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I'm sorry, but you are going to have to put numbers to this. The U.S. Navy could easily be given 10x-100x more money in their budgets per Watt to build their reactors, so pointing to the existence of Navy nuclear subs and ships isn't great evidence for the earlier point. Energy, at least in the commercial sector, is totally a cost problem. Edit: If someone could provide evidence maybe I could be swayed, but to me this idea almost sounds as absurd as proposing that the F-35 team design and produce aircraft for the commercial airlines who have always struggled to make money in their business. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 11:27
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Senor P. posted:Talk to anyone that was around during the 'golden age' of U.S. nuclear power plant construction and they will likely tell you that it has gotten substantially much more difficult than it used to be. So, what in your opinion is necessary to unfuck nuclear construction? (USN powering the nation admittedly sounds pretty good.)
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Aug 7, 2017 13:19
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I think the attractiveness of USN nukes is the fact that, when asked to produce a budget and time frame, they deliver. As energy generation is largely a costs problem, this permits you to deploy nukes when and where you calculate a profit (or at least break even operation) can be turned.
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Aug 7, 2017 13:28
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If it turns out you can only deploy five USN nukes in the US at break even cost, so be it. The value of having a couple state-operated nukes churning out energy when expected and for anticipated cost would be invaluable in the war for public mindshare.
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Aug 7, 2017 13:31
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Something that needs to be built for the public good, regardless of profitability, does sound like something that operates better as a not-for-profit, and/or public owned. FWIW, 45% stake in VC Summer is owned by Santee-cooper, which is a state-owned utility that operates as a cooperative. I don't believe they hiked rates anything like SCANA did (55% stake), though they are considering some rate adjustments at this time.
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Aug 7, 2017 14:16
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I am not super familiar with the application of nuclear reactors for powering ships and subs, but I suspect that the Navy goes through the hassle and trouble of powering their vessels with nuclear reactors because they don't have a lot of other technical options. Being for a defense application, they are willing to pay whatever the cost to get the best functionality. This is to be contrasted with electricity generated for commercial applications, where there are a tonne of lower-cost alternative technical options to nuclear reactors. These are two completely different worlds! It is totally not clear to me why what works in the military world would transfer at all to the commercial world. If you are willing to totally ignore cost when it comes to electricity (I am not seriously proposing the following), we alternately could be greatly overbuilding solar cells and paying the currently high costs for battery packs and power the nation that way. But of course in this thread, cost is only no object when it comes to their favorite energy source. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 15:26
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M_Gargantua posted:The Nuclear Navy at this point almost certainly operates at a better cost ratio than most commercial plants. That's more that the process is streamlined and mass produced and while labor unions are still a thing (a good thing) they also know that the two navy shipyards balk none of the lazy poo poo you see in a lot of other construction processes. I don't think a single S9G reactor plant has been behind schedule. Navy plants require HEU. Very HEU, enrichment is somewhere north of 90%. That's both vastly more expensive as fuel and also something you can build a bomb from directly if you get your hands on some. Trying to use naval reactors as civilian power plants is a remarkably bad idea.
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Aug 7, 2017 15:41
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Phanatic posted:Navy plants require HEU. Very HEU, enrichment is somewhere north of 90%. That's both vastly more expensive as fuel and also something you can build a bomb from directly if you get your hands on some. The reactor itself is completely impractical. It's designed for rapid power changes in a compact design, not for industrial scale generation.
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Aug 7, 2017 15:52
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silence_kit posted:If you are willing to totally ignore cost when it comes to electricity (I am not seriously proposing the following), we alternately could be greatly overbuilding solar cells and paying the currently high costs for battery packs and power the nation that way. But of course in this thread, cost is only no object when it comes to their favorite energy source. Neither you nor I are throwing around actual cost figures, so--
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Aug 7, 2017 15:57
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I thought the first civilian reactors were based very heavily off of the naval ones, because they had already done the R&D and consequently cheaper?
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Aug 7, 2017 16:45
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BattleMoose posted:I thought the first civilian reactors were based very heavily off of the naval ones, because they had already done the R&D and consequently cheaper? Depends on what you mean by "civilian reactor". Both early and modern research reactors use HEU in ceramic plates as fuel, which is the same kind of design as early naval reactors. Early "civilian" power reactors had an output that could light a 60 watt bulb, or are we talking about early commercial power reactors?
