I've been wondering how to take America's existing grid structure (both in a physical and business sense) and get new nuclear plants built. Big infrastructure projects like nuclear plants are so risky for private entities that it is a hard sell.
In many places the answer has been that the state manages the project since sovereign states cannot go bankrupt. But maybe the answer in the US is that the monstrously large tech companies who need 24/7 (and more recently, clean) energy become the anchor customer.
Nuclear currently is 6x as expensive as wind and solar. Emphasis on currently.
Now nuke plants take 10 years, and alas they aren't getting cheaper. Solar / wind however is almost certainly going to get cheaper. Solar has perovskites poised to revolutionise it, and both have a huge economy of scale coming in manufacturing.
Storage wise sodium ion and longer term sodium sulfur will vastly cut the cost of grid storage.
So by the time you build a nuke plants in 10 years, it will probably be 10-12x as expensive.
I think nuclear needs a paradigm shift to reduce its costs. I think something around LFTR which scales down and produces far less waste might move the needle, to hopefully get to a projected cost of only 3-4x as expensive, but of course no design is commercialized. Maybe China will succeed.
The only place I've seen quoted to the contrary is Korea, but the problem with Korea is that large corporate ventures are practically part of the government, so costs can magically be placed elsewhere. And South Korea is a lot more "shadow authoritarian" than people realize. Anyway, the US between federal / state / local simply doesn't have the Korean governmental model, to say nothing of the government <-> corporate interface.
And it doesn't matter why, the cost of nuclear is the cost, and improving the cost with solid fuel designs seems like a dead end. The problem with all the nuclear startups is they got tainted by NuScale, and I've been told that NuScale is a special case of incompetence, before it cancelled the projects it was mentioned along with other "new nuclear" startups. So what will happen when the other "new nuclear" startups rubber hits the road and can't deliver the cost savings?
So when the industry basically says that NuScale wasn't "real next gen nuclear" as soon as they fail, I take a dim view. Just sounds like an industry desperate to keep the investment money train going, not one that has a legitimate answer.
The LCOE economics of wind/solar/storage are just a brutal hammer, solar in particular, because I believe that solar will drop to 1/3 the current cost or less in another 10 years. That has to be hard to look at for other power generation forms. You cling to existing funding, grid leveling, and hold on as long as you can.
I do believe that there theoretically exists a nuclear formula that can be competitive, the power density of nuclear energy is just too many orders of magnitude of superiority.
The LFTR/MSR design, practicalities of molten salt aside, showed:
- a reactor can scale from closet sized and up
- can breed fuel from non-fissile uranium and thorium
- is virtually meltdown proof with the plug design
- uses a far higher percentage of fuel / generates far less waste
- could theoretically be used to breed/consume existing solid fuel waste
From what I've read of pebble bed, that has some of those abilities as well, maybe all of them if you could reprocess the spent pebbles economically.
But the industry, from people to support to regulations to engineering, is focused on huge massive solid fuel rod designs, and those simply aren't going to be competitive even if wind/solar never drop in price. And again, if you are in the business of trying to keep nuclear relevant, you should plan for wind or solar to drop to 1/3 of the current costs in 10 years, and plan for practical grid storage of a day or two to not be more than 10-20% premium over the cost.
And solar+storage is very very scalable. So scalable that, even with the outrageous markups on home consumer solar, is very economical.
I also think that there was a political/cultural issue in nuclear. Almost everyone I talk to in the nuclear industry is quite conservative, I think that comes from the left owning the anti-nuclear political tentpole. But nuclear was a green power solution to address global warming/carbon neutrality. If it had been aggressively positioned in the early days of global warming's scientific findings in the 80s or even 90s when IPCC reports started coming out... but the entire industry is right-wing it seems, so that was simply against the political culture of nuclear.
Being a "right wing" culture for nuclear means that the regulatory/safety aspects of nuclear are treated with scorn and derision. Something like LFTR which had safety and (allegedly) nonproliferation built-in was dismissed by the nuclear establishment early on. So as someone that loves the technology and science of nuclear, but looks into the nuclear power culture and politics, it seems like a bunch of bitter, unreasonable people set in their ways, and unfortunately, that's on the good end of evaluating things.
It is pretty frustrating as a nuclear advocate to have things like Fukushima happen, rife with bad engineering decisions, and to REALLY compound things, you get a spotlight into TEPCO management failings and corruption. And of course the nuclear industry will try to say that is Japan's management cultural issues. But... I think those management issues exist in bland US power companies as well.
I just thing the entire "new nuclear" industry needs a total reboot with different people, a different culture, a different approach. Because the previous culture simply doesn't work. And that probably can't happen until the lights shut off on old nuclear plants, but for now I support keeping those running for grid leveling, because the alternative is natural gas turbine or (shudder) coal.
I think the US national labs should start doing some moonshot nuclear research. I see that MSR research is being funded now (probably because China has been doing it). What would solve all of nuclear's problems is a cheap scalable reactor that has little waste and is meltdown proof that is provably just 2-3x as expensive as wind/solar.
