Nuclear power

[mspohr]

Big surprise here

UPDATE: Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear expansion hit with new delays, costs

Many of Georgia Power’s customers already are paying Vogtle’s financing costs — to the tune of nearly $900 on average per ratepayer. Still to come as of late last year: a $185-a-year increase in average residential rates to cover construction costs if state regulators approve all of the company’s Vogtle costs, according to monitors and state staffers.

 

[mspohr]

Why the U.S. government plans to spend billions to keep money-losing nuclear plants open

The U.S. government is spending billions of dollars to prop up some money-losing nuclear plants, which it needs to stay open to meet its clean energy goals.

www.cnbc.com

The government is going to spend billions of dollars to keep nuclear power plants open in the United States because they’re losing too much money to stay open otherwise.While the $6 billion in the Infrastructure law is helpful to stem a potential flood of closures, it is still not enough, King said. In their modeling, the Rhodium Group pairs the $6 billion with the proposed existing nuclear production tax credit that’s part of the Build Back Better Act, which the Joint Committee on Taxation score estimates to be $23 billion.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Big surprise here

UPDATE: Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear expansion hit with new delays, costs

Many of Georgia Power’s customers already are paying Vogtle’s financing costs — to the tune of nearly $900 on average per ratepayer. Still to come as of late last year: a $185-a-year increase in average residential rates to cover construction costs if state regulators approve all of the company’s Vogtle costs, according to monitors and state staffers.

We should make a timeline of announced delays as a wiki post.

 

[mblakele]

The DER Task Force podcast recently took up nuclear, discussing problems with the existing approach, the question of need, and the promise of SMR. Good discussion IMO. Their conclusion was that we'll need some form of nuclear to reach net-zero, but we'll need better technology (for example SMR) to do that in a cost-effective way. Myself I'm not convinced of the first point, but I'm keeping an open mind.

As I type this there's no link to the episode on the DER web site, but it's easy to find on various podcast platforms and I'll add some direct links.

Podcast — DER Task Force

www.dertaskforce.com

DER Task Force on Apple Podcasts

Technology · 2024

podcasts.apple.com

Google Podcasts

With Google Podcasts, you can find and listen to the world's podcasts for free.

podcasts.google.com

Podcasts | Pandora

Discover your favorite Podcasts from a variety of categories including Daily News, Music, Business, True Crime, Comedy, Politics and more. Listen to Podcasts on Pandora.

www.stitcher.com

 

[RubberToe]

Finland's much-delayed nuclear plant launches – DW – 03/12/2022

Nuclear reactor Olkiluoto 3 has gone online in Finland some 12 years behind schedule and on a massively inflated budget. Finland now hopes to cut back on energy imports from Russia, Sweden and Norway.

www.dw.com

14% of Finland's power from this guy.

RT

 

[mspohr]

Finland's much-delayed nuclear plant launches – DW – 03/12/2022

Nuclear reactor Olkiluoto 3 has gone online in Finland some 12 years behind schedule and on a massively inflated budget. Finland now hopes to cut back on energy imports from Russia, Sweden and Norway.

www.dw.com

14% of Finland's power from this guy.

RT

Good that they finished it. Like most nuclear, late and expensive.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Finland's much-delayed nuclear plant launches – DW – 03/12/2022

Nuclear reactor Olkiluoto 3 has gone online in Finland some 12 years behind schedule and on a massively inflated budget. Finland now hopes to cut back on energy imports from Russia, Sweden and Norway.

www.dw.com

14% of Finland's power from this guy.

RT

Over time, Olkiluoto-3 is expected to reduce the need for electricity imports from Russia, Sweden and Norway and lead to lower prices.

 

[nwdiver]

I should just get a tattoo that reads 'Heat is a terrible source of electricity'

 

[nwdiver]

Sure, throwing a blank check to the nuclear industry is probably the only way it has a chance of surviving. But is that really a good idea? What was it Mitt Romney quipped about Tesla? 'You're not just picking winners and losers you're picking the losers'? Funny how that never seems to apply to nuclear power....

The U.S. Government Should Treat Nuclear Plants Like Military Jets​

'For many years, we have argued that nuclear power is not and never was a commercial technology. The nuclear industry and nuclear builders and operators pretended that it was, but relied on government research and development, government insurance, government regulation, and lately, direct government subsidy. US investors no longer buy that story. If we really want a nuclear revival, the government will have to do the reviving directly.'

 

[mspohr]

Sure, throwing a blank check to the nuclear industry is probably the only way it has a chance of surviving. But is that really a good idea? What was it Mitt Romney quipped about Tesla? 'You're not just picking winners and losers you're picking the losers'? Funny how that never seems to apply to nuclear power....

