-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Nuclear power
- Thread starter eledille
- Start date
-
- Tags
- Energy Environment Policy
AntronX
Member
$1.6B loan guarantee, not actual cash. Uncle Sam only pays if Vogtle is cancelled. This allows Oglethorpe to get much better interest rate on private loan since US Govt assumes failure risk and the creditor is guaranteed to get their money back. VC Summer did not have federal loan guarantees.
Be sure and get back to us when the company that eventually borrows the $1,600,000,000 to finish a nuclear power plant that is already 2x over budget pays back that Loan in it's entirety. I'll be right here waiting patiently for my repayment.
RT
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
"In for a penny, in for a pound" comes to mind
Is GA striving for the most expensive electricity in the world ?
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
A sister plant at Summer was cancelled when they reached 2.5x cost over-runs.Be sure and get back to us when the company that eventually borrows the $1,600,000,000 to finish a nuclear power plant that is already 2x over budget pays back that Loan in it's entirety. I'll be right here waiting patiently for my repayment.
RT
With Fed loan guarantees this project should hit 3x easy. And then collapse, since the underlying technology and business case is a scam that has already hobbled Toshiba.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
'It's solars fault!' - Rick Perry
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I could not reliably add up all the subsidies and loan underwriting this boondoggle has accumulated so far although the wikipedia monograph on the subject mentions 10+B by the Obama administration, 6+B in another entry, 3+B by the DOE and now 1.6B either as free money or a loan underwriting.
This is all related to units #3 and #4 that together are 2.5 GW. Costs are now estimated at 27B, so about $11 a watt with room for more ... while those crazy Californians with their clean and safe energy notions are building wind and solar for $1 a watt. I could mention the high 3x capacity factor of nuclear compared to wind and solar, but then I'd feel obliged to also mention nuclear maintenance, repairs, upgrades and accident costs. No need to mention accident insurance -- the feds are on the hook for that too.
This is all related to units #3 and #4 that together are 2.5 GW. Costs are now estimated at 27B, so about $11 a watt with room for more ... while those crazy Californians with their clean and safe energy notions are building wind and solar for $1 a watt. I could mention the high 3x capacity factor of nuclear compared to wind and solar, but then I'd feel obliged to also mention nuclear maintenance, repairs, upgrades and accident costs. No need to mention accident insurance -- the feds are on the hook for that too.
Skotty
2014 S P85 | 2023 F-150L
From a strictly scientific standpoint, nuclear is appealing technology with a lot of potential. However, the nuclear industry lacks proper leadership, and that more than anything is what has turned it into a disaster. Kind of like the Republican party at the moment.
They suffer from 3 primary failures, all which were mostly avoidable:
1) Capital costs during construction. This should have been an area experiencing regular improvement, but we have seen the opposite.
2) Waste planning and management. We should have had better plans for waste a long time ago, and we should have been pursuing reactor designs that minimize waste. Didn't do either of those things either.
3) Disaster recovery plans. Reactor designs should have been safer (like not putting backup generators in the basement in places that can flood). Emergency plans should have been more effective. Fukushima is a perfect example. Properly designed and handled, Fukushima would have shut down without emergency action. And even if emergency action was required, it should have been effective. Neither was true. Disaster follows. Loss of support of nuclear power is the end result. Fukushima never should have happened the way it did, and there's no escaping that reality.
They suffer from 3 primary failures, all which were mostly avoidable:
1) Capital costs during construction. This should have been an area experiencing regular improvement, but we have seen the opposite.
2) Waste planning and management. We should have had better plans for waste a long time ago, and we should have been pursuing reactor designs that minimize waste. Didn't do either of those things either.
3) Disaster recovery plans. Reactor designs should have been safer (like not putting backup generators in the basement in places that can flood). Emergency plans should have been more effective. Fukushima is a perfect example. Properly designed and handled, Fukushima would have shut down without emergency action. And even if emergency action was required, it should have been effective. Neither was true. Disaster follows. Loss of support of nuclear power is the end result. Fukushima never should have happened the way it did, and there's no escaping that reality.
