do costs compare? What's the site approval process like in China vs the US?
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      Compare this graph with more than nuclear, and notice how lagging nuclear is compared to any other renewable. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption

AdamJacobMuller 3y ago

> Georgia Power expects another similar-sized fourth reactor, Vogtle Unit 4, to begin operation sometime between November 2023 and March 2024. The timelines here are so crazy that they accidentally a whole year.

evilos 3y ago
That's a 5 month range chief.
mburns 3y ago
The dates are correct. They expect it to be operational in Q1 of this coming year. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Vogtle-4-start-up-moved-to-2024 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Vogtle-4-start-u...

OliverJones 3y ago

It would be great to get a straightforward assessment of the improvements in reactor tech in this new plant. "Passive safety features" sound pretty good to my untrained ear. But how much of this is marketing bullshytt?

p1mrx 3y ago
AP1000 has a water tank above the reactor, and can cool itself for 72 hours without electrical power or human action. This design probably would've prevented the Fukushima meltdowns. Ideally, reactors should be designed to transition all the way to air cooling without any help. The high temperature designs (e.g. TRISO and molten salt) should be able to do this, if we ever build them. After Fukushima, the FLEX program was created to protect existing US reactors from a similar scenario: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/49/066/49066583.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...

stetrain 3y ago

The article is dated Dec 26, 2023 but the linked announcement from Georgia Power is dated July 31, 2023.

topspin 3y ago
Yes, it's old news. It's not solar/wind so it's not a priority for EIA et al. More recent news in nuclear power is commercial operation of a high temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor in China. Their first HTR-PM reactor went online a couple weeks ago[1]. [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-HTR-PM-Demo-begins-commercial-operation https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-HTR-PM-D...

evilos 3y ago

We paid the first-of-a-kind costs, we should reap the Nth-of-a-kind rewards. Replace all the coal capacity with AP1000s.

philipkglass 3y ago
There's no Federal agency that can decree that sort of policy. Coal generator retirement happens on a state-by-state or even business-by-business basis. Some states are going to cling to coal power past its economically rational lifespan because important parts of state politics are linked to coal businesses. States where coal retires for economic reasons will go for least-cost replacement (a blend of solar, wind, and natural gas). States where environmental concerns trump cost concerns have little if any coal generating capacity left to replace at this point.
- evilos 3y ago
  There is potential in the federally owned TVA which has around 35 GW in its portfolio. Also Georgia has a lot of coal and is the state with these new NPPs. Plus the federal government doesn't need to mandate it. It can simply incentivize these plants to be built like it did with Solar/Wind.
jerry1979 3y ago
I have head that molten salt is much safer but also more expensive. Would there be a reason not to go with molten salt?
- evilos 3y ago
  It will likely take a minimum of ten years to get a non light water reactor certified by the NRC. And that is very optimistic. Then you have to build the first of a kind plant which is always more expensive and takes longer. Then you have to get good at operating these new kinds of plants. It's true that MSR and Breeder reactors have lots of potential benefits over traditional LWRs but the truth is, LWRs are more than good enough for right now and we literally can't build enough of them if even if we tried. You wouldn't want to power all of human society off of LWRs simply because they only access ~5% of the energy in the fuel. But we're so far away from that being a constraint. Build LWRs today and keep developing Breeder/MSR tech.

erngkejr 3y ago

I was a nuclear engineer for eight years and I left the industry because I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Every time someone says "nuclear is the only practical solution for climate change, it's not possible to build solar or wind fast enough or cheaply enough", you can point them to this press release. All the nuclear supporters I know deal heavily in magical thinking, completely ignoring the factual reality of the industry.