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Aug 7, 2017 16:53
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BattleMoose posted:I thought the first civilian reactors were based very heavily off of the naval ones, because they had already done the R&D and consequently cheaper? The R&D was pretty much a parallel effort considering how different the purposes were. The BORAX reactors were BWRs designed by Argonne and were delivering grid power in 1955. The Navy's design for the nautilus was a PWR. There was an early civilian nuclear plant that used a navy plant core complete with HEU, but it definitely wasn't consequently cheaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station Pander posted:Was that the idea? I thought the idea was using navy style procurement and supply chains, training pipelines, and standardizing of design. He said "Establish modular reactors based off what is already used in aircraft carriers and submarine." I didn't interpret that as procurement and supply chains. And as for those things, I kind of LOL at the notion that the Navy's got a better handle on them than anything else. Take a look at utter procurement disasters that that LCS, Zumwalt-class, and the Ford class have turned out to be. The Ford is more than $2 billion over budget. The Kennedy is already half a billion over budget and isn't due to enter service until 2023. Standardization sounds nice, but standardizing on one design freezes development, even the Navy didn't standardize on a single design. Discounting research reactors or prototypes, considering only reactors that were produced to drive real ships, the Navy has had 4 different designs for aircraft carriers, 2 for cruisers, and *14* for submarines. Basically, when the Navy builds a new class of nuclear vessel, it designs a new reactor. What are you going to standardize on, a 50-year-old reactor design which was based around a fuel cycle we mainly picked for bomb production with civilian power as a distant afterthought? One huge advantage the Navy does have if that if it wants to build 50 of a class of nuclear submarines, it doesn't need 50 different loving operating licenses for 50 copies of the exact same plant. So in that sense, standardization is great, but that doesn't get you any advantages in the civilian power plant world, because in that world if you want to build 50 copies of the exactly same plant you still need to go out and get 50 different loving operating licenses, 50 different site approvals, 50 different periods of public comment from the BANANA crowd, etc. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 17:16
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Phanatic posted:Navy plants require HEU. Very HEU, enrichment is somewhere north of 90%. That's both vastly more expensive as fuel and also something you can build a bomb from directly if you get your hands on some. You don't need an HEU core to utilize the process's developed by the Naval Nuclear Lab. HEU just means the core can be pint sized for the power + endurance. silence_kit posted:I am not super familiar with the application of nuclear reactors for powering ships and subs, but I suspect that the Navy goes through the hassle and trouble of powering their vessels with nuclear reactors because they don't have a lot of other technical options. Being for a defense application, they are willing to pay whatever the cost to get the best functionality. Without getting into the actual power production figures an S9G comes as part of a $2.5B submarine. A lot of that is all the high tech military stuff and the equipment to make it a submarine and not a power plant. The propulsion plant itself costs in the ballpark of $800M, if you assume it would take an equivalent $2.5B to make a plant designed to the same standards, using commercial grade uranium, suitable for permanent installation, then you're still paying less then the rest of the proposals and construction attempts in the past three decades. M_Gargantua fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 19:27
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silence_kit posted:If you are willing to totally ignore cost when it comes to electricity Much of the distribution grid in the USA would never have been built if it was only done in areas that it was profitable to do so. The REA changed everything. Why must generation improvement be expected to be profitable? It's an investment in both a stable grid, and the environment.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:37
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Phanatic posted:The R&D was pretty much a parallel effort considering how different the purposes were. The BORAX reactors were BWRs designed by Argonne and were delivering grid power in 1955. The Navy's design for the nautilus was a PWR. The plan would be to use the Naval Nuclear Laboratory to design and field modular nuclear reactors using commercially enriched Uranium. The NNL has been doing development, testing, and post-use analysis for 67 years. They 100% have a better handle on it than anyone else, the nuclear program has been solid that whole time. Its run by a whole different directorate and they really rigorously enforce their standards from materials intake to expended core disposal. For the submarine program they developed S5W in 1969, that was used in an entire class of submarines, and the S6G, S8G, and S9G are essentially incremental improvements since, and each were designed and tailored for the class of submarine's they were being designed for. Navy Pressurized water reactors are all very very similar to one another, you're wildly over-inflating the difficulty there has been in making so many designs, most of which were cold war one offs. Using the same systems to design land based cores would reduce complexity and costs further. If you nationalize the reactor program the US government can site and construct 50 land based reactors without having 50 different licenses and the BANANA crowd is an issue that can be dealt with (by ignoring it). You'd then slowly integrate civilian operators while maintaining navy oversight until you have a civilian oversight program that can actually keep its poo poo together and plants that aren't cutting corners for profit margins.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:44
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M_Gargantua posted:Without getting into the actual power production figures an S9G comes as part of a $2.5B submarine. A lot of that is all the high tech military stuff and the equipment to make it a submarine and not a power plant. The propulsion plant itself costs in the ballpark of $800M, if you assume it would take an equivalent $2.5B to make a plant designed to the same standards, using commercial grade uranium, suitable for permanent installation, then you're still paying less then the rest of the proposals and construction attempts in the past three decades. There's some numbers. What kind of power output can an S9G push, though? Are you paying that $800M for tens, hundreds, or thousands of kilowatts? Edit - if a quick google search is correct, an S9G can provide 40,000 SHP, or about 30 MW
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Aug 7, 2017 20:11
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Fun fact a modern SSN reactor puts out less peak power than a single 747 engine.
