US DOE to offer $6B to keep struggling nuclear reactors online

>would be the basis for variable power output.

This has been done literally forever. Why do you think nuclear plants run at 100% capacity 24/7?

I'm not an expert but my general understanding is that neutron poisoning is the big issue. Most reactors are designed around a careful balance of operating temperature and radiation field to mitigate neutron poisoning by the fuel, and operating outside of that balance will cause the problem to become progressively worse until the reaction is no longer self sustaining. So reactors have a "design power" and they can operate outside of that design power only for limited periods of time, while transitioning in and out of operation. Operating outside of the design power for too long causes thermal output to get lower and lower until the reactor just needs to be shut down while the operators wait out the half-life of the short-lived fuel products that cause poisoning, and then they can start it up again. I think this can be weeks so it's carefully avoided.

Well, I'm a programmer and will openly admit it! I have zero training in nuclear power!

I have a degree in Nuclear engineering, although I haven’t been practicing in a while. Your explanation is accurate and well described.

> actually I think there are two sets of rods, not all of them are individually actuated

commercial reactors have 5-10 “banks” arranged symmetrically, although only a subset of those are typically used during power operations [1], so you weren’t far off. Rods are rarely controlled individually, the only case that comes to mind is for identifying and then limiting the reactivity in a “leaker” fuel bundle (one where the cladding has been breached by a foreign object, so it is leaching contamination into the coolant - this is undesirable but expected).

[1]: edit for more information: PWRs and BWRs differ substantially here:

PWRs primarily use boric acid in the coolant to limit reactivity at the beginning of a fuel cycle, which is diluted out over the course of the cycle. One bank of rods is used for fine reactivity control. This gives them a generally even power distribution across the reactor.

BWRs primarily use their control rods, so start the fuel cycle with substantially more inserted. A significant part of designing the fuel layout for a cycle is also designing the control rod patterns to be used over the cycle, to control excess reactivity while maximizing fuel use. Power distribution across the reactor can vary wildly, so it’s a much more challenging engineering problem.

I just remembered I actually have a detailed visualization illustrating (modeled) power distribution in a BWR. You can easily see where control rods are inserted and how that has shifted the power around. https://www.kmr.me/posts/coremap/#content

The UK is a curious example to use for this, afaik a big part of that "peak demand" is people starting up their electric tea kettles in a phenomenon known as TV pickup [0]

For contrast, here are the stats for Germany [1] and the consumption peaks during the day contrast very well with the night consumption.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

[1] https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electric...

Read this about 2001 enron BS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

20X increase in energy costs at that time

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ELI5:

While you're speaking that SPOT crude remains relativistic constant/regular over time, may you please explain if this is true, what the cost increases at the pump are directly related to?

When I began driving, the spot price tracking you mention was the same, but the pump price was $.99/gallon for gas...

So, I admit I do not have an understanding of the reasons behind the price at the pump, but shouldn't that price match the same graph?

If not, please ELI5 how it now apparently costs 5X the cost to deliver gas to the pump?

Shouldnt any company be seeking economies at scale and more efficient everything - especially in OIL/GAS where they are really reliant on compute for the future success of their industry and the power of compute is 10,000X more powerful today than in 1990?

Yet - the pump always goes up...

(I'll go ahead and you're going to excuse it as "the cost of doing business/expenses have gone up)

If true, then why isn't toilet paper $50/roll? Trees are not going to replenish themselves at the same rate as our consumption... so shouldn't toilet paper be super expensive?

What is your opinion on the following video on the origins of oil and the origin of the term "Fossil Fuel" coined by Rockefeller:

https://youtu.be/vdSjyvIHVLw

Those are probably good ideas but they're still not necessarily the cheapest options. They'll have capital costs to pay off over time like anything else, and if they only run half the time then the capital cost is doubled for the amount of output you get.

> direct air capture of carbon + a carbon market that rewarded that

That could be nice. Maybe if the DOE money helped with capital to build a direct air carbon capture system. Then the nuclear plants can sell credits to oil/gas based energy companies similar to how like Tesla sells its credits to other car manufacturers.

We have lots of "solutions" (e.g., conventional batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, etc), the critical question is cost. Where are the proven economical, grid-scale deployments of hydrogen storage? Last I checked, they were in their infancy, so while I'm rooting for it, characterizing hydrogen as a solution is facile.

Grid interconnection adds strategic risk, particularly for small countries. This is Europe's problem, particularly. It will be West Africa's, and South America's. China is building a submarine cable to South America for winter solar, but you may be sure they are also stockpiling coal for when the cable fails.

They all need enough storage to not need interconnection, and then rely on interconnection to reduce cost and drawdown from storage.

How does that work? Are you connecting Europe to Africa? Even Spain has a large winter/summer swing in insolation.

