California's Last Nuclear Power Plant to Be Shut Down | Hacker News Reader

California's Last Nuclear Power Plant to Be Shut Down

npr.org

48 pointscmpolis76 comments

In a half century there was ~4 major meltdowns in the world that affect people lives: 1) Kyshtym disaster (57')[1] - it was old production site after WWII - will never be again 2) Chernobyl (86') - stress-testing nuclear plant and disabling all levels of protection - will never be again 3) Fukushima Daiichi (11') - Obsolete block not stopped

Other disasters are not affected anyone outside of the plant, for example Three Mile Island. And that's all! On the other side, hydro plants actually make things much worse to a nature and already killed big rivers in siberia. Fossil-fuel stations (67% of worldwide energy) are even worse.

Nuclear plants are still the safest for environment and the only way to bring electricity to developing world because it can be very cheap. Take a look at B. Gates nuclear reactor: http://terrapower.com/pages/technology

Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night. And who say that batteries can't explode? It is looks like fear of flighting: no reason to fear planes and much much more people die in car accidents that in plane one. Same here - much more people die from other sources that from nuclear plant disaster.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

Please dont take this the wrong way, but I'm genuinely curious from a linguistic perspective. What is your native tongue?

Russian

As a non-native speaker myself (Italian), I too often notice what seem to be patterns in other non-native speaker's English writing that seem to be typical of some larger geographical area (eastern Europe, northern Asia, southern Asia). Though I can't put my finger on it and say exactly what those patterns look like, nor pinpoint where the writer's mother tongue is, I can usually tell that something is off in a certain location-specific way. It's interesting and, to a certain extent, a fun exercise. It's a pity that I'm too lazy to sit down and compare samples of writing from different areas and come up with an organic and formal description of what I'm noticing, assuming that's even feasible without being a linguist and well-versed in all the languages involved.

No offense intended for the author of the parent comment, I hope he won't take this the wrong way either!

> Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night.

I completely agree that we should be ramping up nuclear generation, but nuclear alone also has a timing issue that requires either batteries or a hybrid approach to generation. Unlike fossil fuels where the plant can be dialed up and down to cope with demand, the output of a nuclear reactor is generally fixed (at least on the timescales relevant to demand fluctuation).

Solar can be a big help here, because demand tends to be higher during the day and lower at night. Some sort of energy storage technology would likely still be needed even with a full nuclear/solar grid, since energy usage in developed nations tends to peak in the early evening.

What you're describing is only true of previous generation nuclear plants, where there was no need to implement load following.

There is nothing inherent in nuclear power that makes it impossible to throttle and indeed there are currently operating plants designed with load following capabilities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuc...

Some nuclear plants, including the largest in the world (Bruce NGS in Canada), have steam bypass systems allowing electrical output be curtailed without reducing thermal output. You just dump the thermal energy into a lake.

On a plant near the ocean, any surplus power could be used for desalination, solving two problems, one of them for free.

Agreed.

The OECD estimates that the probability of an accident at a Gen. II or higher reactor that results in significant casualties is approximately one per one million years.

All of the accidents in the history of nuclear power have caused fewer deaths than the failure of a single hydroelectric dam. Combined these disasters resulted in an estimated 60,000 deaths.

That number pales in comparison to the 288,000 people who die every year from particulate inhalation due to fossil fuels.

As much as I agree and support the use of nuclear power to meet our energy requirements, I think the most obvious downside when a nuclear plant fails also happens to help remind the public of what a nuclear failure can create.

The only two Level 7 nuclear events in the world — Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi — have have rendered large swaths of land unusable for a significant amount of time. Whether or not the exclusion zones surrounding these two areas need to be as large as they are can be argued. However, when a hydroelectric dam fails more people die initially, but as the cleanup happens and the reporters fade away, the event fades into the background. With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind.

"With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind."

We could make movies about dams that collapse, too and we have. I'm not even sure there are more about nuclear accidents (nuclear war, yes, but accidents?). Even if there are, I think the movies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The invisible danger of radiation being held back by walls of concrete just looks more dangerous to us than the visible danger of a wall of water being held back by walls of concrete.

And Chernobyl? A nature reserve. I can see someone writing a SF story about cultures that protect existing nature by the controlled disposal of radio-active material.

If the damage done by Chernobyl was limited to the restricted area around the town, that wouldn't be so bad. But in fact, as I wrote in my other comment, large parts of western Europe have been contaminated too. Not to the level where one cannot live there any more, but to the level, where it makes it dangerous to eat wild mushrooms and game (which has to be checked for radioactivity before being considered edible). And this will be an issue for many decades to come.

