California Nuclear Power Plant Decides to Close | Hacker News Reader

California Nuclear Power Plant Decides to Close

nytimes.com

18 pointsjacobmarble47 comments

To give everyone some perspective, the two reactors in the San Onofre power plant generated a total of 2250 MW. O'Shaughnessy Dam (in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir) generates a measly 230 MW and in total, there are FOURTEEN natural gas plants that generate more than 200 MW in the entirety of the United States operating today.

California consumed about 272 billion kWh in 2011 [1], which is 272 million MWh so that $4.11 increase is SIGNIFICANT. Replacing 2.25 GW of generating capability + building infrastructure for growing needs is not simple, cheap, or fast and if we keep going this way (removing high generating nuclear reactors and trying to replace it with renewables) then we will soon be in a situation like Germany. Hint: California can't afford an HVDC build out!

Also, the NRC approved the building of two new reactors after Fukushima in Georgia [2], so I'm curious why uncertainty about the license renewal? The Georgia reactors are also pressurized-type, although they aren't going on 60 years.

[1] http://www.ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbyutil.aspx

[2] http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nucle... - Thankfully only one person voted no for reasons of Black Swan/Fukushima.

and in total, there are FOURTEEN natural gas plants that generate more than 200 MW in the entirety of the United States operating today.

California alone has over 45,000 MW of natural gas capacity, including 46 plants over 200 MW. They add about 1,000 MW more every year (that state alone), and they're built very quickly and cheaply. Replacing nuclear plants with fossil fuels isn't remotely sensible, but it is easy.

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_...

[.xlsx] http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/powerplants/Power_Plants.xlsx

Ahh I was working off of terrible data it appears.

what is the situation in germany?

They're shutting down nuclear power, building an incoherent mixture of coal, solar, and wind, causing both skyrocketing electricity prices and increasing CO2.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commissi...

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569039-europes-ener...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/germany-takes-the...

Basically, the nature of solar and wind power compared to the classical utility power is severely at odds if you try to shift to solar/wind too fast. It's more complicated than just comparing direct vs alternating current but it can be simplified to that.

Earthquakes aside there are so many different types of nuclear reactor both in the way they operate and the fuel used people seem to lump them all together in one hysterical pile.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan used plutonium from what I have read is unique compared to other plants. Canadian CANDU plants use natural uranium and the way they're constructed is far safer than other types of reactors. Two extremes of fuel used and plant design yet it seems some people see no difference. Of course in any discussion about reactors these days LFTR (thorium) reactors are mentioned too, even safer than uranium/plutonium reactors.

People are entitled to their opinion but it seems the vocal anti-science crowd wins. I'm all for closing bad nuclear power plants but all nuclear plants "just because" they use nuclear fuel?

It would be great if we all lived in sunny countries where solar panels and giant battery packs could supply our power but that's not the situation. I like solar but it's not suitable yet in my opinion due to the storage issues and efficiency of the panels, maybe graphene will solve that soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor

As I understand it, Edward Teller made sure the current CANDUs and any other designs with a positive void coefficient were illegal to build in the US (this is part of what killed the Chernobyl reactor), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient for more details, especially:

"CANDU reactors have positive void coefficients that are small enough that the control systems can easily respond to boiling coolant before the reactor reaches dangerous temperatures (see References).

RBMK reactors, such as the reactors at Chernobyl, have a dangerously high positive void coefficient. This was necessary for the reactor to run on unenriched uranium and to require no heavy water. Before the Chernobyl accident these reactors had a positive void coefficient of 4.7 beta and after the accident that was lowered to 0.7 beta. This was done so all RBMK reactors could resume safe operating and produce much needed power for the then USSR and its satellites."

The next generation CANDU addresses this, although one of the costs is requiring 1 to 2% enrichment.

The fuel isn't what caused the problems in Japan, rather, an appalling nuclear safety culture, so bad I don't think I can disagree with their decision to turn them all off, to their using boiling water reactors which don't contain everything inside the classic dome.

The international reactions to Fukushima seem about as absurd as pulling every commuter car off the road because the Pinto was a terrible design.

Japan reprocessed fuel and was using mixed oxide fuel in one of the reactors at that site. The plutonium was processed and mixed with uranium so that it could be used in a reactor that was originally designed for uranium. I'm not familiar with the details, but any design elements put in place for the plutonium fuel would have been retrofits, not extremes.

Why aren't people charging ahead with Thorium power? Seems like Thorium should be a no-brainer - low radioactivity, safe operations.

But there must be some problem with Thorium, because it isn't getting built-out. Does anyone know why?