I tried to look up how many potentially used nuclear powered ships are out there, since you could just drop an anchor and a ton of power all over the world with one, but it seems like a surprisingly short list outside of US navy. I guess it would make sense due to nonproliferation. What a shame though. Imagine if every other container ship had one of these power plants how many remote areas would probably meet a great deal of their energy needs from a battery array in their shipping port, rather than the current paradigm where they must provide dirty fuel for shipping companies that goes on to pollute the harbor.
As I understand it, naval reactors are cooled by seawater. Couldn't the coolant be diverted, causing the reactor to overheat and eventually meltdown? How dangerous a naval reactor meltdown would be I have no idea.
It is about the overall build time, giant price tag and later on risks involved.
I am intentionally oversimplifying a bit, but for a new solar park, you ram metal poles into the ground, run metal beams cross those, put panels on those and cable all of these into a transformer with a lot of electronics. If that transformer detects a problem, it cuts power to the grid and that's it. Then you dig up a short caused by moles, replace it and turn it on again. Wind turbines aren't far off of that thing as well.
Wih nuclear you have for example the question of getting fuel. There is little nuclear fuel available outside of ex-soviet control. Efficient use of that fuel is also tricky, because if you tried to enrich nuclear fuel to make use of nuclear waste, you're 90% the way towards nuclear weapons and suddenly it's globally political.
You have the build time. We can stamp down a lot more solar parks and wind turbine parks in the time a single nuclear plant gets accepted, at least in europe. And also the maintenance time. Due to the planning and build costs of nuclear plants, these need to be planned to last 20 - 40 years. Especially with climate change and climate change turning chaotic - who can say some location is safe to start building a nuclear plant for 15 years, and say safe for 20 - 30 years? Especially if we consider that against renewables, and power storage improvements over these 15 years?
Like don't get me wrong. I also hate it that germany exited nuclear before exiting coal. Which, most likely, was lobby'd by the fossil energy companies. But building new nuclear facilities is too late.
As of 2022 those 4 countries accounted for 55% of mined uranium.
The bigger issue that you correctly identify is that building nuclear plants takes a long time. Also, unlike a wind farm or solar farm, the reactor must be completely finished before it can start earning revenue from electricity generation. Many wind and solar projects start supplying power to the grid when they are less than halfway complete, since they're made up of turbines or racks of panels that work independently.
> There is little nuclear fuel available outside of ex-soviet control.
That's by design of the federal government as they strong armed all other countries into Non Proliferation Treaties and made nuclear power a bad word. If they want to go green, they can start by defanging the watchdogs.
I'm talking about financial risk btw, not safety risk.
Any large project like a dam or nuclear plant is risky from a financial perspective. You're putting up a lot of capital and probably paying a lot of interest. Larger projects in general tend to run over schedule and over budget too. Back in the day, the US was better at building big things and using public funds for them so it wasn't as risky. Add in the mountain of paper work that the regulators now require for everything nuclear and you have a very high risk project.
It doesn't have to be this way. Other countries have shown that you can consistently build these projects on time and in 4 to 5 years if you have an experienced work force, solid supply chain, and a reasonable regulator. Japan holds the record for a gigawatt scale reactor built in just over 36 months.
Something's off there.
From the product description:
3000WProduct Description
Widely used: Under 4 hours of full sunlight, the daily production capacity is 400wh/day. It is very suitable for RVs, caravans, oceans, camping vehicles, electric scooters, golf carts, power wheels, fishing motors, tool trailers, and backup power sources for small sheds.
【 Excellent Performance 】: Single crystal solar panels are made of corrosion-resistant aluminum frames, which can be used for more than ten years and can withstand strong winds (2400Pa) and snow loads (5400Pa). IP65 rated terminal box and 21% high battery efficiency.
[Easy to install]: Pre drilled holes on the back and plug and play cables allow for quick installation
【 Multi protection 】: 20A PWM controller: built-in short circuit, open circuit, and overload protection to ensure safety. And it supports three types of batteries: lithium batteries, lead-acid batteries, and colloidal batteries.
Single listing for multiple items. Second item is 100W panel 24x35cm for $22. The last item is supposed to be 3kW panel 98x54cm. I wouldn't buy from a seller with such messed description.
This is false for the US (and UK as the other commenter pointed out).
> In the USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh to fund decommissioning. They must then report regularly to the NRC on the status of their decommissioning funds. About two-thirds of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all US nuclear power reactors has already been collected, leaving a liability of about $9 billion to be covered over the remaining operating lives of about 100 reactors (on the basis of an average of $320 million per unit). NRC data for the end of 2018 indicated that there was a combined total of $64.7 billion held in the decommissioning trust funds covering the 119 operational and retired US nuclear power reactors.
If you ignore all other variables, then of course the situation looks like what one variable would make it do.
Would covering a desert in solar panels cause more thermal solar absorption in that area than would otherwise happen? Yes.
But if we're optimizing for "offsetting the heating effect of human GHG emissions", then installing 4.5TW of solar (about 4x what has been installed worldwide to date) would have a much more positive effect.
