[HN Gopher] Study identifies reasons for soaring nuclear plant c...
___________________________________________________________________
Study identifies reasons for soaring nuclear plant cost overruns in
the U.S.
Author : consumer451
Score : 205 points
Date : 2020-11-20 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "Analysis points to ways engineering strategies could be
| reimagined to minimize delays and other unanticipated expenses."
|
| Ah, okay, reimagined. Phew.
| Agathos wrote:
| Let me guess. They need to be more Agile.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I appreciate that someone has "done the math" on the soft costs
| for nuclear plants. One of the arguments against nuclear has
| always been "but it's so expensive" and yet the engineering of
| the plant itself is not particularly expensive relative to
| similar capacity coal or gas plants[1]. When we were discussing
| the "Ultra Safe Nuclear" (www.usnc.com) [2] I commented [3] that
| expense was more soft costs than engineering from my own
| experience of looking into the cost of nuclear. This paper just
| does the math and makes it more explicit.
|
| [1] Yes, that is multiple plants to create the equivalent amount
| of capacity.
|
| [2] _Ultra Safe Nuclear_ --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24505727
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24511751
| hokkos wrote:
| Sadly sci hub fails on the mentioned study :
|
| https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X
| supernova87a wrote:
| I think a pervasive theme in US infrastructure (and why it's
| expensive) is that we've gotten out of practice of building. I
| think it's the deeper "why" to this issue.
|
| We no longer have a broad reservoir/cadre/pool of practitioners
| of engineers, construction crews, experts, designers (except for
| a very concentrated few) who do this week in, week out. Every job
| now seems custom. Only Parsons or whoever has the ability to do
| it, and even they have to scrounge around for the project
| manager.
|
| Other countries are in their building phase and have thousands of
| engineers who are practiced in standardizing designs and
| squeezing out inefficiencies. They have graduating classes full
| of highway engineers. For gods sake, they even have graduating
| classes full of engineers specializing in the _tooling_ for
| highway / railroad engineering machinery.
|
| Our building phase was post-war construction-crazy economic
| expansion era. Now we're in the maintenance phase, where big new
| projects are the exception. Not to denigrate the great importance
| of doing great maintenance, but in practice you can't keep (or
| attract) a large pool of well paid expert engineers going on that
| level of activity. They go where the projects go.
|
| And as a result, as the report points out, when everything is
| "for the first time again" and custom because you do it once per
| decade, the particular factors of a given site are allowed to
| dictate what the system design should be. (Maybe also not
| insignificant: the environmental considerations allowed to creep
| in, just to point that out, as grateful as I am for the
| protection that we give these matters). Rather than (for better
| or worse, probably a bit worse) in other countries, they're
| stamping out highways, railroad, power plants by the week, and
| the environment is made to fit the construction.
|
| It's choices we made, over time, that caused us to atrophy our
| capabilities here. It could be brought back with investment.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| I don't disagree with you generally.
|
| Luckily for the nuclear industry, the engineering capability
| still exists in the US to design a whole plant, and a lot of
| the manufacturing base still exists. Big US nuclear players
| have had a base load of domestic upgrades and international new
| plant jobs that have kept these capabilities alive.
|
| But for construction, we really are awfully thin on specialized
| trades. Welders, especially, are _always_ in short supply.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Welders are in short supply is just CEO talk for "we don't
| want to pay them more".
| gricardo99 wrote:
| Welders, especially, are _always_ in short supply.
|
| I've heard this time and again over the years, but it doesn't
| make sense to me. If welders made > 300k/year, surely they
| wouldn't be in short supply anymore. Why isn't there simply a
| wage/price signal to compensate for this? It's not like
| medicine that requires 6-8 years of school, and years more of
| practice to fill certain positions (where additional
| constraints are the schools and hospital residencies limited
| capacity). For welders, labor supply should be fairly easy
| and quick to remedy.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It takes many years to become a skilled welder, and nuclear
| is the hardest class of welding to get certified for.
|
| A few months at the local community college can get you to
| the point where you can do the most basic welding jobs, but
| these low skill jobs are the ones that either left the US
| or got automated, and the few such jobs that remain are
| mostly done by mediocre welders who should have retired
| years ago. If you want to do the high skilled welding that
| pays well, you need to essentially support yourself for
| years as you develop those skills on your own - and most
| people who have the means to do so have better
| opportunities in other fields.
|
| Realistically, employers need to eat the cost of training
| new people if they want the pipeline to open back up again,
| but it's more economical to poach a good welder after some
| other sucker puts their resources into them, so you get a
| classic tragedy of the commons.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| It takes literal years of daily practice for a welder to
| get good enough to do the high quality specialty materials
| pipe fitting welds that would make up so much of nuclear
| plant construction. I am not exaggerating. A good
| welder/fitter team can work pretty much wherever they want,
| they are in incredibly high demand. There aren't more of
| them because not that many people have the baseline talent
| to be able to achieve the ability, regardless of how much
| practice they put in.
|
| Source: used to weld at the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think there's an underestimated resistance to changing
| the labor rate. If a company quotes a typical job at 80
| man-hours with $15/hr welders, and a year later you want to
| hire welders and can only find them at $20, they're more
| likely to complain there's a welder shortage and decline
| jobs because they don't have enough welders to complete
| them than increase their labor rate. Plus, if you increase
| the rate for a new guy, and your $12/hr hire from a decade
| ago hears the new hire is making $20, he's going to be
| pissed, so you'd have to increase costs across the board or
| suppress discussion of salaries.
| triceratops wrote:
| This explanation doesn't really hold water. Some company
| is going to eventually win the contract by bidding with
| $20/hr welders right? It's not like the client is just
| going to give up on their project.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| No, I think you do see clients give up. There are
| certainly more infrastructure maintenance projects in the
| US than governments are willing/able to pay for. I'm not
| sure the market can bear much higher costs for
| construction.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| There was a rather famous story about Aceribo being
| abandoned due to lack of upkeep and high cost of repairs.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _This explanation doesn 't really hold water._
|
| During the 2010-2019 US recovery wage stickiness was
| noticed, even with everyone complaining about not being
| able to find qualified workers. Companies were very
| reticent about increasing wages, often preferring to go
| with signing bonuses.
|
| It is suggested that this reticence/stickiness was
| because after 2008-2009 GFC many places were stuck with
| high wages (from the previous boom), and getting people
| to cut their salaries was almost impossible.
|
| * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sticky-wage-
| theory.asp
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity
| Kye wrote:
| I see this with those profiles of factory owners
| complaining about Those Dang Kids not wanting to work,
| while omitting the fact that they offer too little
| relative to other options. A lot of people running places
| like this don't want to accept they're also in
| competition with retail now.
|
| People look at the small difference between pay at the
| factory or mine (dangerous) and pay at Walmart (not quite
| as dangerous + employee discounts) and make the rational
| choice.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> Welders, especially, are _always_ in short supply._
|
| In short supply for the wages offered. Bid enough out there,
| and the positions will fill. Bid consistently such that
| precarity is avoided and bid even more beyond that, and the
| bench will deepen. Short supply is entirely addressable by
| buyers.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the parent post here, and
| add, that in the construction industry in California over the
| last thirty+ years, the pressure on middle-tier contractors
| combined with human nature, made a blatant game of taking away
| the pay from anyone who could not defend themselves in a
| transaction. That sometimes is the workers, sometimes the
| suppliers of materials, sometimes the contract holder.. Theft
| escalated and wages stayed stagnant or actually fell. "Illegal"
| labor is ordinary and expected.
|
| I would welcome some case studies from the commentors here,
| because "reasons" given in comments are not explaining what I
| have seen with my own eyes.
| csa wrote:
| > "Illegal" labor is ordinary and expected.
|
| I agree with your entire comment, but I want to emphasize the
| part about illegal labor.
|
| There are entire industries built on the back of illegal
| labor, and I think many otherwise informed Americans are not
| aware of this.
|
| We have some fairly substantial mismatches between our labor
| market and our immigration policies.
|
| Before someone says "just don't use illegal labor", please
| realize that this means that you will be out of business due
| to a lack of competitiveness since literally everyone else in
| your line of business does it.
|
| Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one
| hand, maybe it's just better off staying like it is -- the
| market is clearing. On the other hand, I kind of wish proper
| enforcement of the laws would happen. This would force these
| companies to pay wages that legal workers would take. This,
| of course, would require them to raise their prices to the
| end user, but it would give legal laborers more... of
| something... definitely money, definitely rights, and maybe a
| bigger piece of the pie.
|
| I don't work in any of these fields, but I know people who
| do. I would love to hear from HNers who have first hand
| experience.
| Lammy wrote:
| > many otherwise informed Americans
|
| It also has to do with conversation venue. Think how many
| HN commenters work for companies like Uber/Lyft, just for
| one example.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _There are entire industries built on the back of illegal
| labor, and I think many otherwise informed Americans are
| not aware of this._
|
| Indeed. The game though, is a big reason for hiring people
| illegally is to keep costs down. Because illegal workers
| area afraid to complain and will work for less.
|
| Now, when the average moron finds that there are lots of
| illegals in industry X, or in the country as a whole, they
| get up in arms about the illegals, support a crackdown but
| the crackdown doesn't remove the illegals but makes them
| more afraid, reinforcing the whole system. So the typical
| ideology of the countries makes accomplices of the racket
| when sun light is (selectively) shed on the situation.
|
| It's funny that China runs their on the same legal/illegal
| division of labor but in China the "illegals" are internal
| to China, people from the countryside who don't have
| official permission to be in the city.
| wpietri wrote:
| Could you say a bit more about the game being played here? No
| need to spill any secrets, but I'd love some "for example"
| items to understand it better.
| Lammy wrote:
| This is exactly the reason I think Richard Nixon's 1973 plan
| for "1000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000" would have
| been so impactful for us. It's hard to get good at only
| building a handful of something.
|
| e: I misremembered; it was actually 1000 by 1980
| erentz wrote:
| A thousand! We'd be so rich in carbon free energy we'd be
| exporting it to Canada and Mexico and still have hundreds of
| GW left over to, I dunno, produce hydrogen 24/7 for other
| uses.
|
| We could decarbonize our grid today with only something in
| the vicinity of ~200 new plants. This is entirely doable.
| France showed how it's done in the 80s. It's sad we can't
| start now.
| Lammy wrote:
| Unfortunately that was a very different regulatory era for
| nuclear development than we have today, so who knows if it
| would be feasible. Watergate happened not long after that
| declaration, and one of Gerald Ford's first major acts as
| replacement President was signing the Energy Reorganization
| Act of 1974, to split the Atomic Energy Commission
| (responsible for both civilian and military nuclear
| development) into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
| (responsible for regulating civilian nuclear power) and the
| Energy Research and Development Administration (responsible
| for supporting military nuclear development).
| normaljoe wrote:
| To be fair those are completely different things.
| Commercial needs a profit and uses low enriched material.
| Military is not concerned with profit and uses highly
| enriched material.
|
| I am not as familiar with the commercial side but I can
| say the military model is safe as all get out and
| produces less waste since you only need to refuel ever
| few decades or so.
|
| Also NRC is very much still involved with Military
| applications, which at this point just involves moving
| expensive war ships around.
| boogies wrote:
| > produces less waste
|
| But do nuclear reactors really produce any waste, or only
| "spent" fuel that's recyclable?
| godelski wrote:
| Due to some logistics complexities recycling fuel doesn't
| make as much economic sense as it does for places like
| France. Though if we did have 1000 plants it would make a
| lot of sense haha.
|
| But besides that there is always waste. The key part is
| understanding what level of waste. There's a fair amount
| of low level waste (low radiation levels). In fact, this
| is like 90% of total waste (even more if you count my
| volume). But this type of waste is not the kind people
| are typically concerned with because it isn't radioactive
| for long nor is it producing dangerous levels. These
| types are not really recyclable though (concrete, steel
| beams, etc).
|
| I do suggest reading up on our own AcidburnNSA's post
| about waste[0]
|
| [0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
| jandrese wrote:
| Recycling used fuel still doesn't make much sense. It's
| very expensive to recycle and new nuclear fuel is cheap.
| Storing the waste isn't technically difficult either. The
| total quantity of waste is tiny, but politically it's
| very difficult to deal with.