> I think the most obvious downside when a nuclear plant fails also happens to help remind the public of what a nuclear failure can create.

1. It's out-of-the-ordinary. Nobody would pay attention to the monthly news report that coal burning has, yet again, damaged the environment to the same degree as a meltdown.

2. Our monkey brains are incredibly bad at realizing that gases can be more dangerous than those scary barrels with scary warning symbols. Instead of being hidden away underground, gasses conveniently "disappear" into the air.

While I do agree with the broader point that nuclear power is probably a good idea, an estimate like "1 per million years" is, by definition, absolute bullshit.

There is no way to reliably estimate an event that rare. And to publish such an estimate at all is insanely irresponsible.

Actually, if you have the data, estimating failure rates of reactors is fairly straightforward. Just use a Poisson distribution, the same as calculating MTBFs for other rare events.

It's the same way one calculates the probability of being struck by lightening, for example.

Do you have a link for this? I really want to be able to link directly to the information.

Oh, yes. My apologies, I didn't see this before.

The risk analysis is here: http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6862-comparing-r...

In it, the probabilistic risk of a major nuclear accidents are calculated. It's a bit difficult to parse without a stats background, but if you Google the title there are some good summaries.

Most of the data is presented in graphs common in probabilistic risk analysis, but the authors do examine an example of the anyhow burg Nuclear Powerplant in Switzerland.

This is a very low baseline. The plant consists of Gen. II boiling water reactors, built in 1967. The reactor core has multiple cracks in the core shroud.

Even with this design, the authors describe how the risk analysis demonstrates that the probability of a major accident (deaths > 2000) is less than one per one million reactor years.

The risk graphs demonstrate that for reactors newer than Gen. II, the risk is greatly reduced, to the point that modern reactors are 1,600 safer than Muhlenburg.

This specific reactor has some very significant earthquake risks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulne... for an introduction.

Regardless of what you think of the industry of nuclear power, this specific reactor, at Diablo Canyon, is precarious and dangerous.

That there is an earthquake risk doesn't mean it isn't properly dealt with. The plant is built to withstand significant seismic risk, 10 times more than the faults around it could produce. That's right there in the wikipedia article you linked to.

OK, I presumed that wikipedia article would be better. Anyway, there's dissenting opinions within the NRC that disagree with PG&E and allegations that the safety reports were done poorly.

Under renewed scrutiny, PG&E is due to release ground-shaking safety reports in 2017 for the renewal of its lease in 2024 after some newish (last 7 year) USGS surveys suggested there may be more threats and that the fault lines may have not been properly characterized.

Also there was a whistleblower case against PG&E in the early 2000s claiming that safety concerns were routinely minimized (think deep water horizon) and expressing great concern for the accuracy of the claims of safety. (http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id...)

Anyway, there's serious safety concerns regarding this particular plant and that it could be the US Fukushima given its location and the fault line proximity.

These are baseless associations. Perhaps Diablo Canyon and PG&E aren't flawless and honest, but you aren't establishing risk. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk?

I don't really think a reactor being retired at 40 is the worst thing (though I'm sure it could be run longer), but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state (think the numerous oil refinery explosions that occur regularly worldwide)? What about oil train explosions (think the other oil train explosions)?

People express serious concern for some of the most outlandish, obscure risks on any project if it somehow involves the word 'nuclear.' Every project. A lot more lives could be saved if the same effort was used to create real safety standards on oil, coal, and gas.

You've asked a lot of things here. Let me try to address them:

1. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk?

No. I've read and heard from qualified people who do. I can't speak for them beyond saying they exist. I was trying to summarize their positions, but I probably missed some things.

2. Have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state?

Diablo canyon popped up on my radar due to a podcast (TUC radio) which had a 2-part series: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/77429 and http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/77528. I found the case for the shutdown of this specific site quite persuasive - you may be more skeptical...

3. What about oil train explosions?

No. Again, this is a specific case. The focus is on the safety of this one thing.

You can look at my comment history, I don't believe I'm an alarmist. The concerns of the suitability of the plant seemed valid outside of any anti-nuclear concern.

> but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state

I share GPs concerns about Diablo Canyon and, yes, I've spent lots of time concerned about oil refineries in the state (both seismic and other issues) having spent several years living near several of them, and having a family member who worked in several of them. And about oil train safety, for some of the same reasons.

Actually, I've observed that there is a considerable overlap in California between people who are concerned with nuclear safety and those concerned with oil industry safety, and considerable overlap between the people unconcerned each of those, even though those unconcerned with nuclear safety will wave around things like oil (or coal or gas) industry safety when nuclear safety is raised (but generally not in any other context.)

