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Grognan posted:NIMBY's and crazy anti-nuke greens are a group they don't want to piss off as the Democratic party. Fossil fuel companies also oppose nuclear investment from the other party That's my read of it as well. The Dems do what the environmental lobby says, the Republicans do what the fossil fuel lobby says. Neither of them a have real, pragmatic plan for 21st century energy generation that satisfies both our growing energy demand and our desire to reduce carbon emissions. The Democratic plan will probably produce better results in the end because I don't think Hillary will do anything to seriously thwart fossil fuel energy production, but I wish they could have the cajones to discuss what we really need to do if we want to meet their lofty goal of 100% renewable energy generation.
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Jun 22, 2016 02:25
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MaxxBot posted:The Dems do what the environmental lobby says The reason why nuclear energy isn't doing well in America has very little to do with environmentalists. Many posters in this thread have a mistaken belief that the US environmental lobby is some kind of Illuminati pulling the strings behind the scenes of the US Govt. to thwart the rapid build out of nuclear power plants. But in actuality, environmentalists don't really matter. Nuclear energy is not the slam dunk technology that people in this thread like to claim. The real reason why nuclear energy is unpopular in the US has to do with the large capital investment needed to build a nuclear power plant and amount of risk associated with doing so, and the long amount of time it takes to build the plant. It is a pretty elaborate and complicated technology, with the potential for things to go very wrong, and so to do it right and to do it safely means that it must be high cost. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 03:34
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It's almost as if it's the sort of project best handled by the government directly. They even have a training pipeline for nuclear engineers, unlike everyone else.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:06
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silence_kit posted:The reason why nuclear energy isn't doing well in America has very little to do with environmentalists. Many posters in this thread have a mistaken belief that the US environmental lobby is some kind of Illuminati pulling the strings behind the scenes of the US Govt. to thwart the rapid build out of nuclear power plants. But in actuality, environmentalists don't really matter. I'm willing to accept that there's a lot of economic negatives, but I have to wonder: if it's so incredibly risky, why does anyone in private industry bother with attempting to build nuclear?
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Jun 22, 2016 04:28
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Silencr_kit, I think you misread this thread. I've only ever seen level-headed discussion on nuclear power based on real-world examples like existing French programs or discussion on problems like a lack of a standardized, pre-approved turnkey reactor design and SOP in the states that make rollout monstrously expensive, slow, and prone to going over budget. What I've definitely not seen is some kind of blind "slam dunk" support. Unless there's something you have in mind I've forgotten about? Edit: vvv I spoke literally one post too soon. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 04:32
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silence_kit posted:The reason why nuclear energy isn't doing well in America has very little to do with environmentalists. Many posters in this thread have a mistaken belief that the US environmental lobby is some kind of Illuminati pulling the strings behind the scenes of the US Govt. to thwart the rapid build out of nuclear power plants. But in actuality, environmentalists don't really matter. Hm. Maybe for profit energy generation is bullshit and utilities should be public infrastructure. HMMMMMmmmm. silence_kit posted:Nuclear energy is not the slam dunk technology that people in this thread like to claim. The real reason why nuclear energy is unpopular in the US has to do with the large capital investment needed to build a nuclear power plant and amount of risk associated with doing so, and the long amount of time it takes to build the plant. It is a pretty elaborate and complicated technology, with the potential for things to go very wrong, and so to do it right and to do it safely means that it must be high cost. Okay, c'mon now. We've hosed ourselves SO BADLY using the cheapest energy source available forever. Its costs should no longer be a concern, and considering that privatized energy generation basically looks for the next cheapest and dirtiest energy source to make a quick buck, this is a poor reason to bemoan that its not a slam dunk. Its not only a slam dunk, its got the best safety record exactly for the reason you gave in the last sentence: You can't take shortcuts. At all. Which is what for-profit firms LOVE DOING!
