Nuclear power

[nwdiver]

To reiterate my current viewpoint, there is nothing wrong with nuclear. It's natural, and arguably sustainable. If you can forgive the insult, humans just aren't smart enough to use it right now. I don't mean not smart enough to support building existing nuclear. I mean, not smart enough to design, sight, build and operate it with sufficient proficiency. The companies involved over the last few decades have failed in spectacular fashion.

...........

I'm curious if James Hansen's viewpoint has changed any. In the beginning, I mirrored his own support for nuclear energy, but that was when Tesla was just a baby and we didn't know what would come of it yet, and the nuclear industry hasn't exactly presented a good impression of late.

I think our reactor technology is there. If Westinghouse wanted to build an AP1000 in my backyard I would have zero problem with that (as long as they don't ask me to help pay for it Fission isn't rocket science... keep the core covered... older reactor designs were a bit too flippant with that concept. That's essentially what the AP1000 is designed around. It's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th priorities are ensuring adequate cooling to the reactor. I'm confident in the resilience of new reactor designs... wether they can be built at a sane cost is another matter....

IMO Hansons problem is that he's being fed misinformation by people close to him. They're operating under the old centralized utility paradigm of matching supply to demand. Grid 2.0 has no use for such archaic concepts. My stance on nuclear power has evolved A LOT over the last 8 years. I was a nuclear evangelist not long ago. The nuclear renaissance was right around the corner and solar was >$6/w. As the cost wind and solar fell and the cost of nuclear rose I became more of a nuclear pessimist. Seeing the hypocrisy of the industry first hand I've grown downright hostile. Most people in nuclear power could not care less about climate change or clean energy. They have little interest in displacing fools fuel generation with clean energy like executives running wind and solar companies. They just want to sustain nuclear. They promote nuclear power as 'clean' because that's what the public wants... not because they care. If an industry can 'deserve' to fade into obscurity it's nuclear power..... do I sound bitter?

 

[RubberToe]

...do I sound bitter?

Maybe driven by the need to justify your level of cynicism?

RT

 

[RubberToe]

Hinckley Point C gets the go ahead for concrete pour. Two reactors in 2026 for $28,000,000,000. This is the first new reactor built in the UK in 20+ years.

Hinkley Point C gets go-ahead for construction

Anyone care to guess how this story ends?

RT

 

[nwdiver]

Anyone care to guess how this story ends?

I'm guessing tears. Really really expensive tears....

 

[adiggs]

Hinckley Point C gets the go ahead for concrete pour. Two reactors in 2026 for $28,000,000,000. This is the first new reactor built in the UK in 20+ years.

Hinkley Point C gets go-ahead for construction

Anyone care to guess how this story ends?

RT

$28B pays for a LOT of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. So much so, that there would be a worldwide production capacity problem filling the order (at least for the batteries).

BUT - you put a significant fraction of $28B on the table to buy and deploy battery storage, I'm thinking the world supply of batteries will react


My guess - wasted capital, big losses for investors, big losses for rate payers, and big bonuses / paydays for the CEO(s).

Oh - and a few years of construction wages for construction workers.

 

[nwdiver]

Southern Company (the company building Vogtle) CEO denies that CO2 is the primary contributor to climate change.

Like I've said... the 'nuclear industry' could not care less about climate change. They have no interest in displacing fools fuel with nuclear power. Wind and Solar as an industry strive to grow. It's hard to win when victory is not your objective. The idea that nuclear power can help fight climate change is absurd on almost every level. Nuclear Power is not a solution... it's an expensive distraction.

 

[nwdiver]

Doing the same thing but expecting different results....

Michael Shellenberger calls for a massive, state-directed consolidation of the nuclear sector in developed economies. A single state-sponsored nuclear behemoth, consolidating the nuclear divisions of Toshiba, Westinghouse, General Electric, Areva, and EDF would deploy a single standardized light-water reactor design in the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and western Europe and compete with Korea, China, and Russia for export markets abroad. To assure demand for the new conglomerate’s product, low-cost public loans would encourage utilities in developed economies to build the new standardized reactor.

It's like an addiction... only more expensive and pathetic....

 

[transpondster]

$28B pays for a LOT of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. So much so, that there would be a worldwide production capacity problem filling the order (at least for the batteries).

BUT - you put a significant fraction of $28B on the table to buy and deploy battery storage, I'm thinking the world supply of batteries will react


My guess - wasted capital, big losses for investors, big losses for rate payers, and big bonuses / paydays for the CEO(s).

Oh - and a few years of construction wages for construction workers.

UK peak demand is in winter. Can we stop nonsense that solar works everywhere?..

 

[nwdiver]

UK peak demand is in winter. Can we stop nonsense that solar works everywhere?..

Wind.

Bit of a straw man there... no one is claiming that solar alone is the solution. Solar, Wind, Storage and Demand Response.

 

[Lloyd]

Disturbing news regarding nuclear facilities:

The Most Toxic Nuclear Facility in the US Is in Lockdown

 

[mspohr]

Disturbing news regarding nuclear facilities:

The Most Toxic Nuclear Facility in the US Is in Lockdown

This is the Hanford site which was used for bomb production for many years and is a nightmare of toxic waste. They are starting to try to clean it up but the combination of toxic nuclear waste and aging storage facilities means that it will probably never be "clean". The cleanup has already suffered from several disasters... this is only the latest.
My neighbor's daughter and her husband are working there as nuclear engineers and they have secure lifetime employment... if they don't get exposed to too much radiation.

