[HN Gopher] Georgia's big new nuclear reactors could be the last...
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Georgia's big new nuclear reactors could be the last built in the
US
Author : epistasis
Score : 61 points
Date : 2023-03-14 21:53 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.canarymedia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.canarymedia.com)
| jmyeet wrote:
| The article mentions SMRs and other advanced nuclear power
| reactor designs that are still ridiculously far from commercial
| reality:
|
| > The advanced reactor closest to market in the U.S. is being
| developed by NuScale, which has a nonbinding agreement to build a
| first-of-its-kind SMR project in Idaho. The company has already
| raised its projected power cost from $58 per megawatt-hour to
| $89, even though it's still years away from even beginning
| construction. The first module at the plant is set to begin
| commercial operation in December 2029, NuScale says, but nuclear
| project timelines are inevitably Pollyannaish and wildly off-
| base.
|
| Compare the $/MWh costs to other power sources [1].
|
| I am not yet convinced nuclear power will _ever_ be economic but
| I 'd like to be wrong.
|
| For fission power in particular, I will point to one fact that
| turns me against it. And that is the Price-Anderson Act [2]. This
| is a Congressional limit on absolute liability (per-plant and
| total). It's a complex system of industry insurance not too
| dissimilar to the FDIC insurance premiums. Ultimately though the
| government limits liability and would ultimately have to pay
| anything in excess of that anyway.
|
| And the more plants you have the more pressure and lobbying
| you'll get to further limit that liability and shift all
| potential accident costs to the taxpayer.
|
| Companies are just terrible at managing long-term low-probability
| risk. We see this time and time again.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
|
| [2]: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821#:~:te
| ....).
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I only hear about NuScale doing anything new in this space. Is
| there anyone else or the US is entirely dependent on one
| "startup" for it's energy future?
| topkai22 wrote:
| I don't follow the industry that closely, but I know TerraPower
| (a Bill Gates vehicle) is actively doing things, including
| building out molten salt reactors.
| pkaye wrote:
| TerraPower which is funded by Bill Gates.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| Hope it wasn't keeping its payroll money in SVB.
| ed_balls wrote:
| nope. royce rolls SMR, Toshiba. Pretty much everybody invests
| in it.
|
| There are others in US, but NuScale is the closest to a
| product.
| credit_guy wrote:
| There are plenty of other startups and established players
| pursuing NRC approvals for other reactor types. Here's [1] a
| list put of reactors that the DoE is working on (together with
| private partners)
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-advanced-
| reac...
| fwlr wrote:
| There's a statistic that floats around the internet claiming more
| radioactivity harm from coal power than from nuclear power, based
| on the principle that coal power is essentially aerosolizing tons
| of particles with ever-so-slightly-higher-than-background
| radioactivity and there's a lot more coal than nuclear.
|
| One could probably derive a similar statistic for how much harm
| nuclear over-regulation has caused. Perhaps of the form
| "Chernobyl killed 60 people directly through acute radiation,
| killed 60,000 indirectly through elevated cancer rates due to
| spread of radioactive material, and killed 6,000,000* with its
| second-order effects of supporting nuclear over-regulation that
| caused increased use of coal and gas energy". (* This number is
| completely made up)
|
| It seems to me that changing over-regulation is nearly
| impossible, as it requires making suicidally unpopular arguments:
| "we _shouldn't_ weigh the risks", "we should care _less_ about
| safety", " _don't_ think of the children", etc. The workable
| solution is to find or make a receptive regulatory environment
| (perhaps in a small country with large reserves of nuclear fuel
| and large unpopulated areas to isolate reactors in, like say
| Australia), use massive banks of nuclear power to power
| commensurately massive carbon capture plants that turn airborne
| CO2 back into synthetic coal and synthetic gasoline, and then
| export these "completely clean conventional fuels" to the rest of
| the world.
|
| Using synthetic coal to run a coal power plant is essentially a
| zero-capital plant retrofit achieving guaranteed zero emissions.
| Putting synthetic gasoline in a gas station is essentially an
| over-the-air upgrade to any conventional ICE vehicle making it
| guaranteed zero emissions. It's sort of like carbon offset
| credits except it bakes the carbon offset directly into the
| product instead of relying on fragile and game-able links like
| "we planted a tree to offset this pound of coal". A potent
| offering and one that's hopefully hard to regulate against as
| well.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Why use nuclear energy when renewables do it without any
| radiation or 3rd party hazard for 1/5th the cost? That sounds
| awfully close to a solution looking for a problem.
|
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
| scrlk wrote:
| Is it still a 1/5th of the cost if you have you factor in
| storage?
| brutusborn wrote:
| Because nuclear doesn't require the development of extra
| storage on the grid, so ends up being cheaper in majority of
| locations.