And, in the particular case of PG&E, part of the reason for concern about them is they don't exactly have a spotless record of nonfeasance and malfeasance regarding gas infrastructure safety, too.

My two main arguments against nuclear: 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet? This includes accounting for war, tectonic movements, water safety and a host of other factors. 2. Are fines and punishment for not building nuclear facilities high enough as to be effective in enforcing regulations?

Iff those two are satisfied, go nuclear. Before, nope.

But even if they are satisfied: nuclear is a stopgap. Solar and wind are solutions. So I emotionally welcome everything which pushes those forward

I'd flip this argument around. Have we adequately solved energy storage and base power load problems with renewables yet? That is, can they feasibly serve as a primary power source or do renewables have to be coupled with sources like goal and gas?

If that's the case, sure, go full-tilt renewables. If not, then we have to weigh nuclear waste is a bigger problem than contributing to CO2 levels. I'm inclined to say no -- if only because nuclear waste can be a reasonably localized problem, whereas climate change from CO2 is global.

The main power loads are during daytime. So solar is a pretty good match to that, especially, if you like the US have large desert regions, where weather related changes are unlikely to reduce the solar efficiency a lot. Add to that wind power, which runs around the clock, you have a pretty good cover of the load. Of course you need also storage. That can be batteries on the small scale (also a good way to reuse old electrical car batteries), and hydro on the large scale. Just limiting the Hoover dam to produce electricity as a backup to solar should cover quit a bit of the storage requirements. If the remaining gaps are filled with natural gas, its a good balance. Natural gas produces much less CO2 than coal. And if only 10% of the energy load is done with gas, we should no longer worry about the CO2 too much.

> 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet?

Technically speaking? Yes, for sure. Politically speaking? Hahahahahahahaha no, nowhere close.

Not to mention spent nuclear fuel will soon be "renewable" in the future in terms of being used again to produce more energy where as it was once considered waste.

If you want to oppose power plants on the basis of safety, fine, but do not exempt the types currently unchallenged. Coal-fired plants kill more than 13,000 Americans every year [0]. Nuclear plants could kill 0. Their worst accident killed 4,000 [1].

Climate change aside, it's hard for me to see anti-nuclear activism (to the extent that it results in coal plants continuing to operate) as anything other than mass murder.

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-f...

[1]http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/25/chernoby...

Why do people like you try to outweigh one bad thing for another? Yes, coal plants are bad, too. But how is that an excuse for nuclear plants?

It's like saying: Army A is better than army B, because army B is causing more deaths in this war.

BTW. The Chernobyl and Fukushima desasters are still harming society. These desasters are still in progress.

eh, Coals CO2 might even be spun into carbon tubes one day, still waiting for that feet to hapen to fuel rods

> Coals CO2 might even be spun into carbon tubes one day

Link? I'm also very curious what can be done with after carbon sequestration if you have any links for that…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=kQBlpENiFzo

Thanks!

Because nuclear plants can replace coal plants. Replacing a bad thing with a less bad thing is a good thing.

>how is that an excuse for nuclear plants?

Because if anti-nuclear activists were to back down and let us replace coal with nuclear, tens of thousands of lives would be saved. The death toll might not be 0, but it would almost certainly be lower.

I am living in southern Germany, about 1000km west of Chernobyl. It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed). This is not going to change in my lifetime and beyond.

As a physicist, I am certainly not afraid of "nuclear" and "radiation" in the abstract. But seeing the country you live in to be contaminated for so long just because a single operator error is quite sobering. Solar has its challenges on the technical level, as the power output depends on the daytime and weather, but that is not killing anyone. "And who say that batteries can't explode?" - well even if they would, you would have a ruined battery, perhaps a building. That can be rebuild. The damage done by Chernobyl cannot be fixed for centuries.

The good news in all of this is: by now solar has become cheaper than building new, safe and modern nuclear reactors. And as a lot of the grid load in California comes from air conditioning, I fail to see how solar would not be the perfect solution for these kind of loads.

> It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed).

What a bullshit. Please provide an official source for this claims.

Mushrooms in the Central Europe were contaminated, but only for a first few months after the disaster.

Not authoritative, maybe, but there's this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/radioactive-boars-a...

and this: http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-i...

Both say the contamination comes from mushrooms.

Here is the link to the federal office for radiation protection: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w...

It is Ceseium-137 which still contaminates mushrooms and all animals regularly eating those. Occasional consumption is possible but not recommended. And that is 30 years after Chernobyl.

I was in Munich months after the disaster. A great deal of uncertainty, in the public.

I remember one particularly scary item: Wild mushrooms from Eastern Europe, e.g. Poland.

