Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

For some reason I get the feeling that such people are not paid in the millions. Maybe double or triple a traditional salary but not in the executive-bonus tier. Do they deserve to be?

The boiler will get software updates until the next 3-4 year cycle, then you will need to buy a new boiler to get the latest BoilerOS(tm) that adds the ability to remotely set the temperature. No need for that to be secure...What's the worst that could happen??? It's just a boiler...

I'll continue to consider it in the future.

I have a fundamental mistrust of the industry and our government's ability to properly regulate it. That mistrust is based on historical facts.

Even with newer designs, I think human error and regulatory capture is too dangerous to make nuclear viable.

The jury is still out on which will kill more in the end. Though so far nuclear is looking really, really good.

See https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... for some statistics on how dangerous things are so far.

Science illiteracy has nothing to do with it. The industry has a history of non-trivial reasons for mistrust.

Regarding coal plant deaths, I'm not in favor of coal either. The sooner we can move away from fossil the better.

Plus carbon pollutants are known to be carcinogenic.

You're saying that you trust an industry that...

> In 2008, the San Onofre plant received multiple citations over issues such as failed emergency generators, improperly wired batteries and falsified fire safety data. In its annual review of 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) identified improvements but noted that in the area of human performance, "corrective actions to date have not resulted in sustained and measurable improvement”.

There's a history of human error and negligence within the industry. That history of errors and negligence is why I am against nuclear power.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

They are all passed - so I dont have the details, I just recall having some minor conversations with my grandma about this.

That generation was fiercely quiet and corporate loyal...

For example, if the hydraulics are hooked up backwards, the controls are reversed, which is a disaster. So the design:

1. uses different port sizes for the input and output 2. one port uses left hand threads, the other right hand 3. the lines are physically not long enough to reach the wrong port 4. very clear labeling 5. inspections and signoffs

Except the losses come from the construction of new reactors (the AP1000 for the Vogtle and Summer plants), not the operation of them.

From the bankruptcy declaration:

As described in more detail below, the Debtors’ need to avail themselves of the protections of the Bankruptcy Code arises primarily from a series of unforeseen challenges that significantly delayed and increased the cost of construction of the nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina (referred to as Vogtle and VC Summer, respectively). These challenges potentially expose the Debtors to billions of dollars either in (i) cost overruns to complete the projects or (ii) penalties and liabilities if they abandon the projects. The Debtors cannot afford either option. Notwithstanding that the Debtors’ other businesses are profitable and world-class, the Construction Business cost increases have led to a liquidity crisis that the Debtors can only solve in chapter 11.

...

The Construction Business division delivers both new-plant projects and major projects for new and already operating nuclear power plants globally. It consists of two business segments: (1) engineering, procurement, and construction (“EPC”) services for customers around the globe, primarily offering the AP1000 technology; and (2) engineering and procurement (“E&P”) services, such as design, equipment, and site installation and startup support, to both AP1000 and non AP1000 projects. While some portions of the Construction Business are profitable, the main portion of the EPC business, which constructs the Vogtle and VC Summer projects, has damaged the profitability of the entire Construction Business. As a result, the Construction Business generated EBITDA from FY2013 to FY2015 of negative $343 million. As described in detail below, these losses have accelerated in the past 15 months following the Company’s purchase of CB&I Stone & Webster, Inc. (“S&W”).

https://pdf.inforuptcy.com/pacer/nysbke/273388/dockets/4/1-C...

(Thanks to mikikian for linking this declaration elsewhere in the discussion. All of Part III, "Events Leading to Chapter 11", is worth reading.)

EDIT: if you're talking about the valuation dispute around the Chicago Bridge & Iron acquisition, pg 22, that is presented as a $2 billion problem. The construction projects have another $6 billion worth of expenses now estimated necessary to complete before 2020 (pg 23-24). It's not clear that Westinghouse could dig itself out of this hole even if the money pit was only $6 billion deep instead of $8 billion.

This surprised me! So I Googled it. Is this your source? It is Wikipedia's source. Who are the 440 people dying per trillion kWh of rooftop solar? (note: this is rooftop solar; utility solar statistics aren't included in the below source)

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

There wasn't even a single tkWh of power produced by rooftop solar in 2012. The total solar (rooftop, commercial, and thermal) energy produced in the US in 2012 was 4,327 million kWh... or half a percent of 1 tkWh... making me think that the 'deathprint' of 440 deaths per tkWh for rooftop solar in 2012 was extrapolated by taking the number of people who slipped and fell off a roof and multiplying it by 200. My guess, based on the expression "Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)", and the fact that less than 4.3 billion kWh of solar energy was produced in 2012 by rooftop solar (Wiki doesn't break out production by method), is that approximately two people have died in the quest for solar energy.