Convincing an already scared-of-nuclear population to allow the building of an experimental (big, scary word) reactor after a disaster like Fukushima is a maddening prospect for an entrepreneur or even an established company. It more than 25 years between the Three Mile Island "disaster" and the start of construction of new nuclear reactors. It's a miracle they were approved so shortly after Fukushima, but by the time you're ready to issue construction permits hundreds of millions if not billions have already been invested.

A full blown reactor (with immediate infrastructure) costs at least $2-3 billion in markets with cheap labor and upwards of $5-10 billion in the developed world. The other issue is that most of the cost of mining, processing, and storing fuel and waste is externalized, which much of the government is no longer as willing to do after Yucca Mountain was canceled.

If it costs that much to build a reactor, how much does it cost to test a new design?

Many: it's a new, untried at scale approach, there's a big "And then a miracle occurs" stage as I recall, and it doesn't burn thorium, it burns U-233 ... which can be used to make nuclear weapons. And is easily isolated from the rest of the stuff compared to enriching uranium or even breeding plutonium, which has to be removed quickly or else you'll get too much of the 2 undesirable isotopes of it.

It doesn't address any of the real problems to my knowledge (you think the Greens are going to be happy with it???), and going back to that "untried" bit, right now it would I think need that "10X" advantage to displace the tried and true stuff that we know can work pretty well.

The rabid far-left elements of Northern Europe and America are not content limiting nuclear power proliferation just in the developed world.

Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant

Operating capacity: 6800 MW

Maximum capacity: 9200 MW

  In March 2012, police said they had arrested nearly 
  200 anti-nuclear protesters objecting resumption  
  of work of building one of two 1 GW reactors, a day
  after the local government restarted work on the
  project.

  There have also been rallies and protests in favour
  of commissioning this nuclear power plant.
 
  *On, 24 February 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
  blamed American and Scandivanian NGOs for
  fueling protests at the power plant. Three of the 
  NGOs were later found to have used foreign funds
  received for social and religious purposes to fuel 
  the protests, violating foreign exchange regulatory
  rules. The PM also blamed these NGOs for opposing 
  genetically modified foods and the use of
  biotechnology to increase food production in the 
  country.*

Source(s):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_XwANnrxvo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Movement_Against_Nuc...

Not one of the nuclear power stations currently planned or under construction are in the Western world (unless you count Slovakia).

Not even the traditionally very nuclear-friendly France.

Is this just a coincidence or is it the handiwork of some hyper-sensitive faction of the environmental lobby with bottomless coffers to buy political clout across whole continents?

  This table lists stations under construction or operational stations with under-construction reactors and current net
  capacity under 1,000 MW. Planned connection column indicate connection of first reactor, not thus whole capacity.

  Power station	                 Cap(MW)Start   Conn	Country	Location
  Braka Nuclear Power Plant	  1,340	2012	2017	 UAE	23°59′6″N 52°17′1″E
  Belyarsk-4 (BN-800)	          1,364	2006	2014	 Russia	56°50′30″N 61°19′21″E
  Changjiang Nuclear Power Plant  1,220	2010	2014	 China	19°25′23″N 108°48′45″E
  Fangchenggang Nuclear Power 	  2,000	2010	2015	 China	21°40′36″N 108°33′38″E
  Fangjiashan Nuclear Power Plant 2,000	2008	2013	 China	30°26′29″N 120°56′30″E
  Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant	  3,000	2008	2013	 China	25°26′39″N 119°26′46″E
  Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant	  2,000	2009	2014	 China	36°42′33″N 121°22′54″E
  Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant	  4,000	2007	2013	 China	39°47′52″N 121°28′19″E
  Kakrapar-3	                  1,664	2010	2015	 India	21°14′19″N 73°21′00″E
  Kaliningrad Nuclear Power Plant 1,082	2012	2017	 Russia	54°56′20″N 22°09′40″E
  Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant 1,834	2002	2013	 India	8°10′06″N 77°42′45″E
  Leningrad Nuclear Power II	  2,170	2008	2013	 Russia	59°49′50″N 29°3′26″E
  Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant	  2,600	1999	2013	 Taiwan	25°02′19″N 121°55′27″E
  Mochovce Nuclear Power Plant	  1,654	1987	2015	 Slovak	48°15′50″N 18°27′25″E
  Novovoronezh Nuclear II  	  2,228	2008	2013	 Russia	59°49′50″N 29°3′26″E
  Ōma Nuclear Power Plant	  1,325	2010	2014	 Japan	41°30′35″N 140°54′37″E
  Sanmen Nuclear Power Station	  2,000	2009	2013	 China	29°06′04″N 121°38′23″E
  Shin Ulchin Nuclear Power Plant 1,340	2012	2017	 SKorea	37°05′34″N 129°23′01″E
  Shin Wolseong Nuclear Plant	  1,920	2007	2013	 SKorea	35°43′20″N 129°28′44″E
  Taishan Nuclear Power Plant	  3,400	2009	2013	 China	21°54′34″N 112°58′45″E
  Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant	  3,000	2008	2013	 China	21°42′35″N 112°15′38″E

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations#...

