See also:
"Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost" https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
"Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost" https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
To put it into context, nuclear
* total human deaths due to nuclear since its inception is in the low thousands at worst, for the entire industry.
* total animal deaths due to nuclear since its inception is minimal, in fact, for example, wildlife around Chernobyl has flourished
* damage to the environment is minimal
* waste is tiny by volume, zero CO2, and can be buried deeply where no human will ever get to it.
Versus fossil fuels:
* has killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of humans
* has killed millions if not hundreds of millions of animals through climate change, oil spillage, fires and so on
* has destroyed thousands of square miles of land for open cast mining, oil slicks, and so on
* waste dumps thousands of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day plus other byproducts
So, what's the actual monetary cost of the usage of fossil fuels? How much money needs to be spent to mitigate climate change? Or figuring out how to de-extinct species? Or restoring habitats after cleaning up oil slicks? Or attempting to the put the land 'right' after open cast mining?
How much money are we going to spend on figuring out 'energy storage' for green power, when nuclear power is already stored in the uranium, in a tiny volume?
In fact how much money could we have saved by going long on nuclear in the 60s and 70s, had it not been for ill-educated, and ill-informed campaigns by CND and Greenpeace, for example? And how much better would the environment be right now?
The overall phenomenon is well documented, so I'll give just one highly credible account: "The greening [over the last 35 years] represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States… Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect" - NASA Apr 2016, https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green...
I'm not wanting to rehash the climate debate, nor am I implying how much it offsets negatives and would grant all of your points otherwise. I do think it's wise to do whatever we can to move towards cleaner carbon burning to remove toxic and particulate emissions, and limiting CO2 emissions as well, but also within fair economic tradeoffs. I also support developing nuclear, fission and fusion.
As for how much greening benefits offset costs, I was mildly frustrated by the downvoting :) and went researching on the economic effects in particular. The only study I can find on CO₂ fertilization is recent and stunning:
"we apply the CO₂ fertilization effect... backwards to 1940, and, assuming no other limiting factors, find that CO₂ was the dominant driver of [American agriculture] yield growth"
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29320/w293...
As they note, the extrapolation is from a study period of 2014-2020, but it's expected they have underestimated the prior role of CO₂ fertilization, as CO₂ response becomes saturated as levels rise and that's not represented in their model.
This is 2021 research funded by DOE & USDA, run by NBER, with PIs from Harvard and Columbia who are well cited within their field of environmental economics. Given the pedigree and that conclusion, this should be front-page news in science mags at least. I couldn't find any reporting on it except for Epoch Times (https://www.theepochtimes.com/science/nasa-satellite-data-su...), which gets an eye-roll from me, but guess they got this one :)
I read the full thing. It's great. Crosses high-resolution satellite CO₂ anomaly observations (NASA OCO-2) with crop yield records, wind modeling, sensitivity testing on non-ag land and the result is broadly repeated: +1ppm CO₂ -> +~0.5-1% yield. CO₂ levels went from ~310-410ppm in that period.
If true, it seems at odds with the normal account that gave nitrogen fertilization the lead role for increasing crop yields this past century and lifting most of the world's population out of regular food insecurity, and the growth of our population into billions. Seems more likely both were necessary.
It also makes sense, as C3 plants (e.g. soy, wheat and most plants besides hot/dry grasses) respond positively to CO₂ partial-pressures up to 800-1000ppm. C4 low-CO₂ adapted corn also fertilizes, just to a lesser extent. The authors also note the negative effects of heat stress, but this wouldn't have been as significant in the extrapolation period.
From Epoch Times: “The paper’s first author, Taylor, said: 'We reiterate that climate change will have a large negative impact on agriculture in aggregate, especially in places exposed to extreme heat. And higher CO2 may even lower food nutrition. But the countervailing fertilization effect should also be taken into account.'”
The amount of damage/victims linked to nuclear is a matter of debate, and a final count will only be possible after its very last hot waste will be cold.
Case in point (Chernobyl):
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around...
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environmen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...
Energy storage: vehicles batteries are a game changer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ). Grid backup will also use existing hydro along with turbo-alternators burning green-hydrogen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy#Energy_system... ).
Energy density isn't, alone, determinant here.
The most determinant question is: after taking into account all measures aiming at reducing renewables' production 'intermittency' ('variability' is more adequate), which are: spreading a mix (wind, solar, geothermic...) of renewable sources on a continent, enhancing grid interconnections among nations for them so support each other (objective already very actively and more and more pursued in Europe), storing at continental-level renewables' over-productions (thanks to hydro, hydrogen...) and using it on a clean 'backup' compensating for renewables' 'intermittency', demand response... ... then how much energy do we need to store in order to compensate for any remaining 'intermittency'?
Given that the average electric car battery can power the average home for quite a while (days), and that other EV batteries will be online...
Moreover each year 7% to 10% of gridpower is in France (fully nuclearized) produced thanks to fossil fuel, and its electricity is low-emitting, giving a quite comfy last-resort.
> And how much mining is required obtain those materials
Those materials are recyclable and have substitutes.