The US has gigantic wind resources down the middle that could help power the coasts if transmission was there.

More specifically, the water become too hot to be released in a river without impacting the bio-environment, not all plants have this issue.

That's a completely separate issue. It would also be common to all thermoelectric powerplants placed in the same locations.

All sources of power can have engineering challenges. Like the recent Texas blackouts where equipment related to the gas supply stopped due to the cold weather.

We already know what to do with excess power: capture carbon, electrolyse hydrogen, synthesize ammonia, kerosene, and methane, and refine aluminum; and charge storage systems. It takes time and capital to build all of those out: capital that nuke plant construction and refurbishing compete for.

It is a much, much better use of capital to build the others out, and the solar and wind, than to spend the money trying to bring those ramshackle contraptions out of retirement.

If energy storage solutions were sufficient, there wouldn't be any negative priced energy!

Obviously, everyone who can store energy maxes out their battery banks during these times of negative-cost energy. The reason why prices are negative is because the sum of market participants still has a shortage of storage.

We have a shortage of storage because the amount of energy our grid uses is on a behemoth scale, barely comprehensible. Dozens-of-GW-hr pumped hydro stations fill up their storage to the brim on a constant basis.

Energy storage is expensive. Nuclear is expensive. Solar and wind are cheap. If we are going to need energy storage regardless (we will), then why not combine it with the cheapest sources rather than the most expensive?

Just turn on the crypto mining rigs when the price is wrong

You can't "just" put 1GW of power into the ground, that energy is conserved and is still going to do something (quite a lot of somethings, in fact)

I think the answer is to use surplus energy to make and store hydrogen. The combine that with implementation of hydrogen powered vehicles in the large transport sector (trains and long haul trucks) would be a good way to store and make use of energy without building massive energy storage devices. Battery electric is already a bad fit for those sectors, since the heavy batteries significantly reduce useful transportation weight and long charging times mean expensive delays in moving goods. It would also help build out hydrogen distribution networks, which could be strategically installed at transportation hubs and along strategic routes to start, which then could be utilized by local transportation, making them more viable using hydrogen where battery electric isn’t as feasible (local buses and delivery trucks that can refill hydrogen in a few mins to run with minimal downtime).

Super high voltage DC transmission lines are the new hotness in China right now - they could pair perfectly with this.

> A lot of environmentalists just don't like rural people so they do things like rail on and on about pickup trucks

What? I don't think there are many environmentalists who "don't like rural people" and have a problem with pickup trucks used where they're appropriate ( like on a farm). In a country like the US, they're often abused as a suburban vehicle, which is a preposterous waste which deserves railing on against.

I don't disagree really.

They focus on ideal outcomes over what we can realistically accomplish - I've had plenty of discussions where people just ignore the trillions in infrastructure we have baked into steel and concrete, as well as people habits and lifestyle - folks honestly seem to think that with enough political will you can just turn all of that off in 2-5 years.

As with everything in society, we didn't get here overnight, and turning a vast ship takes time.

I would gladly join a more scientific environmental movement but I haven't found one. And I looked

This is just a completely imaginary attack on people you oppose. A textbook example of a "strawman argument".

The problems of pollution, climate change, etc are real. The science is clear.

Please don't make up an imaginary bad actor who has bad motivations for why they want to solve or improve some of these problems. This is a rhetoric device designed to distract people from the problems and solutions by getting them to dislike, distrust or hate the people trying to help.

Sorry but this is one of the least productive and silliest comments I’ve seen on here for a long time…

Hydro is great, but is very limited in terms of viable locations.

Hydro causes massive environment destruction, takes up a large amount of area (typically the most agriculturally productive area at that), and can't just be thrown down anywhere.

Yep. Seems to be just a convenient excuse to hate on environmentalists, when nuclear power is just too damn expensive (and also takes too long to build), especially today when there are cheaper alternatives.

I was all for nuclear power myself before I started seeing how infeasible it was to get us to carbon neutral with them. I'm still fine with any new nuclear power plants that want to be built but it looks like pretty much no one wants to invest in them anymore anyway.

"The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189."

"Capital flows reflect that trend. In 2018, China invested $91 billion in renewables but just $6.5 billion in nuclear."[1]

"Nuclear power plant construction costs—mainly materials, labor, and engineering—rose by 185 percent between 2000 and 2007. More recently, costs have been increasing even faster: In mid-March, Progress Energy informed state regulators that the twin 1,100 MW nuclear plants it intends to build in Florida would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.”

Jim Harding, former direc tor of power planning and forecasting for Seattle City Light, estimates that nuclear plants constructed today would provide electricity at between 12 and 17 cents per kilowatt-hour. To put this cost into perspective, the average U.S. electricity price in 2006 was 8.9 cents per kWh, and well-placed wind turbines can produce electricity for less than 5 cents per kWh."[2]

"Study claims that investment in a new 1GW nuclear power plant leads to average losses of approximately 4.8 billion euros." [3]

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...