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Aug 7, 2017 21:12
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M_Gargantua posted:Using the same systems to design land based cores would reduce complexity and costs further. You're wildly overstating the commonality between naval propulsion reactors and civilian power reactors, which don't have much in common other aside from being light water reactors using uranium as fuel, and a civilian plant has a whole lot of design considerations that just don't apply for a nuclear propulsion plant. The notion that because the Navy has a handle on designing the former that if you put them in charge of designing and building the latter they'll be experts at that too and you'll save a shitload of money is utterly baseless. The fact that it's become so disproportionately expensive to build civilian plants doesn't have anything to do with the *design* of the reactor, so using a Navy process to design land based cores does nothing to reduce how disproportionately expensive building civilian plants are. Your last paragraph handwaves away a shitload of regulatory issues that wouldn't go away just because you start using the Navy's process to design the physical plant. If you can handwave those things away with the Navy, you could just as easily handwave them away with GE. Potato Salad posted:There's some numbers. What kind of power output can an S9G push, though? Are you paying that $800M for tens, hundreds, or thousands of kilowatts? At that cost:power ratio, Palo Verde would have cost over 100 billion dollars (actual cost: $6 billion). The Navy has basically zero experience in designing reactors for the purpose of economically generating electricity. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 21:28
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M_Gargantua posted:plants that aren't cutting corners for profit margins.
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Aug 7, 2017 21:30
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Potato Salad posted:There's some numbers. What kind of power output can an S9G push, though? Are you paying that $800M for tens, hundreds, or thousands of kilowatts?
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Aug 7, 2017 21:35
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silence_kit posted:I'm sorry, but you are going to have to put numbers to this. The U.S. Navy could easily be given 10x-100x more money in their budgets per Watt to build their reactors, so pointing to the existence of Navy nuclear subs and ships isn't great evidence for the earlier point. Energy, at least in the commercial sector, is totally a cost problem. While that's true, I think this thread is also concerned with the externalities that aren't felt by the commercial sector, such as global warming and public health. While I don't think that the navy spends 100x more per watt or anywhere near that your point that we don't have an understanding of the cost difference is a good one. silence_kit posted:I am not super familiar with the application of nuclear reactors for powering ships and subs, but I suspect that the Navy goes through the hassle and trouble of powering their vessels with nuclear reactors because they don't have a lot of other technical options. Being for a defense application, they are willing to pay whatever the cost to get the best functionality. Any ship with a nuclear reactor likely has a diesel-burning equivalent or near-equivalent, nuclear reactors are good because they would greatly simplify your logistics and your resiliency. I don't know if there's a cost benefit but there could be one, since that's an insane amount of fuel that you don't need to deliver to carrier fleets around the world But I don't think that anyone is suggesting that we just hook up a ship to the electrical grid. The idea is that you use the technical experts that the navy employs and government capital to build a nuclear power plant using whatever cost-effective design is desired, since securing capital and US-based experts seem to be two of the principle problems with commercial construction. The third seems to be having trouble with permit, which seems like it could be fixed by having better technical staff (aka Naval experts) Probably what we actually need to do is hire some experts abroad and have the USG provide the loan. Am I mistaken in believing that these are the primary problems with nuclear construction in the US?
