Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Time for America to do the same?
The second best time to plant a tree is now.
> It takes around 6 to 8 years to build a nuclear reactor.
(Note: There is no data on planning part though; not so easy to methodically measure probably)
Point still valid, but 20 years seems excessively pessimistic.
Also keep in mind that the limited amount of data for US/UK plants are for long planned expansions. Vogtle was built to accomodate 4 reactors from the start. So Vogtle 3 & 4 should have taken considerably less time than average.
But let's be generous and say that a greenfield project takes less time to construct than Vogtle, or 10 years. Do you think planning & approvals can be done in less than 10 years?
Even the touted "small modular reactor" projects take over a decade. For example, the INL small reactor project started in 2013, kept getting delayed until it had a start date of 2030, and then was cancelled a few months ago.
And meeting demand with nuclear would require around ~200 full size reactors. 20 years to build 200 reactors sounds extremely optimistic to me.
Nuclear advocates would do well to keep up to date with the Indian Point decommissioning in order to propose solutions to the knottiest problem for nuclear: the plants are owned by corporations who do bad things.
If you want nuclear to prosper, there needs to be solutions to issues like a company announcing it will discharge nuclear waste into the Hudson River with no regard as to how it might affect local economies or residents.
I think nuclear energy is quite a powerful tool in our quest to decarbonize, but I have very little trust in the stewardship of for profit companies who have very little regard for the lifetimes of the materials when they live and die by the quarter (relatedly see PFAs, micro plastics, &c.).
I may be a libertarian of sorts, but I'd have no problem with nuke plants being nationalized for other reasons, and if that would assuage worries about corporate malfeasance, so much the better.
Like I said, take a look at Indian Point. There was an uproar about releasing the nuclear waste into the river (on an accelerated timeline), an action which is now prohibited by law.
As a result, there are holding tanks full of radioactive water that no one knows what to do with and that pose a greater threat should they leak. There is public distrust for the company decommissioning the plant, and they are severely hamstrung (how _do_ they get that waste out of there when they can’t transport it anywhere?).
I should note, I’m not really looking to argue state vs non-state ownership. I’m saying that someone needs some real solutions to these types of problems before nuclear could be built at scale.
Wait, what?
The Indian Point reactors 2 and 3 were decommissioned in 2020 and 2021 because of pure political reasons. For some reason Andrew Cuomo wanted them shut down.
> corporations who do bad things.
You know that governors can do bad things too, right?
Scaling the surface this means 200 nuclear power plants in the US. There already are 50 so another 150 to go. More chances for Fukushima / Chernobyl situations.
The electric utilities have been singing "We need more generation capacity" for a couple decades.
We don't need quick chargers at home, unless you mean 240V chargers? Which is in some of the countries with 110V/120V.
We don't need more generation capacity. Utilities are keen on increasing costs, their profits are a percentage of cost, there is a nexus between generation, transmission and distribution companies to keep adding capacity. This was pointed out by many commenters, a recent out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714
Energy demand will down with EVs and renewables: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/iea-energy-scenari...
Whats needed is demand response. But utilities won't do it, because it won't increase their profits.
Point a) has already been explained by GP, but b) is the interesting one. Right now there's barely any incentive for large consumers such as aluminium smelters to shut down or limit consumption during the night (where there is no solar energy), the only incentive these kind of consumers get is a premium for short-term load shedding. We would, as a society, need far less of generation capacity buildout if we can get the large consumers to drastically reduce their consumption at night.
We can solve this problem simply by closing all our plants and importing more aluminum from Japan.
California does have a nice advantage in that it has lots of solar near populated areas that have mild climates (well, that mainly means the LA area).
You cannot shut down smelters period. They must be kept running or the entire smelter has to be rebuilt taking months.
But it'll still mean an increase electricity production/consumption.
It's not a big drama, and it's already planned for, but it'll still be an increase (even after accounting for efficiency gains).
The US increases its generating capacity by about 4% per year. (50GW added per year, 1.3TW total).
EV's are a very small part of demand increase.
I don't think it is economically viable to maintain two sets of power distribution (electricity and petrol) at the same time so countries will probably "push out" traditionnal petrol stations once they think EV distribution is okay enough
Are you suggesting everyone already knows it?
While nuclear generation plants do create waste, I was under the impression that most modern designs do a pretty decent job of recycling water that is contaminated or not having contaminated water to begin with so cooling water just gets ejected back out?
If it's big enough, maybe start making those companies pay for these externalities they're forcing on the rest of society.
Though for other industrial uses... does the U.S. have a plan for SMR research and policies for deploying them when the tech is ready? I'm a bit ignorant on that one. I know Canada has been making moves in that direction.
> Or are you saying they should pay more per KWh than some other user for some reason?
I just checked, and residential electricity users pay more than commercial or industrial users:
"Residential Sector: The average price is approximately 17.08 cents per kWh. Commercial Sector: The average price is around 13.10 cents per kWh. Industrial Sector: The average price is about 9.47 cents per kWh."
https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/commercial-vs-residential-el...
The good thing about a data center is at least with fewer employees, there isn't a huge pressure to build new housing and schools.
> A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. ... Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are scouring the nation for sites for new data centers..
Sounds like these companies have capital investment available, and their demand is inducing increased supply of data centers.. which should also induce demand for electricity supply too.
If they really want to grow fast they are welcome to invest in generating capacity and grid infrastructure too.
That's what I was getting at: if the grid is burdened by their demand, and the demand is outpacing other uses (preventing other productive use of that electricity like say... powering air conditioners in a heat wave) then maybe they should be contributing a portion of their capital to building more capacity.
Why does every one else, from residential users to small businesses, need to suffer rolling blackouts because a bunch of VPs need to, "win at AI?"
At this point it seems like the big tech companies are simply using up as much supply as they can get in order to grow and that there's only so much capacity to go around since funding for expansion comes from investments in projects that aren't being funded by the largest growing set of users creating that demand.
All Bitcoin was generated through energy waste. Taxing it over its lifetime will reduce incentives to continue producing it.
> noun 1. an act or instance of using or expending something carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
In a typical democracy, those people are legislators, courts, and government agencies tasked with oversight.
Do you have an idea of what this would entail at a legal, accounting, or technical level? This is sort of a bizarre suggestion from any of those perspectives
Proposing a bitcoin transaction tax is more akin to imposing a tax on intrabank account transfers, which is facially absurd, because it's essentially a no-op from an accounting standpoint.