[2]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/10-reasons-not-to-i...

[3]: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/24/nuclear-a-poor-invest...

The parent you are responding to is talking about deregulation in a different context and with a different purpose. Regulation and deregulation are both broad terms and talking about one does not requisite jumping to a different topic. Doing so just means we'll fight all day because you can find examples on both sides where they had disastrous effects. We need to be more nuanced than this. I'll also argue that the parent should be more specific to avoid these types of responses too.

Can you elaborate on what nuclear regulations were lifted and how that contributed to the Texas power outage? This isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious.

What is the charter school scam? Kids actually learning to read and do math? Giving parents a choice?

Charter schools aren't a scam. They improve the ability of children to learn.

I don't think nuclear waste is a key factor, but cost overrun is. Source: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u...

Environmentalists are not against Nuclear generally - they are just against the shitty ways governments have stored the waste in the past. When a government cheaps out and ships the waste to some far off pacific island and does not invest as much as it should building a proper containment setup and then it all leaks into the ocean it becomes a big problem for everyone and then environmentalists are of course pissed. When done properly I would guess the majority would be relatively fine with it (although they may still prefer cleaner options).

It's worth pointing out AEMO's demand is for the grid, and residential solar typically does not show up on the grid. OpenNEM[1] uses estimates of residential solar to approximate the full load.

[1]: https://opennem.org.au/

Clearly you would like for that to be true.

But Jimmy Carter was a trained nuclear engineer. He was well qualified to understand their true value. Or lack of it. He put solar panels up on the White House roof. Reagan scrapped them.

Reagan, of course, was not qualified to understand much of anything besides PR. But did, that.

> it is not like there is any technological brakethrough required.

Just like there isn't in advanced nuclear and yet you 100% believe that will happen but reject that the same can happen in nuclear.

Funny how that works. Both relay on a advanced chemical process that have to be correctly controlled.

The advantage is that a few 1000 nuclear plants can power the whole world, when we are talking about Form Energy style batteries we literally need 1000000s large locations to provide the kind of stability need for a global grid that only gets powered by solar/wind.

What happens when a volcano darkness the sun for a few weeks? Everything including transportation will be standing still. You better have a few weeks of backup energy. Storing the global need for 1 weeks worth of energy alone is almost unimaginable task. Specially once all flight transportation and industrial heat 100% depend on availability of electricity.

> It is still advised against eating too many mushrooms or boar meat in my area (central europe), because of one incident 35 years ago, happening 1000 km away.

Yes and that is total nonsense pushed by vastly overzealous over-reaction and fear mongering driven by absurd low tolerance level having been written into law to make nuclear almost impossibly expensive.

I'm central European and I have eat a lot of boar meat and I'm fine.

The actual reality is far more people have been killed by oil, gas and coal then nuclear, its not even close. The single largest nuclear accident in the history of the earth lead to the premature death of about 1500 people based on the best most authoritative report.

And of course that design has literally nothing to do with the designs I'm advocating. Its like saying 'don't ever get into a plain, somebody once build a zeppelin and wanted to fly it by making a hole in the hull and light they hydrogen stream out on fire'.

Go and actually study advanced modern nuclear reactors and tell me how they can lead to mass death. I would argue to come up with a viable case for major damage you would basically need terrorist working together with 2 massive natural disasters and even then its likely gone kill less people then a gas pipeline explosion.

Its nothing but fear mongering about technology people don't understand. Molten Salt reactor can not even produce a reaction like happen at Fukushima let alone the what happened Chernobyl.

And my point is this could have been done 40 years ago nuclear and we would be a n far better position regarding climate change. It could have been done 30 years ago after Kyoto protocols. It could have been done 20 years ago when everybody started to take it seriously.

And if nuclear had really involved at all since the 1970s nobody would even think about deploying solar and wind.

Next generation nuclear plant based on first principle analysis have no reason to be more expensive. The reality is such plants can run with little human intervention for potentially decades and the total land and materials requirements are not very large.

The fuel has the potential to be essentially free as thorium is a waste product and if you can run on natural uranium its also basically free.

The key is reducing the total investment to build a plant and the time it takes to build it. Both are very likely if you build plants that are only 1/10 the size and require far less safety and cooling equipment while being able to run on commercial turbines from gas and coal.

Generating solar or wind power does not take the land out of use.

Both are compatible with agriculture. Agricultural productivity under partial solar cover is higher than without, for less water input. Pasture is probably the easiest to make compatible, and there is a very great deal of pasture, although little of it is irrigated. The prospect of less irrigation need will drive solar onto more intensive cropland.

"Relatively".