kranke155 3y ago
Could you elaborate? Having read the press release I’m not sure what you mean
- cableshaft 3y ago
  From the linked article, we get how much power it generates 1,114 MW (or 1.114 Gigawatts), how long it took to build that reactor (started in 2009, so 14 years), and how much it cost (planned $14 billion, final $30 billion): > The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor > Construction at the two new reactor sites began in 2009. Originally expected to cost $14 billion and begin commercial operation in 2016 (Vogtle 3) and 2017 (Vogtle 4), the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns. The total cost of the project is now estimated at more than $30 billion. Meanwhile: "Utility-scale solar capacity in the U.S. electric power sector increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to data from our Electricity Power Monthly. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022."[1] So solar increased 10 Gigawatts last year and wind grew 8 Gigawatts. About 18x that one nuclear reactor we've managed to complete since 2016. In a single year. Also wind and solar is cheaper than the cost of nuclear energy now: "Nuclear energy is generally more expensive than wind and solar energy. The IEA report estimates the cost of electricity from new nuclear plants to be between $60 and $70 per MWh (megawatt-hour), while the cost of electricity from onshore wind and solar PV is estimated to be between $30 and $60 per MWh."[2] So wind and solar is faster and cheaper. The only main benefit is a nuclear plant can still keep generating power in inclement weather (which is still important, but doesn't make it cheaper or faster than wind and solar). [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 [2]: https://medium.com/@liam.m.obrien/nuclear-vs-wind-and-solar-energy-a-comprehensive-comparison-of-costs-and-benefits-15ef13b04657 https://medium.com/@liam.m.obrien/nuclear-vs-wind-and-solar-...

klipklop 3y ago

Seems to me the people saying solar and battery only future do not live in areas that can be cloudy for multiple weeks. I didn’t run the math but I’m guessing it’s not feasible to build a battery pack large enough to ride out winter in some areas. The SF Bay Area, sure, but I suspect blackouts will be common in solar+battery only areas. A preferred solution would be a mix of both with nuclear handling disruptions due to weather. One technology for power generation should not “win”. Employing a variety of power generation methods will give you the most stable power grid.

slashdev 3y ago
Batteries are not for riding out winter, they're for evening out the daily load. You have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation, as well as make long-distance interconnects. Pumped hydro is also extremely interesting for obvious reasons. Nuclear as it exists today is not cost competitive. But that's mostly an artificial problem caused by regulation. Can we solve that without sacrificing safety? Can we even solve it at all? Bloated regulatory agencies seem to have infiltrated and poisoned every aspect of society with no relief in sight.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > have to overbuild renewables to handle seasonal variation At which point it ceases to be as cheap.
  - loandbehold 3y ago
    Not necessarily.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    That sounds like a kneejerk response. Got a source for it? It's not like we didn't know about it all the time, yet the large solar systems were built.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago

baby 3y ago

Interestingly a year after fusion worked

p1mrx 3y ago
Fusion has worked since 1952, just not in power plants.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  It has worked since over 13 billion BC, just not on Earth.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    The fusion reactions in stars are different than the ones to be used in fusion reactors (or used in bombs).
    - p1mrx 3y ago
      I'm sure stars have smashed together all the isotopes we've considered, at some point or another.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        In small (sometimes very small) amounts. But the energy producing reactions that power the stars are disjoint from the ones we'd exploit on Earth.
- baby 3y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energ...
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike

a_saidi 3y ago

Now copy exactly hopefully at much reduced costs

gretch 3y ago

I see a lot of the arguments from all sides on “the future is X, it cannot be Y!” To me, this is a false dichotomy. In my opinion energy is one of the most important pillars of society. It is so important that it must be hedged. I don’t think we can afford to put all of eggs in 1 basket, no matter how confident we are in a single basket. I support all forms of sustainable energy advancement and research. We need more nuclear plants AND more solar/wind. And probably also geothermal, and tidal, and other things I don’t even personally know about.