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Stat...

Further - it is too soon to tell what the 'deathprint' for any given kWh of nuclear energy is. The method of production could kill someone for some time after the kWh is consumed.

The regulations haven't changed since the new American units began construction. Regulations were supposed to be factored in to the cost/schedule estimates. Yet the original cost/schedule estimates turned out to be badly mistaken. Being in a highly regulated industry (like making nuclear reactors, airliners, or pharmaceuticals) does increase costs over lightly regulated sectors. But it isn't an excuse for mis-estimating costs and schedules that were supposed to be developed considering those factors. Boeing would be in crisis too if every unit of its latest airliner were double-digit-percentages over budget and over allotted assembly time.

I've been following the American AP1000 projects for years. The contractors blame the sub-contractors. The new sub-contractors are behind schedule just like the old sub-contractors. Nobody actually involved with these projects, AFAICT, is blaming the cost/schedule problems on regulators. Pro-nuclear bloggers have still tried shifting the blame away from the industry and back to environmentalists/regulators/the public at large.

EDIT: here's what Georgia Power and Westinghouse alike believed about the new AP1000 design:

Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 will be the first in the industry to use the Westinghouse AP1000 advanced pressurized water reactor technology. This advanced technology allows nuclear cores to be cooled even in the absence of operator interventions or mechanical assistance. The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The AP1000's simplified plant design results in a plant that is easier and less expensive to to build, operate and maintain. The plant's design has:

+ 50 percent fewer valves

+ 35 percent fewer pumps

+ 80 percent less piping

+ 45 percent less building volume

+ 70 percent less cable

than earlier-generation nuclear plants. The modular design also allows for faster construction.

https://www.georgiapower.com/about-energy/energy-sources/nuc...

The builder and the buyer both believed that these reactors would be faster and cheaper to build than past designs, before they actually tried to build them.

I find myself in conflict with people a lot regarding nuclear online. I used to be one of those LFTR reactor guys but the facts are that nuclear reactors are always some newer, untested design that will require new untested innovations. On the other hand solar has an easily predicted, easily met roadmap to cheap power with existing tech. We know for a fact that solar can power the entire world's needs cheaply for many decades to come, but we are just guessing that the same can be done with nuclear. Why make that bet when we have a sure thing?

Both costs are more or less impossible to establish upfront.

1.) Incredible cost to privately insure a nuclear power plant.

2.) There hasn't been an economy of scale when producing nuclear power plants.

Their study looks at different forms of electricity generation from the perspective of 'costs avoided' (e.g. avoided carbon emissions), net cost of generation (e.g. nameplate vs. actual generation), and total system costs (e.g. grid balancing / stabilising costs). On 'costs avoided', their base-case assumption is a $50 per tonne price on co2 emissions.

The study concludes:

"Assuming that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are valued at $50 per metric ton and the price of natural gas is not much greater than $16 per million Btu, the net benefits of new nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle plants far outweigh the net benefits of new wind or solar plants. Wind and solar power are very costly from a social perspective because of their very high capacity cost, their very low capacity factors, and their lack of reliability.

For example, adjusting U.S. solar and wind capacity factors to take account of lack of reliability, we estimate that it would take 7.30 MW of solar capacity, costing roughly four times as much per MW to produce the same electrical output with the same degree of reliability as a baseload gas combined cycle plant. It requires an investment of approximately $29 million in utility-scale solar capacity to produce the same output with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle. Reductions in the price of solar photovoltaic panels have reduced costs for utility-scale solar plants, but photovoltaic panels account for only a fraction of the cost of a solar plant. Thus such price reductions are unlikely to make solar power competitive with other electricity technologies without government subsidies.

Wind plants are far more economical in reducing emissions than solar plants, but much less economical than hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle plants. Wind plants can operate at a capacity factor of 30 percent or more and cost about twice as much per MW to build as a gas combined cycle plant. Taking account of the lack of wind reliability, it takes an investment of approximately $10 million in wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle plants."

And here are my calculations on German solar and wind capacity factors (they're awful): https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd...

Not that anyone here will care about any of this. This issue has pretty much become a matter of blind religious fear & faith.

So if anything, they're equally terrible in that regard.

I would love to see a full breakdown of the budget on some nuclear power plants, but I have not yet seen anybody provide evidence that R&D or unnecessary regulations are significant enough of a cost burden that reducing them by a factor of 10 would make nuclear more cost competitive.