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Jun 22, 2016 04:33
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CommieGIR posted:Hm. Maybe for profit energy generation is bullshit and utilities should be public infrastructure. If we can say "costs shouldn't be a concern" to nuclear, can we say the same thing to renewables, storage, demand mitigation and efficiency?
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Jun 22, 2016 04:35
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Trabisnikof posted:If we can say "costs shouldn't be a concern" to nuclear, can we say the same thing to renewables, storage, demand mitigation and efficiency? They don't have a 2000+ MW solution that they can squeeze in less than 525 acres that can generate continuously.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:42
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CommieGIR posted:They don't have a 2000+ MW solution that they can squeeze in less than 525 acres that can generate continuously. When did we decide power per acre was the be-all-end-all metric? If we give nuclear a free pass on resource usage to build, use and replace it, why not give the exact same benefits to renewables, storage, demand reductions and efficiency?
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Jun 22, 2016 04:45
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Trabisnikof posted:If we give nuclear a free pass on resource usage to build, use and replace it, why not give the exact same benefits to renewables, storage, demand reductions and efficiency? Not saying we shouldn't.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:48
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Trabisnikof posted:If we can say "costs shouldn't be a concern" to nuclear, can we say the same thing to renewables, storage, demand mitigation and efficiency? Whenever the party-line nuclear posters discuss their favorite technology in this thread, cost is no object. However, whenever the subject turns to renewable energy, suddenly they all develop a collective obsession with the cost of electricity.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:48
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silence_kit posted:When the party-line nuclear posters discuss their favorite technology in this thread, cost is no object. However, whenever the subject turns to renewable energy, suddenly they all develop a collective obsession with the cost of electricity.  I'm okay with cost not being an object for renewables too, but thanks for playing!
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Jun 22, 2016 04:48
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Let he who has numbers on cost per MW cast the first stone.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:51
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What exactly is a party-line nuclear poster?
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Jun 22, 2016 05:39
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CommieGIR posted:
Cost is important though. Most people don't really care where their electricity comes from and wouldn't be very pleased to pay either directly or indirectly for higher electricity costs. If solar PV electricity cost today were the same as it was 20 years ago, it would be really stupid and wasteful to try to generate a non-negligible portion of the US's electricity using solar cells. Its cost still is higher than many would like, but it is still dropping. If anyone has a good prediction for when the cost will stop dropping, I'd be interested in hearing it. crabcakes66 posted:What exactly is a party-line nuclear poster? The majority of posts over the entire history of this thread are posters whining about misguided environmentalists are and about how the US government is at their beck and call, spoiling the rapid expansion of nuclear energy. Also, they say that nuclear energy has absolutely no sociopolitical side effects, would be basically free, quick, and easy to deploy if it weren't for all of that government red tape driving up the cost, while at the same time still be 100% safe and reliable. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 05:54
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U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2013 Production  Subsidies  Impact  Most of the points silence_kit brings up has been discussed in this thread. I agree that nuclear is an unattractive investment. I wouldn't spend billions to build a nuclear plant to be finished years down the line - when the energy sector will likely have very different dynamics - and then needs another 30-40 years to recoup investment. I have no idea what I can sell electricity for in 5 years let alone decades. However, subsidies are not exactly equally applied to all carbon neutral sources and that might be a constructive first step.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:58
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haha I love that we are too unstable to envision a project that our children would reap the benefits off now.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:04