 

[Kbra]

This is the Hanford site which was used for bomb production for many years and is a nightmare of toxic waste. They are starting to try to clean it up but the combination of toxic nuclear waste and aging storage facilities means that it will probably never be "clean". The cleanup has already suffered from several disasters... this is only the latest.
My neighbor's daughter and her husband are working there as nuclear engineers and they have secure lifetime employment... if they don't get exposed to too much radiation.

Given federal limits on worker dose allowance. I'd bet most airline pilots are getting more radiation dose than them.

 

[mspohr]

Given federal limits on worker dose allowance. I'd bet most airline pilots are getting more radiation dose than them.

Probably, unless there's an accident like the one that just happened.

 

[nwdiver]

Given federal limits on worker dose allowance. I'd bet most airline pilots are getting more radiation dose than them.

You're confusing radiation and contamination...

 

[Kbra]

You're confusing radiation and contamination...

I'm fully aware of the difference.

 

[S'toon]

The nuclear industry is so uncompetitive that half of U.S. nuclear power plants are no longer profitable. And if existing nukes are uneconomic, it’s no surprise that new nuclear plants are wildly unaffordable.

New York and Illinois have already agreed to more than $700 million a year in subsidies, and if all northeast and mid-Atlantic nukes got similar subsidies, it would cost U.S. consumers $3.9 billion a year. Things are so bad for the nuclear industry that, recently, even conservatives have started to publicly oppose the subsidies the industry needs to survive.

“Ever since the completion of the first wave of nuclear reactors in 1970, and continuing with the ongoing construction of new reactors in Europe, nuclear power seems to be doomed with the curse of cost escalation,” explained one 2015 journal article, “Revisiting the Cost Escalation Curse of Nuclear Power.”

At the same time, nuclear’s main competition — natural gas, energy efficiency, and renewables — have gotten much cheaper.

The nuclear industry has essentially priced itself out of the market for new power plants, at least in market-based economies. Even the nuclear-friendly French — who get more than three fourths their power from nukes — can’t build an affordable, on-schedule next generation nuclear plant in their own country.

Last week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on the umpteenth cost overruns in Georgia Power’s effort to built two new reactors, with the headline, “Plant Vogtle: Georgia’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ now a financial quagmire.” The Westinghouse plants, originally priced at a whopping $14 billion are “currently $3.6 billion over budget and almost four years behind the original schedule.” Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March.

<snip>

And here’s the last straw: You know the industry is in trouble when even conservatives start penning pieces dissing it. This week saw two such pieces:

• “Nuclear Subsidies: A Case of Pure Waste”
• “Why nuclear power subsidies must end”

<snip>

Full article at:
Nuclear industry prices itself out of power market, demands taxpayers keep it afloat

 

[mspohr]

New article in Science reviewed by NAS stating that current storage of spent nuclear fuel in ponds is unsafe and could expose 8 million to radiation in the event of an accident. They recommend dry cask storage.
Unsafe Nuclear Waste Management May Put Eight Million Americans at Risk

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Full article at:
Nuclear industry prices itself out of power market, demands taxpayers keep it afloat

No reason to get excited. Nuclear is competitive threat to coal.

 

[nwdiver]

New article in Science reviewed by NAS stating that current storage of spent nuclear fuel in ponds is unsafe and could expose 8 million to radiation in the event of an accident. They recommend dry cask storage.
Unsafe Nuclear Waste Management May Put Eight Million Americans at Risk

The real 'solution' is ensuring the cooling ponds are secure. You can't put used fuel directly into a dry cask... the short-lived isotopes need time to decay. Used fuel needs to spend a few months or years in a cooling pond. It only takes 1 fuel rod to cause a problem. At the end of the day wether 1 fuel rod burns or 1000 burn the result won't be much different.

IMO the fuel ponds are by far the greatest threat. They're generally outside primary AND secondary containment as was the case in Fukushima. The fact that the pools were above ground and could be so easily drained by a crack in an Earthquake prone region could be considered criminally negligent. Once exposed to air a fuel rod can quickly 'self-ignite'. The zircaloy cladding is heated by the used fuel and ignites. Burning metal is notoriously hard to extinguish. Water can become fuel.

No reason to get excited. Nuclear is competitive threat to coal.

Not without a carbon tax... and subsidies... and the Price-Anderson Act... and the EPA... and really bad math...

 

[macpacheco]

Full article at:
Nuclear industry prices itself out of power market, demands taxpayers keep it afloat

The nuclear industry didn't priced itself out of the market. The NRC did !
Replacing nuclear fission with much simpler type of reactor, done the way GE tried to do with S-PRISM would take decades and cost perhaps US$ 10 billion, specially while trying to please the NRC in all of its infinite safety wisdom.
My hope is by either pursuing new types of nuclear reactors, using either the Canadian, UK, Chinese or Indian regulatory system will be doable at a much lower cost.

Canada for one have very different rules from reactors considered small vs big reactors.
Big reactors... CNSC must learn that reactor type and they must first come up with rules for such reactor types.
Small reactors... The maker must demonstrate the reactor is safe using some basic principles and goals. CNSC still has the authority to say its not convinced and suggest modifications to obtain certification, but the nuclear designer is essentially free to go about it in any way that makes sense. What matters isn't following a prescription but rather satisfying safety goals.
Also, is seems the difference between the opaque nuclear regulator that imposes vs the chatty one that helps the designer achieve certification.
All impressions of someone that's reading a lot of things between the lines.
The simple fact that Terrestrial Energy expects to accomplish the real certification work in 3 or 4 years. They're still in the pre certification work with the CNSC, have pretty much stated the final submission should only be performed some time in 2018 or 2019, yet they expect final approval to build their first reactor around 2021, something unheard of for PWR/BWR with the NRC, yet instead this is a Molten Salt Reactor, a type of reactor that's not operating anywhere in the world and the last one to operate was about 50 years ago !