Uranium isn't (in practice) recyclable and doesn't have any substitute: this is eternal mining of an ever-rarefied source.
> shipping them around the world in diesel powered boats?
This is a valid point, enforcing the need for each continent hosting cooperating nations to produce its own production units.
On the other hand uranium reserves at current conditions can provide for at best 200 years (more probably 130 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium ), therefore the conditions (price and emissions, as the raise as the ore grade lowers may quickly worsen if some 'nuclear renaissance' stems reactors building projects. Who will take the risk and invest?
Regular houses are too small to make it possible to install enough solar to charge the car though.
That's without even considering appartment buildings.
On average the car autonomy already is way above the daily commute, and this margin is quickly growing.
There are more and more parking places (private and public) connected to the grid.
A bit of intelligence ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid ) will orchestrate.
This would only work if the added charge on night-time electricity also accounts for battery cycling cost which I doubt it would.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_pricing#Electricity
Reciprocally as more and more less tolerated grid backup (greenhouse-gas emitting fossils or dangerous nuclear) disappear episodes of under-production will be more common, and during those electricity price will soar.
No level of organization is sufficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...
- there was no one really in charge of such matters during most of the pertinent decades (first leg of Mao's regime): politics were the sole concern, leading to well-known disasters such as the Great Leap Forward ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ) and disdain (or worse) towards whistle-blowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Whistle-blower )
- the (Soviet) designers had no skin in the game
A nuclear reactor built and used in such a context may trigger some bad events in way less than 23 years, as a mere few seconds are sufficient for it to do so.
This can't be serious...
Bearing in mind that coal plants have a lot of negative health effects, so there needs to be an argument that life in the exclusion zone would be detectable worse than life near a coal plant.
Is it the kind of wildlife you want as a pet?
Is it the kind of wildlife you want to eat?
No, this is not actually a good thing.
We certainly still need to get a handle on the cost of deploying nuclear because it is not sustainable the way we do it today
In 2022 Georgia Power got 23% of its power from nuclear, 1.9 gigawatts of capacity.
Since construction started, Georgia Power customers have been paying the construction costs (about 6%) and now that construction is complete the rest of the costs are now being added to customer bills. These are surcharges in addition to the actual cost of fuel and operations at the plant, so they're going to be paying per kWh as well.
At the same time Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) shareholders are now receiving profits from the operations of Vogtle 3 while capital costs are recovered--IE they are not paying for the asset that they will own
This 10% increase in customer bills will result in the nuclear percentage as pat of GPC's mix increasing just a few percent. It would still be lower than either Gas/Oil or Coal as of 2022's numbers (in 2023 I believe it will be higher than coal, but that is because GPC is replacing coal with gas at a rapid rate)
If you replaced all fossil fuels with nuclear at the same cost structure, power bills in Georgia would increase many fold
I'm completely on board with nuclear, but we have to absolutely and totally rethink the designs we build, how we manage the projects, who owns them (private vs. public) and more
The feasibility of such an endeavor is clear when we compare it to military spending or the costs of road construction and maintenance. Essential infrastructure often requires substantial investment, but the long-term benefits justify the expense.
The idea of for-profit nuclear power has proven to be less effective. It leads to fragmented, inefficient projects and prioritizes short-term gains over long-term sustainability and safety. A centralized, public approach like the Nuclear Corps would streamline production, enforce uniform safety standards, and reduce overall costs.
This shift is not just an economic imperative but a step towards a sustainable, cooperative global energy future. It's time to rethink our approach to nuclear energy, prioritizing global benefit over private profit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
Nuclear fanboys need to accept the fact that so long as nuclear always costs multiples more than literally anything else, these things won't get built, no matter how carbon-clean and healthy they are.
Chernobyl was estimated at 50 billion+ adjusted.
Accidents are rare but they are costly.
Both are part of the pledge to triple nuclear generation by 2050.
How unfair of us, to use the egregious flaw of nuclear to criticize it.
Pointing at fossil fuels would have made sense in the past, but that's a useless argument against renewables.
I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".
Except for airplanes that's one of the few things we still do better.
My overall point is I highly doubt nuclear powerplants will be built here in any major way. Will it happen in Asia? Far more likely.
I believe engines are from Rolls Royce which is European.
Mineral fuels including oil: US$378.6 billion
Machinery including computers: $229.6 billion
Electrical machinery, equipment: $197.7 billion
Vehicles: $134.9 billion
Aircraft, spacecraft: $102.8 billion
Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $99.1 billion
Gems, precious metals: $92.5 billion
Pharmaceuticals: $83.5 billion
So the top 3 "non-aircraft" machinery categories are still exported at 5x the amount of aerospace. It seems like people [2] are still interested in the stuff the US manufactures.
[1] https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-states-top-10-export...
[2] https://www.usitc.gov/research_and_analysis/tradeshifts/2020...
It's just true.
Pharmaceuticals, medical and gems are off topic.
I'm sure there's other small niches the US dominates in. But overall what I said is the objective truth no matter how much you desire it to be not true.