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silence_kit posted:The real reason why nuclear energy is unpopular in the US has to do with the large capital investment needed to build a nuclear power plant and amount of risk associated with doing so, and the long amount of time it takes to build the plant. It is a pretty elaborate and complicated technology, with the potential for things to go very wrong, and so to do it right and to do it safely means that it must be high cost. It's almost as if regulatory ratcheting is a driving factor of capital cost. Peach Bottom 2 and 3 cost about $380 million, in 1974. Limerick 2 was completed in 1988 and cost $2.9 billion. The Dresden 2 and 3 plants in Chicago, built in the early 70s, cost $146/kW of plant, they're GE BWRs. The LaSalle plants, 14 years later, also GE BWRs, cost $1880/kW. Yeah, inflation, but inflation wasn't anywhere near that much over that time interval. Ignoring the cost of regulation when considering capital costs, and then blaming capital costs for the lack of interest while pointedly ignoring what drove that regulation, is pretty shady.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:17
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It seems hard to both rely on the US nuclear regulatory regime to prove how safe nuclear is while also arguing those regulations are just a big waste of money. But then again, I'm not sure how a government operator would have prevented the errors that ruined SONGS and Crystal River 2.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:23
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Trabisnikof posted:It seems hard to both rely on the US nuclear regulatory regime to prove how safe nuclear is while also arguing those regulations are just a big waste of money. The work involved in completing the smallest, most mundane of tasks in the nuclear world is made insanely expensive due to regulation. I generated a modification package to install room heaters at Fort Calhoun nuclear station. They were in a relatively unimportant room and only being installed for personnel comfort during the frigid winter months (ie not designed to keep critical equipment or pipes from freezing). It was off-the-shelf style air heaters, the kind you'd frequently see in a large warehouse or something. In a normal environment a couple mechanics could get it and install it in a day, maybe two. The hardest part is that it's 15' above the floor, which might take a little assembly and care. Total cost would probably be a couple grand maybe. In the nuclear environment, it took me, an engineer contractor, about 3 months to create a mod package with numerous calculations. Seismic calculations, support calculations. I had to demonstrate why this electrical component wasn't a digital asset. I had to do a probable risk assessment to determine how it would impact fire loading. So to keep people warm in a glorified warehouse garage FCS spent 6 figures. The other example of how regulations cost money is the tornado wind-driven missile barrier I helped design and built the modification package for. The purpose? In case an EF-5 tornado hits coastal North Carolina, we needed to ensure an adequate shield was in place to protect a few valves and pipe stems on a 52' diameter 30' tall water tank from debris thrown at hundreds of miles per hour. No EF-5 had struck within 500 miles of that nuclear plant in recorded history. The nearest EF-4 was ~200 miles if memory serves. The highest wind speed ever recorded on site was 88 mph during a hurricane. It was a fool's errand, entirely created because of one-size fits all regulations that required a plant nowhere near a tornadic area to meet the same requirements as a plant in Texas or Nebraska. The total cost of design and package prep was something like $4M. Building the wall was another few million I think. I have some pictures of it lying around if anyone wanted to see. It's neat. The original plan was just to build a new hardened water storage tank, a million gallons worth (existing tank was either 250k or 500k gallons, forgot). That was a $40M project, minimum. All to protect several pipes off a water tank from theoretical 500lb wooden decks flying at 150 mph perfectly toward a water tank that's generally shielded on 3 sides by a 120' tall control/reactor building complex that has 3' concrete walls.
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Jun 22, 2016 07:29
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Category 4s have hit that section of the Atlantic coast and they can spin up tornadoes. A category 5 is not completely out of the question for the area.
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Jun 22, 2016 07:43
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hobbesmaster posted:Category 4s have hit that section of the Atlantic coast and they can spin up tornadoes. A category 5 is not completely out of the question for the area. Hurricanes spawn weaker tornadoes than great Plains mesocyclones. Used to be able to explain why. This plant is ten miles inland too, which reduces the worst of the hurricane effects. Plus, regulations-wise, this plant was within a few miles of falling under a much more relaxed tornadic status, similar to new England and not Oklahoma. But because it fell on the wrong side of a line, it had a once-in-never tornado to protect against.
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Jun 22, 2016 08:12
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Pander posted:It was a fool's errand, entirely created because of one-size fits all regulations that required a plant nowhere near a tornadic area to meet the same requirements as a plant in Texas or Nebraska. A recurring argument in this thread is that the cost of building and licensing nuclear power plants is so high because each is designed individually, and that it could be reduced if a single design is used for all plants. But now you're saying that one size doesn't fit all. What am I missing?