Only, you didn't have to go that far to have real risk. At that time, some measurements had mushrooms concentrating relevant radioactive isotopes by circa 400 times, IIRC.

Weather patterns and geography created particular hot spots in the more immediate area. For some reason, the Tirol sticks in my mind, for one.

This is a bad idea.

Wind and solar are simply not enough to bridge the gap between fossil fuels and fusion.[0] Shutting down the country's safest, cheapest, and most consistent method of power generation would be disastrous.

[0]http://phys.org/news/2013-11-experts-nuclear-power.html

Four scientists who have played a key role in alerting the public to the dangers of climate change sent letters Sunday to leading environmental groups and politicians around the world. The letter... urges a crucial discussion on the role of nuclear power in fighting climate change.

Environmentalists agree that global warming is a threat to ecosystems and humans, but many oppose nuclear power and believe that new forms of renewable energy will be able to power the world within the next few decades.

That isn't realistic, the letter said.

"Those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough" to deliver the amount of cheap and reliable power the world needs, and "with the planet warming and carbon dioxide emissions rising faster than ever, we cannot afford to turn away from any technology" that has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases. The letter signers are James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist; Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution; Kerry Emanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tom Wigley, of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Math please? There is enough wind and solar potential in the United States to meet our energy needs several times over, even when including moving all light vehicles to electric.

There's a big gap between potential and making it work risht now. How much would that cost?

A nuclear plant costs ~$9 billion (before cost overruns) per generating unit, and ~10 years to build. Whether that's less or more than solar isn't the point; there isn't time, and no one will finance one.

Utility scale solar is ~$1/kw, and can be operational in a fraction of the time. Importantly, costs continue to decline.

Planned utility scale generation coming online in the next year: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.... (note its almost exclusively solar and wind)

Battery storage costs are falling as fast, if not faster, than renewables did:

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2016_01_21_how_much_does_storage_re...

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/why-battery-storage-is-just-...

There is no other option other than wind and solar, full speed ahead.

> there isn't time

There's even less time when you're taking existing power capacity offline.

And yet, PG&E has said they'll be able to replace the displaced generation with renewables, energy efficiency, and battery storage.

Build. more. renewables. faster.

Which means they could have put out twice the clean energy in ten years time if they didn't have to shut down the nuclear plant.

> And yet, PG&E has said they'll be able to replace the displaced generation with renewables, energy efficiency, and battery storage.

And I'm sure that's exactly what the regulators and the politicians controlling the regulators want to hear. Smart business sense, given the political climate in a state that sees its insurance commissioner trying to strongarm insurance companies doing business in the state into not owning anything related to coal.

The calculations regarding the relative feasibility of energy sources include the decline in expense. Assuming molten salt energy storage progresses, storage costs decline steeply. Even including these (very optimistic) projected price declines, solar and wind energy are not enough.

Hence why the very same leading climate scientists who first alerted the world of global warming wrote a detailed public statement pleading for use of nuclear power, and stating that renewables are insufficient to stop climate change.

To believe that all four of them, PhDs hailing from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country with decades of experience, failed to include projected price declines is simply incorrect.

Well, the drop in price of solar has been pretty unprecedented. I'm not quite sure what happened, but it's been a pretty sharp drop, which isn't really seen in other energy sources. Like a 90% cut in prices in the past 20-odd years.

http://costofsolar.com/management/uploads/2013/06/disruptive... (This is log scale)

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/how-so...

The storage costs are the issue.

The grid cannot realistically be more than about 20-30% solar PV without matching storage.

Storage is expensive, like 20-30 cents/kWh expensive.

It's just not competitive with natural gas which is available for ~6 cents/kWh.

Storage is not 20-30 cents/kWh. Storage alone, provided by Solar City in Hawaii, is 14.5 cents/kWh as of this year [1]. These costs will only continue to decline [2].

The price of natural gas will increase again [3] (and currently, its closer to 7-10 cents/kWh, not 6); when that does, it only makes renewables more competitive. Renewables will never get more expensive than they are today; coal will be gone in the next 3-5 years, and natural gas not far behind.

[1] http://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-e...

[2] http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already...

[3] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm

That's certainly an improvement from 20-30 cents/kWh.

However for solar PV with storage to replace natural gas their combined cost is going to need to be less than 6 cents/kWh.

The combined cost of solar PV and storage is currently 20-50 cents/kWh.

Do you really see a 10x performance/cost improvement right around the corner?

> Do you really see a 10x performance/cost improvement right around the corner?

I see batteries under $100/kWh in <5 years.