Last edited:
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
After working in nuclear power for ~15 years I think this is inevitable from a first principles perspective and a little obvious if you think about it. The more experience the industry gets with nuclear the more they learn about what can go wrong. The more they know about what can go wrong the more safeguards they engineer to prevent those things from going wrong. Financially nuclear power has a negative learning...
It's sad and frustrating to see our society wasting so much time and talent on fission. It's a dead end. Success is not one of the possible outcomes.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
More insight into the project..
Early signs of 'incompetence at every level' went unheeded as South Carolina rushed toward 'sexy' nuclear future
It includes corporate-friendly politicians, an ambitious for-profit utility, an untested nuclear design, utility regulators who didn't raise questions, investors who had nothing to lose, a state-operated financial partner and a small state looking to be on the leading edge of a nuclear renaissance.
Early signs of 'incompetence at every level' went unheeded as South Carolina rushed toward 'sexy' nuclear future
It includes corporate-friendly politicians, an ambitious for-profit utility, an untested nuclear design, utility regulators who didn't raise questions, investors who had nothing to lose, a state-operated financial partner and a small state looking to be on the leading edge of a nuclear renaissance.
link from nbcnews.com regarding thorium:
Have physicists found the key to safer nuclear power?
My favorite quote:
"More than 45 years later, thorium-based nuclear fission is still as promising as ever."
Um, they do realize that that's a condemnation, not an endorsement, don't they?
Have physicists found the key to safer nuclear power?
My favorite quote:
"More than 45 years later, thorium-based nuclear fission is still as promising as ever."
Um, they do realize that that's a condemnation, not an endorsement, don't they?
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
do you realized that thorium wasn't developed because it's almost useless as material for bombs? Most early reactor designs had feature to produce plutonium that's why they had early development
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
That was >50 years ago... why hasn't it been developed in the last 50 years? Why are new companies like NuScale still pursuing PWRs? Thorium isn't a magic pill. Just like all other forms of fission it's too expensive to matter.
Everytime I hear someone talking about how safe XYZ nuclear technology is the only thing I'm thinking is 'Hmmm.... they're touting safety again.... they obviously haven't found a way to make it cost effective...' I totally agree nuclear is safe... but spending ~$10/w on power generation is absurd.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
That sounds right now, but wind and solar really only dived in price the last 10 years or so.
The NBC article (which is clearly poorly informed, lite-propaganda) threw out the possibility of a thorium plant being used to dispose of uranium waste. That sounds like something worse pursuing if true.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Still cheaper and safer to just bury it. If people were less hysterical about scary words like 'uranium' dumping spent fuel into the ocean would actually be a great way to get rid of it too. With radioactive contamination dilution really is the solution to pollution. There's ~4B tons of Uranium in the Ocean naturally. The US has generated <80k tons since the birth of nuclear power. So dumping all our spent fuel in the ocean would increase the amount of radioactive material by ~0.002%.
Radiation is 100% natural. I received several times more exposure to radiation from soil than I did from nuclear power in all my years working in the industry.
Zapped
Model S - PURE EV
That my be 4B tons naturally diluted.... so how does one dilute those barrels of waste when dumping in the ocean ?
I can help but wonder how do we get rid of the base load power that Sweden for example requires.
The control room
I can help but wonder how do we get rid of the base load power that Sweden for example requires.
The control room
Last edited:
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
There's lots of ways to do it. You can mix it into Anti-Growth Marine Paint used for Cargo ships. Even dumping barrels that sink into a 3 mile deep trench would probably do it... by the time it gets to sensitive areas it would be diluted this was a method which was studied years ago but never implemented.
Public fear of radiation is ridiculous... but no one ever accused humanity of being rational...
Look at the Gluten Free Craze (Not counting people with Celiacs)
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Similar threads