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| France delivered 50% of their nuclear cores (the 900MW model)
| between 1980 and 1985. It isn't very good because they will
| all EOL at the same time. I hope Nixon's plan would have been
| to streamline and spread their production, which then becomes
| extremely efficient, a bit like our P'4 in this graph:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrono-parc-
| nucleair...
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| The gov should just pay people $15 an hour to study welding.
| It's the best way of;
|
| i)getting people trained, ii)having a kind-of minimum wage
| accessible to many people.
| sunshinerag wrote:
| Why would the gov. need to pay people? if there is a demand
| for welding people in the market, their pays would signal
| people to study for it isn't it?
| milesskorpen wrote:
| People change plans now to need fewer welders (like
| deciding not to build things) - because there are too few
| welders - which results in fewer welders in the future.
| Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Government action can
| help break that cycle.
| yvdriess wrote:
| They get payed for the work, not the training (with some
| exceptions). Not being payed for training is a barrier for
| people who are not in a good financial situation.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I wonder why banks don't offer loans for job training
| programs. Seems like it might work. Or maybe they do?
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| You can get student loans to go to welding school - yes.
| vizzier wrote:
| This sort of thing has been theorized under the name of the
| Job Guarantee.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Tons of welding jobs already exist and already pay a minimum
| of approximately $15/hr. Unless you meant welding engineers
| when you said 'study', like some of my compatriots building
| automated robotic weld cells, who get paid 4x that much.
|
| And there's plenty of training courses at the local caterer
| center and community college for both those jobs at
| reasonable rates. Local manufacturers often pay
| hourly+tuition for their best fabricators or line workers who
| want a promotion to the welder position to go through one of
| those programs.
| jariel wrote:
| "We no longer have a broad reservoir/cadre/pool of
| practitioners of engineers, construction crews, experts,
| designers (except for a very concentrated few) who do this week
| in, week out. "
|
| No, we definitely have those people.
|
| Thinks are more complicated across the board, safety practices
| are higher, contrary to public opinion wages are higher in this
| sector and I think there's a soft kind of pervasive corruption
| going on at the government and contractor layer, where there's
| just padding, waste, overbidding, back-scratching etc..
|
| Montreal had some serious problems with corruption and was able
| to make progress on it, states and municipalities need to do
| the same.
|
| I would vote for the first person that wanted to make these
| things more efficient and transparent.
| fatbird wrote:
| "[M]ore efficient and transparent" are at odds with each
| other. Transparency requires more process and scrutiny and
| inspection; more of these things increases project risk
| because bidders need to invest more money in getting the bid,
| and that increased risk is amortized across successful
| projects. It also has the effect of favouring entrenched
| interests and existing players because 1) they know the
| process, and 2) have the capital to endure longer lead time
| in sales.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I think a pervasive theme in US infrastructure (and why it's
| expensive) is that we've gotten out of practice of building. I
| think it's the deeper "why" to this issue.
|
| When it comes to nuclear, that's a problem the world over. Out
| of practice of designing as well. Look no further than the mess
| that is the EPR. On its face it seems like a boondoggle, but it
| makes a lot more sense when you look back at the history of
| nuclear construction: from 1971 to 1993, France was
| continuously building plants, first the 34 900MW CP-series
| (1971 to 1988) then the 20 1300MW P-series (1978 to 1993). The
| CP-series took 5-6 years to build and the P-series a bit more
| (6-7). From the mid-70s to the mid 80s, there were a dozen
| plans being built at any time, and they were being completed.
|
| Then came the N4, that thing had serious teething issues, the
| first model started construction in 1985 but took _12 years_ to
| complete. By the time the 4th was completed, it was down to 7
| years. But the 4th was the last N4 to be built. It 's unclear
| to me whether the N4 slowdown was intended all along or whether
| the teething issues made them take a look at construction and
| pump the brakes, but in the space of 5 years the country went
| from building 12 plants at a time to building 5, then 4, then
| 3, then 2, then 1.
|
| N4 at least overlapped some with the tail end of the CP-series
| and the middle of the P-series, but the first EPR construction
| was started in 2007, 5 years after the last N4 (Civaux 2) was
| _completed_. I can 't even imagine the loss in institutional
| knowledge over that span.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think another important factor is that to the extent we have
| people with lots of daily experience, they're not in charge.
| We've shifted from work-focused to plan-focused behavior. To
| the extent that we don't even know there's another option.
|
| A talk that really opened my eyes was Mary Poppendieck's
| "Tyranny of the Plan": https://chrisgagne.com/1255/mary-
| poppendiecks-the-tyranny-of...
|
| It turns out the Empire State Building was created on time and
| under budget, and against a very hard deadline. They did not
| have a complete plan when they started; they were designing the
| top floors as they were building the bottom ones.
|
| In software, we've become familiar with how over-planning
| creates a lot of waste. But I was still surprised how broadly
| that lesson applies.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| The issue is mostly political and not financial or knowledge
| problems. How you accomplish that is government spending, and
| there's a certain subsection of the population that has been
| convinced that government spending is universally bad.
|
| There are vested interests waging a war against the US building
| infrastructure because its ideologically against the narrative
| developed.
|
| "Starve the beast" has turned any kind of fiscal spending into
| a huge political battle. It used to be, funding basic things
| was just a given. Now it's a fight over every little dollar.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Please explain the $578 million dollar elementary school in
| Los Angeles, California in 2010
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/robert-f-kennedy-
| communit_n_6...
|
| Excess on all sides
| notJim wrote:
| It's an outcome of polarization, imo. One side says
| government spending is evil so don't do any, so the other
| says government spending is an inherent good unto itself,
| so damn the costs.
| triceratops wrote:
| > "Starve the beast" has turned any kind of fiscal spending
| into a huge political battle.
|
| Strangely though "Defund the police" goes the other way,
| politically. /ducks
| 0xdde wrote:
| There's no equivalence. The rationale behind each of these
| two positions is completely unrelated.
| newfriend wrote:
| > and there's a certain subsection of the population that has
| been convinced that government spending is universally bad.
|
| Oh of course! It's the Republicans' fault, how predictable.
| If only we had a Democrat utopia like California at a
| national level, we'd have nuclear plants everywhere and
| everything would be perfect.
| pjmorris wrote:
| > Now it's a fight over every little dollar.
|
| Unless a bank is in trouble or someone wants to fight a war.
| ciarannolan wrote:
| The factions against this kind of government spending also
| happen to be the same ones who blow up the debt and deficit
| on tax cuts for the rich when they're in power, then bang on
| the table about how it's the most important issue when
| they're out of power.
|
| In approximately 61 days, conservatives in the US will be in
| an absolute panic about the financial state of the country.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| The boomercons in my circle have given up on fiscal
| responsibility and have now just accepted the fact that
| we're going to default at some point, so there's no point
| in fretting about it. It'll be interesting to see if the
| Congress critters follow suit.
| nwah1 wrote:
| The US debt is denominated in a currency that it is the
| sovereign issuer of.
|
| The US has full ability to pay such debts, at the cost of
| inflation.
|
| Large deficits would be fine if the spending were for
| investments with a high ROI, such as infrastructure or
| nuclear power.
|
| Indeed, going further into debt for an investment with
| great ROI makes sense. Regardless of the debt level, a
| good investment is a good investment. And a bad
| investment is a bad investment.
|
| Alas, most spending of the US federal government isn't an
| investment of any type.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Capitalists?
| newfriend wrote:
| > tax cuts for the rich
|
| You mean those who actually pay taxes? The top 10% pays 70%
| of all federal tax.
|
| The most current tax cuts also lowered the brackets in
| almost all cases, as well as raising the standard
| deduction. These changes reduced taxes for almost every
| American.
|
| > In approximately 61 days, conservatives in the US will be
| in an absolute panic about the financial state of the
| country.
|
| As opposed to the last 4 years where democrats in the US
| were in an absolute panic about everything.
| legolas2412 wrote:
| The truth is that somehow we are conditioned to believe
| that only income deserves taxation. We have under-taxed
| wealth so much that there needs to be some equalization.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Yes, it's all a game. The minute they're in power, it's
| spend spend spend. The minute they're out of power,
| suddenly the deficit is a huge deal. How many actually care
| about the deficit is questionable, but it's clearly very
| low.
| wnevets wrote:
| > certain subsection of the population that has been
| convinced that government spending is universally bad.
|
| unless that spending is on them. That subsection of the
| population LOVES welfare when they get it and it's called
| something else. You could just call this something other than
| welfare.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Maybe the answer _is_ (a) Green New Deal. Basically just
| rebuild the whole infrastructure - no tinkering around the
| edges, just replace the lot.
|
| Start with engineering courses, bringing on new talent. Spin up
| hundreds of solar farms, battery factories etc
|
| My question is are there real innovations to be made - do we
| need to rely on concrete and steel ? Are new homes possible in
| flat packs?
|
| I would rather packet it into small parcels (10-100M) that
| explore the phase space of possible than think a quick
| government report can define infrastructure for a century
|
| On top of which we should heed the strong town lesson - only
| build what we need, and cost in the car externalities in our
| cities.
|
| Just thinking out loud ...
| animal_spirits wrote:
| In 50 years do we come to the same point in the road with
| different infrastructure?
| landryraccoon wrote:
| That would still be a better outcome than if in 50 years we
| came to the same point in the road with World War 2
| infrastructure.
| blueblisters wrote:
| One of the problems with New Deal-like projects is what do
| you do with new engineering and construction talent once the
| projects are complete? China is pushing OBOR onto developing
| countries to make use of its excess construction capacity,
| with limited success. I don't think that's feasible with
| high-cost US labor.
| piva00 wrote:
| Export it, if you have such a deal you will become a
| leading research and development center for it, it can
| become a feedback loop.
|
| You will still need engineers for improving the technology,
| you will be on the bleeding edge. You will still need
| maintenance crews, the constructors are the ones that know
| the most about what they built, why not train them to
| maintain it as well?
| jariel wrote:
| I'm sorry to disagree with this.
|
| First - 'Green New Deal' is a slogan, not anything material
| that helps fix underlying operational problems.
|
| Second - we don't need to 'rebuild' most things, we need to
| fix, maintain.
|
| Third - this is not an issue with 'green' or 'innovation' in
| the technical sense - it's about the efficiency of the
| bureaucracy.
|
| Fourth - 'All the wasted money' is going into the pockets of
| seriously powerful vested interests - they are not interested
| in reform.
|
| Are you ready for the political cost of taking on the Unions?
| Esp. public sector unions? They may not have their fingers in
| the pot, but they still likely a massive barrier.
|
| What about exposing the fact that a ton of workers in
| infrastructure are in the country illegally? Who's going to
| 'clamp down' on that and pay the political price?
|
| What about the fact that all these firms are massive
| political donors to the powers that be? How do we solve that
| one?
|
| And fighting entities: SF is a tiny city. So is Palo Alto. So
| is Oakland. The 'Bay Area' needs coordination and nobody
| really wants to give up their little fiefdoms of power. So
| there are a lot of problems like that.
|
| The issues are complex and a lot of it has to do with vested
| interests and power, not 'technology' or anything like that.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >Third - this is not an issue with 'green' or 'innovation'
| in the technical sense - it's about the efficiency of the
| bureaucracy.
|
| The entire discussion has been how this isn't the major
| driving factor of the cost of building. So why bring this
| up at all?