If Asia doesn't dominate a niche yet they are aggressively on track to dominate in the near future.
Throwing out gems (because that probably isn't a good case, like you said), it still amounts to over $1.2 trillion in exports. I'm sure other countries would love that kind of "niche" business.
Gemstones therefore are more of a reflection of countries with the ability to purchase the gemstones as an import and less of a reflection of the country actually exporting the gemstones. Right? If a country exports a huge amount of gemstones it means a lot of external countries have an abundance of economic output such that they can purchase frivolous goods that ultimately don't contribute much to the economy. North Korea doesn't purchase gemstones but maybe a rich country would. And the place where diamonds are mined are mostly from some poor countries in Africa.
>Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term.
Manufacturing and infrastructure I believe are the two words that cover it best off the top of my head but it's unnecessary to specify this to the level of pedantic detail you're going for here. I think those two terms are clear enough.
I think we both know, in general the direction China/Asia is going and where they're completely dominating the US. It's at a general tipping point now. Where one can say they're better than the US overall in the general area of infrastructure/manufacturing. Manufacturing is pretty broad and general and that's the right word to use because broadly and generally Asia is just ahead of the US in this matter.
The problem with these things is that even though it's obvious people still like to debate pedantic details in some vain attempt to use the pedantic details to obscure the obvious truth or even shift the advantage in the favor of the US. Why else would you bring up gemstones and pharmaceuticals?
I don't think I need to elaborate as you requested. You know what I'm talking about and deep down you most likely agree. The trouble here is less about getting at the most accurate truth and more about the inability to accept the truth.
Additionally byd will be surpassing Tesla soon. It's projected to in less than a year.
As for phones, the entire stack is owned by Asia. Software is the only thing we have left and most of it is open source.
Pretty clear cut from your examples. But also clear cut from common sense.
I suggest you find other examples to help detract from the obvious generality. Look into Tiny niches like precision and highly advanced bespoke manufacturing where the US still holds a shakey lead. These areas may help you construct an argument that looks effective but obviously isn't.
The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point. Asking for clarification is not being pedantic any more than hiding behind ambiguous terms makes for a convincing argument. I'm not, for one, saying the US manufactures more than Asia. But I'm also not in agreement that it's languishing, save for a single industry like aerospace. If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy. You wrote a lot of words but didn't contribute much to the argument other than another vague diatribe when asked for a finer point, and that's often indicative of not having a thorough understanding.
It's False gracious-ism lol. You obviously believe you can win the argument without that so you gave it up. It was a deceptive gesture. Anyway. I'm not in this to win. I'm in it because I, in totality believe I'm right. So what does it matter if I use gemstones given that you already conceded that point? And like I said it was a false concession. You pretended to concede that point and I correctly responded as if you didn't concede.
>The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point.
I can't adequately illuminate my point. I concede to that. The statement "Asia is superior to the US in manufacturing and infrastructure" is a statement with so many fuzzy words I can't satisfy your pedantry. What is "manufacturing"? What is "superiority"? What is "Asia"? Am I referring to North Korea?
There is no study, no science on the face of this earth that can prove either side of this debate correct.
The most we can do is throw a bunch of random facts and tidbits at each other and never ultimately agree. Take your side foray into gemstones... Does diamonds represent all of gemstones? Also what about the proportional value of artificial diamonds vs. Mined diamonds? What about the amount of value involved in beauty vs. Manufacturing? You failed to acknowledge here that diamonds used in manufacturing are mostly manufactured themselves. How much of manufacturing does gemstones represent? We could dive deep into this useless pedantic branch of the debate and ultimately go nowhere.
But despite all of this, we both know what gemstones usually refers to a mined rock for beauty purposes. That was the industry referred to through the colloquial usage of the term gemstones. But there's an underlying strategy here where you can subtly switch definitions and use the pedantic definition without the other party realizing it. Anyway let's move off of gemstones like you originally conceded.
I value the human ability to know things and communicate vague and general concepts and things without fuzzy boundaries without the need to reference data or research. If you don't have the intellectual ability to do this then the only logical conclusion for you is to not even engage in this debate or any debate for that matter because no definitive conclusion is possible for most things of this nature.
I also concede that despite all of this fuzziness you are smart enough to know what I'm talking about and deep down you know I'm right.
Call it diatribe or whatever you want. The outcome of this conversation had a predictable end of going to a pedantic nowhere. I just took it to a different end here.
>If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy.
So? You can make this statement and the following can still be true: Asia is far superior to the US when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure.
Additionally the following statement can still be true: the past several decades American manufacturing and infrastructure has been in decline.
And this as well: America does not have the will or the manufacturing capability to replace it's energy infrastructure with nuclear.
Do we need to get into a overly detailed debate about this or is it just self evident that these statements are true? I think it's self evident. Again it's not really matter of truth, but more about accepting the truth.
Additionally the rivalry between the US and China is off topic I'm not talking about that.