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Jun 22, 2016 08:50
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MaxxBot posted:I listen to a lot of talk radio and 100% of the liberal hosts I listen to and the environmental guests they invite on are opposed to all forms of base load power and think that we can build a magic grid using solar and wind only. Are all of these people just that dumb or are there more serious arguments for the feasibility of doing this? It seems like there's a serious lack of pragmatic and realistic energy plans coming from the left, the message is just nuclear/coal/natural gas is bad and must be shut down now. Even the most pie in the sky but still serious tech mags don't try and pretend that it's realistic to transition to a magic solar+wind only electrical grid. It's the kind of thing imagined by people who just don't understand what they're suggesting. They mean well and they're probably not stupid, they just don't understand the problems. MaxxBot posted:It's not just talk shows though, that's how all of the environmental groups talk about it and prominent politicians like Bernie Sanders and many others. Even Hillary who has more more moderate positions with respect to natural gas and such seems to imply on her website that we can get by with renewables only, other forms of energy are only mentioned in context of reducing their use. It's flat out impossible to continue reducing the use of coal (which we should do and have been doing for a while) without ramping up natural gas and nuclear, I have to believe that many of these guys understand this but they must just not want to talk about it I guess But that quote doesn't actually seem crazy; "enough renewable energy to power every home in America" does not even come close to implying a 100% renewable grid. Homes are only responsible for around 10% of the country's power consumption. That kind of goal is totally reasonable, and you can even claim to have reached it by just looking at max combined theoretical output. It's made even more reasonable by the latter part of the quote, which focuses on cutting energy waste by a third (again, not an unreasonable goal).
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Jun 22, 2016 09:25
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. Lots of people out there have really unrealistic beliefs about the power grid and power generation and this poo poo sure isn't helping.
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silence_kit posted:The majority of posts over the entire history of this thread are posters whining about misguided environmentalists are and about how the US government is at their beck and call, spoiling the rapid expansion of nuclear energy. Actually this thread is mostly posters complaining about your lovely and completely wrong posts about the nature of this thread's posters. Nearly everything that you've posted on this page has been a hyperbolic made-up argument. Like look at this dumb garbage that you wrote: silence_kit posted:Also, they say that nuclear energy has absolutely no sociopolitical side effects, would be basically free, quick, and easy to deploy if it weren't for all of that government red tape driving up the cost, while at the same time still be 100% safe and reliable. Arguing about the high cost of nuclear regulation is one thing, but lol please provide evidence that a plurality of posters in this thread claim that we should completely deregulate nuclear power and that doing this would make it "basically free" and simultaneously "100% safe". This thread has a fair number of optimistic nuclear proponents but you're just being silly at this point
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Jun 22, 2016 09:40
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I was not going to be as direct, but now that it has been said, yeah Silence_kit I think you have this thread confused with a reddit sub or something.