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >They go where the projects go.
|
| So where do they go now? Are American trained
| Mech/Civil/Industrial/etc Engineers really going overseas in
| large numbers? We all know the cost of schooling is now
| exorbitant in the US and engineering salaries (certainly for
| software but I'd guess other disciplines as well) are generally
| higher here than anywhere else in the world. Where could they
| even go to make enough to pay off their student loans?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I feel critical of approaches that make generalization using
| "we" when talking about a serious of actions by some very
| specific institutions.
|
| The US has a complex state and a number of private corporations
| with a relationship to the state and each other. Who are you
| talking about in particular?
|
| Edit: I should add. It's not just the problem of having trouble
| building things but companies that get a lot of money out of
| failure and those companies symbiotic attachment to the
| government - consider the X billion dollar California rail
| planing process. Whoever did that didn't even have to create
| more than minimally to still leave with truckloads of cash. And
| they'll be on call for next time. Even that is just an example.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > building subsequent plants based on an existing design actually
| costs more, not less, than building the initial plant.
|
| > if more components of the plant, or even the entire plant,
| could be built offsite under controlled factory conditions, such
| extra costs could be substantially cut.
|
| Wait what? France builds with relative similarity and it's
| cheaper. The problem is with US regulation, politics and CYA
| hand-wringing, imo.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| "The problem is with US regulation, politics and CYA hand-
| wringing"
|
| The article specifically addresses your cynicism about
| "regulation and politics", only they call it "safety
| regulations".
|
| They found it not to be the deciding factor. Lack of
| construction outside the US would seem to support that
| conclusion or, alternatively, to accept those factors as
| unchanging, sort-of like the laws of nature, and to blaming
| democracy for all ills of society.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The French industry isn't doing too well either; all the EPRs
| are also late and over budget and they took over Areva to bail
| it out.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| not true
|
| Taishan units are up and running
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Flamanville, France:
|
| _The project was planned to involve around EUR3.3 billion of
| capital expenditure from EDF, but latest cost estimates (from
| 2019) are at EUR12.4 billion. Pierre Moscovici, president of
| the Court of Audit, gave a statement on 9 July 2020 concerning
| the release of the report on the delay costs of the Flamanville
| 3. The report of the Court of Audit reveals that the cost of
| Flamanville 3 could reach EUR19.1 billion when taking in
| account the additional charges due to the delay in
| construction._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
| manfredo wrote:
| Flamanville is one of the first EPRs built by France. The
| bulk of its nuclear fleet were built on serial production of
| the same design. 34 900 MWe reactors and 20 1300 MWe reactors
| make up the bulk of its generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Techni...
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Unit 3 at Olkiluoto in Finland was started before
| Flamanville and it hit massive cost overruns and delays as
| well. It was another EPR -- it's not like Flamanville was
| the very first build of this design, they had another to
| learn with.
| realusername wrote:
| This one is a bit different though, it's the first of a kind
| of a new design (so count a lot of R&D there) and the
| original schedule was very unrealistic, not sure why anybody
| agreed on a timescale so short for a new design in the first
| place.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Worth noting that Unit 3 at Olkiluoto in Finland was
| started before Flamanville and it hit massive cost overruns
| and delays as well. It was another EPR -- it's not like
| Flamanville was the very first build of this design, they
| had another to learn with.
| dv_dt wrote:
| France hasn't built any reactors of the old design in what
| decades?
| fnord77 wrote:
| don't forget the NIMBYs
| philipkglass wrote:
| The NIMBY factor constrains where new projects get permits.
| It doesn't explain why permitted projects that were welcome
| in local communities still blew out their construction
| schedules and budgets. The AP1000 fiascoes at VC Summer and
| Vogtle weren't caused by NIMBY. Nor did NIMBY cause the
| problems with new European builds of EPRs.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I don't know how anyone can look at the state of corporate
| America and not be a NIMBY when it comes to a new nuclear
| plant... which company exists right now that you would trust
| to run something correctly for the next 50 years and resist
| the pressure to cut costs as close to the bone as possible..
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? I wouldn't trust a nuclear power
| plant run by a private company.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Exactly. Watts Barr in Tennessee just got a big fine from
| the NRC for safety violations, after trying to lie about an
| incident to the NRC and firing a whistleblower who reported
| safety issues.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/federal-utility-
| fined-900k-nuclear-21...
|
| > In a notice dated Nov. 6, regulators noted a "substantial
| safety culture issue" at Watts Bar at the time of the
| incident. They also found that "TVA senior management and
| staff failed to communicate with candor, clarity, and
| integrity during several interactions with the NRC during
| the course of the inspection and investigation."
|
| > The incident wasn't recorded in the plant's logbook and
| managers later misled NRC investigators about what had
| happened. The shift manager told investigators he wasn't
| truthful with them at first because he feared that whatever
| he said would be relayed back to management.
|
| > last year, TVA was ordered to rehire and pay thousands of
| dollars in back pay and compensation to a whistleblower who
| raised concerns about nuclear safety.
|
| And then there was the nuclear corruption scandal in South
| Korea:
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-
| greed...
|
| And let's not forget when a nuclear company literally
| bribed Ohio politicians with $60M to get a $1Bn+ bailout:
|
| https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/07/fbi-agents-
| deployed-t...
| loeg wrote:
| The Navy. Semi-serious; they've been operating nuclear
| reactors safely for decades.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| oconnor663 wrote:
| I trust airlines with my life without even thinking about
| it. Sometimes we even make fun of people who are afraid of
| flying.
|
| Incentives make a big difference here. Ignoring everything
| else, airlines don't want to lose their hundred million
| dollar machine in an accident. And the person most directly
| responsible for the safety of the flight -- the pilot -- is
| sitting right there in the machine with the rest of us.
| It's a good arrangement with a long track record.
|
| I could imagine corporate-run nuclear plants that have the
| same incentives as airlines. I could also imagine bad ones,
| run by Homer Simpson. It probably makes more sense to judge
| case by case.
| rmah wrote:
| There's a story (probably highly exagerated) I heard
| about a nuclear power plant being built in china a while
| back. During construction, flaws were found and it was
| discovered that inspectors had been bribed to look the
| other way, etc. The gov ordered that all plant
| construction executives and crew bosses and their
| families had to live next to the power plant. Lots more
| problems were suddenly found but soon it was built and
| operating safely.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Airlines in less developed countries are certainly not as
| safe as they are in the West.
|
| Airlines are also different from power utilities, in that
| it's very easy to change airlines and not very easy to
| change grid operators. After Fukushima it's not like
| consumers could switch to a power utility other than
| TEPCO.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| All good points!
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yeah, I had PG&E in mind too when I said "How could you
| trust anyone in corporate America" -- look at their
| record even before their equipment burned down 10 million
| acres in California with the San Bruno explosion since
| they decided to ignore their own engineers'
| recommendations on maintenance intervals.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| I think people have a lot of suspicion and disdain for
| corporate ownership of infrastructure. People abhor the
| windmills of BigEnerCorp that "disrupt" their view, but
| the same sort of folks in the next town over love their
| energy cooperative and the ROI of their town-owned
| windmills or solar farm.
| RockIslandLine wrote:
| "I could imagine corporate-run nuclear plants that have
| the same incentives as airlines."
|
| So how exactly do you enforce that corporate executives
| and their families must live on site for decades?
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Counter-example: the Boeing 737 MAX
| ultra_nick wrote:
| NuScale's small modular reactor (SMR) seems like a good solution
| to this problem.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/small...
| jjk166 wrote:
| I'm surprised by these findings but they do make sense. Seems to
| me like it's basically the giant construction project version of
| design for manufacturing.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Does anyone have a PDF for
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S25424...?
| Sci-hub has the wrong paper for this DOI.
| alricb wrote:
| The principal author, Philip Eash-Gates, presented his master's
| thesis last year: _Modeling barriers to cost change in solar and
| nuclear energy technologies_ [1]
|
| [1]: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/122160
| _trampeltier wrote:
| How can you build today something, with any kind of electronic
| parts, and excpect a life from 50 years?
| edogg wrote:
| You have drawings that show how it works and a supply of spare
| parts. When it stops working people can figure out why using
| the drawings and then fix or replace the broken or worn out
| components.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Overbuild it to be capable of taking many times what it is
| expected to encounter just like for something mechanical. It
| being electronic isn't the cause in itself and can make things
| significantly better from fewer moving parts.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Where is the Elon Musk of Nuclear Reactors? Where are the robotic
| assembly lines that crank out highly modular, efficient,
| miniature "assemble-yourself" nuclear power plants that any
| construction team could snap together and seat into a preformed
| foundation in 48 hours? Why doesn't this exist yet? I'm talking
| on the scale of 1 reactor to 1 neighborhood or 1 large business.
| Perhaps geothermal cooling.
| briffle wrote:
| NuScale power just got approval a month or two ago, and is
| working on their small (50MW reactors)
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| NuScale just lost a bunch of their backers for their project
| after announcing several years of delays and cost overruns.
|
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-
| utilities...
|
| > announced that completion of the project would be delayed
| by 3 years to 2030. It also estimates the cost would climb
| from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion.
|
| Unfortunately this is a very old story with the nuclear
| industry: they consistently over-promise and under-deliver.
| The closer projects get to completion, the more costs grow
| and the further the completion date gets pushed out. This has
| been true of most of the recent builds in the US and Europe.
|
| The tech is fine, but there seems to be something wrong with
| the industry.
| epistasis wrote:
| And they can't find customers.
|
| Their target price, of $55/MWh, would probably be acceptable
| if delivered today.
|
| But when you look at hybrid solar/battery projects, we are
| already getting close to $55/MWh for fully dispatchable
| energy, that doesn't have to be run 24x7 like nuclear but
| actually matches the load curve of the grid.
|
| Seriously, there are battery projects being deployed now,
| attached to solar, with a storage cost of $80/MWh, and energy
| cost of $20/MWh. Since overnight demand is small compared to
| daytime, only about half of the energy needs to be stored.
| That averages out to $60/MWh, _today_. In 5 years it will be
| something like $40-$50. In 10 years, when NuScale deploys,
| the cost of solar+storage will be $30-40 /MWh. And it might
| even get cheaper.
|
| NuScale may be useful for polar locations without much wind,
| but I don't foresee them having a huge addressable market.
| darkerside wrote:
| Sure there are reasons this is a bad idea, but there are
| certainly reasons it's a good one. It seems like building large
| plants the way we typically do backloads tons of risk. And it's
| not really working.
|
| How does the risk of nuclear meltdown scale down with size?
| Both in terms of likelihood and how catastrophic?
| happycube wrote:
| The actual Elon Musk is building large battery farms, which
| have ROI measured in single-digit years.
|
| In Hollywood terms, solar/wind/battery plants are now bankable.
| I don't know who in their right mind would underwrite a nuclear
| plant now.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I suppose it would be useful in a space ship, or in sea
| vessels smaller than current nuclear subs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| NIMBYism, safety, and non-proliferation concerns.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Thorium msr reactors almost solves the last two problems...
| echelon wrote:
| > non-proliferation concerns
|
| We're already entering into runaway proliferation.
|
| Pakistan and India are our allies, but I don't see them
| keeping a stranglehold on the tech. Iran will have them. The
| Saudis will probably have them soon.
|
| If a dysfunctional nation like North Korea can have nukes,
| what's stopping the rest of the world?
|
| We're not even preventing ICBM capability from spreading!
|
| What gives? This is way more of a nightmare scenario than
| climate change and nobody is batting an eye.
| baq wrote:
| > This is way more of a nightmare scenario than climate
| change and nobody is batting an eye.
|
| there is a probability that an irrational leader orders a
| nuclear attack and somebody executes it instead of
| deserting.