My statement is, Asia is superior to the US in terms of Manufacturing/infrastructure. I can add more to that as well. In terms of ICs, Asia also dominates. The US is behind Asia on all three of these fronts. As a general statement this is still true. You didn't invalidate anything with your off topic comment here.
That being said, the united states is the dominant spender in terms of defense. They are number one on this front and in terms of technology. I don't think the world has ever seen a military industrial complex as massive and as advanced as the one the US has built. What you say here is true and it's major. It's not included in "manufacturing" but it's intimately connected and thus worth mentioning.
So in essence if there is a place that will convert to majority nuclear power it's most likely going to be Asia that still has the capability to do this. I don't think it's likely for the US.
This nuclear plant cost ~$34 billion USD. What if Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and a few others just got together and built 10 or so nuclear power plants? I wonder if that could actually bring down the price to build them.
Nuclear plants have only ever been built where the customers can be forced to buy the power. No merchant nuclear plant, selling into a competitive market, has ever been built anywhere.
Taking your point more charitably, it is indeed the lack of a sustainable nuclear energy industry that routinely builds plants that causes costs to skyrocket. There is a chicken and egg situation: nuclear projects don’t get funded because they’re too expensive, so there is no chance to develop expertise in how to build them cheaply, which causes the few that get greenlit to be built by rookie teams that make rookie mistakes that cause costs to skyrocket.
The MIT study into the causes of cost overruns: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
I clicked through to the actual study ( https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r... ) and I couldn't find a single sentence mentioning on-site last-minute design changes. I searched for "change" and tabbed through all of the results. The closest thing was mention of Westinghouse changing construction standards halfway through an ongoing project, which required many changes to the project design. But, that's one project.
So my question is: Is it possible that the MIT News Office can't understand MIT journal articles?
Couldn't that be paraphrased to "last minute changes"?
Guess that's where they took it from.
Skimming the paper it seems a large part of the issue is that it's difficult to mass produce something which needs to be integrated into a variable environment, and attempting to do so is detrimental compared to custom solutions.
This seems to mirror what I've found in the software world, where a custom integration is often much cheaper and easier to maintain than trying to manhandle some generic library/software to do what's needed.
IIRC one of the big differences/problems is that every one of them have completely different control rooms and control systems. To the point that you cannot train on one reactor and walk into another and operate it. If we at least standardized that side of things, the cost of operations would surely come down
I also question (and happy to be enlightened about) how much the local project needs some massive change. That a pipe might need to be a few hundred yards longer to reach the river surely isn't so consequential that you can't reuse designs
These things are built on huge sites that could be completely leveled and turned into identical square clean pieces of dirt with massive empty land around them How much variation can there possibly be that can't be handled outside of the critical reactor design area
Then again, perhaps it is one of those things where you actually need to make a few of 'em to gain experience.
Today renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels which in turn are cheaper than than nuclear. Through pure economic terms the world is steaming towards a new cheaper energy equilibrium based on renewable energy.
We are currently in the chaotic transitioning phase but that will of course shake out. Sprinkling some luxury nuclear in top will have miniscule effect.
Rince repeat.
Norway also does great with its nationalized O&G
Nationalize industries can be fantastic with the public benefiting directly rather then a few select individuals.
Fix your public institutions instead of privatization
> a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift
Oh really? A government run monopoly being involved in grift? How surprising. Guess what? That's what happens with government run companies. You can't simply wish away the opposing party. And I bet the party you like best also does awful crap you conveniently ignore.
For every great nationalized business you can point out, I could point out 100 that are awful wastes of money.
in canada every province with private electricity company is being reamed with high energy prices. every province with a government run power company is not. the same seems to apply in the EU/UK.
nationalized companies run from amazing too crap but every time infrastructure or natural monopolies is privatized the consumer/citizen looses out. EVERY TIME. from parking in Chicago to PG&E in cali to the 409 in ontario - privatization never works out and to prevent abuse regulation is always imposed.
turns out when you grant a for profit company a monoply they take advantage. every time without fail.
so we have on one hand nationalized companies ranging from bad to great for society to private companies always being bad doing everything possible to extract money.
Yes. Granting anyone a monopoly (a corporation or a government) is always a terrible idea. Let's stop doing that.
Also turns out that competition doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for a society see healthcare in America vs the rest of the world or that we are speed running the world into a climate disaster
> you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home
Why the fuck not? You are asserting things that you clearly haven't thought much about. But I don't have time to try and change your mind. Your biases are clearly too ingrained.
We seem to get by fairly well without those in most places. There are various solutions.
I think it's more likely the current exponential improvements in renewables increase such that we have to come up with new uses for the excess power.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088
“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs.
https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/
And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned).
Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant.
Who cares? That putative issue would be beating a dead horse. If it didn't make sense economically anyway, why worry about that?
> The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts.
Oil isn't in the picture (it's not used for any baseload power generation in the US, and precious little peaking). But gas is certainly an issue. There have been existing plants (not all of them, of course) that shut down because they could not make even an operating profit. TMI's other reactor was cash flow negative for six years before it was shut down, for example.