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Jun 22, 2016 12:49
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silence_kit posted:Cost is important though. Most people don't really care where their electricity comes from and wouldn't be very pleased to pay either directly or indirectly for higher electricity costs. Solar is not going to be replacing natural gas and coal anytime soon. I don't know why you don't get that? Oh, and nobody here who is a proponent for nuclear has honestly suggested totally deregulating nuclear safety standards or construction standards. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 13:03
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silence_kit posted:The majority of posts over the entire history of this thread are posters whining about misguided environmentalists are and about how the US government is at their beck and call, spoiling the rapid expansion of nuclear energy. Also, they say that nuclear energy has absolutely no sociopolitical side effects, would be basically free, quick, and easy to deploy if it weren't for all of that government red tape driving up the cost, while at the same time still be 100% safe and reliable. Pointing out and arguing against rampant over-regulation is not at all the same as arguing for complete deregulation. Nuclear power is complicated, dangerous and even potentially catastrophic under careless oversight, it needs to be strongly regulated for safety and consistency. But, one only needs to look as far as the US 30-40 years ago, or France now, to see a functioning, effective, and balanced level of oversight. It shows that the ridiculous costs of nuclear here are far beyond what they need to be to ensure safety, and that scaling back on that would lower the capital costs.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:08
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Again, if a significant portion of the capital cost is capital markets' difficulty in dealing with risk of future energy prices in a very long-term project with extremely front-loaded costs, the government can do it. We can borrow money at barely above inflation, and the worst case scenario is that there's a renewable breakthrough and nuclear plants would be generating at a loss* and pushing down energy prices - still a benefit for the country that's not relevant to private investors. *Probably not an operational loss since so little is spent on fuel relatively, so they would keep running, just that the project as a whole may not turn a profit.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:18
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Trabisnikof posted:If we can say "costs shouldn't be a concern" to nuclear, can we say the same thing to renewables, storage, demand mitigation and efficiency? Costs aren't the issue for storage, it's the sheer lack of existence for any serious proposal that can buffer 50% of our power demand overnight without taking an ungodly huge amount of land and resources.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:15
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Potato Salad posted:I was not going to be as direct, but now that it has been said, yeah Silence_kit I think you have this thread confused with a reddit sub or something. No, I don't. I have been following this thread from the very early beginning, and there is a constant scapegoating of environmentalists as the source of all problems for nuclear energy. But this obsession with environmentalists is stupid--environmentalists don't matter and have very little to do with why the US is not rapidly building nuclear power plants. We've even had one poster in this thread pray for the death of all environmentalists: Sinestro posted:We have a stupid environmentalist problem and a need to get rid of our left over chemical weapons problem. Why can't we put this together? I'm not the only person in this thread who has noticed this thread's fixation on Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Forums poster Morbus, who seems pretty knowledgeable about nuclear energy and is not afraid to say things regarding it which contradict this thread's party line, has noticed this too: Morbus posted:Its a myth that "low-information liberals" and public outcry are what is holding back the expansion of nuclear power. Nuclear power has been hobbled because it is loving expensive. While the ultimate cost per kWh can be very competitive, the initial investment and maintenance costs are staggering. Additionally, the time from when a new reactor design is submitted for approval and when it is actually up and running can easily span 10-20 years. I would recommend reading his other posts in this thread. They are excellent.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:36
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CombatInformatiker posted:A recurring argument in this thread is that the cost of building and licensing nuclear power plants is so high because each is designed individually, and that it could be reduced if a single design is used for all plants. But now you're saying that one size doesn't fit all. What am I missing? You are missing the difference between plans going forward and what exists now. For the future, the ideal path forward is to limit designs to one of a very small number of highly versatile and passively safe modular designs. This reduces the time the NRC requires to do a critical and lengthy safety evaluation. For existing designs, regulation needs to make more sense. Forcing reactive mass retrofits on safety related equipment is the biggest reason for nuke plants closing lately, for reasons I hinted at in the previous post. Any change to safety related equipment requires months to years of evaluation and back and forth contact with the NRC, an organization that has too much work and too few staff to meet adequate deadlines for engineering safety evaluations. Modifying the design of new plants to mitigate one-size-fits-all regulations is much easier, cheaper, and faster than retrofitting existing plants to meet them. New plants being passively safe reduces the biggest potential modification money pits. Fewer components to fail, simpler design to review, smaller plant to build, etc.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:38