|
| climate change is a certainty at this point and the only
| question is how bad will it be. for people living by the
| sea and in the parts of the tropics displacement in a
| single lifetime is next to certain.
| [deleted]
| zamalek wrote:
| > Where is the Elon Musk of Nuclear Reactors?
|
| They are doing fusion.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I have been pro-fission for a very long
| time (as it could get us out of this fossil fuel pit faster
| than any other option, even if we plan to replace it in the
| future). It has a very bad name because of bad green peace
| pseudo-science, fusion has better PR.
| hannob wrote:
| It does exist. But it uses nuclear fusion instead of fission.
| There's a big nuclear fusion plant at the center of our
| universe. It's called the "sun". It spreads out its energy for
| free. There are highly modular energy collectors you can buy
| that make use of that energy and they're getting cheaper at
| amazing rates.
| manfredo wrote:
| Sure, except the Earth rotates and we can only collect said
| energy for half the day. It's also fluctuates in the amount
| of energy collected seasonally (tilt of Earth's axis), and
| most energy demand happens to occur in northern latitudes
| where these fluctuations are more extreme. Our ability to
| store energy remains orders of magnitude smaller than what is
| required to actually use this as a primary source of energy.
|
| This doesn't provide a path to a decarbonized energy sector.
| It's a good way of mitigating emissions while a real
| decarbonization solution is implemented. Right now nuclear is
| the only known way of doing that, save for geographically
| dependent sources like hydroelectricity and geothermal power.
|
| Multiple countries generate the majority of their electricity
| from nuclear power. No country generates more than 15% of
| their energy from solar power, and only 3 countries (Malta,
| Yemen, Honduras) generate more than 10%.
| darkerside wrote:
| This is an irrelevant distraction. There's no reason we can't
| do both. And, since life on Earth is powered by the sun,
| everything is fusion power if you zoom out far enough.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| > There's no reason we can't do both
|
| Sure there is -- one option is a terrifically expensive and
| dangerous dead end.
|
| We need to focus on figuring out the logistics for the
| capturing, storage, and distribution of our friendly
| neighborhood fusion reactor. If you look at the increasing
| energy density of battery technology over time[1], there is
| no practical application for fossil fuels or nuclear in the
| long run. There are startups[2][3] that are far closer to
| the "holy grail" of battery technology than any similar
| plan for nuclear based power.
|
| The economics are already so clear that every major energy
| provider is moving to renewables. There is (correctly) no
| appetite for massive nuclear power plants in anyone's
| backyard. However, there is already a huge market for
| putting solar on top of your roof and a battery in the
| garage.
|
| Tesla has proven the massive savings available to any
| sizeable government with the use of a truly smart grid.[4]
| Once the logistics are in place to recycle high performance
| electric vehicle batteries into infrastructure storage
| where charging times are less important, it's game over for
| non-renewables for everything but industrial applications.
| And there are already solutions for that.[5][6]
|
| [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/History-of-
| development-o...
|
| [2] https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/28/tony-fadell-and-
| mitsui-ki...
|
| [3] https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/16/sila-
| nanotechnologies-rai...
|
| [4] https://www.startupdaily.net/2020/03/south-australias-
| tesla-...
|
| [5] https://phys.org/news/2019-03-renewable-energy-
| solution-indu...
|
| [6] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/company-backed-bill-
| gates-clai...
| StillBored wrote:
| Wish in one hand, * in the other and see which fills up
| faster.
|
| I've been hearing similar stories for the last 30 years.
|
| In that time the energy mix feeding my house has gone
| roughtly from 50% coal:40% nuke:10% NG, to 30% nuke:30%
| NG:30% coal: 10% wind. For an increase in total CO2
| production, despite a slightly better CO2/MW rating due
| to moving from coal to NG.
|
| No one AFAIK, has managed to get their "green" energy
| solutions down to the levels france was in the 1980's,
| despite the increases in cost that come with not only
| having to build energy production, but 2-3x the
| production in storage.
|
| The day its actually cheaper to put solar on your average
| house with a tesla power wall will be the day there is a
| shitton of home equity loans being taken out to do so. Or
| for that matter people knocking on everyones door
| offering to do it for "free" to sell the power back to
| the grid.
|
| Right now most of the green energy solutions are
| "inexpensive" because they are being supported by natural
| gas generators. Meaning they are cleaner than standalone
| gas, but still a carbon source.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| This is... really off base for 2020. Solar and wind in
| the US are incredibly cheap sources of energy. Literally
| the cheapest options:
| https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg
|
| Residential solar is expensive because you don't have the
| same economy of scale you see in utility-scale
| deployments. Also something like 1/3 of the cost is "soft
| costs" such as marketing and the crazy red tape
| associated with permitting.
|
| The latest academic modelling shows that we can meet
| 70-80% of energy demand from renewable energy alone, even
| without storage. All it requires is building a modest
| excess of capacity and a 50/50 wind/solar mix. When it
| comes time to add storage, battery storage costs have
| been plummeting and already dropped 75% over the last 6
| years:
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-
| levelize...
| StillBored wrote:
| But if its truly cheaper than all the worlds CO2
| production problems are solved!!
|
| Energy is sufficiently deregulated in enough of the US
| that they will sell to the areas that aren't, just like
| France was doing with all its "old dirty" nukes, to the
| countries around it building "green".
|
| I can't tell from your graph, but I saw an actual cost
| estimate a couple months ago that points out what has
| been true for the past 10 years of "wind is cheaper"
| metrics.
|
| Which is that its not, because its not continuous (or
| controllable) power delivery. Nor does it account for the
| fact that it also needs to be overbuilt if its going to
| supply an energy storage system either. Nor does it
| account for the energy storage costs.
|
| So, yes in absolute KW produced its cheaper, but that
| does little but create an oversupply problem. Which is
| why in places like TX the power costs frequently go to
| zero when the wind is blowing and spike at other times.
| Making cheap power when you don't need it doesn't help.
| What TX needs is lots of power at 3PM (when in theory
| solar would be useful, but the existing smaller plants
| aren't making money either).
|
| The net result in TX has been lots of wind install, but
| even more gas install. Because the gas plants are
| actually making money. If big battery plants are
| economically workable then we would also see a lot of
| companies arbitraging the free wind energy into $ when
| the price spikes but we don't see that either.
|
| So its not a simple/sure bet like is being claimed.
|
| (for those that don't know, TX is one of the largest
| green energy systems in the world
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas)
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| > But if its truly cheaper than all the worlds CO2
| production problems are solved!!
|
| I mean, the International Panel on Climate Change
| certainly thinks renewable energy is a core part of
| solving carbon emissions. Their special Report on 1.5C
| AKA SR15 (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/) says:
|
| > In 1.5degC pathways with no or limited overshoot,
| renewables are projected to supply 70-85% (interquartile
| range) of electricity in 2050 (high confidence).
|
| For the 3 scenarios where we achieve needed emissions
| reductions, renewables are 48-60% of electricity
| generation in 2030, and 63-77% in 2050.
|
| > Energy is sufficiently deregulated in enough of the US
| that they will sell to the areas that aren't
|
| In the US in 2020 the majority of new generating capacity
| being added is from solar or wind:
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42495# --
| and if you do the math for capacity factors (around 40%
| for wind, 25%ish for solar, 60% is for natural gas) then
| you'll find that solar and wind capacity generates more
| electricity than the gas.
|
| If the US grid operators and utilities are building all
| this renewable energy capacity, perhaps they know
| something...??
|
| > in places like TX the power costs frequently go to zero
| when the wind is blowing and spike at other times.
|
| Isn't that what a free market is supposed to do --
| respond to supply and demand? Last I checked, we don't
| say that the stock market is broken because it goes up
| and down.
|
| > that does little but create an oversupply problem
|
| Are you saying free excess power is a BAD thing? I can
| think of a TON of ways to take advantage of a temporary
| oversupply; capturing it in storage is only one of them.
|
| > If big battery plants are economically workable then we
| would also see a lot of companies arbitraging the free
| wind energy into $ when the price spikes but we don't see
| that either
|
| Hold your horses -- they're literally starting to do this
| in Australia. Batteries were pretty expensive up until a
| couple years ago:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/us-grid-battery-
| cost...
|
| Now we're seeing a race to install batteries. Energy
| arbitrage is only one of the possible income streams --
| grid services such as frequency regulation are an even
| bigger source of funds. The "Big Battery" in Australia
| has already paid for itself after just a couple year and
| they've already increased capacity by 50% and are
| installing a second one in Victoria.
|
| > balancing with gas
|
| In the US, gas capacity is mostly replacing dirtier, more
| expensive coal powerplants. I don't see a problem with
| using spare gas capacity to help balance the grid while
| storage gets ramped up -- the renewable generation is
| directly replacing fossil fuels except when they need an
| extra boost.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's not solved yet, because energy is not deregulated
| enough, and entrenched financial interests won't go down
| without a legislative fight.
|
| For example, in Ohio several state legislators were
| purchased, and passed regulation claiming to "save"
| nuclear but what it really did was bail out coal and
| prevent the cheapest source of energy from competing in
| the market. The most surprising is that this corruption
| is actually resulting in prosecutions, and the top
| regulator has now resigned too:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-20/firste
| ner...
|
| Funny you should bring up Texas, it actually _is_
| installing massive batteries, with 17GW in the pipeline
| last time I heard. And natural gas is dwindling to
| nothing, getting replaced with solar. ERCOT is one of the
| very very very few places where cheapest cost can
| actually win, and it 's where we are going to see natural
| gas die first because of that.
| StillBored wrote:
| I live in tx, and have a bit of knowledge about this.
|
| Gas plants are still being constructed, and there are
| more in planning. There is 0 indication its going
| anywhere anytime soon.
| epistasis wrote:
| Since 2019/early 2020, the data disagrees with your
| assessment. Gas plants are leaving the interconnection
| queue, and massive amounts of solar and wind are coming
| in:
|
| https://rmi.org/clean-energy-is-canceling-gas-plants/
|
| The market is responding to the inflection point, where
| renewables are clearly the lowest cost energy.
|
| The switch is happening right now!