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Aug 8, 2017 00:03
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QuarkJets posted:Any ship with a nuclear reactor likely has a diesel-burning equivalent or near-equivalent, nuclear reactors are good because they would greatly simplify your logistics and your resiliency. I don't know if there's a cost benefit but there could be one, since that's an insane amount of fuel that you don't need to deliver to carrier fleets around the world It's entirely the opposite, it's more expensive. That's why we don't have nuclear cruisers anymore. The advantages in the capability to stay at sea for a long time is worth the extra cost for carriers and for submarines, but that's not the case for other ships. In addition, it doesn't really simplify your logistics, because now you've got an even more limited set of ports you can enter into due to security concerns. A submarine that can sustain high dash speeds pretty much indefinitely is a lot more useful for power projection and intelligence gathering than a diesel boat, even a modern AIP diesel boat, that's tied to a relatively small area. We don't do nuclear submarines and carriers because they're cheaper or because they simplify logistics, we do it because the performance advantages are worth it. And then some. quote:But I don't think that anyone is suggesting that we just hook up a ship to the electrical grid. The idea is that you use the technical experts that the navy employs and government capital to build a nuclear power plant using whatever cost-effective design is desired, Again, the *design* is not where the cost is. Getting that design approved and constructed, and having to go through that process from almost the ground up for every single site you want to build that design at is. quote:since securing capital and US-based experts seem to be two of the principle problems with commercial construction. The third seems to be having trouble with permit, which seems like it could be fixed by having better technical staff (aka Naval experts) Do you think the people who do this for the private players aren't experts in their field? Like, they're just bumbling along through the permit process and their lawyers and engineers just aren't good at their jobs? Because that's not the case at all. quote:Probably what we actually need to do is hire some experts abroad and have the USG provide the loan. Am I mistaken in believing that these are the primary problems with nuclear construction in the US? http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx quote:The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculated that, in constant 2002 values, the realized overnight cost of a nuclear power plant built in the USA grew from $1500/kWe in the early 1960s to $4000/kWe in the mid-1970s. The EIA cited increased regulatory requirements (including design changes that required plants to be backfitted with modified equipment), licensing problems, project management problems and mis-estimation of costs and demand as the factors contributing to the increase during the 1970s. Its 2010 report, Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Electricity Generation Plants, gave an estimate for a new nuclear plant of $5339/kW. http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html quote:In addition to increasing the quantity of materials and labor going into a plant, regulatory ratcheting increased costs by extending the time required for construction. According to the United Engineers estimates, the time from project initiation to ground breaking5 was 16 months in 1967, 32 months in 1972, and 54 months in 1980. These are the periods needed to do initial engineering and design; to develop a safety analysis and an environmental impact analysis supported by field data; to have these analyses reviewed by the NRC staff and its Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and to work out conflicts with these groups; to subject the analyzed to criticism in public hearings and to respond to that criticism (sometimes with design changes); and finally, to receive a construction permit. The time from ground breaking to operation testing was increased from 42 months in 1967, to 54 months in 1972, to 70 months in 1980. The issue isn't being unable to secure capital, the issue is this disproportionate and continuing *increase* in capital costs. A lot of that is due to regulatory ratcheting and construction delays. Hiring naval experts doesn't address either issue in the slightest. Where do you think the experts the navy trains and employs go when they retire from the navy? They're not lifers. Most of them, anyway.
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Aug 8, 2017 01:52
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I guess people think that the navy doing it would not be subject to the same regulations? That's the only thing that's even sensible that I could think of.
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Aug 8, 2017 02:19
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Potato Salad posted:There's some numbers. What kind of power output can an S9G push, though? Are you paying that $800M for tens, hundreds, or thousands of kilowatts? A quick google of open source reporting gives an S9G at 210 MWt. That's close enough for this purpose. Submarine engines aren't designed for excellent efficiency. They're optimized to operate over a very wide range of rpms and power. Pick a steam cycle efficiency of your choice and get your MW/$. So that's analytical answer I can give you. The rest of this comes because I've previously worked for the Navy and the NNL so I'm going to speak in broad strokes: Phanatic posted:You're wildly overstating the commonality between naval propulsion reactors and civilian power reactors, which don't have much in common other aside from being light water reactors using uranium as fuel, and a civilian plant has a whole lot of design considerations that just don't apply for a nuclear propulsion plant. The notion that because the Navy has a handle on designing the former that if you put them in charge of designing and building the latter they'll be experts at that too and you'll save a shitload of money is utterly baseless. The fact that it's become so disproportionately expensive to build civilian plants doesn't have anything to do with the *design* of the reactor, so using a Navy process to design land based cores does nothing to reduce how disproportionately expensive building civilian plants are. What major differences would you care to cite that would make a civilian reactor more expensive? The physics don't change. The chemistry doesn't change. Building bigger pipes and bigger pressure vessels is a well known, practical engineering problem. -A submarine reactor, all support systems, all turbines, everything, must be stuffed in a 30' diameter steel tube, a civilian plant gets to spread out when its convienient. -A submarine reactor has far more demanding nuclear safety requirements due to the rate