| devmor wrote:
| Because peak demand exists.
|
| Renewables are cheaper and safer than nuclear power, that
| much is undeniable. The problem they do have is that their
| generation is sporadic. Until we solve the energy storage
| problem, there has to be something else on the grid that can
| be always online always delivering enough power to meet peak
| demand.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| What's this doing on hn? It doesn't even mention GPT-4 in this
| article? /s
| wesoff wrote:
| Funny.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Regulations have killed the nuclear industry, which I think is a
| direct results of environmentalists and carbon energy producers.
| We know we can make safer reactors but like high speed rail, more
| housing, and pretty much every major infrastructure project, red
| tape will stop it every time.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Will be. Wind is the future of American energy. Every year it
| pulls farther ahead.
| gambiting wrote:
| What's the American plan for baseline energy generation?
| beisner wrote:
| parent would probably say, "grid-scale battery storage". or
| natural gas.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Two very large grids. The wind is always blowing somewhere
| Animats wrote:
| If only. You can look at graphs of wind output for the big
| grids, CAISO and PJM. Over large multi-state areas, wind
| output varies over a 4:1 range in the course of a day. Wind
| needs storage.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Storage, or dispatchable energy, in whatever form is
| given, but is it 1, 4, or 12 hours?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| I advise caution when claiming that the wind is always
| blowing somewhere. One does not hear a lot of discussion
| from the wind energy industry about the wind drought of
| 2015 in the USA and Canada. The 2015 event caused some of
| the lowest average wind speeds in fifty years.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078374-mystery-wind-
| dr...
|
| Climate change has proven time and again that these events
| will be more likely. What then?
| ajross wrote:
| Uh... grid-scale failures of some kind happen in the
| existing fossil-based infrastructure far (far) more often
| than once every fifty years. That sounds like a solid
| numerate argument _FOR_ wind to me.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| * * *
| ajross wrote:
| In the immediate term? 70-80% wind/solar works just great.
| Fill the remainder with gas plants or whatever else you got.
| Pick the high hanging fruit once that's done. If nuclear
| wants to bid for that, then great. But it's gotta be an order
| of magnitude cheaper if it wants a piece. Right now, quite
| frankly, it's looking like it's going to be cheaper to store
| the wind in batteries and pumped hydro than it will be to
| break nuclei for that energy.
|
| Everyone wants to have this fight on the fundamentals, but
| everything is about tradeoffs. Nuclear isn't losing because
| of out of control woke hippies or authoritarian regulators,
| it's losing because it costs too damn much.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| * * *
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Entire industrialized European countries are running on pure
| wind for days at a time. In the renewable energy space it feels
| like wind is not getting enough attention and solar is getting
| too much attention.
|
| Wind combined with a long-range continent scale HVDC grid and
| effective energy storage could be enough to solve the modern
| energy demand.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| My nearest nuclear power plant closed. It lasted its full
| licensed length, plus a 20 year extension. (Due to a problem,
| they closed 11 days early)
|
| I can't pretend to know why they need to be extended, but it
| seems like some sort of contract by either the government, the
| power companies, or some labor problem. I know this plant is in
| the middle of nowhere + near a lake that is only nice 2 months of
| the year. I imagine labor was not cheap.
|
| Our governor asked for federal funding, but it doesnt seem like
| it will happen.
|
| I hope they turn it into a museum, but that is probably too much
| to ask. I love looking at it from the beach, and I liked seeing
| the steam coming out of it.
| hanniabu wrote:
| They have an engineered lifespan and things start falling apart
| and becoming dangerous when you exceed that.
|
| Many should never have been extended. They've had to change
| safety tests and infrastructure tests so the order plans would
| pass inspection.
|
| This has always been my concern with nuclear. Yes we can make
| it safe, but the human greed factor is always the weak point.
| Regulations weakened, automated systems bypassed, skimping on
| design decisions, etc.
| tekla wrote:
| > Many should never have been extended.
|
| Which ones.
| belorn wrote:
| The only way I see that the decision to exceed the expected
| life time was a bad decision is if they could have replaced
| it with an other non-fossil fuel solution.
|
| The problem is indeed human greed. Even with the accidents
| that have occurred, I am still glad that people did
| historically run with the risk over burning even more fossil
| fuels. My concern over pollution, especially global warming,
| is far greater than my concerns over nuclear accidents.
| wnevets wrote:
| > This has always been my concern with nuclear. Yes we can
| make it safe, but the human greed factor is always the weak
| point. Regulations weakened, automated systems bypassed,
| skimping on design decisions, etc.
|
| This is exactly my concern. Fukushima was only a problem
| because the company didn't want to spend money putting in
| backup generators in the correct place despite repeated
| warnings to do so.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| That's fine, China can lead the world in nuclear power.