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Gas plants are replacing coal plants: https://www.power-
| eng.com/2019/04/11/eia-gas-fired-combined-...
|
| They're generally cheaper to run and better at load-
| following.
|
| Coal has been on the way out for a decade or so, long
| before renewable energy started to be a big player in the
| US.
| StillBored wrote:
| Right, but its the NG that enables the wind because of
| said load following. That combined with the fact that
| they are super cheap to build, and the US has a huge glut
| in NG due to fracking and regulation on how much we can
| sell internationally.
|
| But, that isn't the point. The point is that even if we
| go to a ~70% wind model, we will
| _STILL_BE_WORSE_OFF_THAN_FRANCE_WAS_40_YEARS_AGO_.
|
| The "Green energy" movement there is _INCREASING_ their
| CO2 production.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/france-
| co2-emiss...
|
| I don't get why this is so hard to understand for all
| those down voters. Worse, at the current rates, we won't
| get there for decades.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Click the link and look at the graph in my parent
| comment. Gas started rising in 2002, when wind and solar
| had an invisibly small presence in the US market.
|
| It sure sounds like you were arguing that renewable
| energy had a time-travel effect causing the construction
| of gas before the renewables were added?
|
| People are downvoting because what you're saying makes no
| sense.
|
| You realize that the natural gas plants sit mostly idle
| when renewables are producing enough power, right? And
| the more renewable capacity we build, the more often that
| happens?
|
| > Worse, at the current rates, we won't get there for
| decades.
|
| So, about the same timespan it took to execute the
| Messmer plan in France, and at a fraction of the cost?
| (The Messmer plan was France's big nuclear buildout from
| the 70s through the 90s.)
|
| On a side note, even if we started building reactors
| today they probably wouldn't be operational for a decade
| or more (including planning time).
| nicoffeine wrote:
| > The point is that even if we go to a ~70% wind model,
| we will
| _STILL_BE_WORSE_OFF_THAN_FRANCE_WAS_40_YEARS_AGO_.
|
| No.[1]
|
| Denmark has about 48% of their energy from wind, and
| their per capita carbon emissions are at the same level
| as in 1960.[2] Ireland with 33% is at the same level as
| in 1980.[3] Portugal with 27% now has the same emissions
| as 1990.[4]
|
| There is a trend here.
|
| > I don't get why this is so hard to understand for all
| those down voters.
|
| You are ignoring data that doesn't agree with your
| hypothesis.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/217804/wind-
| energy-penet...
|
| [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?l
| ocation...
|
| [3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?l
| ocation...
|
| [4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?l
| ocation...
| [deleted]
| nicoffeine wrote:
| > In that time the energy mix feeding my house
|
| That's a pretty small data point. Check out the worldwide
| trend.[1]
|
| > No one AFAIK, has managed to get their "green" energy
| solutions down to the levels france was in the 1980's
|
| The share of nuclear power generation in France peaked
| around 2005.[2] They had to temporarily shut down four
| plants in 2018 to avoid meltdowns[3] due to heatwaves
| which will become more frequent and they are cancelling
| nuclear projects in favor of renewable projects.
|
| Renewable energy surpassed nuclear for the EU as a whole
| around 2014[4]. And the first half of this year,
| renewables provided more energy than fossil fuels:
|
| "It's official: in the first half of 2020, and for the
| first time, Europe generated more electricity from
| renewable sources than from fossil fuels. Not only that,
| but electricity is proving cheaper in countries that have
| more renewables.
|
| From January to June, wind, solar, hydro and bioenergy
| generated 40% of the electricity across the EU's 27
| member states, while fossil fuels generated 34%. In the
| United States, by way of contrast, fossil fuels generated
| more than 62% of electricity last year, while renewables
| accounted for less than 18%."[5]
|
| > The day its actually cheaper to put solar on your
| average house with a tesla power wall will be the day
| there is a shitton of home equity loans being taken out
| to do so.
|
| "Per the US residential solar finance update: H2 2019, a
| bit over half of homeowners who upgrade their homes with
| solar panels get a loan, a sixth of the population pay
| cash, and the last third rent their roof out to a third
| party.
|
| Within those numbers were $1.35 billion of residential
| solar loan ABS (asset backed security) 144A public
| issuances in 2019, doubling 2018's $680 million."[6]
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-
| energy-c...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
|
| [3]
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-
| nucle...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the
| _Europe...
|
| [5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/07/23/
| europea...
|
| [6]
| https://commercialsolarguy.com/2020/07/01/residential-
| solar-...
| StillBored wrote:
| You can lie with press releases all day long. The pacific
| NW had more "renewable" energy production than carbon
| sources for decades, its carbon footprint per MW is about
| 3x that of France.
|
| Shifing to a pacific NW model is economically something
| that is happening on its own, and has been for the 30
| years I linked above. But not because we are building
| "Green" because all those intermittent sources are 30%+
| backed by NG generators which can be spun up/down on
| demand and over the past 15 are super cheap to install.
| And NG has been super cheap due to fracking and the fact
| that the US can't sell it internationally.
|
| But its not about percentages, its about how much CO2 is
| being produced.
|
| https://www.nwcouncil.org/news/northwest-carbon-
| footprint-lo...
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Today I learned that Wikipedia and OurWorldInData are
| "press releases"...
|
| Yes, we get it that you have a wholly irrational dislike
| of renewable energy and are willing to grasp at straws to
| argue against it.
|
| > because all those intermittent sources are 30%+ backed
| by NG generators which can be spun up/down on demand and
| over the past 15 are super cheap to install
|
| I'm trying to follow what you're arguing here and it
| makes no sense. You're arguing that the Northwest is
| simultaneously using almost all renewables and using tons
| of fossil fuels...? It can't be both.
|
| We'll ignore the fact that according to your link,
| wind+solar is less than 10% of the electricity generation
| there, and there's no real evidence of a big investment
| in either, just the pre-existing hydro power.
| StillBored wrote:
| No, I just don't like people who pretend that wind/solar
| are actually going to solve the CO2 problem by pointing
| at some future technology or pricing model that is going
| to save us while stubbornly refusing to accept a 70 year
| old technology that is actually carbon free.
|
| That is what got us were we are today. Because back in
| the 1970/80's people argued the exact same thing (no
| nukes, solar will save us). And what happened? We got
| more coal plants because they were way cheaper except in
| the few places that actually built nukes. The same
| argument happened in the 1990s/2000s and what did we get?
| A few percent of wind/solar, and a shift to NG due to
| fracking.
|
| _TODAY_ if you want a competitive solution you build
| somewhere in the ballpark of 20-70% wind/solar and back
| it with NG.
|
| Where will that put us in over the next 40 years?
|
| Its going to create even more C02 because power
| utilization is going up. All that is going to do is slow
| the rate of increase, which is exactly what the current
| charts are showing. The rate of wind/solar rollout is
| barely exceeding the demand curve and in a lot of places
| its regressing, particularly in places where ancient nuke
| plants are being replaced by "green" technologies.
|
| Yes, sure wind+NG is better than NG or coal, but its a
| shit solution. If batteries actually get cheap then we
| can do 2x wind+battery, but that isn't here today. What
| we have today are nuke plants, just like we did 40 years
| ago. If back then instead of waiting for the future to
| save us we were more pragmatic the ice caps wouldn't be
| melting.
|
| My personal opinion is that in 40 years what is going to
| solve this problem is a giant war, because wishing for
| the future to save us hasn't worked yet.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You still need base load, ie. an option that can displace
| natgas in the way that natgas displaced coal.
|
| There's a reason why even though solar is now cheaper than
| coal it didn't displace it like natgas has.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Last I checked we still use a lot of coal.
|
| Solar hasn't replaced natural gas, because they are
| entirely different things. It's exceptionally easy to
| transport natural gas, it has a ridiculously good energy
| density and burns well, the logistics of natural gas
| require no technology in the lines that run between natural
| gas devices are a half pound of pressure meaning any idiot
| can hookup/install/modify.
|
| There is a case to be made for hydrogen displacing natural
| gas, but in my opinion not until we have small local fusion
| reactors, and in that event you're probably looking a
| battery anyway. Hydrogen has great potential for aviation,
| but home consumer use natural gas will be king for some
| time.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/28/climate/ho
| w-e...
|
| Rapidly declining, actually.
|
| > they are entirely different things.
|
| Uh, sure - but many of the reasons you're giving seem to
| be missing that I'm talking about for electricity
| generation, whereas you seem to be imagining in home
| usage?
|
| Natural gas power plants can have 1000 psi or more in
| their lines.
|
| > it has a ridiculously good energy density and burns
| well
|
| Yes, good energy density - that does sound like something
| that might be important.
| pydry wrote:
| The reason is more about capex, the financial necessity of
| aging out existing plants and the time it takes to shift
| from one dominant source of power generation to another.
|
| It wouldn't have been possible to shift to nuclear power
| overnight either.
|
| Since natgas is 100% dispatchable and is 35% of power
| generation in the US it's not like nuclear's 20% is really
| contributing that much stability to the grid right now and
| natgas can be gradually dialed down as
| solar/wind/variability tech is dialed up.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > the financial necessity of aging out existing plants
| and the time it takes to shift from one dominant source
| of power generation to another.
|
| Yes... but we just undertook the capex to do this with
| coal -> natgas in the last decade or so. So the barrier
| is not just the financial cost of overhauling.
| pydry wrote:
| and in the last 5 years we went from about 5% to 18%
| renewables.
|
| The renewables industry in the US wasn't given any
| special dispensation so it had to compete pretty much
| without subsidy with natgas and coal which it could only
| really start to do about 5 years ago (it's cost
| competitive with coal only this year).
|
| In fact, arguably the US subsidies oil and gas more than
| renewables.
|
| Nuclear would require massive _subsidies_ to grow beyond
| 20%. Renewables won 't.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| The green industry is subsidized in the US at both the
| state and federal levels.
| pydry wrote:
| Some. Dirt cheap solar panels from China also had tariffs
| slapped on them by Obama which offset much of that and
| killed the solar boom a few years ago.
|
| The oil and gas industry is _also_ subsidized at federal
| and state level, of course.
| quanticle wrote:
| How many Falcon 9s did SpaceX blow up before they got a
| successful launch? Are you willing to have that many meltdowns
| in order to get your "highly modular, efficient, miniature
| 'assemble-yourself' nuclear power plants"? Even if you are, how
| are you going to convince people that it's worth it? What are
| you going to say when the press tars your project with the
| headline, "A Fukushima In Your Backyard?"
| darkerside wrote:
| Falcon 9 had been an amazing success, which kind of defeats
| your point. Of course you need to perfect the technology (or
| close to it) before you deploy it. People are easily defeated
| by repetition. To paraphrase, if you have one reactor and it
| fails, it's a news story. If you have one million reactors
| and one fails, it's a statistic.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Yes. Build the first ones in a desert. Do chaos testing,
| stress testing and over-engineer each component and the whole
| system so that any teenager can install and operate it. I'm
| not kidding. Make it "teen certified".
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Build the first ones in a desert
|
| Leaving aside the fact the deserts are essential biomes on
| their own and shouldn't be treated as garbage dumps, didn't
| Fukishima and Chernobyl teach us that putting nuclear power
| plants "way over there away from anything" doesn't really
| matter in the case of a serious accident?
| zamalek wrote:
| > "way over there away from anything" doesn't really
| matter in the case of a serious accident?
|
| The current level of burning coal equates to roughly 50
| nuclear meltdowns a year because coal contains thorium.
| So in terms of "putting it anywhere," an _in-place_
| switch from coal to fission in a populated area is
| actually safer.
|
| In addition, the article identifies outdated designs as
| the primary reason for the cost of nuclear plant rollout.
| Guess what? Modern plant designs are _passively safe,_
| particle physics (not electronics, nor mechanics, nor
| humans) prevents criticality events.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I'm afraid that the "coal is more radioactive" argument
| isn't going to get the traction that it did in 20 years
| ago. There are too many caveats and assumptions made in
| what the level of radioactivity in coal ash means to
| meaningfully compare it to fissionable radionuclides.
|
| As measured by GHG emissions, nuclear power is certainly
| better for the climate. Whether or not that equates to
| "safer for human activity"? The devil is in the details.
| zamalek wrote:
| > There are too many caveats and assumptions made in what
| the level of radioactivity in coal ash means to
| meaningfully compare it to fissionable radionuclides.
|
| If the reactor is passively safe, the amortized level of
| radioactivity is zero, especially if the waste is
| "burned" in secondary reactors (such as TWR).
| cratermoon wrote:
| "if" and "amortized" are just different forms for caveats
| and assumptions. The level of radioactivity amortized
| over how long? Long enough time scales and the level of
| radioactivity is 0 for everything in the entire universe.
| manfredo wrote:
| Well, we've already got a tract of desert that's been
| heavily irradiated:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site
| cratermoon wrote:
| We've also got an ocean full of plastic and has hotspots
| where nuclear waste was dumped[1]. That's no reason to go
| around saying, "well, we've already trashed it, might as
| well let it continue to be trashed"
|
| 1. https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1198/chapters/207-217_RadW
| aste.p...
| theferalrobot wrote:
| And presumably they would melt down a few plants in the
| Nevada desert nuclear sites before launching... there's an
| obvious difference between testing and deployment
| pjscott wrote:
| The first Falcon 9 launch was a success -- maybe you're
| thinking of the older Falcon 1 rockets that exploded during
| launch?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yeah people suck at critical reasoning.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I feel like large multi-year construction costs have a tendency
| to increase significantly (outside of the normal increases in
| year-of-expenditure costs), and I wonder if this is because
| construction firms know something needs to be built and will
| behave accordingly.