But the Wikipedia page does not in fact include any "misled federal officials" language, quoted above as if it were from there. It says, instead, "Ultimately, none of the investigations of Solyndra found any evidence of wrongdoing or undue political influence." Sometimes a business failure is just a business failure. I have not heard of any multi-billion dollar solar failures or cost overruns as are the norm for nukes.

Most wind projects are large scale, yet buy their turbines on the open market. Again, I have not heard of any big cost overruns or non-delivery.

Solar concentrator projects have not paid back investment because they have turned out to be uncompetitive, same as Solyndra, undercut by the staggering fall in cost of conventional photovoltaics. Their natural value would be for process heat, which I have not heard of being tried.

Which valley are you going to drown? Hydro being pretty much at capacity...

Nukes are mature tech. No surprises coming. They are not getting cheaper. If you got approval to build one, you would get no power for ten years, minimum.

A billion dollars buys a GW of solar panel generating capacity today. Another billion buys plenty of storage. No NRC approval, no containment vessel, no disaster plan. You can start generating power almost immediately, while you are still building out. Prices continue falling the whole time you are building, so the last panel you put up costs half what the first did. It all fits well within the exclusion zone of a typical nuke reservation. You can put up wind turbines too. And keep adding panels, paying for them with income from ones already up.

It is quite exciting to see CFS' series B funding. I worry about commercializing too soon because companies need to turn a profit. The publicly funded fusion scientists and engineers are quite good at what they do and could efficiently spend money on research and new machines until the blueprint for a reactor is ready. The benefit of public programs is that they don't need to make quarterly profits and some problems are bigger than a year.

CFS has a path to be profitable even if they don't make a blueprint for reactors. Research needs high field magnets and they're positioning themselves to be the supplier of them.

Check out my cousin comment. The PPPL FIRE 1976 report starting around page 30 addresses these questions. Also the PPPL FIRE site (also linked) has many resources that highlight areas of research.

Plasma physics is a large task in fusion energy science, but it is not the only task. FES being the motivator of those materials research ventures means money in FES goes into those areas.

No I mean stimulus. If I meant corporate welfare I would have invoked the DoD budget.

For context, the Hanford reactor was built during ww2; around the same age as the presidential candidates from the 2020 USA election.

Hanford is definitely the worst, but that's because of its origins as the world's first plutonium production site (first reactor criticality in 1944). Unlike commercial reactors it had to chemically reprocess irradiated fuel because the whole point was extracting plutonium. They were running experiments at industrial scale as they sought better methods for plutonium (and later, uranium-233) extraction. It ran under extreme secrecy in its earlier years, meaning that even by the generally lax standards of pre-EPA chemical facilities it had little environmental/safety oversight.

Hanford only ever had one reactor that produced electricity, the N reactor, and that wasn't built until 1963:

https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/NReactor

Most of the problems are from nuclear weapons production not civilian reactors.

And if you look at the list of causalities its very small amount.

> and come very damn close to real disaster

That's what I'm smoking. For there to be a fucked-up American accident the accident has to actually happen.

Any reliability coming to those municipal utilities would be due to PG&E's transmission system.

No municipals, even the biggest like LA's, tackles anything near the scale of even our smallest IOU. Most critics of the IOUs ignore the sheer scale and geographic challenges of running a service area larger than some states across many different types of terrain. Running retail distribution and metering isn't that hard when other people run the grid for you. PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E have lots of issues to be sure, but to compare them to SMUD or Modesto is far from apples to apples.

For typical nuclear power plants the land usage isn't anywhere close to what you claim:

>...A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. NEI says wind farms require 360 times more land area to produce the same amount of electricity and solar photovoltaic plants require 75 times more space. To put that in perspective, you would need more than 3 million solar panels to produce the same amount of power as a typical commercial reactor or more than 430 wind turbines (capacity factor not included).

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/01/f58/Ultimate...

Are there countries where the land use for nuclear power is orders of magnitude larger?

So nothing for Greenpeace?

That talks about the Sierra Club.

And digging even further. The biggest "incentive" that renewables received was in the "Tax Policy" category. This money is likely the tax incentives that are available to newly built projects. This money is not a government transfer, but rather a tax credit that a project developer users AFTER successfully building a project. These types of incentives are available to nuclear developers, but funnily enough, they received 0 in 2015. Considering these incentives are available to developers of both technology types, I think it is unfair to use them when comparing federal subsidies (after all, if the nuclear industry could actually build a power plant, they would also get this incentive).

However, when you look at the R&D column, which is a direct transfer of cash from the government to industry. Nuclear received over 2.5 times as much as renewables (85B vs 32B). This is even more of a travesty considering "Renewables" is a bucket of multiple technology types. So oddly enough, if I was to take away one thing from this report, it looks like we are not investing nearly enough in renewables R&D. Also, why is coal getting 43B, that sucks.