Edit: Formatting

Power stations != reactors. We have 2-3 reactors under construction in the United States. Each reactor is 1GW+

This should clear up the disparity: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries...

Edit: Also China's per capita consumption of electricity is a fraction of the per capita consumption of the developed world and is growing incredibly rapidly. I wouldn't be surprised if China is outbuilding the US in everything from renewables to natural gas to coal.

France, Finland, Slovakia, and the US:

http://www.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstructionRe...

Good news for California. They should dismantle the radioactive material asap as it could always be a Japan rerun...

I disagree. It's bad news for California, and bad news for the environment long-term. It's not an ideal nuke plant, but the current alternative is to kill ourselves burning oil and coal.

Here's a former Greenpeace bigwig's account of switching to pro-nuclear: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04...

America has a power grid. California uses power from all over and supplies power all over.

Trivia: the discharge water from the plant raised sea temperature enough that surfers could feel it.

There aren't a lot of idled hydro, wind, or solar plants. Most of the idle plants are coal, with a small number of natural gas (higher construction cost per kw of capacity, previously more expensive fuel, but now natural gas is cheaper than the mitigated costs of coal, so they run gas and idle coal).

So, you'd be adding coal to the operating mix. The dirtiest plants are the ones which were idled, too.

In the 5 year timeframe, you could argue for building more natural gas, solar, wind, etc. to replace the nuclear, but as far as I can tell, wind and solar and being done as fast as they can, and the coal to gas transition is also happening.

There also isn't "one grid"; it's basically 3, and it's not like it has infinite capacity everywhere. Putting a bunch of wind in the Midwest or Texas doesn't really help California.

Also, an intuitive model of a single grid would be a bunch of ponds with small streams between them. You can't arbitrarily "wheel" power from one "pond" to another, you have to have in place sufficient transmission line capacity, which is not cheap.

What is the hydraulic analogy of reactance? inertial mass of pulsing water? (also, wtf does chrome on windows not include the word reactance in the dictionary?)

Are you saying we have to obey the law of thermodynamics?

And no travel faster than c.

But I want it now!

And? Can you show that oil/coal/gas powered plants heat less water per kWh electricity produced?

Considering the sheer energy that it makes available to us, if our main concern with Nuclear energy is that it makes water warmer, then I think I'm okay with that.

No, I meant trivia. I just thought it was interesting, my friends used to surf there. I think the biggest issue with nuclear power is the toxic waste with a half-life 500 times my lifespan.

It sucks 1,000 people will loose their jobs.

It's only 600 years before it's no more radioactive than the ore it was mined from, "toxic" isn't a binary property. And it's not like it isn't valuable stuff, we're just too stupid to reprocess it.

A lot more than 1,000 people will lose their jobs as the costs inevitably go up. Even more if the grid becomes flaky.

The current alternative is to keep installing solar and wind and (eventually) wave plants ... which the smart money has been investing in, which require no government-paid insurance, and which generate no waste-that-has-to-be-safely-stored-forever.

What's the total output of solar and wind in California?

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_...

Time-averaged outputs are 1,045 MW wind, 175 MW solar. (2nd table, in units of gigawatt-hours per year. The 1st table shows peak capacities: 4,967 MW wind, 855 MW solar).

Marginal additional energy in CA (to replace the nuclear capacity) means either burning more natural gas in-state or burning more coal in the Pacific Northwest.

Coal (and even natural gas, surprisingly) puts more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear fission. Plus, all the other negatives of fossil fuels (particulates, acid rain, risky mining, etc.). And global warming.

So, yay?

For anyone who wants numbers - coal puts out approximately 100 times the amount of radioactivity as nuclear power plants do and is responsible for about 1,000 times the deaths. There is a good stackexchange discussion with more detailed statistics, nuances etc http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1018/do-coal-pla...

But people just don't want to believe that. Renewable energy also has caused more deaths than nuclear power, even if you (completely unfairly) count the deaths resulting from the use of nuclear weapons. And the public reaction is to simply ignore this, and even deny it.

