7 ms·
A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical det
by Alexsky2 5mo ago
A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impression is that smart people are working hard to ensure the lessons of previous disasters and potential future ones are mitigated, and that nuclear energy, whether through next-gen small module reactors or legacy systems, will be an important aspect of our future energy grid, especially with the rapidly rising energy demand predicted over the next two decades. If you are interested in a tour, the form can be found here:
https://www.pge.com/en/about/pge-systems/nuclear-power.html https://www.pge.com/en/about/pge-systems/nuclear-power.html
- declan_roberts 5mo agoI'm so glad we saved Diablo. It was VERY close to being shut down the same year we were having rolling blackouts.
- boringg 5mo agoSo close - big save indeed.
- pdntspa 5mo agoI really wish the same could be said for San Onofre. To say nothing of its value as a landmark -- it will live on in our memories as the great San Onofre boobies
- boringg 5mo agoOne upside -- is that SONGS being decommissioned gave the energy storage market the ability to level up in a big way back then. They filled part of the gap with some large MW procurements. Allowed BESS to be part of the collective energy solution. Nuclear + Solar + BESS + some small amounts of NG is a dream team.
- leonidasrup 5mo ago"Ironically, what originally motivated pumped storage installations was the inflexibility of nuclear power. Nuclear plants’ large steam turbines run best at full power. Pumped storage can defer surplus nuclear power generated overnight (when consumption is low) to help meet the next day’s demand peak." https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-pumped-hydro-energystorage-renaissance https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-pumped-hydro-energystorage-renai...
- boringg 5mo agoMain challenge with pumped storage is its geographically limited, always a custom project, and large scale deployment.
- adolph 5mo agoYeah, nuclear provides a steady base load, so the percentage goes up or down depending on overall grid utilization. Right now its doing 2.28 MW [0], which is more than what Wikipedia claims as its "Nameplace capacity" of 2.256 MW [1]. 0. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
- kalessin 5mo agoThe correct unit is GW.
- robocat 5mo agoTo use the strongest plausible interpretation, the writer could be from Belgium, where the meaning of 2.256 depends on whether they wrote the number in French, Dutch or German. The Belgians apparently typically invert the meaning of . and , in numbers (from how they are used in the US). To make large numbers readable, Belgians use either a period (.) or a non-breaking space. Example: Two thousand thirty-six is written as 2.036 or 2 036. In formal Belgian French, the space is increasingly preferred over the period to avoid confusion with the Anglo-American system, but the period remains very common in Belgian Dutch and everyday shorthand. I would guess Europeans tend to be better at SI units than people from the US. And let's not mention the the cancer of changing the value of G depending on context.
- foolfoolz 5mo agodiablo canyon has 2 reactors that can make 1.1MW per hour continuously. about 2.2MW/hr they both aren’t always on but that’s the goal. It’s closer to 2MW/hr actual the largest solar plant in california is Ivanpah. It made 85GW/year. Thats 97MW/hr. It would take 20 clones of Ivanpah to match one diablo canyon. Ivanpah took 4 years to build, cost 2.5B and was in discussions to close because it’s not cost effective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoIvanpah is solar thermal. Nobody is advocating for solar thermal, photovoltaic has decisively won.
- foolfoolz 5mo agomount signal, the largest PV plant in california makes 1,200GW/hrs per year. it would still take ~15 copies of mount signal for a single diablo canyon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar my whole point is solar is great, but the insane scale it requires to get reasonable output is really underestimated. you would need solar fields 100sqmi big. probably many of them. solar alone won’t be the future of humanities energy needs because it’s not efficient enough. we should still keep building solar. but if we aren’t building nuclear too its not enough growth
- Toutouxc 5mo agoThe other day I calculated what it would take to run my entire country on pure solar, assuming magical infinite storage capacity. Even here in Central Europe, the required area for all the panels was a pretty insignificant number that, even if built as a single huge circle, would easily fit in many different places.
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- throwaway2037 5mo agoI did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a terrific way to power our countries, but the ship has sailed. PV solar has won, and now we can add batteries (and some wind) to get reliability.
- panja 5mo agoMaybe there is a discussion to be had about WHY it needs to make economic sense? Power is a natural monopoly, maybe it doesn't need to be a part of the economy?
- ineedasername 5mo agoAnd $ cost is a poor metric to chase when what you really care about includes a lot more-- exposure to the whims of geopolitical forces you can't foresee or control, which have both $ cost and more.
- dalyons 5mo agoI agree to an extent… but a state forcing a nuclear share and locking the populace into higher power prices for 30+ years is going to politically very unpopular. Short term economic concerns dominate today.
- illiac786 5mo agoThe problem has never been the lack of smart people for Chernobyl or Fukushima. Rather the fact that dumb, short sighted people were in power and drove the smart people away. And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this is going to stop any time soon.