of power change, the range it must operate over, and how often power levels must change. From a physics standpoint the tolerances to moderate and control 30 years of continuous fuel burn is hugely more challenging to model and account for. -The entire propulsion plant is already designed to continue safe operations through flooding and explosion, far overbuilt to meet civilian regulatory requirements for natural disasters. -The navy has a huge oversight operation, and they've been extremely effective, you can't rebuild that level of competence in the civilian industry without a decade of experience. This to me would be one of the biggest cost savers to the program compared to a commercially led attempt. -A navy reactor is made with beggeringly expensive HEU. Using commercial grade fuel is much much cheaper. The cost of the reactor does benefit from the fact that the core never needs to be refueled. Lump sum up front, rather than the continuing cost of refueling. quote:Your last paragraph handwaves away a shitload of regulatory issues that wouldn't go away just because you start using the Navy's process to design the physical plant. If you can handwave those things away with the Navy, you could just as easily handwave them away with GE. Except GE is a corporation and they don't have the best track record. The Navy is actively operating, around the clock, more Wattage than anyone else. You can pretty safely let the certification process that exists handle it. NNL is a DoE contract and has a day to day working relationship with the regulators. NNL research was the basis for 30 years of civilian plant regulation to begin with. quote:At that cost:power ratio, Palo Verde would have cost over 100 billion dollars (actual cost: $6 billion). The Navy has basically zero experience in designing reactors for the purpose of economically generating electricity. The physics of the economics of scale really aide the cost analysis. The construction cost does not rise linearly with reactor power. The experience directly translates to planning and constructing reactors for power production alone. Phanatic posted:The issue isn't being unable to secure capital, the issue is this disproportionate and continuing *increase* in capital costs. A lot of that is due to regulatory ratcheting and construction delays. Hiring naval experts doesn't address either issue in the slightest. Where do you think the experts the navy trains and employs go when they retire from the navy? They're not lifers. Most of them, anyway. The best way I can put this is that the level of design quality already present in naval designs effectively pass muster for all civilian applications. You can add whatever bits you need in the design phase to makeup for whichever shortcomings the safety engineers worry about. And once the risk assessment is set, you can have NR and the NRC sign off on the program, independent of civilian regulatory ratcheting and licencing cost bullshit. Your remaining details are the external cooling system (cooling towers etc), containment, pure water storage, and emergency cooling. Things like siting backup diesels so they're not susceptible to flooding is site specific. Designing a standard containment building that can withstand all your 100 year projected natural disasters is hardly impossible. More concrete and steel is cheep. They've been doing this continually for 57 years. There hasn't been a slump, there hasn't been layoffs or brain drain. That's the biggest reason I can give for why it would be done better. Building them and running them as a DoE program would work, its turning them over to civilian operators over the years that I would worry about.
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Aug 8, 2017 03:14
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Phanatic posted:It's entirely the opposite, it's more expensive. That's why we don't have nuclear cruisers anymore. The advantages in the capability to stay at sea for a long time is worth the extra cost for carriers and for submarines, but that's not the case for other ships. In addition, it doesn't really simplify your logistics, because now you've got an even more limited set of ports you can enter into due to security concerns. A submarine that can sustain high dash speeds pretty much indefinitely is a lot more useful for power projection and intelligence gathering than a diesel boat, even a modern AIP diesel boat, that's tied to a relatively small area. We don't do nuclear submarines and carriers because they're cheaper or because they simplify logistics, we do it because the performance advantages are worth it. And then some. A) I didn't say that the design is there the cost is. Please reread what I wrote B) You say that commercial experts definitely aren't just bumbling along but then your links cite "licensing problems", "project management problems", and "mis-estimation of costs" as explaining why nuclear power plants tripled in cost by the 1970s. At least the first two seem like they're strongly correlated with having bumbling staff, and that's supported by the third Also, can you back up your assertion that diesel ships are less expensive (including refueling costs) with numbers? I'm genuinely curious Sinestro posted:I guess people think that the navy doing it would not be subject to the same regulations? That's the only thing that's even sensible that I could think of. You... you don't have to actually think of them yourself, you could just read the posts in the thread. For instance my post suggested that the Navy probably has superior expertise when it comes to building nuclear reactors and more readily-accessible funding that they don't have to worry about paying back. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 05:23
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Phanatic posted:It's entirely the opposite, it's more expensive. That's why we don't have nuclear cruisers anymore. The advantages in the capability to stay at sea for a long time is worth the extra cost for carriers and for submarines, but that's not the case for other ships. In addition, it doesn't really simplify your logistics, because now you've got an even more limited set of ports you can enter into due to security concerns. A submarine that can sustain high dash speeds pretty much indefinitely is a lot more useful for power projection and intelligence gathering than a diesel boat, even a modern AIP diesel boat, that's tied to a relatively small area. We don't do nuclear submarines and carriers because they're cheaper or because they simplify logistics, we do it because the performance advantages are worth it. And then some. Have there been studies on nuclear cruisers since McNamara? Because I reading that the study was only able to reject nuclear power for more ships by not including the fuel costs incurred in transporting fuel around or something like that. On a related note isnt the military looking at various green energy sources, mainly solar and nuclear, for bases? Hows that been progressing?