In any environment where existing plants are troubled, building new NPPs is obviously completely off the table economically. V. C. Summer was so out of the running it was better to write off the $9B spent so far on it than to complete it.
When we built them more often, weren't they bespoke and expensive?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-C...
Solar and wind costs have only ever decreased. For reasons.
China has constructed more solar and wind generating capacity in the past year than its entire fleet of nukes will produce after they have finished building them. China is less interested in power production from their nukes than strategic isotopes.
The only reason massive subsidies for renewables continue is to accelerate build-out to address the looming climate catastrophe. We need to ramp up to building out a TW of new renewable capacity every year.
They are a supplement to, not a straight replacement for, nuclear or gas or anything else.
Factor in the cost of filling in the gaps, and solar and wind don't come out ahead.
Financial effect of renewables in Europe: https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...
The civilian nuclear industry stemmed from massive military investments, which were a way to subsidize it. "In the United States, the federal government has paid US$145 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($85 billion) and fossil fuels ($60 billion) from 1950 to 2016" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United...)
The very PWR reactor exists thanks to the US Army desire of nuclear subs, which paid all associated R&D (Westinghouse then adapted it to the civilian on-shore market). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor#Hist...
Nowadays the sole direct federal energy support "peaked in FY 2021 at over $500 million" ( https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pd... )
There is no secret here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via... https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/nuclear_s... Nuclear enjoys massive tax reduction
Cost effectiveness will be established after the last hot waste of the last decommissioned plant will be cold. In the meantime any serious accident or waste particle wandering around may induce costs.
As already answered: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via...
I don't think we should be subsidizing power (or most things) but it seems disingenuous for an article to claim that nuclear power isn't viable because it gets subsidies, even tho fossil fuel gets at least as much subsidies per mwh as nuclear.
Coal and oil still get huge subsidies, yet even with are not viable against solar and wind without.
Wait, what? Other than solar (for obvious reasons), renewables can run 24/7/365, and that's extremely common; as an example, the Itaipu power plant has run continuously since 1984, and it only powered down once in 2009, when several of the transmission lines taking power from it failed at nearly the same time due to lightning.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
In 2013, CA generated 17 out of 200 GW from nuclear. GA generated 32/120 GW. NY generated 44/136GW. So at least in the case of New York, it generated more power from nuclear as a percentage than GA, and had higher electricity prices, so there doesn't seem to be a correlation. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/
It probably has more to do with the fact that electricity is deregulated in CA and NY, where implementations were infamously botched: https://truenergy.com/deregulated-energy-states/
"very limited and is conducted by a lottery system called DirectAcccess"
There was a semi-deregulation in 1996, but it was largely rolled back in 2001. So any price data post data 2001 should be bucketed in regulated.
But the thing still remains: the supposed Vogtle 3/4 boondoggle of gazzilions of dollars of cost overruns did not result in consumers paying more for electricity. Sure, historically they used to pay less than the national average, but they continue to pay less than the national average, and by about the same amount. The cause could be regulation or deregulation, or better geographic position, or whatever. But the consumers are not paying more, after Vogtle 3, am I right?
All the "nuclear renaissance" nuclear builds aside from Vogtle 3/4 were cancelled because the utilities realized the alternatives were much better economically. V. C. Summer was cancelled after dropping $9B on it. Even with that sunk cost, it still wasn't worth completing.
What happened between back then and now is two (well, three) things: fracking crashed the price of natural gas, demand didn't increase as much as utilities said it would, and then (later, after fracking) renewables also became much MUCH cheaper. One can excuse the nuclear industry for not seeing this would happen (or perhaps for not wanting to see that it would happen), but that doesn't change the fact that it did happen, and that the nuclear builds turned out to be economically unjustifiable.
Things got so bad for nuclear we were seeing already completed NPPs being shut down because they couldn't even make an operating profit! The other reactor at TMI had been cash flow negative for the last six years it was in operation, for example. In that sort of environment, building a new NPP (which would also have to amortized construction and financing costs) would be totally out of the question economically.
Fact 1. People in Georgia pay about 1.7 cent per kwh less than the national average ($0.110 vs $0.127 [1])
Fact 2. People in Georgia paid about 1 cent per kwh less than the national average 20 years ago ($0.077 vs $0.087, [2])
Are you disputing these facts?
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_state_electricity_prices
I think you're betraying your bias here with the added term "needlessly". There is some (maybe even most) bureaucracy that is inefficiently applied, for sure. But it is meant to address some risk. Maybe it's a risk that you (personally) don't care about, or aren't even cognizant of, and that's when it becomes easy to declare it "needless." We should be looking to streamline our risk mitigation and align it with risks that the public cares about, not throw it out altogether.
Just look at any institutional review board: the breadth their expertise is always smaller than the relevant topics they will have to rule upon at the institution, and often that leads to a certain level of consternation, misplaced understanding of risk, and overall higher levels of inefficiency.
https://freopp.org/rethinking-u-s-nuclear-energy-regulation-...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/top-westinghouse-nuclear-... ("Top Westinghouse Nuclear Executive Charged with Conspiracy, Fraud in 16-Count Federal Indictment")
That's the failed project OP blithely elided over as:
- "Two other Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were planned for a nuclear power plant in South Carolina, but construction was halted in 2017."