|
| This is in contrast to smaller projects, especially during
| recessions, where construction firms may be more likely to need
| the work (lower bids) and also don't have the expectation that
| the project will have to be completed (they can wait it out to
| extract more money from a contract).
| iguy wrote:
| Not quite this scale, but talking to people on large projects,
| I have been told that to bid what it's actually going to cost
| simply guarantees someone else gets the job. To stay in
| business, knowing how much to underbid is a crucial piece of
| unwritten knowledge.
|
| I'm sure it's hard to shift these norms. As the buyer, it's
| hard to credibly threaten a hard limit. Everyone knows that, in
| 10 years time with an 80% done plant, and a construction
| company in bankruptcy proceedings, of course more money will be
| found.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Yes, nuclear power projects bid below what they know it will
| cost and then pull a shocked-pikachu face when the final bill
| ends up several times the original "cost estimate".
|
| Look at Flamanville in France: budget triple the "estimate",
| 15 years to construct. France has more nuclear energy per-
| capita than any other country on Earth, so it's not like they
| don't know how to "do" nuclear.
| oropolo wrote:
| > building subsequent plants based on an existing design actually
| costs more, not less, than building the initial plant.
|
| Unless building a nuke plant is a common thing where the crew
| that built a plant in Georgia can then go build one just like it
| in Alabama then one in Tennessee, then in Ohio, etc, then I don't
| see how building two plants with identical layouts can leverage
| economies of scale. For example: Wolf Creek NGS in Kansas and
| Calloway NGS in Missouri were apparently the first two plants in
| the US to be built using the same blueprints. If two more plants
| were built today with those same blueprints but by different
| construction crews who don't have any of the tribal knowledge
| from the construction of Wolf Creek and Calloway then what you
| have are four essentially bespoke plants that just happen to use
| the same blueprints.
| 7952 wrote:
| I have no experience in nuclear but have worked on
| infrastructure projects that have restarted. I think people
| have a new set of biases that are not present in the first
| project. They are _optimistic_ which is a risky state of mind.
|
| Also...
|
| * Often the starting point is a poorly organized mess that
| needs to be unpicked and understood.
|
| * People conduct "reviews" of existing work that consumes
| budget and leads to new issues being found.
|
| * You are continuing an existing chain of communication, but
| with a loss of continuity. The people you need to ask can't
| remember, or are not available to ask.
|
| * Overly optimistic budgets lead to corner cutting and
| mistakes.
| Animats wrote:
| This is also true of aircraft carriers. The head of Newport
| News Shipbuilding and Drydock once told Congress that if they'd
| order two at once, instead of one at a time, he'd throw in a
| third carrier for free.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The Navy has ordered two at a time, and they definitely
| didn't get a third one free. They did save about 15%, though.
|
| https://news.usni.org/2019/01/31/navy-awards-2-carrier-
| contr...
| Animats wrote:
| That comment wasn't about this round, it was from the
| middle days of the Nimitz class, which was produced one at
| a time for almost 35 years, with occasional periods of no
| production.
| pram wrote:
| Well, did they take him up on the offer? lol
| willvarfar wrote:
| Details https://news.usni.org/2018/04/16/newport-news-
| save-1-6-billi...
| rkagerer wrote:
| I don't see any "throw a third carrier in for free"
| mentioned in that article.
|
| The link says the savings from Newport would be $1.6B.
|
| It also quotes the Navy acquisitions chief pointing out
| "about a third of the cost of a carrier comes from
| government-furnished equipment that the Navy would
| contract for separately" and that he previously said the
| overall savings of ordering two at once would be around
| $2.5B after considering similar efficiencies of "scale"
| from those vendors.
|
| Considering the cost[1] of these Ford-class carriers is
| around $13B this represents a savings of about 10%
| overall, at least according to my crude, back-of-the-
| napkin math [ 2.5B/(2x13B) or 1.6B/(2/3x2x13B) ].
|
| So it might be closer to "buy 10, get one free".
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-
| class_aircraf...
| Animats wrote:
| No.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Congress, collectively, is not often referred to as
| "smart". If I'm a senator and a guy sitting in front of
| me makes that offer, I take him up on it and hold his
| feet to the fire. How do you explain that to your
| constituents? I was offered free, and I said no. Re-elect
| Me!!!
|
| To be fair, the building of the actual carrier is just
| part of the price of a carrier. What's the cost to also
| fit that carrier out with all of the various aircraft
| required to make the carrier worth having? Didn't we see
| an example of this when the NSA donated Hubble equivalent
| satellites to NASA, but NASA had to politely say no since
| they had no budget to operate them?
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Didn 't we see an example of this when the NSA donated
| Hubble equivalent satellites to NASA, but NASA had to
| politely say no since they had no budget to operate
| them?_
|
| It was the NRO not the NSA and NASA did accept the
| donation. They announced the mission schedule for one of
| the satellites in 2016 [1]
|
| [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/02/18/nasa-moves-
| forward-wit...
| smorephism wrote:
| >What's the cost to also fit that carrier out with all of
| the various aircraft required to make the carrier worth
| having?
|
| Right idea! The answer is "hardly anything, relative to
| crewing it for its useful lifetime", but you're barking
| up the correct tree.
| kevinpet wrote:
| DOD budget is about $350K per employee. A typical E5
| (sergeant or PO2 in the navy) makes $3K/mo, or 1/10 of
| that.
| jbay808 wrote:
| You could always sell the bare-bones carrier to an ally,
| the way Russia sold their extra carrier to China.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Ha easy thing to say. And when he can't deliver on the
| promise and goes under who has to sweep in to save all those
| jobs?
| _n_b_ wrote:
| I've been involved with large scale nuclear construction
| projects of different designs in multiple different countries
| and different regulatory schemes. I have a hard time squaring
| what I've seen on the ground with the summary of this study.
|
| To respond to your exact point, big parts of the nuclear-
| qualified workforce in most places really do move from large
| job to large job (assuming relatively static demand), so you do
| get that transfer of knowledge on sequential jobs.
|
| Also, don't forget the design and manufacturing that happens
| off-site, which can be significant and often is a huge driver
| of risk and cost. (10 MW vertical motors! Big safety-related
| pumps! Mega-sized forged components! Specialized custom
| fabrications!) The back office engineers and subcontractors and
| factory floor people who make them remain pretty static as long
| as there is work to be done. By the Nth unit, there is know-how
| and known problems are worked out; some of this is translatable
| into drawing updates and schedule resequencing but really a lot
| of it is expertise that stays in peoples' heads. Once everybody
| is demobed and scatters, that is all lost.
| brmgb wrote:
| The crew is only a small part of the price. The first plant has
| a lot of costs which shouldn't impact as much the next ones:
| r&d which gets amortized on more and more units, sourcing parts
| and certifying providers, eventual blueprint adjustments at
| building, certification and safety assessments.
| manfredo wrote:
| That's why you don't build two plants you build 20 or 30.
| France's nuclear project built 34 and 20 plants of 900 MWe and
| 1300 MWe classes of plants respectively which make up the bulk
| of its reactor fleet:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Techni...
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| The Messmer plan (France's big reactor build) was enacted
| 40-50 years ago. The energy market looked vastly different
| then. It would not work in 2020. In fact, France is looking
| to REDUCE their dependence on nuclear energy now. Source:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/france-electricity-
| solarpowe...
|
| > France aims to rapidly develop renewable wind, solar and
| biomass capacity to curb its dependence on atomic power,
| reducing its share in its power mix to 50 percent by 2035,
| from 75 percent today.
| godelski wrote:
| This "France is looking to reduce their dependence on
| nuclear energy" statement can get dicey because of
| different contexts that it is used. So I apologize if I am
| responding to a context you aren't implying. It is often
| used as "look, even France doesn't want nuclear!" which
| frankly just isn't true.
|
| We have to look at France and how much carbon it produces.
| Right now it is one of the lowest producers in Europe.
| Let's look at the electricity map[0]. Sweden, Norway, and
| France are leagues ahead of others in terms of carbon
| emissions. France's plan is first to replace existing
| natural gas, biomass, and coal with renewable resources.
| The second part of the equation is that their reactors are
| reaching EOL, so do you build more or replace them? If you
| pay attention to energy trends solar and wind (something
| France has an abundance of) is getting much cheaper and
| battery storage is getting cheaper (France doesn't have to
| bet as much on battery storage since they can over produce
| and sell excess energy, which they currently do a fair
| amount of). So if you're going to take bets this is still a
| good bet. A big part of a good and stable power grid is by
| having a diversification of energy resources. 75% of your
| energy being dependent upon one resource is not a good
| idea. No matter the resource. Even 50% is high, but
| acceptable. They aren't planning from going away from
| reactors, there's even one under development. But you also
| want to hedge your bets. If any of these factors (solar,
| wind, battery storage, smart grids, ITER, etc) don't pay
| off, then they need to maintain their nuclear grid. It
| would take a large revolution in energy development for
| France to be able to still produce so little carbon and
| provide its citizens with a modernized (electrified)
| country.
|
| Also consider that France doesn't have good access to hydro
| like Norway and Sweden do so its options for clean energy
| are nuclear, solar, and wind (lots!). They should, and are
| planning on, using a diversification of these. Nuclear
| provides a strong baseload and the others supplement. You
| may notice that this is a key argument made by many
| proponents of nuclear. Anyone that says the grid should be
| entirely nuclear is an armchair scientist who understands
| very little about nuclear or the climate. But the same is
| true for those that think we can solve the issue with just
| solar and wind.
|
| So if you're saying France is turning away from nuclear,
| then this is adding desires into a plan that does not
| express or concern itself with those desires. A big part of
| this decision is about diversification and increasing
| energy independence (just like recycling fuel is a big part
| of their energy independence, which they power a whopping
| 17% of their grid with recycled nuclear alone).
|
| [0] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/FR
| manfredo wrote:
| Plans they continue to delay, because there's no feasible
| alternative to geographically independent and dispatchable
| energy save for fossil fuels: https://world-nuclear-
| news.org/Articles/French-bill-delays-n...
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| You realize that World Nuclear News is not an unbiased
| source, right?
|
| The UK is doing fine with a renewables-heavy powergrid,
| as are Spain and Portugal. 40% of their electricity comes
| from this, and the share is rising steadily.
| sir_bearington wrote:
| The above source is quoting a bill written by the French
| government:
|
| > However, the bill also calls for "realistic goals to
| transform our energy model by increasing the timeframe
| for reducing nuclear power to 50% by 2035 instead of
| 2025, which would have required the construction of new
| gas-fired plants, and would have involved an increase in
| our greenhouse gas emissions."
|
| I'm sure World Nuclear News is more favorable to nuclear
| power, but I don't see how that is relevant. Do you
| believe that this article fabricated the contents of the
| French bill?
|
| This comes off more as a cheap jab than a substantive
| claim of bias.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Nothing in there actually refutes my point that France
| wants to REDUCE its dependence on nuclear energy overall.
| France is the poster-child for a nuclear-focused
| powergrid. If they want to move away from nuclear, that
| suggests it is not working out as well as people claim.
|
| Legislation gets written and rewritten as timelines get
| tweaked. That's a reality. The core goal is unchanged.
| sir_bearington wrote:
| The point is, they make lip service towards moving away
| from nuclear but don't actually make any strides towards
| doing so. The claim that France wants to reduce its share
| of nuclear would hold more water once they actually start
| doing so. Talk is cheap, actions are not.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| They closed FESSENHEIM-1 and FESSENHEIM-2 this year
| echelon wrote:
| I'm not familiar with electric power infrastructure. Could we
| build the plants in middle America and transmit the power long
| distance?
|
| I assume we'd lose power during the transformer steps, but
| would it preclude building the plants away from people and
| groundwater reservoirs?
| fulafel wrote:
| To the first question: Yes. See eg
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
|
| It's not as attractive for managing nuclear accident risk as
| you might think, as nuclear is already struggling with cost
| competitivenss even without HVDC lines, and risk reduction
| per buck of other safety design features are better.
|
| But it's brilliant for eg hydro (for obvious reasons), wind
| power (because 2000 km away it'll be windy when you have
| local lulls and vice versa) and solar (2 time zones worth of
| distance balance out production/consumption peaks nicely).