The world currently has 1.1TW of solar installed, producing about 6% of all electricity. So our new installation would be on its own capable of supplying 25% of global electricity usage. The corresponding drop in GHG emissions from the shutdown of coal, gas, and oil power plants would far outweigh the fact that part of the desert has been turned black.
> Would covering a desert in solar panels cause more thermal solar absorption in that area than would otherwise happen? Yes.
This depends on the efficiency of the PV modules. When it's greater than the albedo of the desert, it will cool the desert, not warm it. Remember, the electrical energy produced isn't heat. It's turned to heat at the consumer, but that's true of electrical energy from a nuclear plant too. Oh, and did you know that nuclear plants also add 2x as much heat energy in the exhaust of their cooling system?
Has this actually been quantified? Earth's albedo is a critical factor in the portion of the sun's energy that is rejected into space, just as GHG incidence in the atmosphere is.
In theory, darkening a portion of the Earth with high albedo (snow, sand) is worse than darkening a portion of the Earth with low albedo (roads, roofs, forest). Then it should be better to use a greener area for solar panels so long as the capacity factors would be similar.
Many people would argue that humans did cause this loss of sea ice.
Also I don't see how that justifies adding to the effect? Especially if we don't know can't compute the trade off? I'm sure someone has done that work but my it didn't immediately jump out at me during a cursory search.
I mean, we know we can build nuclear plants quickly because we've done it before. It is physically possible. China and Korea can still do it today.
If you just mean the bureaucracy is impossible to defeat, it would just take political will. Which we are seeing more and more of recently. The first of a kind build is always slow.
Depends on what you mean by "we". China is doing it as we speak.
Also, "it's been done before" is a much better argument than "we think we can make these massive and untested changes to our society because my studies say so" like I see constantly from solar/wind maximalists on demand response, mass v2g, hyper connected grid, underground hydrogen battery etc, etc.
"In 1989, Korea began construction on their first domestically developed OPR-1000 design... Twelve reactors of this standard design began construction between 1989 and 2008, and their costs declined in a stable manner... representing a 13% cost decline (1% annualized)." (Lovering 2016)
The problem is, even after reaping this cost decline, totaling 50%, nuclear power is still noncompetitive in South Korea. They were built for energy independence after oil shock, not for cheap electricity.
Same source as you (Lovering 2016), the Koreans built several 1 GW plants for an overnight cost of 2 Billion USD per plant or less in many cases. A seriously impressive feat. The graph seems to show a far greater cost decline than 13%.
The Koreans just recently ousted an administration that was overtly hostile to nuclear energy and had declared a phase out. Now they are planning on increasing the share of nuclear electricity to 35%. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/South-Korea-incr...
There's no Federal agency that can decree that sort of policy. Coal generator retirement happens on a state-by-state or even business-by-business basis.
Some states are going to cling to coal power past its economically rational lifespan because important parts of state politics are linked to coal businesses. States where coal retires for economic reasons will go for least-cost replacement (a blend of solar, wind, and natural gas). States where environmental concerns trump cost concerns have little if any coal generating capacity left to replace at this point.
There is potential in the federally owned TVA which has around 35 GW in its portfolio. Also Georgia has a lot of coal and is the state with these new NPPs.
Plus the federal government doesn't need to mandate it. It can simply incentivize these plants to be built like it did with Solar/Wind.
MSRs look nice on paper but we don’t have any experience building them. It would take a gigantic up front investment to work out the real world issues and commercialize a technology that has a lot of novel aspects like handling radioactive molten salt.
Meanwhile that same money would buy loads more power in solar/wind and batteries, which are proven technologies that are getting progressively cheaper.
An alternate timeline where we do MSRs in the 1950s and phase out coal by 1990 would have been possible but we didn’t do that and there are better alternatives now.
I have not seen any evidence that solar+wind will provide a proper base load of electricity, and it looks like MSR and its variants will give people the electricity they need.
While nuclear plants do pair well with storage (many pumped hydro storage stations were built to pair with nuclear plants), the idea that they cannot load follow is a myth. It is simply more economical for them to run at full load since fuel cost is a very small portion of nuclear operating expenses.
It will likely take a minimum of ten years to get a non light water reactor certified by the NRC. And that is very optimistic. Then you have to build the first of a kind plant which is always more expensive and takes longer. Then you have to get good at operating these new kinds of plants.
It's true that MSR and Breeder reactors have lots of potential benefits over traditional LWRs but the truth is, LWRs are more than good enough for right now and we literally can't build enough of them if even if we tried.
You wouldn't want to power all of human society off of LWRs simply because they only access ~5% of the energy in the fuel. But we're so far away from that being a constraint. Build LWRs today and keep developing Breeder/MSR tech.
Lets hope not. Everone whith basic math skills will understand that economics for nuclear make absolutely no sense... just do your research on the topic...
Reasonable adults can disagree on the economics of building new reactors, but to destroy a fully functional already paid for reactor in a country that burns so much lignite is brain dead to the point that it defies comprehension.
Is this even possible? Would be great if so. First google result seems to say it’s do able [0]. Turning them all off was the dumbest knee jerk reaction I’ve ever seen.
It's likely just a phase. Young people have been doing this since time immemorial. I think you are overreacting a tad.