_ph_ 3y ago
Yes, we need a mix of technologies. But at the current state of things, nuclear shouldn't be something to invest into. Yes, existing reactors should be used for their full life time, but there is far too much speaking against building new ones.
- viknesh 3y ago
  Other than the practical reality of it being expensive to construct nuclear facilities (which may or may not be solvable), what is speaking against building new ones?
  - _ph_ 3y ago
    Several reasons: - it takes way to long to finish them, renewables can be set up much quicker - as they are too expensive, they are binding money which could be used more efficiently somewhere else. - we haven't solved the waste problem - nuclear is the worst companion to renewables, as nuclear power plants are limited in their regulation capacity and you cannot afford to keep them not running at a high load or the electrictiy would become even more expensive.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  I think it still makes sense to do R&D on nuclear, for example new reactor types, just as insurance. There's a low bar to justify R&D.

wait_a_minute 3y ago

Oh yeah baby. I love to see it.

sgu999 3y ago

Goodonya! Meanwhile we're still waiting for our infamous EPRs over here. [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) > The first EPR unit to start construction, at Olkiluoto in Finland, originally intended to be commissioned in 2009, started commercial operation in 2023, a delay of fourteen years.[3] The second EPR unit to start construction, at Flamanville in France, is also facing a decade-long delay in its commissioning (from 2013 to 2024).[4] Two units at Hinkley Point in the United Kingdom received final approval in September 2016; the first unit is expected to begin operating in 2027.[5][6]

amateuring 3y ago

kudos. we need moaaar of these

simonw 3y ago

This caught my eye: "Prior to Vogtle Unit 3, the last nuclear reactor to start in the United States was Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee. Construction on Watts Bar 2 began in 1973 but was suspended in 1985. Work resumed in 2007, and the reactor came online in 2016." More on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant#Unit_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant#Unit_2

arcfour 3y ago
Jeez. Imagine walking into a construction site from 2 decades ago.
- HankB99 3y ago
  Makes me wonder how much effort went into mothballing partial construction and then unwinding all of that to get it going again. Seems like it would have cost a lot.
  - lallysingh 3y ago
    You don't have to worry about disposing of any copper pipe!
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Check out Satsop, Washington: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNP-3_and_WNP-5
- saltminer 3y ago
  The A-35 (a highway in Quebec) has been under construction since 1966. When finished, it will be 34 miles/55 km long. Two decades isn't very long for an infrastructure project, which is unfortunate since long-term planning benefits greatly from political stability, and many areas are seeing large shifts for the worse in that regard.
  - adastra22 3y ago

Dah00n 3y ago

[flagged]

renewiltord 3y ago

NRC missed one, eh? That's the thing with regulatory commissions, once you put them in you're never getting the thing done. But we should always remember, regulations are written in blood. But this is the classic technique of how to slow down something. Infiltrate by agreeing, and then kill it with committee. At least one W3C anti-ad group is currently hamstrung with this technique. It's pretty good. And the best part is that the suckers you're exploiting will argue for you after a point because they'd have to justify why they couldn't get something done otherwise.

techscruggs 3y ago

This is a win for the environment and for human rights. A lot of people on here are talking about how solar and wind are better alternatives. The problem with that is that they typically need to be stored in batteries made of cobalt. The vast majority of cobalt mines exist in the Congo where modern day slavery exists to extract it. This affects everything from your Tesla to your iPhone.

edent 3y ago
Good thing uranium doesn't need mining! And it is only found in countries with strong human rights records!
- mpweiher 3y ago
  Largest reserves are in Australia. Canada also has quite a bit.

dkobia 3y ago

As exciting as this should be, the soaring cost overruns on this project means we Georgians have been left holding the bag. There’s now a “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” line item on my bill, so electricity costs more rather than less.

BeefWellington 3y ago
"Cost overruns" is underselling it - according to what I can find online it seems like the cost nearly doubled from 14B to 27B. I've never seen a public/private setup like this actually yield benefit for the consumer.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Arguably, the benefit is "less coal and CO2 in your family's lungs". The military doesn't make you money, it makes you safe. The post office doesn't make you money, it ensures communication and logistics. Roads don't make you money, they undergird the economy. Nuclear power doesn't save you money on your power bill. It establishes energy independence for our country and clean power for our atmosphere.
  - BeefWellington 3y ago
    You don't need private enterprise to be involved to obtain those things though, is my point.
    - unethical_ban 3y ago
      The military and road construction is loaded with public private partnerships, contractors.
Bubbadoo99 3y ago
Unfortunately, this more the rule than the exception. Same thing happened on Long Island, NY with Lilco's Shoreham reactor that took years to build (construction was riddled with all sorts of problems, theft, etc.)and when finally finished, people realized if something went wrong, the narrow, 128 mile island would be impossible to evacuate. After completion, it was never put online and despite the mass incompetence, no one was fired. In fact, management bonuses were as big as ever. Rate payers on LI are still paying for this debacle 40 years later thanks to then Gov. Mario Cuomo. LI utilities, like many utilities, are so poorly managed.