The U.S. Government Should Treat Nuclear Plants Like Military Jets​

'For many years, we have argued that nuclear power is not and never was a commercial technology. The nuclear industry and nuclear builders and operators pretended that it was, but relied on government research and development, government insurance, government regulation, and lately, direct government subsidy. US investors no longer buy that story. If we really want a nuclear revival, the government will have to do the reviving directly.'

We don't need or want a nuclear revival. We can't afford it.
We do need and want wind and solar.

 

[Terminator857]

... Like most nuclear, late and expensive.

How expensive is it using gas and oil to fund Russia which then kills Ukrainians?

 

[mspohr]

How expensive is it using gas and oil to fund Russia which then kills Ukrainians?

How cheap is it to use solar, wind and batteries and skip sending money to Putin?

 

[Terminator857]

How cheap is it to use solar, wind and batteries and skip sending money to Putin?

I wonder what Germany's response is to that question. Perhaps something like we can't transition that fast.

 

[nwdiver]

I wonder what Germany's response is to that question. Perhaps something like we can't transition that fast.

Nuclear costs ~$300M/yr/GW to keep operational. At some point it just makes more sense to shut it down and invest that $300M/yr in renewables or storage.

Why nuclear power slows action on climate change

'Sustaining uneconomic reactors would not only divert public funding from more climate-effective competitors but also constrain their sales and degrade the competitive markets where they thrive. Slowing and blocking the fastest and cheapest climate solutions harms climate protection.'​

 

[mspohr]

I wonder what Germany's response is to that question. Perhaps something like we can't transition that fast.

Germany stuck its collective head in the sand and went all in on methane from Russia. Gerhard Schröder promoted the Gazprom Nordstream pipeline and earns $1 Million a year from Russia.
They should have been building solar, wind, batteries. They have screwed up badly and they are toast.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Germany stuck its collective head in the sand and went all in on methane from Russia. Gerhard Schröder promoted the Gazprom Nordstream pipeline and earns $1 Million a year from Russia.
They should have been building solar, wind, batteries. They have screwed up badly and they are toast.

Wind is really the possible additional growth area, although they do need some infrastructural investment. The new government is supporting significant installation of onshore wind.

For solar and batteries, the world is constrained by supply, but it needs to be ready to install as fast as it can get it.

 

[mspohr]

‘Dodged a bullet’: how whistleblowers averted a second US nuclear disaster

In its second half, Meltdown, directed by Kief Davidson, hones in on the story of Rick Parks, a cleanup supervisor turned whistleblower on the Bechtel Corp, the company hired to conduct the billion-dollar cleanup by Metropolitan Edison and supervised by the government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “While a lot of people know about the disaster, they don’t know about what happened in the cleanup phase and how close we were to another disaster,” Davidson told the Guardian. “We dodged a bullet a second time, and it was entirely due to the fact that Rick Parks and [fellow whistleblower] Larry King stood up.”

The cleanup was risky, arduous and behind schedule. Bechtel received funds upon completion of individual tasks, incentivizing the company and its hirer, General Public Utilities (GPU), to cut corners and ignore NRC regulations.

 

[mspohr]

Georgia nuclear plant’s cost now forecast to top $30 billion

A nuclear power plant being built in Georgia is now projected to cost its owners more than $30 billion.

www.news4jax.com

 

[mspohr]

Great documentary on Netflix.
Meltdown - Three Mile Island

Four parts. First two are on the accident and the confusion and misinformation at the time.
Second two on the cleanup, corruption, and prevention of an even wore meltdown.

 

[mspohr]

Poisoned legacy: why the future of power can’t be nuclear

What the Russian takeover of these nuclear facilities exposed is a hazard inherent in all nuclear power. In order for this method of producing electricity to be safe, everything else in society has to be functioning perfectly. Warfare, economic collapse, climate change itself – all of these increasingly real risks make nuclear sites potentially perilous places. Even without them, the dangers of atomic fission remain, and we must ask ourselves: are they really worth the cost?

This is the second great risk from nuclear power: even if a reactor runs for its lifetime without incident, you still have a lot of dangerous material left at the end of it. Fuel from nuclear power plants will present a threat to human life and the environment for generations to come, with the half-life of some radioactive particles measured in tens of thousands of years. One of the solutions to this is to bury high-level radioactive waste deep underground, in former mines such as at Morsleben in Germany. The United States proposed an underground facility for that purpose, to be called the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but the project, which met with strong opposition from the indigenous population and the general public, has been shelved. Nuclear power plants generally have no alternative to storing their high-level radioactive waste on site.