| mr_toad wrote:
| China's building coal plants like there's no tomorrow.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| China is investing a pittance in nuclear to keep the option
| open. That is the result of autocratic five-year plans in a
| huge economy.
| ortusdux wrote:
| *could be the last _of its kind_ built in the US
| [deleted]
| nosianu wrote:
| The article further explains why that may not work out.
|
| To quote:
|
| > _the industry is betting on advanced nuclear reactors to save
| the day._
|
| > _It's a bad bet._
|
| The main points:
|
| > _The advanced and small modular reactors (SMRs) under
| development face a raft of economic, regulatory, technological
| and temporal risks._
|
| and
|
| > _The advanced reactor closest to market in the U.S. is being
| developed by NuScale, which has a nonbinding agreement to build
| a first-of-its-kind SMR project in Idaho. The company has
| already raised its projected power cost from $58 per megawatt-
| hour to $89, even though it's still years away from even
| beginning construction._
|
| and
|
| > _Advanced reactors such as TerraPower's Natrium, which are
| significantly different in design from existing light-water
| reactors, face an even steeper regulatory climb. And they'll
| have to contend with broken or nonexistent supply chains
| because the more highly concentrated uranium fuels used by most
| advanced reactors are currently unavailable in large quantities
| outside of Russia._
|
| Which leads to this summary at the end:
|
| > _Regardless of rosy messaging from DOE and the industry, it's
| almost certain that Vogtle 3 and 4 are going to be the last big
| nuclear reactors coming online in the U.S. for a long time._
| Maursault wrote:
| Wishful thinking. The problem with nuclear energy is not is
| not the risk of meltdown. It is not the waste, not directly.
| The problem is economics. Light water fission reactors are
| the least expensive nuclear reactors we know of, and even
| these can not break even. Every other design is even more
| expensive. For nuclear energy to work it must be profitable.
| Economics is nuclear energy's Achilles' heel, and its only
| hurdle.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah here in Holland they have the same pipe dream. They want
| to start new reactors rise should come online by 2040, delays
| obviously not included.
|
| It's a big bullet point for the hard right party VVD that
| think this way they can continue business as usual. But it'll
| come way too late for that. All the hard choices will already
| have been made by that. I'm sure their buddy's corporations
| will have some nice pork from it though.
| belorn wrote:
| We will see in 2040 if countries who made a different
| decision has lower carbon footprint. There is seemingly a
| lot of countries betting that green hydrogen will become
| energy storage solution in 20-30-50 years, and thus they
| can use natural gas/coal while waiting and continue with
| business as usual.
|
| Only time will tell which bets in the energy grid was good
| and which was bad for the environment. The last bet that
| many countries did on buying natural gas from Russia ended
| up being quite bad for Europe.
| bjourne wrote:
| The situation may be analogous in Sweden. Building nuclear
| reactors was a huge part of the right-wing parties
| campaign. They even promised to start construction 100 days
| after they won the election. Unsurprisingly that promise
| fell through. No private companies have been willing to
| invest in nuclear and, thankfully, the government has not
| yet decided to plow hundreds of billions of taxpayer money
| into new reactors.
|
| Imo it's all culture war populism. Renewable energy and
| saving the planet is for little girls, nuclear power and
| driving fossil fuel cars is for real men or something.
| megaman821 wrote:
| It could easily be the last of its generation and its size
| built in the US. Is there any non-SMR on the horizon?
| _hypx wrote:
| I'm going to come out and say, not even the last of its kind.
| Support for nuclear power is directly proportional to real,
| intellectually motivated support for clean energy (this is not
| related to the people that make dumb protests). And as that
| continues, we will see more conventional nuclear reactors being
| built.
| joseph_grobbles wrote:
| Nuclear is catastrophically expensive. Nuclear stagnated not
| because of those "dumb protests", but because economically it
| turned out that they made very little sense. Projects always
| went massively over budget, and then had a lifespan cost
| multiples idealist notions.
|
| Are they expensive because of overbearing safety
| requirements? Partly, sure. On the flip side, Fukushima has
| now cost hundreds and hundreds of billions in direct costs.
| If nuclear power plants didn't have a civil exemption where
| governments bore the potential liability of damage (which is
| almost infinite), they would be unbuildable.
| melling wrote:
| Yes, next comes Gen-4 reactors
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
| Gwypaas wrote:
| 2040? 2050? Which problem are we solving?
| manfre wrote:
| Hard to tell if it's purely for the clickbait or leaning
| heavily on shortening the title.
| wesoff wrote:
| Headlines limited to ~70 characters.
| stevenally wrote:
| Thanks. Saved me a click.
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