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Comment by SemanticStrengh | Hacker News Reader

Do you have news on Westinghouse? Is had filled bankruptcy, did they survive? how? Are they in maintenance mode or do they pursue evoltution of their models? China has bought their patent and is in the process of upscaling the original Westinghouse design, is westinghouse still collaborating with china? Have they abandoned their own models? It seems according to their website they are joining the small reactor fad..

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Here's some recent news: China's announced that they're building 4 more Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs. They'll use the Chinese supply chain, but it's still a big win for W.

https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-...

I really wish we could get a few more orders in the USA so that we could leverage the learning and supply chain being so painfully built in Georgia for the AP1000s there.

for 4 AP1000 they are building ~20 CAP1000, westinghouse should never have sold they patents for a penny.. Also they are obscoleting westinghouse with their 4 planned CAP1400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

We need to build hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants. Electricity should be so cheap, it’s not worth monitoring usage for homes.

The fact that this hasn’t happened is a testament and an indictment of dysfunction in our society.

I’ll turn into a single issue voter if any candidate for the President is pro-nuclear in a big way.

The system needs voltage

Your semantics are strong.

at current costs of fuel maybe power would be too cheap to meter, but is uranium really so abundant to meet demand? I thought I read there was only a couple hundred years supply, but maybe that was propaganda one way or another... I know it exists in seawater but is it easy to extract?

A couple hundred years of proven reserves, with massive deposits known but not proven. It’s never been worth doing more than scratching the surface.

If uranium was used much more, there are economic amounts that are filterable from seawater even.

Seawater: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium" Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...

I’ve usually heard it in reference to an add on process to other reasons we move seawater around - desalination, power plant cooling, etc.

very good point though on end cycle efficiencies!

Indeed, and there AFAIK were some "tandem" (desalination+uranium) projects, however nothing appeared therefore there may be severe practical constraints or technical hurdles. Maybe later(?)

Part of it I think is Uranium is easy to get economically right now, and has a pretty limited set of potential buyers (and the set isn’t growing very quickly).

Most Uranium mines (15000 worked claims in the Midwest in particular) no one even bothers with. Cool or not, if one of the 5 major mines decides to cut prices, you’d better be awfully efficient right now.

Uranium was cheap from the 1960 until now, bar ~3 years around 2007 (a 'Bubble'), however research towards ways to not depend on it (mostly towards breeder reactors) was very intense in many nations from the 1950's to 2000, because of an economic perspective (there is no clear reason for uranium prices to stay low, especially after a nuclear 'Renaissance' and given that it is tied to ore grade, which gets lower and lower), a social perspective (breeders and such reduce the amount of nuclear waste and risk associated to it), and for some nations also a strategic perspective (all existing uranium sellers live under a superpower).

Yeah uranium can power the entire world for about as long as the sun will run. This requires breeder reactors, which were first proven in 1952 at the EBR-1 in Idaho.

https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...

So do we just wave a magic wand and suddenly nuclear power does not cost anything. The article clearly laid out the cost and why even with deregulation LWRs are not cost competitive (while other technology is just not there yet). Or is your argument the government should even heavier subsidise nuclear to make electricity cost nothing? But why electricity and not e.g. housing?

Realistically the quickest way to get to the stage where you don't need to think about your electricity usage is put a solar installation on your roof + battery. Now you have to invest up front (and it might not even be a good investment), but it shows that nothing comes for free.

> do we just wave a magic wand

We have at least 6 magic wands: 1) if the VVER 1200 truly cost 1.4 billion to construct in 4 years, nuclear economics are saved. 2) building a lot of marine nuclear plants https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html#economies-of-scale-... They require far less concrete (no need to protect against seisms) and much less redundancy because the cooler (water) will always be there (the ocean won't disappear) hence preventing radiations escalation in a passive way. 3) using disruptively simpler/cheaper models https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi... 4) using more complex but significantly more efficient models (I'm mainly talking about the underresearched supracritical reactors) 5) if SMRs are not a scam and can really have a fordism era 6) rationalizing et reconciloating regulations with cost effectiveness.

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