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Aug 8, 2017 05:24
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Communist Zombie posted:Have there been studies on nuclear cruisers since McNamara? Because I reading that the study was only able to reject nuclear power for more ships by not including the fuel costs incurred in transporting fuel around or something like that. Re: new nuclear navy: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454 quote:To determine how sensitive those findings are to the tra- jectory of oil prices, CBO also examined a case in which oil prices start from a value of $86 per barrel in 2011 and then rise at a rate higher than the real (inflation-adjusted) growth of 1 percent in CBO’s baseline trajectory. That analysis suggested that a fleet of nuclear-powered destroy- ers would become cost-effective if the real annual rate of growth of oil prices exceeded 3.4 percent—which implies oil prices of $223 or more per barrel (in 2011 dollars) in 2040. Similarly, a fleet of nuclear LH(X) amphibious assault ships would become cost-effective if oil prices grew at a real annual rate of 1.7 percent, implying a price of $140 per barrel of oil in 2040—about the same price that was reached in 2008 but not sustained for any length of time. A fleet of nuclear LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ships would become cost-effective at real annual growth rate of 4.7 percent, or a price in 2040 of $323 per barrel.
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Aug 8, 2017 06:15
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It is probably indicative that theory-crafting a promising American nuclear-power future is requiring a total revamping of the industry. I think that as much as nuclear power is a wonderful technology that could do a lot of good for the United States, realistically I think that the scale of the projects are increasingly prohibitive for our country to take on, given the level of increasing dysfunction. Sure it's quite possible for the country to resolve many of these systemic issues, but I don't think that anyone is anticipating that we actually will. We increasingly struggle to complete large projects, with our political, industrial, and social forces increasingly divided and resistant to change. Massive, complicated investment projects that take decades to complete have always been challenging, but it's objectively more difficult now than it was in the mid-20th century.. With that in mind, I think it's probably best that we focus on more achievable green energy projects, with the hope that Europe and Asia will take the lead on nuclear power and develop the technology in ways that we can eventually take advantage of.
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Aug 8, 2017 20:07
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Kaal posted:It is probably indicative that theory-crafting a promising American nuclear-power future is requiring a total revamping of the industry. I think that as much as nuclear power is a wonderful technology that could do a lot of good for the United States, realistically I think that the scale of the projects are increasingly prohibitive for our country to take on, given the level of increasing dysfunction. Sure it's quite possible for the country to resolve many of these systemic issues, but I don't think that anyone is anticipating that we actually will. We increasingly struggle to complete large projects, with our political, industrial, and social forces increasingly divided and resistant to change. Massive, complicated investment projects that take decades to complete have always been challenging, but it's objectively more difficult now than it was in the mid-20th century.. With that in mind, I think it's probably best that we focus on more achievable green energy projects, with the hope that Europe and Asia will take the lead on nuclear power and develop the technology in ways that we can eventually take advantage of. So, since climate change isn't quite enough to put the US in crisis mode and make politicians prioritise national-level effectiveness over pork barrel spending and NIMBY concerns, we need to hope that China/India/Russia will get powerful enough to shake things up a bit and scare America into doing things again. Good thing climate change is predicted to make the world politically unstable then!  (or America could just buy monkey model VVERs and/or BNs from Rosatom)
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Aug 8, 2017 22:27
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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I'm all for huge investment in Thorium Breeders, and fuel reprocessing.
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Aug 8, 2017 22:42
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M_Gargantua posted:What major differences would you care to cite that would make a civilian reactor more expensive? The physics don't change. The chemistry doesn't change. Building bigger pipes and bigger pressure vessels is a well known, practical engineering problem. The issue of size is enormous. It's simply a vastly different scale. A civilian plant is about a gigawatt, a submarine plant is maybe a fifth of that. The turbines on a submarine are not designed to generate huge amounts of electricity, they are designed to turn reduction gears to turn a shaft. A naval plant does not need to worry about keeping its electrical output synchronized to an external grid. A naval plant does not need to worry about an external source of power to operate. Yes, all that is a well-known, practical engineering problem. Is is also a *different* engineering problem than the Navy concerns itself with. A civilian plant has an entirely different kind of core geometry, an entirely different scheme for moderation, an entirely different set of plumbing, an entirely different set of control laws and hardware to embody those laws, and has to play well with the grid. In other words, any civilian plant will of necessity be radically different in every aspect of its design from a naval reactor. You go on to list a bunch of other things that make civilian and naval plants different, and thereby conclude that the Navy would be really good at civilian plants. This is kind of baffling. quote:-A navy reactor is made with beggeringly expensive HEU. Using commercial grade fuel is much much cheaper. The cost of the reactor does benefit from the fact that the core never needs to be refueled. Lump sum up front, rather than the continuing cost of refueling. It's...not really something you can just switch back and forth. You made a similar comment earlier: quote:You don't need an HEU core to utilize the process's developed by the Naval Nuclear Lab. HEU just means the core can be pint sized for the power + endurance. Again, this is exactly my point: a history of designing and constructing