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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Why are they moving away from nuclear? They have a 100% carbon free target, which doesn't exclude nuclear and they intend to introduce a carbon price, which lets nuclear fight on an even ground with other carbon reduction moves. I guess it just didn't make sense financially?

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Cuomo and Riverkeeper entered into a deal with Entergy to shut down Indian Point Energy Center.

I am personally disappointed because it provided good jobs in my community and 1/3 of my school district's revenue.

My knowledge with people in a midwestern 'urban' city tells me it's the NIMBYs who want the trend away from nuclear.

Surprisingly, a decent chunk of America's nuclear reactors are in the midwest. Illinois and Pennsylvania are by and away the largest producers of nuclear energy in the US, with 11 and 9 reactors respectively.

Nuclear power was invented in Illinois. They got the jump on it and it’s paid dividends for 60 years now.

Nuclear reactions were first mastered in Illinois, but arguably Idaho gets credit for the first generation of electricity via nuclear reactor with the 100kW EBR-1 in 1951. Credit for the first grid-tied nuclear power plant goes to the Soviets, with the commissioning of the the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in 1954. Curiously the latter produced a miniscule amount of power by modern standards, with a mere 5MW of nameplate capacity.

The reactor out in Idaho was designed and built as Chicago Pile-4 and was only placed in Idaho because our there it couldn’t blow up around anything that mattered.

I’m not sure a reactor designed, built and operated by scientists at the university of Chicago has much to do with Idaho.

Note: as a native Chicagoan and a lover of nuclear energy, I take this stuff overly seriously :)

Pennsylvania is not in the Midwest. According to most regionalization schemes, it's in either the Northeast or the Mid-Atlantic region.

e.g.: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/maps/reference/us...

Being from Southern Ohio, I've always considered Pennsylvania to be Midwest. Maybe it's because the cultural difference between Eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania is much less marked than the difference between Southern Ohio and Kentucky.

Western PA is for all intents and purposes.

If only my state would adopt cleaner electricity production more so than having predominant production from coal. There is 1 single small reactor supplying less than 10% of power.

New York introduced subsidies to keep nuclear plants operating just a few years ago:

"Five states have implemented programs to assist nuclear power plants"

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41534

It says that some nuclear plants in New York receive subsidies since 2017. I don't know what the New York selection criteria are. Maybe Indian Point just didn't qualify like other plants did, and (regrettably) shut down sooner as a consequence.

Indian Point has always been a political flashpoint because of how close it is to NYC, just 36 miles north and in the middle of the suburban bits of the metro area.

>in the middle of the suburban bits of the metro area

I.e. the rich people who have the spare fucks to give about this sort of thing.

If it were in a crap neighborhood in Newark nobody would care.

It's a mix of economics, technical issues, politcs, and safety concerns.

The economics of building or even operating nuclear power plants continues to be unfavourable relative to either wind/solar, or natural gas (for peaking plants). Nuclear has, of course, a smaller carbon footprint than gas, but until that is built into economics (through emissions costs or higher costs for natural gas fuel), that doesn't translate into a financial benefit. Long-term costs of nuclear have been rising whilst those of alternative renewable and low-carbon sources (notably solar and wind) have been falling for well over half a century. If you're hiring^Wbuying based on slope rather than intercept, nuclear is not attractive.

Technically, nuclear power is poorly suited to peak-power loads. It doesn't ramp easily or quickly, and performs most economically when operated at constant power outputs. Gas (and hydroelectric or pumped-hydro storage) by contrast can follow demand-side changes rapidly, in a matter of minutes. For pairing with a variable-input solar-and-wind capability, something other than nuclear would be a better supply-side match. Pumped hydro, compressed-air energy storage (CAES), thermal-electric storage (e.g., molton salt), electric battery, load-banking (e.g., as thermal energy) or demand-side shaping (adjusting heavy loads to maximum generation) would be better fits. For now, natural gas turbine peaking plants fit the bill, though those also need phasing out.

Politically nuclear power is a challenge for numerous reasons, spanning those I'm raising and with others. The economics make for challenging financing and popularity, with very long lead and pay-off times. Cancellations of plants during construction or operation means that potentially-realised benefits are lost with major costs. In many ways, nuclear solves the wrong power problems (though it does solve the right emissions problem).

Nuclear continues to carry risks, and very-long-tailed ones, despite the claims of supporters. Many of those are not technical in nature, but operational, organisational, or reflect global threats outside the purvue of a utility itself. Nuclear plants typically have a paramilitary security presence armed, trained, and authorised to use lethal force. Relative to coal and oil plants, the net safety record is better, but one of the characteristics of nuclear power is the capability for things to go from operating very well to behaving exceeding poorly in a matter of minutes. This has happened repeatedly, across a wide range of designs, despite assertions of safety. Once things go poorly, then tend to remain that way for centuries or millennia. Long-term environmental consequences of fossil fuels notwithstanding, other power options don't have this specific handicap.

> Why are they moving away from nuclear?

Because in the US, Twitter determines policy priorities, not science or reason.

The US has been nuclear hesitant since before Twitter was around. Perhaps it's gotten worse, although I think that would be difficult to prove causality.

I think it’s more because, does it make sense to have a nuclear power plant so close to nyc. Even in a moderate fallout incident the city would have to be evacuated.

>Even in a moderate fallout incident the city would have to be evacuated.

This is exactly the problem when it comes to Indian Point. The only way out of New York is over a few bridges and tunnels. It isn't possible to evacuate even a fraction of the millions of people through a few bridges and tunnels if a radioactive plume is released only 36 miles away. There are arguments to be made for nuclear power, but that we should have one 36 miles from the most populous, densely packed city in the country, which also happens to be an island, is not one of them.

My understanding of the situation is that it's a generational thing. Millenials and younger see nuclear power as much more appealing than folks over 40. So, not twitter.

It was the opposite in 2012[0] but I haven't found more recent data. (Although their dividing line was 50, not 40).

0: https://news.gallup.com/poll/153452/americans-favor-nuclear-...

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