exabrial 3y ago

In my mind, the only allowable carbon offset should be an investment fund for new nuclear reactors. A truly unlimited energy source with solve everything from poverty to wars over oil.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

What is the lcoe?

happytiger 3y ago

I really want nuclear reactors and clean energy but I’m keenly aware that we are rushing headlong and with pathetic levels of self-control into AI. A global environment filled with nuclear reactors and AIs operating only in the lower interests of individual nation states is a risk I haven’t seen much discussion about, but it’s not a great scenario. There is a distinct possibility that no security system design will be impervious to AGI: a weird-to-consider existential risk.

tills13 3y ago
It's fine to think about this scenario but I hate that people take this train of thought, dig their feet in, and block ANY progress forward based on "what ifs" What if AGI + nuclear is our key to unlocking infinite potential? At least, to me, that's a more likely scenario than the Hollywood-inspired robots-enslave-the-human-race trope.

apexalpha 3y ago

1.1GW for 30 BILLION dollars? Jeez, that's an insane amount of money for this little power. Probably pretty high cost per kWh, too, which has to be guaranteed by the government I guess. For comparison in my country they built a 1,6GW off-shore windfarm in 2 years with 0 government subsidy. I understand that a nuclear plant provides power 24/7, so it's not an entirely fair comparison. But the cost of nuclear power is just insane compared to wind and PV. It's just setting up your country for higher energy cost than needed for the next 40 years, while the government takes all the risk.

klysm 3y ago
It’s hard to compare given the intermittency, but I do agree the cost is a bit absurd. It’s painful because it doesn’t have to be this way but we’ve cornered ourselves via regulation into bad designs
iwallace 3y ago
I like to compare this to Site C in British Columbia https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/projects/site_c.html#:~:text=Site%20C%20will%20provide%201%2C100,homes%20per%20year%20in%20B.C https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/projects/site_c.html#:~.... If you are lucky enough to be blessed with remote untapped rivers that can be dammed in somewhat unpopulated mountain valleys (that's another story again), it seems to be far cheaper and safer. I would imagine that Nuclear power's main issue is first and foremost cost. If you could pull off completely safe nuclear power, it just winds up costing too dang much.
ZeroCooly 3y ago
It's a reactor design and project that started in 1976 and was delayed for tens of years at a time. It's not exactly the nuclear post child, but that is largely the problem with nuclear in the United States, it, as it currently stands, could not operate at an economy of scale. If the US committed to building say 3,000 of a standardized design across the US, things would likely be very different. (Even if it is not the latest and greatest design, or the most efficient design reactor. Just mass producing parts would drive down the cost.) Basically, like my ex, it's a commitment issue and I hate this on again off again relationship we have that has me wasting money. Edit based on the rest of the comments I'm going to stop cap a reddit cascade: No I am not against solar.

rareitem 3y ago

Pretend I’m country’s government A. Am I incentivized to make sure that country B doesn't get access to nuclear energy, since that is the precursor to a nuclear program? Therefore, I have to make sure that nuclear energy stays unpopular

tills13 3y ago
Please correct me if I'm wrong but a) it's not possible to convert spent nuclear fuel into nuclear weapons (or am I misunderstanding your point?) and b) I'm pretty sure you can just Google how to make a nuclear bomb at this point so what are you really protecting against.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  It is possible (especially if you have access to tritium for boosting), it's just more difficult. Japan's reactor grade Pu stockpile, ostensibly for a now-cancelled fast reactor program, is likely there as deniable insurance in case the US withdraws the nuclear umbrella.