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why do you assume "middle" America has no groundwater
| reservoirs to be concerned about? Also, sure, the population
| may be sparse in case of accident, but there goes your food
| supply. Also, "middle" America has another common name used
| to describe it: Tornado Alley. Weather plays a large part of
| site decisions.
| giarc wrote:
| But if subsequent plants are built with same drawings, you
| don't have a design engineering firm having to create that work
| from scratch. Should that alone not save money?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not when those original plans and designs are 30-60 years
| old.
|
| We have newer reactor designs, materials, and engineering
| knowledge today that could significantly reduce cost just in
| material savings or construction time.using something like
| FAST reactor, is significantly different that the older tech
| and could save 90% on fuel and waste.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| The reactors being built today are Gen III/Gen III+
| designs: AP-1000, the EPR, VVER-1200/ AES-2006, APR1400,
| etc. These include all the design and engineering
| refinements we've been able to cram in. They're a far cry
| from 30-60 year old tech.
|
| Unfortunately most of the new reactors built in the US and
| Europe have run massively over time and over budget,
| despite new technology. Vogtle 3&4 in Georgia drove
| Westinghouse bankrupt. These were modern AP-1000 models.
| Flamanville 3 in France (an EPR) is running nearly triple
| its cost estimate and the delivery time ballooned to 15
| years. Olkiluoto in Finland (the first EPR) went massively
| over time and budget as well. These reactors were
| specifically designed to be more cost-effective and
| promised much lower prices, but failed to deliver.
|
| The problem in the nuclear industry isn't the technology
| itself, but the fact that they consistently fail to deliver
| projects within their allotted time and budget.
| Unfortunately this shows no signs of changing, and
| renewable energy industry looks poised to completely out-
| compete them in the energy market.
|
| I say this all as someone that used to have high hopes for
| nuclear tech, after working in nuclear physics research all
| throughout university.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They may be gen3 and gen3+ and newer designs, but they
| are still just working on the old regular fission model.
| I'm talking about using breeder or FAST reactors, which
| are completely different in the underlying physics. So
| far I believe there haven't been any of those built
| commercially but have been in testing for 60 years
| without issue.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| There's a reason countries don't build breeder reactors.
| Fuel costs are a tiny fraction of the costs for a nuclear
| powerplant: less than 10%. Breeders save a bit of money
| on fuel in exchange for a higher capital cost (cost of
| construction). For reactors, capital costs are a huge
| factor because reactors are extremely expensive already
| ($8-10Bn per reactor in the US/Europe). Increasing that
| further more than balances the savings on fuel.
|
| __Thus, breeders generally end up being more expensive
| than a conventional BWR or PWR. __
|
| Here I should mention that I spent some time in nuclear
| physics research. There 's a lot of misinformation
| floating around about nuclear energy. Most of the
| "miracle solutions" don't live up to their promises
| (especially thorium tech and breeders). If they did, we'd
| already be using them -- nuclear engineers are not fools,
| and most of these reactor concepts have been kicked
| around for literally decades.
|
| One other point: the physics behind breeders and
| conventional slow-neutron reactors isn't fundamentally
| different. Both neutron capture ("breeding") and fission
| ("burning") reactions happen in both, the ratios in a
| breeder are just optimized to favor the first process
| more. In fact in conventional light water reactors,
| around a third of the energy released comes from fissile
| isotope bred from fertile isotopes such as U-238.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Except that when a safety problem is found with a plant
| design, you can't just build more from the same blueprint,
| you have to both refit the older plants with the mitigation
| and redesign subsequent plants with the fix, so now you're
| building a new design.
| lumost wrote:
| Like any engineering activity it'll depend on how much
| knowledge of the design the engineering team has. If it's not
| the same engineering and regulatory teams - then there will
| be a lot of risk in certifying the plant, little reward, and
| I'd expect every design decision to be expensively
| questioned.
|
| Not to mention the hundreds of small decisions related to "X
| part supplier went out of business. Y part is similar with a
| slightly different alloy and mechanical properties, is it a
| suitable replacement? how can we verify this?"
|
| The original design teams would have auxiliary artifacts that
| were vetted, and tribal knowledge to help quickly answer
| these questions. Subsequent design teams will not. The
| timescales between plant construction exceeds most engineer's
| memory at 5-10 years.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Depends so much on siting too.. a lot of assumptions on
| foundations and water handling are baked into plans and even
| if the reactor room is the same size, you're going to need an
| engineering firm comfortable with signing off on a nuke plant
| run the math based on the new soil composition and 500-year
| storm rainfalls, etc.
| DennisP wrote:
| That's the reason for small modular reactors, built in
| factories.
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| It's not looking so hot for SMRs right now though. NuScale,
| one of the most promising SMR companies, is losing backers
| for its first big reactor build. This is a result of cost
| under-estimates and delays:
|
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-
| utilities...
|
| > announced that completion of the project would be delayed
| by 3 years to 2030. It also estimates the cost would climb
| from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion.
|
| Unfortunately it has become a pattern now for the nuclear
| industry to promise that the next tech will suddenly make
| nuclear energy cheap and fast to build. They consistently
| have failed to deliver on their promises -- the fiasco of the
| AP1000 reactor build at Vogtle in Georgia is a recent
| example.
|
| It seems like the problem of the nuclear industry is the
| industry, not the technology itself. They're too used to
| relying on fat taxpayer subsidies, and are not well equipped
| to compete against other energy sources on the free market.
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Sounds like we just have to build even more plants
| wavegeek wrote:
| I can't see any other reference to this but there is a whole
| field of study on this. See e.g. https://www.amazon.com.au/Cost-
| Disease-Computers-Cheaper-Hea... or google "cost disease".
|
| One thing I have noticed is the incredible increase in the cost
| of regulatory compliance over the years.
|
| It can take years to get the dozens to hundreds of approvals
| needed. Vast armies of people are needed to document and monitor
| compliance.
|
| At a large bank where I worked, I analyzed the previous $600
| million in IT projects. $350 million of that $600m was on
| compliance projects.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _At a large bank where I worked, I analyzed the previous $600
| million in IT projects. $350 million of that $600m was on
| compliance projects._
|
| We live in a complex world. "Traffic laws," to keep people from
| inadvertently interfering with -- or harming -- each other, are
| necessarily more complex than they were, say, 200 years ago.
| hristov wrote:
| The biggest reason for cost overruns in the US is that the
| companies that are doing the work make more money from cost
| overruns. The way nuclear plant financing works in the US is that
| taxpayers and ratepayers ultimately pay for the cost no matter
| what the cost is and how much the overruns are. The cost of the
| plant with all the overruns usually shows up on the electric
| bills of the consumers, so the more overruns the more one can
| charge the consumers. This overcharging may not happen fully
| intentionally, it may be happening as kind of a long bureaucratic
| slide into convenience but it is happening.
|
| Now you may think there is an easy solution for this. Funding for
| these plants should be changed, so that private parties pay for
| them and they get their money by selling the electricity produced
| by the plants. I.e., they should be funded the way any private
| business is supposed to be funded in a capitalist economy. Sounds
| like a good idea at first, but there is a catch. If that is the
| rule, nobody in their right mind will ever build a nuclear plant
| ever again. Gas, wind and solar are all so much cheaper now. And
| yes, even considering back ups for when the wind is not blowing,
| wind is much much cheaper than nuclear.
|
| So the obvious solution is just not to build nuclear. Even if you
| do not consider the real risk to human life, it is a an
| incredibly expensive extravagance. If you do consider the risk to
| human life it is absolute madness.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You are right about wind and solar being able to bid the lowest
| rate to the grid.
|
| Newer reactor designs such as FAST reactors do not pose a
| threat to human safety.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Gas, wind and solar are all so much cheaper now.
|
| But cannot power our collective needs (especially industrial),
| unlike nuclear, which can (at least temporarily).
|
| > an incredibly expensive extravagance
|
| So is entire cities disappearing under growing oceans because
| nuclear makes us feel bad. And if we want nuclear to be
| cheaper, then we should collectively raise the cost of fossil
| fuels until gas is $20/gallon. Then we'll see how expensive
| nuclear is.
| iwwr wrote:
| The article is fairly sparse in details and could be summarized
| by:
|
| >so if more components of the plant, or even the entire plant,
| could be built offsite under controlled factory conditions, such
| extra costs could be substantially cut
|
| From the paper (locked behind paywall) there is also a mention of
| rising labor costs.
|
| I wonder if this has more to do with the size of reactors, which
| went up from 600-800MWhe up to the 1500MWhe range, i.e. if
| containment buildings (safety systems etc) at those power levels
| are just a massive dis-economy of scale.
| bobbybabylon wrote:
| Please. We have known why this is the case (in the West) for
| decades.
|
| http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
| pydry wrote:
| This was certainly true in 1990 when it was published.
| bobbybabylon wrote:
| Sadly, the facts don't seem to have changed that much.
| pydry wrote:
| It switched from coal in 1990 to natgas and now renewables
| taking market share. Nuclear is still not cost competitive
| without lavish subsidy injections though, no. Never was,
| probably never will be.
| terrisdotcom wrote:
| Can they please be less ugly
| bitminer wrote:
| >Is there a field of study/practice that deals with such changes
| to large scale system? It does sound like a very useful thing to
| systematically study, if possible.
|
| "Analysis points to ways engineering strategies could be
| reimagined to minimize delays and other unanticipated expenses."
|
| (from comments below).
|
| The two quoted authors in the press release are a prof in energy
| studies and a nuclear engineer.
|
| What I notice is that MIT does not have a Systems Engineering
| undergraduate department, but numerous specialties.
|
| In a large design/build project such as a nuclear power plant,
| the systems engineering group (there must be exactly one) keeps
| track of the performance and function of each of the subsystems
| (civil works like containment, basements, buildings; electrical;
| controls; HVAC; the nuclear bits; and so on). In addition, it is
| the system engineering group that responds (or directs responses)
| to a change order request, and the overall impact on expense, on
| functionality/reliability/safety, and schedule.
|
| It seems these are responsibilities that are not identified here
| with a known role; instead the authors reinvent system
| engineering for themselves.
|
| There is a lot of SE work done in numerous industries (Elon Musk
| is what I would call a systems engineer, based on how he
| identifies things to do and how he gets them done. His degree is
| not in SE though).
|
| A short list of US universities offer SE or related disciplines;
| in California/New York/Illinois. MIT is not one: it has a
| research group not a degree-granting program.
|
| References:
|
| https://www.incose.org/ The International Council of System
| Engineering. Has published a handbook in numerous editions over
| the years.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/nasa-systems-engineering...
| First published 1995, based on other reports published in the
| 1960s.
|
| MILSTD 499, 1970s, very dated by today's standards
| AlleyTrotter wrote:
| Jane Fonda
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Even if they can reduce costs a bit, the economics are still not
| in favor of nuclear energy, and renewable energy has become
| incredibly cheap. Between 2010 to 2019 wind energy become 70%
| cheaper and solar became 89% cheaper[1] -- and they're still
| getting cheaper. We are now in a situation where we can build 3x
| as much renewables for the same price as nuclear[2] - nuclear has
| a serious cost problem. I'm very skeptical of any claimed nuclear
| energy cost reductions because time and again the industry has
| promised lower costs and failed to deliver; for example the new
| AP1000 and EPR reactors in the US and Europe have all vastly
| overrun their budgets and run years behind schedule.