pint-sized cores free of NRC oversight and interference does not mean you're necessarily good at designing and constructing civilian power plants. If you put LEU fuel in a naval reactor, you probably couldn't get a sustained chain reaction even with the control rods physically removed from the submarine. Conversely if you put naval fuel in a civilian plant, it's probably going to disassemble itself in short order. quote:Except GE is a corporation and they don't have the best track record. The Navy is actively operating, around the clock, more Wattage than anyone else. You can pretty safely let the certification process that exists handle it. Except you can't, because the *NRC governs civilian power plants*. The NNL is an entirely different path. Also, I'm dubious about "more wattage than anyone else," but that's a quibble. quote:The best way I can put this is that the level of design quality already present in naval designs effectively pass muster for all civilian applications. You can add whatever bits you need in the design phase to makeup for whichever shortcomings the safety engineers worry about. And once the risk assessment is set, you can have NR and the NRC sign off on the program, independent of civilian regulatory ratcheting and licencing cost bullshit. Except again, you can't. Your whole argument is that if you have the Navy do it, then suddenly the NRC stops being an obstacle. But it wouldn't stop being an obstacle. There are two options here: 1. The regulatory environment for civilian power plants as embodied by the NRC is good and well-thought out and those regulations serve a useful and crucial purpose. In this case, saying "let the NNL do it" in no way obviates the role that the NRC would have to play. 2. The regulatory environment for civilian power plants as embodied by the NRC is ridiculous overkill and should be streamlined and simplified. In this case, *that's* the cornerstone of your plan and that's what you need to change. If you're saying abandon the NRC and replace it with the NNL process, adapted for civilian plants, I'd think that's worth looking into. But without getting the NRC out of the game I don't see what it buys you. QuarkJets posted:B) You say that commercial experts definitely aren't just bumbling along but then your links cite "licensing problems", "project management problems", and "mis-estimation of costs" as explaining why nuclear power plants tripled in cost by the 1970s. At least the first two seem like they're strongly correlated with having bumbling staff, and that's supported by the third "Licensing problems" include all kinds of things that are out of the control of the applicant. As for project management and misestimation of cost, again: if anyone thinks the *Navy* has a better handle on those things than anything else, it's laughable. Military project management in this country is hosed across the board, it's a nightmare of inefficiency and waste. It literally has no idea how much it's even spending on things; DFAS literally just plugs random numbers in to spreadsheets to make things look reasonable. quote:Also, can you back up your assertion that diesel ships are less expensive (including refueling costs) with numbers? I'm genuinely curious https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-08/revisiting-nuclear-option#footnotes quote:When the Aegis combat system came on line, a massive nuclear-powered strike cruiser was envisioned to field it, but its high cost estimates led decision makers to the fossil-fueled Spruance hull, creating what would become the Ticonderoga class. 2 A lack of committed production runs kept the CGN prices high as the Aegis revolution happened without the participation of nuclear power. The last of the CGNs, the USS Arkansas (CGN-41), was commissioned in 1980. Current price of oil is under $47/bbl in 2011 dollars. Which is even cheaper than it was in the mid-1980s. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 23:26
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Trabisnikof posted:Re: new nuclear navy: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454 Phanatic posted:https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-08/revisiting-nuclear-option#footnotes Thanks for the info both of you.
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Aug 9, 2017 08:55
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http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2017/08/07/460325.htmquote:A federal judge on Friday ordered the nation’s largest public utility to dig up its coal ash at a Tennessee power plant and move it to a lined waste site where it doesn’t risk further polluting the Cumberland River.
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Aug 9, 2017 16:24
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blowfish posted:So, since climate change isn't quite enough to put the US in crisis mode and make politicians prioritise national-level effectiveness over pork barrel spending and NIMBY concerns, we need to hope that China/India/Russia will get powerful enough to shake things up a bit and scare America into doing things again. Good thing climate change is predicted to make the world politically unstable then! More that America is constantly in a crisis-mode these days, which means that big projects and big changes are incredibly difficult. We're barely managing to keep our bridges repaired. There's widespread opposition to nuclear power at multiple levels, and major government projects of any kind are increasingly under threat. These projects take at least a decade to go from concept to completion, and in the US it takes significantly longer. The idea that we're going to silver bullet this by changing the base design kind of misses the point. The designs aren't the issue, it's the political, regulatory, commercial, and social obstacles that are truly standing in the way. And they aren't likely to be easily resolved. Don't get me wrong, nuclear is great and would be the best way forward if our country was more functional. But given the scale of our energy and climate problems, it is imperative that we pursue more achievable solutions. Smaller green energy projects with less opposition and a more diverse array of viable operators are the way to go forward. Maybe that is microplants and other forms of scalar nuclear power, but more realistically it's wind and solar.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:54
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I had solar panels installed last year and my power bill is now $9 a month, which is the minimum that my power company will allow to be connected to the grid. I think I have enough surplus credits to keep the thermostat at 58F until fall. My poo poo Republican state is going to push legislation through that would make solar not worth it for most people. That's my energy generation story, thanks for reading.