I find it easy to believe : mounting slippery glass panels on rooftops ... not very safe, maintaining and cleaning them, again obviously not safe[1]. There are also recorded accidents with solar panels falling off rooftops into people (they are large, heavy glass shards by the time they hit the ground, so you can imagine what happens, let's just skip the photos). Putting generators on poles 50m or 100m above the ground (or 150m above the sea surface) is not a safe occupation and those generators cannot be as safe as the ones on the ground. So maintaining those is generating a steady stream of death and disfigurement[2], and catastrophic failure means the tower collapses, you don't want to be below one, like a catastrophic failure in the UK where a wind turbine locked up and crashed into a school playground, thankfully an empty one. Or just search youtube [4][5][6]. And dam-based electrical power has the same problem as nuclear power : if it works, great. If it fails, it can fail catastrophically, taking a lot of people with it[3].

[1] http://asiancorrespondent.com/54571/green-deaths-the-forgott...; [2] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100200909/...; [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWcdDwECZU0 [4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMNqjirbWoQ [5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ovHFTSBQ54 [6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyQD83NLDc

Also keep in mind the EROI of the different solutions. Meaning how much energy is produced given input energy. Renewables (except hydro) are in the 0.5-2 range (and "small" renewables, like solar recharging bluetooth headsets, are 0.1 at best), oil used to be 20-30 but have dropped to 15 at best and is rapidly decreasing (a fact that has been accused of being the real cause of the global economic slowdown). Coal is also around 10-15 range average globally. Nuclear, is at least 150000. Whatever disadvantages nuclear power has is related to the amount of material used, and that amount is tiny.

> And the public reaction is to simply ignore this, and even deny it.

That pattern seems to apply to most risk. There is huge fear over rare plane accidents that affect up to a few hundred at once, while ignoring the traffic accidents that kill 3,000 people a month (US) in ones and twos. Even terrorism is rare, and 9/11 is a blip compared to those traffic accidents. A nuclear accident could affect lots of people at once, while coal/renewables are doing it in dribs and drabs for far greater totals.

If you want to include deaths from nuclear weapons, nuclear is way negative, in that nuclear weapons largely kept the cold war cold. A hot ww3 would have been in the millions.

I don't know the exact model of this plant, but I read about the Fukushima plant in Japan.

The Fukushima plants had control rods, they are inserted in the reactor to stop almost entirely the uranium fission. They were inserted automatically, so most of the heat creation was stopped in a short time.

The problem is that the fission creates some unstable atoms, that continue to decay mostly in a few days and create additional heat. The refrigeration must have continued for some days, but they couldn't because they lost all the alternative electricity sources. :(

So the reactor overheated and they must release steam and use sea water to cool it and things like that. Those measures released some radioactivity to the environment.

After a few days, the only active nuclear reactions are the spontaneous fission of uranium and the decay of the other radioactive intermediate products. This created very few heat and they wouldn't need any active refrigeration. They were able to put the other reactors in Fukushima in this state, so they didn't create any problem.

The power plant in California is closed since one year, so it's almost sure in a stable state that doesn't create too much heat, so the probability of a nuclear disaster is very low.

You missed the main part of the disaster where the cores of reactors 1, 2, and 3 melted down (fuel rods melting and collecting in a pool at the bottom of the core) after the cooling failed. This led to hydrogen explosions, the boiling away of most of the coolant, and some problems with the waste fuel pool (also lost cooling shortly after the meltdown I think).

Also it wasn't "after a few days." The site wasn't stable until almost nine months later (December, 2011).

The issues here is what is your worst case when you loose your cooling. After Three Mile Island and Fukushima we have some answers for their respective designs: pressurized water reactors which have everything "hot" inside the classic dome also keep enough of that hot stuff in it, boiling water reactors that have things spread out in a rather complicated design don't.

And the insane Chernobyl design....

Ok, this is a safer design. Anyway, my point is that loosing the cooling system of an active nuclear plant is much worse than loosing the cooling system of the shutdown nuclear plant (but don't try that at home). So it's not necessary to rush to dismantle the nuclear material, because of the fear of a tsunami. Those material should be handled properly.

Doubtful, these are pressurized water reactors, not boiling ones, an inherently safer design.

A Japan rerun? Among all the problems Japan has faced in recent history, matters related to nuclear power barely even register.

"Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick"

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-t...

Contrast this with "The dam failures killed an estimated 171,000 people" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure

That's one columnist's opinion, and it seems like he's just trumpeting the W.H.O.'s story. I don't think it's safe to call this book closed. There are other opinions, and facts.

http://www.allgov.com/usa/ca/news/california-and-the-nation/...

Right now there's no cost-effective technology to create safe energy - just that some are worse than others http://www.energyjustice.net/coal

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