It's only gotten more expensive as time has gone on.

The health effects have been small in Sweden, but it still affects our quality of life, in the sense that we have to be vary of what we eat.

If we keep having an incident every 15-20 years, it will potentially affect large areas, and another incident in Europe might be unfathomably expensive.

Has nothing to do with lizard brain mentalities but a lot with the history/culture in different regions of the world and the false dichotomy of "anti nuclear = pro coal".

The US never had a large scale catastrophic event like Chernobyl happen to it, something that's burned deep into many people of Europe to this day. From one day to another, millions of people had been told they shouldn't eat the "fruits of the land" anymore. When I grew up my family used to regularly gather mushrooms in the woods, that just stopped just like eating any game meat, that had a huge impact which can be felt to this day.

For most US Americans that scenario is only a theoretical one they played trough in pretend during the cold war but for many Europeans Chernobyl made it an way too scary actual reality.

Because solar farms are disastrous to the environment as they sterilize the ecosystem in their shade.

Because Thorium is neither rare nor cumbersome.

https://www.recode.net/2015/5/5/11562326/hps-5-billion-fraud...

This is one of the things I've noticed about a lot of nuclear advocacy. Though there's often appeals to science and reason, the main driver appears to be an emotional one. There's the claim that the real interest is in combating global warming, but many advocates have shown no interest in learning about the best ways to combat global warming. Their interest seems to start and stop with advocacy for their preferred solution, whether or not it's even a good solution to the problem.

[1] https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publicatio... [2] https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-08/documents...

Here are some example studies of where things could go: http://blog.ucsusa.org/mike-jacobs/suddenly-the-future-is-cl...

The article specifically mentions that pretty much every major builder of nuclear plants outside of China are in trouble and/or downsizing/restructuring in big ways.

So, tell me again how "nuclear can scale up"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

Nuclear has saved an immense number of preventable deaths.

Coal is the dirtiest, most dangerous form of energy production available.

From your link:

>the spill caused a mudflow wave of water and ash that covered 12 homes, pushing one entirely off its foundation, rendering three uninhabitable, and caused some damage to 42 residential properties. [...] Though 22 residences were evacuated, nobody was reported to be injured or in need of hospitalization. [...] [T]he spill [...] covered an area of 300 acres (1.2 km2).

42 homes were damaged, 4 to the point of destruction, and 22 homes were evacuated. There was zero human injury from this incident.

Although Wikipedia tries very hard to make it sound like the spill was massive, if you look at the real area affected, 300 acres is less than half of a single square mile, and that area can be cleaned up (if it hasn't been already). People can walk on the ground affected without having to watch a geiger counter, and no exclusion zone is required.

For reference, Fukushima's exclusion zone is about 12 sq miles and Chernobyl's exclusion zone is 1,000 square miles. (both numbers from the relevant Wikipedia entries)

Are you really trying to compare this minor accident to large-scale international incidents that have made caused the permanent evacuation of entire cities? Humans will not safely be able to live in those areas for decades.

The point is not that industrial accidents never happen or that they're pleasant or inconsequential when they do happen. The point is that the cost associated with nuclear accidents is massively higher, and it's entirely reasonable to find that risk unacceptable v. more controllable risks like greenhouse gas emissions.

Even dam breakage, which is about the next-largest threat profile for industrial disasters, won't create a permanently uninhabitable radius of literally-irradiated land. Maybe the land gets too wrecked to rebuild on? OK, but you're not going to get cancer by going to check it out.

It's silly to pretend like you can't tell the difference. Nuclear may be safe while it works, but the question "What happens when it stops working?" is just as important, if not more.

And nuclear power generation also emits a very dangerous pollutant: nuclear waste.

In case people are curious about this claim the reason Germany's "renewable energy" releases so much CO2 is because a large portion of their 'renewable energy' is burning wood.

Burning wood isn't "net neutral" until trees live over 100 years. Until then, it's worse than coal. http://www.pfpi.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/PFPI-Biomass-...

Most tree farms don't let trees grow 100 years either.

>Based on consumption trends in our region, using wood to generate power here or to make fuel pellets for power generation in Europe is projected to produce higher levels of atmospheric carbon(300%) than fossil fuels for 35 to 50 years. After that time, carbon levels will begin to fall as regrowing forests absorb CO2 from previous combustion, but it is likely too late to avoid irreversible effects on the climate system.

https://www.southernenvironment.org/cases-and-projects/bioma...