I'm really, really strongly in favor of nuclear fission power; but the American attempts this decade, and this company in particular, have been a grotesque failure. We really seem to have forgotten how to build things.
Rockets and cars are one thing. But that risk equation doesn’t work for nuclear.
If you continue to build reactors non-stop you'll learn how to make the process more efficient and be able to make better estimates.
Surely we software developers should appreciate how hard making accurate estimates is? And this isn't a 2 week sprint we're talking about, but a gigantic engineering project.
Power demand increases. Technology improves. Installed capacity ages out.
There will always be a need to build new plants, might as well lean into it and be proactive.
With the failure of Germany's Energiewende, countries have drastically re-evaluated their nuclear stances.
France just did an about-face and cancelled their plans to drastically reduce nuclear capacity or even get out of nuclear entirely. Instead they are now investing into a nuclear renaissance.
Poland is getting into nuclear power big time, they are buying reactors from South Korea (and possibly also the US).
The Finnish Green Party has recently come out to endorse nuclear power.
Japan, who was also getting out of nuclear power after Fukushima has also made an about face and is now going to reactivate more plants and even build new ones.
etc.
France had a law to slowly phase out nuclear and switch to renewables. They've rescinded that law and instead passed legislation to build more nuclear plants, and make building those plants easier, putting into action Macron's call for a "nuclear renaissance". Also extending the life of existing plants.
Japan, site of the second worst nuclear accident, had all, then most of its reactors shuttered (after political pressure). They are now reactivating more and more of them, have rescinded the policy to get out of nuclear and instead are planning to build more plants.
Poland is getting into nuclear power in big way. They currently don't have any and have just approved building 24 small reactors at six sites. I think they're also in talks with the US's Westinghouse to build more.
Ukraine, site of the worst accident in history, continues to operate its plants, and is talking with Rolls-Royce to convert some of their coal plants to nuclear. Rolls-Royce wants to build these reactors in a factory (economies of scale!) and ship them to sites. There are a lot of coal power plants that either already are decommissioned or soon will be. So quite the market for mass-produced reactors.
The US just approved the first new kind of nuclear reactor in 50 years, a molten fluoride salt-cooled reactor. China just gave an operation license for their first molten salt reactor (completed ahead of time), and their pebble bed reactor started delivering electricity to the grid this year.
etc.
Japan generated 30% of its electricity from nuclear before 2011, and is now aspirationally hoping to generate 20% by 2030 when considering decommissioned reactors and restarts.
Poland has two planned reactors with construction targeted to begin in 2026 and a couple of additional proposed reactors. There are some plans to deploy SMRs in Poland, but the reactors aren’t even in the design stage yet and I can’t determine how many GW these small reactors will actually produce in total. I also can’t figure out where Rolls Royce is in the product cycle, except that they’re still somewhere in the design stage. Any deployments in Ukraine seem likely to be decades out.
The Hermes molten salt reactor looks pretty great, but it won’t generate electricity and the Hermes 2 project will also be a 28MW test reactor. I’m very bullish on this sort of research, including the SMR stuff, since — unlike the 1970s-era plants being built, it at least has the potential to take off. But it’s all very much at the research and design stage: actual commercial production may be decades out. Who knows where battery storage tech will be in two decades.
> Poland has two planned reactors
Incorrect.
"Poland has given the green light for the construction of 24 new small modular reactor (SMR) units across six sites"
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/poland...
Anyway, nobody claimed that this was in advanced stages, how could it be?
Just two years ago, pretty much everybody was getting out of nuclear, some more quickly, some more slowly, but the direction had been consistent for the last two decades or so. Then Ukraine happened, and the house of card that was the German Energiewende, built on a solid foundation of cheap Russian gas, collapsed.
Not sure how quickly you expect turnarounds in energy policy to happen, but let's just sat that the Energiewende was made officially announced in the 1990s. And look how far we've gotten.
I personally find the development in the last year, year and a half remarkable quick.
Regarding the Energiewende, the initial plan from the SPD-Green government was decent. It was then revised, before being rushed in again by a CDU/CSU-FDP government after Fukushima. By the way, no new reactors were planned during that time anyway.
And please, do everyone a favour, look up the numbers of reactors under construction, reactors planned and proposed, the number of planned shut downs, the corresponding capacities and then compare those to the nameplate capacity of other sources going online.
And yes, I know the load factor for solar and wind is lower. But what these numbers tell you is, that the money does not go nuclear, not even close.
And all that is before we talk actual costs, construction times and delays.
That was the start of the post I replied to.
- comparison of net additional capacities: total name plate capacity of new NPPs being build + total nameplate capacity of new NPPs planned and proposed - nameplate capacity going offline vs. new solar + wind capacity being installed, do that on a yearly basis intil, say, 2035
Run the math, provide sources for the numbers, come back and share the result and your interpretation of it. Takes about max. an hour if you don't where to look for input data yet, much less if you do already.