flr001 3y ago

did the end of cold war killed nuclear reactor constructions?

merpnderp 3y ago

Weird how it’s take the US decades to do what Japan used to do in three years.

swader999 3y ago

How many more until net zero?

mlsu 3y ago

Lots of disfavorable comparisons being made here between nuke and solar. Let's do some math. There is a total of around 10 GWh of deployed grid storage in the US. The US consumed about 4,000 TWh of electricity in 2022. (10GWh/ 4000TWh) * (31,536,000 seconds) == 78 seconds. So, net, there is about a minute and a half of energy storage across the entire grid. (Most, about 90%, is pumped hydro, not battery). Of course, not really. Most regional areas have roughly 10-30 seconds until the gas peakers absolutely unequivocally must be turned on before brownouts occur. Hours? Minutes? We are not talking about hours and minutes. We are talking about seconds. Look at the price of a powerwall. That's for the energy needs of a residential home. What happens to your AWS bill if us-east-1 was to buy a powerwall? Let alone steel, chemical, paper, mineral processing industries. What would happen to our economy if capacity for every one of those was cut by 1/3rd (or more depending on local climate)? Never mind your power bill. This is the problem that I have with these solar capacity discussions. The number on the tin misrepresents things in just such a fundamental way that these cost discussions don't make sense. The reason, of course, is because fossil fuels are the big batteries we turn on at night when solar is not working. If you actually care about making the grid green, you must solve this problem. Either with transmission, with battery manufacturing (the cost and environment friendliness curve on that is a bit less rosy compared to solar power...), or with nuclear. There is simply no other way.

flgb 3y ago
Every power generation technology needs ‘backup capacity’ and energy storage. If your transmission line to your nuclear power station trips, you need reserve capacity elsewhere to serve the load. Gas and coal generation all need storage to run reliably. If you are going to be an armchair power system designer and you want to ‘gross up’ the cost of capacity and storage into the cost of renewable generation, then be consistent.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
- mlsu 3y ago
  Solar is unique in that it reliably "trips" for extensive periods every day and seasonally. It is also unique in that it does not take fuel that can be stored. Solar cannot act as the backup to a nuclear power plant. Whereas a nuclear power plant can (and does) act as the backup to solar. I'm grossing up to make the point that after about 60-70% solar penetration, the circle cannot be squared without massive investment either in batteries or in distribution, a fact which seems to never quite fully make it into cost comparisons between nuclear and solar such as those being made in this thread.

laszlojamf 3y ago

Could have been worse, hehe. Finland had a (in)famous nuclear power plant project which went years and billions over budget only to be effectively terminated after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Rosatom was a major investor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

indysigners 3y ago

Since the usual arguments pro RE are being made: One of the main downsides of RE is a) its need of fossil backup and b) profits of solar / wind goes into the pockets of its owners while c) the costs of fossil backup and increased network capacities are to be borne by the general public so that d) wealth is distributed from the bottom to the top whose e) RE systems a being subsidized by the public too. In conclusio, the bottom half pays for the profit of top earners who can afford to invest in RE. That’s the green „revolution“ for ya.

pfdietz 3y ago
There is no need for fossil backup. Renewables can scale to 100% and will work fine (and probably cheaper than nuclear) in a post-fossil world.

throwaway2990 3y ago

Mind blowing that people think wind or solar is good lol

jgalt212 3y ago

Not actually both "robust passive safety systems", but the original safety systems in Fermi's reactor were certainly robust. > In case of emergency, such as Weil becoming incapacitated or failure of the automatic control rod, Norman Hilberry stood on the balcony with an improbable nuclear safety device: an axe. In an emergency, he would cut a rope that ran up to the balcony, releasing another emergency control rod into the pile. The last line of defense consisted of a "liquid-control squad" that stood on a platform, ready to flood the pile with a cadmium-salt solution. Taken together, these safety precautions were a strange combination of the high-tech and the ad hoc. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1944_pu/cp-1_critical.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...

shortsunblack 3y ago

This is a win for science-based energy policy.