USGS thinks the Diablo Canyon plant should be shutdown (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/PG-E-USGS-disagree-on-Dia...)

Then at the NRC, there's been multiple DPOs (deferring opinions) (e.g. http://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1425/ML14252A743.pdf)

The UCSUSA has weighed in on its concerns (http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-power-accidents/...)

When the USGS, NRC, and UCSUSA think something is a bad idea, it's worth listening to them - these aren't anti-nuke people.

There are serious complaints from qualified people about the safety of a specific thing. Please don't inflate this to some generalized "anti-nuclear" movement - it's not about that.

Oh certainly the Diablo Canyon plant needs to go. It's running two Gen. II reactors with no passive safety systems in a seismically active zone along a coastline vulnerable to flooding and tsunamis. It's actually rather startling that they closed that plant last.

But I'm not making this about nuclear power in general. The State of California and the media have already done a fine job of that.

it's an interesting problem. I understand why these engineers and scientists went through the anti-nuke network to get this thing done, but then the media will frame this as an anti-nuke thing instead of legitimate concern for one specific thing.

I came up with an analogy to help me think about this. Say you are a medical researcher and found some serious adverse health effects to an abortion pill and as a medical professional you think it's unsafe to be on the market. Who do you go through to take action and how will this be portrayed in the media? You have a problem on your hands.

There are certainly plants that need to be shut down. However, the future of Nuclear and what's on the horizon in terms of reactor technology is so promising it can't be ignored.

This is the last state you want to shut these reactors down in. California has mountains of regulations that only apply to new things. Many (most?) buildings that exist today could never be built because of some violation.

Once these plants shut down they will never be reopened.

It's amazing to me that the political groups fanning the flames of climate change panic are the same ones holding back the development of the single best alternative to fossil fuels that we have. Nuclear could power the world.

It would seem to me that the ones blocking nuclear power are a small subset of those concerned with humanity-induced climate change.

A small subset? They've effectively won the policy debate. Nuclear is either banned or being phased out in most of the West.

Your comment didn't link the two groups; you have effectively repeated yourself.

Good news for frackers.

> Pacific Gas and Electric Company said in a statement that the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant's generating capacity will be replaced by "a cost-effective, greenhouse gas free portfolio of energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage."

Good news for Tesla Energy and their new Solar City division.

EDIT:

Exelon is shutting two nuclear plants in Illinois over the next two years, Clinton and Quad Cities, and Fort Calhoun in Nebraska is set to close by the end of the year.

Slowly but surely, we will retire every coal, natural gas, and (woefully aged) nuclear generator in the country.

I'm not a market absolutist, but even after all the massive government support nuclear got, they could not make it pay. And if anything bad happens, it kills the profits from the next 20 plants, like the RMA from hell.

When equity startup investors (not utility bondholders) get rich off a nuclear technology, then I'll believe it can solve some real-world problems and not just be showpiece technology.

I work in energy research for a large financial institution and would love to see the data you're drawing this conclusion from.

That even with the current plants in operation for over 40 years, surely having their capital costs paid for, they can't compete against the economics of wind and natural gas (which is pushing current plants into early decommissioning).

They can't compete politically with those alternatives at least.

Then maybe you could explain why customers should pay a dime for failed, uneconomical nuclear projects: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/26/us/millions-face-high-rate...

Note that the article itself says "either canceled or blocked from operating". You can't support politicking that locks nuclear plant development in endless NIMBY battles and then blame nuclear itself for it.

You can't blame the tech, but the companies that rely on it should have better marketing.

It's not NIMBY unless you count not tolerating shoddy construction as NIMBY: "Several more plants may run into difficulty when virtually complete because of questions of the quality of construction."

It's not a marketing problem. It's that the plants are too complex to be properly built and operated.

Maintaining old plants may be economical but even that is fraught with risk (e.g. the RSG debacle at San Onofre) but looking at the few new nuclear projects under way makes it seem highly unlikely that they'll ever be worthwhile.

The Vogtle upgrade has been underway for 6 years and is already 3 years behind schedule, it will have taken over a decade by the time it sells it's first watt to the grid. The total investment over that time will be something like $20 billion.

I can't imagine a scenario in which tying up $20B in capital for a decade to produce 2.2GW of power makes any financial sense at all. With the EPA cost estimate of $1,000/KW for a natural gas plant, you could literally build 20GW of natural gas capacity and probably save 5 years in construction time.

Wind is ~2x more expensive per installed MW, so build 10GW of wind capacity, even with their shitty 30% capacity factors you come out ahead of the Vogtle project.

Hopefully the modular reactors come with much better economics but large scale nuclear is dead for a reason.

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