The policy shift was announced was announced December 2nd of this year. So 26 days ago.
And your counter is "so where are all the new nuclear plants, I don't see them".
Seriously?
Edit: COP28 agreed on triplong renewable capacity to 11 TW by 2030. If we consider pledges for future NPPs, I think it is just fair to do the same when it comes to renewables, right?
There was quite a bit of nuclear built. For example France nuclearized its electricity grid.
In the last 20 years, policy shifted away from nuclear and there was very little built.
This hasn’t been in dispute in the least bit.
Just now we have witnessed a policy shift by most countries where nuclear is or was relevant back towards nuclear.
To argue that this policy shift hasn’t happened because we didn’t see its effects in the last 20 years seems weird, unless there was some important time travel news I missed.
To argue that the policy shift hasn’t happened because we haven’t seen new nuclear plants pop up since the few weeks or months since the shifts happened and were announced is also…odd.
And you seem to be under this impression that for nuclear to be built up, renewables must somehow be reduced.
This is simply not the case.
Unless you assume all those future reactors are magically planned, approved, built and connected at a fraction of the time all others are. In which case, please specify how exactly that is aupposed to happen. Otherwise, all you have is claims, unfounded ones at that, and pipedreams.
> If those policy changes are supossed to any effect by 2035
They are not. 2050 is the target date for tripling.
> those new NPPs would have to be at least in planning stage by now, which they are not
A lot of the policy changes just happened this year. Some announcements were made this month. OK, no new plants were built in the last 3 weeks. You win.
China, which the country building the most nuclear right now, is falling behind its own plans and downscaling its nuclear ambitions in favour of renewables.
Renewables being installed does not imply nuclear not being installed.
1. To my "I've head rumors that you can do both" you replied "I heard facts that people don't so."
Glad we are now agreed that your comment was not true, and mine was true. Doing "more" of one does not imply one is not doing the other at all.
2. It's not "orders of magnitude less" once you account for capacity factors.
And once again: the nuclear under-investment of the last few decades is well known, and so that is what we are seeing in the stats now. The policy shifts just started happening at earliest a year ago, most this year. While nuclear doesn't take nearly as long as anti-nuclear advocates claim, it also doesn't happen in a few months either.
PV load factor for utility scale solar was 16%. China installed 230 GW, Europe 75 GW and the US 40 GW -> 55 GW incl. load factor and excluding the rest of the world
Wind:
Let's use 40% as a load factor, which seems reasonable. Globally, around 100 GW added -> net 40 GW
NPP grid connections in 2022 (if you have 2023 numbers, please share them): 8.3 GW, with a load factor of aeound 80% for 2022 -> 6.6 GW. At the same 2.2 GW, around 1.8 GW of NPPs were shut down, resulting a net gain of 4.8 GW.
In total we have 90 GW of wind solar vs. not even 7 GW of nuclear. Excluding load factors we have 440 GW of wind and solar vs. 8.3 GW of nuclear globally. In the western world, those numbers fall even more towards wind and solar.
And looking at estimates until 2035, these numbers are looking even worse for nuclear.
So no, countries are not doing both, countries, especially in Asia, are very, very slowly adding new NPPs while overall net added nuclear capacity is negligible and barely replacing shut down reactors.
In other words, one year worth of new NPPs is added every two weeks using wind and solar.
Feel free to argue those numbers...
And you are using nameplate capacity again (after a brief nod to reality)
You could accept these facts as reality, which would make this whole discussion a lot less frustrating... Or at least engage with the numbers, which you didn't neither...
Nope.
>>> Excluding load factors we have 440 GW of wind and solar vs. 8.3 GW
> I never said nuclear projects don't exist
Yes you did.
>>> I've heard rumors that you can do both at the same time.
>> I heard facts that people don't so.
> only that their net added capacity is negligible compared to wind and solar.
Nope, see above. But they are also not negligible.
> ...and did for years now.
And I've told you a number of times now that the historical under-investment in nuclear the last few decades or so is a well-known fact that in no way contradicts the fact that policy has now changed.
Linearly projecting a past trend into the future is ... unwise. Particularly if there has been a major policy shift. Which there has.
Arguing that the policy shift that just happened hasn't happened because it had no effect in the past is even less wise.
Westinghouse used a new regulatory process that had been created specifically at the request of industry to speed the design and build of AP1000s. Despite this, Westinghouse did not deliver constructible designs, and the contractor soldiered on with on site modifications. Westinghouse screwed up so bad that they nearly bankrupted Toshiba, their owner.
So we have two failed holes in the ground at Summer in South Carolina, something like a $10B monument to corruption, with utility execs going to jail for their fraudulent reports.
All the other sites that were eyeing AP1000s to replace aging reactors have now backed out. The disaster was too big. What exec wants to go to jail for a nuclear reactor? What exec wants to lose their job for greenlighting what has a not-insignificant chance of bankrupting the entire utility.