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silence_kit posted:We've even had one poster in this thread pray for the death of all environmentalists: Ironically, most of us are probably ardent environmentalists. But groups like Greenpeace (basically a pseudoscience spewing 'Return to Nature' group) and Sierra Club (wealthy group of people who also advocate a return to nature and abandoning technological advances) are serious issues.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:43
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Silence_kit I am in a boat similar to him. I don't think environmentalists are the direct cause of most costs for nuclear plants anymore. They often WERE during plant construction, when local politics could put a partially constructed plant in town hall limbo, triggering extremely expensive delays due to the nature of construction costs and loan repayment schedules. But we haven't built many lately, and those we (America) build are interested the South, where there is a lot less nimbyism than the northeast. The current expenses tend toward too-expensive-to-fix equipment failure (SONGS, Crystal River) and modification costs out weighing future revenue (numerous single unit plants around the country). I argue that regulations are necessary to ensure a potentially dangerous and damaging industrial utility is managed as safely as possible given flawed human natures. Regulations are good. But they are implemented very poorly, a Gordian knot that's been growing since the fifties without the consolidation or simplification that's necessary to allow the nuclear industry to join the 21st century. Restrictions and requirements on safety related procurements often require plants to replace outdated components with the exact same model. Since most plants were built in the 70s, this means buying super expensive vintage equipment from nuclear specialized companies who can effectively hold nuclear plants hostage. After all it's still cheaper to pay 5000 bucks for a 50 dollar component than pay people to write a justification for a different replacement.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:51
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silence_kit posted:We've even had one poster in this thread pray for the death of all environmentalists: I'm glad that you've found such a good example of entirely genuine posting on this very serious forum. I'll leave the serious discussion to smarter people than me, at least for now.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:58
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Trabisnikof posted:It seems hard to both rely on the US nuclear regulatory regime to prove how safe nuclear is while also arguing those regulations are just a big waste of money. I'd like to see an argument that the regulations under which Limerick 2 was constructed were expensive, but necessary in order to build a safe plant, that doesn't also implicitly argue that Peach Bottom 2 is a death trap and that's why it only cost 1/8th as much. Because the difference in construction cost sure as hell isn't the type or size of reactor, or the location of it.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:37
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silence_kit posted:No, I don't. I have been following this thread from the very early beginning, and there is a constant scapegoating of environmentalists as the source of all problems for nuclear energy. But this obsession with environmentalists is stupid--environmentalists don't matter and have very little to do with why the US is not rapidly building nuclear power plants.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:52
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Phanatic posted:I'd like to see an argument that the regulations under which Limerick 2 was constructed were expensive, but necessary in order to build a safe plant, that doesn't also implicitly argue that Peach Bottom 2 is a death trap and that's why it only cost 1/8th as much. Nah, Browns Ferry is the death trap.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:48
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silence_kit posted:No, I don't. I have been following this thread from the very early beginning, and there is a constant scapegoating of environmentalists as the source of all problems for nuclear energy[citation needed]. Fixed silence_kit posted:We've even had one poster in this thread pray for the death of all environmentalists You should lurk more
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Jun 22, 2016 19:51
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fishmech posted:Costs aren't the issue for storage, it's the sheer lack of existence for any serious proposal that can buffer 50% of our power demand overnight without taking an ungodly huge amount of land and resources. Tell me about it. We finally got solar installed at our place, and we're generating an almost obscene amount of extra electricity during peak hours, though most of our use is pulling off the grid past 10 PM, mainly for EV charging but it's also because we're all home and our housemate (and sometimes me) stays up all night and plays video games  It'd be pretty great to get some powerwalls or something and get off the grid entirely, but that isn't exactly a cheap or even arguably environmentally friendly option considering what an environmental disaster lithium mining is.There are places with so many people and businesses getting solar it's actually causing negative demand on the grid, but solar quite obviously does poo poo-all for overnight use, and storing it on a utility scale is just not a thing that is feasable. The whole dipshit liberal/environmentalist pie-in-the-sky 100% renewables thing, especially for home and possibly even light commercial, is only impossible because there's no utility-grade power storage. Otherwise, your "average" middle class American family can afford their own power plant that can cover their needs now, but not necessarily a way to store it.
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Jun 22, 2016 22:44
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