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Aug 10, 2017 06:25
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Bread Zeppelin posted:I had solar panels installed last year and my power bill is now $9 a month, which is the minimum that my power company will allow to be connected to the grid. I think I have enough surplus credits to keep the thermostat at 58F until fall. My poo poo Republican state is going to push legislation through that would make solar not worth it for most people. If you ever needed proof that human people are not the Republican constituency.
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Aug 10, 2017 13:18
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Arglebargle III posted:If you ever needed proof that human people are not the Republican constituency. Liberal political organizations have been slow to respond to this oil industry talking point, and it's been spreading like wildfire in Republican states that are hostile to environmentalism. There's a real need to develop the idea that home solar represents a direct investment in the community energy grid, which reduces costs for everyone by expanding the generation base and increasing line efficiency. Investment in home solar reduces the need for costly infrastructure expansion that has to be paid for via bank loans and rate increases. These rooftop projects also help develop the local economy by employing local small businesses, as opposed to large out-of-state corporations that build and fuel the oil and gas plants. Conversely, as I'm sure everyone here recognizes, implementing a mandatory usage subsidy only increases wasteful power usage and drives the need for increased infrastructure spending. It's similar to how a utility-free renter will run the hose and air conditioning all the time: if you artificially disrupt supply and demand then someone else ends up picking up their tab. This fiscal viewpoint isn't being advocated sufficiently, particularly in conservative areas that are more interested in the bottom-line than climate concerns. Kaal fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 14:32
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Kaal posted:There's a real need to develop the idea that home solar represents a direct investment in the community energy grid, which reduces costs for everyone by expanding the generation base and increasing line efficiency. Investment in home solar reduces the need for costly infrastructure expansion that has to be paid for via bank loans and rate increases. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere between this idea, getting people to actually curb their usage, and developing utility level energy storage. Bread Zeppelin posted:I had solar panels installed last year and my power bill is now $9 a month, which is the minimum that my power company will allow to be connected to the grid. I think I have enough surplus credits to keep the thermostat at 58F until fall. My poo poo Republican state is going to push legislation through that would make solar not worth it for most people. I'm going to guess that your utility company is crediting you for the KWh that you're generating, at the same rate that you purchase it from them when you're not generating. What other business that you deal with is willing to constantly buy something from you at zero profit, and for how long do you think this situation is tenable?
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Aug 10, 2017 14:53
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angryrobots posted:I am not an engineer, but I have listened to a lot of presentations by engineers in the power distribution industry who would argue against every point here. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere between this idea, getting people to actually curb their usage, and developing utility level energy storage. I'd be happy to hear more about those concerns, if you're able to find those kinds of presentations and relate them to us. I certainly agree that finding ways to further reduce consumption and develop methods of energy storage are critically important for our energy future. I know that the energy industry has been surprised by the impact of rapid improvements in energy efficiency, which has reduced the need for new power plants (and the profit opportunities that go with such construction). There is a delicate realignment going on there, which is also being affected by the other technological changes that have been changing the industry over the last couple decades. Energy storage is another area where there are a variety of options for positive change. Utility-level storage (in the form of water storage dams, high-efficiency batteries, or other methods of energy retention) is going be very important, but local storage is another promising avenue. Hybrid/Electric cars in particular offer a huge opportunity for efficient, market-based energy storage. In many ways, line smoothing will require innovative ways of not only reducing demand at need, but also increasing it. quote:I'm going to guess that your utility company is crediting you for the KWh that you're generating, at the same rate that you purchase it from them when you're not generating. What other business that you deal with is willing to constantly buy something from you at zero profit, and for how long do you think this situation is tenable? But the utility takes that power and sells it to someone else, right? So it's not really zero profit at all. By taking on local power generation, home solar actually reduces production costs for the utility - participating in the public good and driving down rates by increasing overall supply and reducing the demand on the utility. Home solar projects are a net benefit to everyone on the electric grid, including the utility. Each installation represents, in the final sense, a reduced need for costly infrastructure bonds and rate increases. Kaal fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 15:12
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How do you put energy back into the grid without a powerplant sized transformer?
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Aug 10, 2017 15:26
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