|
| 1. https://www.lazard.com/media/451082/lcoe-8.png 2.
| https://www.lazard.com/media/451081/lcoe-2.png
| ninja3925 wrote:
| I am very hopeful about renewable but I am also aware of their
| intrinsic weakness: They can't be provide base power (unless we
| build battery farms able to cover our needs).
|
| Renewables are exciting. Jumping too fast into it like Germany
| did (and is now polluting as much as 8X France with 450g CO2 /
| kWh) is much less exciting.
|
| I wish there was a bit more expert involvement in the way we
| choose our energy policies (and much less tribalism and
| populism).
|
| source: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Wind is a pretty solid source of baseload actually, as long
| as you build enough. The supplementary materials from
| Caldeira's Geophysical Constraints paper (usually used to
| argue AGAINST renewable energy) show that with 50/50
| wind/solar mixes (figure S4) you can achieve:
|
| * 1x capacity, 0 storage: 74% of electricity demand
|
| * 1.5x capacity, 0 storage: 86% of electricity demand
|
| * 1x capacity, 12h storage: 90% of electricity demand
|
| * 1.5x capacity, 12h storage: 99.6% of electricity demand
|
| Citation:
| http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/c7/ee/c7ee03029k/c7ee03029k1.pdf
|
| > ElectricityMap
|
| Nobody who follows the energy sector closely thinks
| ElectricityMap has any credibility for country-to-country
| comparisons. The datasets are extremely fragmentary and have
| huge yawning gaps with no data available, which should be the
| first red flag for anybody citing it. It might be useful for
| trends within a given country, but not the way you're citing
| it.
|
| Also: accounts popping up out of the woodwork to argue
| passionately for an out-of-favor technology reeks of a dying
| industry trying to revive itself with public relations. 3/4
| of those accounts seem to cite ElectricityMap, oddly
| enough...
| epistasis wrote:
| The reason renewables are the cheapest source of energy today
| is at least in part because Germany made a big investment
| early on.
|
| Ensuring that there is demand allows investment to be made in
| production, which allows competition and learning, and
| acceleration of the decrease in cost.
|
| Batteries are halving in cost every handful of years because
| there is a guaranteed market that allows construction of more
| production facilities.
|
| Batteries are currently being deployed very cost-effective
| for replacement of gas peaker plants and for frequency
| regulation. They are also being deployed on the grid as "non-
| wires-alternatives" to transmission upgrades. As we
| transition to a carbon-free grid, they will find even more
| use.
|
| A huge fraction of planned solar farms in the US have storage
| built in, because of the efficiency of reusing the same DC to
| AC inverters, and because for quite a while now, panels have
| been cheap enough that some panel generation capacity is
| thrown away in order to get more output at other times of the
| day.
|
| It is a mistake to think of batteries as needing some sort of
| technological leap to serve our needs. If we had to, we could
| deploy them at current prices and build a renewable, carbon-
| free grid more cheaply than we could with nuclear. But we are
| only installing them as necessary as we replace aging
| infrastructure, rather than shutting down existing
| infrastructure that hasn't worn down.
|
| As the cost of storage+solar drops below the fuel+operations
| expense of natural gas, we will start shutting down natural
| gas plants before their natural end of life, resulting in
| wasted costs. I have a feeling that any naturals gas turbine
| installed today will be considered a boondoggle within 5-10
| years.
|
| The future is now, when it comes to storage, we just haven't
| had time for reporting to catch up.
| [deleted]
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Before the HN crowd, which sometimes seems to forever live in the
| future of 1960s sci-fi, gets their hopes uppish:
|
| - "building subsequent plants based on an existing design
| actually costs more, not less, than building the initial plant"
|
| This invalidates a major argument often made for large-scale
| roll-out of nuclear power.
|
| - "safety regulations could account for some of the excess costs,
| that was only one of numerous factors contributing to the
| overages."
|
| Safety regulations are often cited as onerous, politically-
| motivated reasons for lack of economic viability. This finding
| makes it unnecessary to even argue the point.
|
| - "we need to be rethinking our approach to engineering design
| [...] new methods and theories of technological innovation and
| change"
|
| ...is their suggestion. If that sounds vague and unrealistic,
| that's because it is. But, specifically, we get:
|
| " if more components of the plant, or even the entire plant,
| could be built offsite [...]"
|
| I have no idea if this is possible. But I'm reasonably certain
| that the idea isn't entirely new. Since it wasn't done, it's
| likely to not actually be worth it. Indeed, the next suggestion
| is to:
|
| "substitut[e] some new kinds of concrete in the massive
| structures"
|
| Gee, thanks! Now we know a yet-to-be-invented miracle material
| might be useful. And if the sheer amount of concrete is a major
| factor in construction costs, we now also have a better idea wrt
| feasibility of off-site construction and subsequent transport.
|
| Meanwhile, in the alternative SF universe that is reality,
| photovoltaics and batteries have come done in costs per unit of
| energy (-storage) by an order of magnitude every three or four
| years.
| conro1108 wrote:
| > But I'm reasonably certain that the idea isn't entirely new.
| Since it wasn't done, it's likely to not actually be worth it.
|
| Well I certainly don't think that's a safe bet, generally
| speaking. There are constantly new advances and shifting
| situations making things viable that never were before.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You do a lot of hand-waving.
|
| Current methodologies mean scaling out for cost benefits
| doesn't work correctly, so give up forever.
|
| Oh wait, says the article, we need to rethink our design
| approach. You say "never going to happen, chump".
|
| But listen, says the article, improvements in materials would
| help a lot. "Fat chance, we've invented the best concrete we'll
| ever have", you say.
|
| The chip on your shoulder regarding nuclear could feed a small
| state.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please review the site guidelines and not post in the
| flamewar style to HN? It degrades the community and provokes
| other people into doing worse.
|
| Note these ones:
|
| " _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the
| community._"
|
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nipponese wrote:
| "-storage" is no trivial caveat.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
| nipponese wrote:
| Did you actually read it?
|
| "If all the electricity use of the USA was distributed
| evenly among its population, and all of it came from
| nuclear power, then the amount of nuclear waste each person
| would generate per year would be 39.5 grams"
| fsflover wrote:
| Yes, so it's a pretty trivial caveat.
|
| Also " _There is scientific consensus that putting the
| nuclear waste in geologic formations that are expected to
| be stable for many millions of years is appropriate (e.g.
| see the Blue Ribbon Commission report (pdf) and the 2020
| OECD report (pdf) on waste disposal). This way, if the
| material is released in the far future, it will have
| already released all of its afterglow heat and will be
| radiologically inert._ "
| nipponese wrote:
| Lol, I think we are arguing the same point.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Since it wasn't done, it's likely to not actually be worth
| it.
|
| That doesn't follow. If one company needs a widget, it might
| make sense for them to build it themself. If 100 companies need
| a widget, forming a widget company that supplies those hundred
| companies is probably more efficient.
|
| So if we collectively decide "let's scale up nuclear power"
| then it makes sense that the components that go into the plants
| might be modularized and built on a (cost-saving) larger scale.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > I'm reasonably certain that the idea isn't entirely new.
| Since it wasn't done, it's likely to not actually be worth it.
|
| Right, we shouldn't ever try doing anything differently. What
| kind of logic is that?
| [deleted]
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| What about the possibility that their is no bad consequences for
| cost over runs? If fact, from a corporate view it is highly
| beneficial.
|
| Show me the reward structure and I will show you the outcome.
| StillBored wrote:
| I guess I have to read the full paper, because reading the link
| does nothing to clear up what is going on.
|
| From reading the link I get, change orders cost money (duh!) and
| that there are a lot of change orders, particularly to older
| designs due to "changing regulation". Cause presumably before
| starting construction the older design has been mitigated to deal
| with newer regulations.
|
| Which from my own biases, seems to mean that courts/etc are
| stepping in and modifying the regulations during construction and
| that costs a sh*tload. Otherwise the builders are negligent, or
| simply that it took 30 years to get approval for the plans, but
| now its a catch 22 because they are outdated.
| jt2190 wrote:
| All large systems are, in a sense, obsolete as soon as
| construction begins. The longer construction takes, the more
| out-of-date the finished product. And then there are the
| decades of operation.
|
| Consider, for example, that one year into construction of a new
| power plant a completely unrelated investigation into fires
| concludes with the finding that a certain kind of electrical
| wire, when installed incorrectly, can short and cause a fire.
| The power plant has already installed miles of the exact same
| wire. The wire manufacturer has a new product that prevents
| incorrect installation, but the plant designs call for the old
| wire. What to do?
|
| * Pause construction while they adjust the plant designs with
| the new wiring? * Continue construction, but inspect the
| existing wiring, and reinstall if necessary? * Leave the wiring
| in place, but install a fire-remediation solution for the
| already-installed wiring?
|
| All large systems have to deal with these kinds of changes.
| (It's interesting to look at the changes in a "class" of ships
| over them as they build each one, for example.)
| CogentHedgehog wrote:
| Exactly, and when a reactor takes 10 years to build it's
| almost guaranteed you'll discover some issues after
| construction begins.
| selestify wrote:
| Is there a field of study/practice that deals with such
| changes to large scale system? It does sound like a very
| useful thing to systematically study, if possible.
| subroutine wrote:
| The article highlights that...
|
| > Among the surprising findings was that contrary to
| expectations building subsequent plants based on an existing
| design actually costs more, not less, than building the
| initial plant.
|
| Given your example wouldn't that mean replacing the wiring of
| all previous plants of the same design? I suppose this is one
| way cost overruns get compounded - an issue discovered during
| the current build would likely apply to the previous builds.
| (any actual examples of this?)
| StillBored wrote:
| But those problems exist for large coal/etc plants as well,
| so some of that is baked into the equation and doesn't do
| much to explain why nuke plants end up paying 10x as much for
| a plant that is only slightly more complex.
| philipkglass wrote:
| My take: one significant issue is that nuclear power is the
| only large scale electricity source with meaningful,
| consistently enforced regulations.
|
| There's no equivalent of the NRC setting welding standards
| for the steam systems of coal plants and demanding that
| control systems are guarded against wiring fires. General
| safety and environmental regulators are often deliberately
| underfunded by business-friendly legislatures, and even
| violations that they catch are rarely considered severe
| enough to shut down a site until remediation. And of course
| nuclear reactors are (rightfully!) expected to contain
| their waste products, while combustion plants still get a
| free pass to dump CO2 into the atmosphere.
|
| The result is that very few industrial sectors in the US
| have experience receiving meticulous government oversight
| that they cannot ignore. Aerospace [1], pharmaceutical
| manufacturing, and nuclear power are about the only ones I
| can think of. If contractors don't have institutional
| knowledge of actually working on nuclear projects (which
| are already more complex than a big coal or gas project),
| they may not be prepared for regulators that actually check
| the work and demand it adhere to documented standards. Just
| about every other project can let marginal welds or
| inconsistent paperwork slide with "eh, you tried." The
| really expensive part about nuclear projects isn't doing
| the work. It's _redoing_ the work that you failed to do up
| to standards the first time.
|
| But you absolutely _do not_ want to make the NRC more lax
| to bring it in line with the barely-there standards the
| rest of industry is used to ignoring. You don 't want the
| nuclear equivalent of the West Fertilizer Company --
| inspected twice in 28 years, minor violations ignored until
| the plant exploded [2].
|
| [1] You might even put an asterisk on "aerospace"
| considering the 737 MAX debacle.
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_e
| xplos...
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Has this study included corruption as one of the key points of
| raising costs?
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