Nuclear is too risky, but public perception is off, it's not running reactors that have the risk, it's the financial risk to anybody who wants to build one.
There were supposed to be advantages to building four at once, in that there would be some economy of scale. The AP1000 were also supppsed to be somewhat "modular" to avoid on site custom builds. None of this worked out as planned.
If we wanted nuclear to be a part of the energy transition, we didn't need two new reactors every decade or even four, we needed something like 5-20 per year. However, the experience of building the AP1000 has soured the market.
If we are going to build more nuclear, now is the time because we have the most knowledable workforce right now, but the benefit of building nuclear looks so small in comparison to the cost and the risks that it seems unlikely.
Major major support from the government is needed (and it's there from DoE's Loan Programs Office, run by a huge nuclear fan), but you also need utilities who want to place orders. And that second part is hard to create.
A) Idealistic voters with little interest in detail or execution.
B) Hard working state employees executing in an ineffective way because they are working on over constrained problems with conflicting and sometime impossible goals.
C) A number of opportunists that take advantage of poor rulemaking and bureaucratic disorganization.
For what it is worth, I dont think corruption is a major driver of problems, but bad policy detached from the practical considerations.
One simple example is SF parks maintenance:
The city wants to keep invasive species out, so it has staff to remove them. The city also believes in livable wages, so the workers make >100K. Residents dont like pesticides, so the workers must hand weed. Hand weeding doesnt work, so the City periodically also pays outside consultants to come in and take care of the invasives (with pesticides and low paid workers).
These small examples are extremely frustrating as a tax payer. What is the solution to these examples, or does one just try to ignore it as a price of living in that society?
One consideration is having a broader tax base so that voters have more skin in the game.
For example, taxes in Houston are less progressive than SF, but SF city budget per resident is more than 500% that of Huston.
The $1.7M public toilet was a painful example showing how far off the rails we are. Should auditors and controllers have some teeth? What would they be?
California has a referendum system. That so few referendums focus on cutting costs says something about its voters’ priorities.
On the other hand, the state is losing population on an absolute basis (and relatively even more so against a backdrop of national growth). So some folks are voting with their feet. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I'm free enough to do the same.
I’m arguing the opposite. The voters have the tools to oppose the state government’s size. That they don’t use them signals support in broad terms.
One key difference that I do like about the CA referendum process is that laws passed by referendum in California are equal to the state constitution and require 2/3 supermajority in state congress to modify or change, just like the state constitution itself. This avoids many attempts by legislature to foil or spoil the will of the voters’ referendums, in contrast to other state referendum processes which are only considered a law passed by other means and are usually able to be modified by simple majority.
In contrast, the only real alternative to air travel for high speed transportation between Northern and Southern CA is high speed rail. The "Hyperloop" has been exposed (charitably) as a failure, and personal vehicle travel (even electrified) is not an equivalent to HSR in a state as big as CA.
None of that is to say that the CA HSR project has been well planned/executed or that the costs have been well estimated. But that doesn't obviate the need for high speed ground transport in the state.
1. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... (pages 2 and 31)
They took the cost to build Vogtle, which is one of the most or even the most expensive outlier in terms of time/cost overruns of all time, and decided to make that the baseline for "the cost of nuclear power".
When the average time to build a nuclear reactor in the world has consistently been around 7.5 years. For the last 50 years, and also for the ones that came online in 2022, lest you think these were just the bygone good old days.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
Time to construct a nuclear plant takes on average 7.5 years, a number that hasn't really budged in the last 50 years.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
And since financing (i.e. interest) is the primary cost of nuclear (~50%), time is money.
Hinkley and Flamanville are examples of the EPR, a brand new reactor type that is both at the start of its learning curve, always problematic, and also apparently a design that is particularly difficult to build. And both Europe and the US haven't really built any nuclear plants for quite a long time, so the know-how to build them is just not there. Oh, and the regulators sometimes change regulations after parts of the plants have been built so they have to tear down what they have built and start again.
These are obviously all solvable problems, and mostly solvable by just building more. The problem is that we didn't build enough. Just build more.
So what better estimate would you suggest? What nuclear power plants where built in the last decade or so, for how much do they sell their power? How big will their decomissioning costs be per MWh?
Please support your claim.
We were talking about cost, and cost is directly proportional to construction time because financing (interest) is the primary cost of nuclear power plant construction.
I’m still waiting for better cost estimates than what Lazard gives.
Take the Vogtle-3 time, divide by average time to construct a nuclear reactor.
Apply factor to Lazard "estimate".
Vogtle was only delayed by 25%, 2.5 years? I thought it was such a disaster and this proved nuclear doesn't work?
Now it's all good?
This says the delay was 7 years:
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-vogtl...
Oh, and the plant will still be cost effective, apparently, even with those delays.
Oh, and the solar numbers include sufficient batter storage? I saw something about 4h for half the capacity on some of the graphs. Most didn't explain at all.
https://web.mit.edu/kshirvan/www/research/ANP193%20TR%20CANE...
https://www.enr.com/articles/55774-oxford-professors-latest-...