|
Phanatic posted:"Cost" isn't necessarily about "profit." In the US case, its pretty much all about profit. If they wanted to they could easily scale up training and resources. The US is willing to dump nearly endless resources into "profitable" Fossil Fuel industry ventures through lobbying, and thanks to a lack of regulation and oversight, companies can keep their money. Nuclear isn't expensive in that its too much to build, its expensive in that companies don't want to be responsible for actually following regulations and oversight. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Aug 22, 2020 |
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 16:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 04:11 |
|
|
CommieGIR posted:In the US case, its pretty much all about profit. If they wanted to they could easily scale up training and resources. The US is willing to dump nearly endless resources into "profitable" Fossil Fuel industry ventures through lobbying, and thanks to a lack of regulation and oversight, companies can keep their money. Nuclear shouldn't be privately operated, period.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 16:47
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Nuclear shouldn't be privately operated, period. Agreed. But the argument that always comes up against Government owned and run Nuclear is "How can for-profits compete?!?!"
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 16:49
|
|
|
They don't, and they shouldn't. Only a massive national program for energy generation can cope with the challenges ahead. And even then...just barely.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 16:51
|
|
|
Dante80 posted:They don't, and they shouldn't. Only a massive national program for energy generation can cope with the challenges ahead. And even then...just barely. Again, very much agreed. We need a Manhattan project style response to climate change. But its going to take the wealthy really feeling the impact to make that happen, and even then, most will ignore it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 16:54
|
|
|
I wish we had like a nuclear/grid version of the strategic petroleum reserve. Whats the sunk capital and opex cost there?
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 16:55
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:In the US case, its pretty much all about profit. If they wanted to they could easily scale up training and resources. The US is willing to dump nearly endless resources into "profitable" Fossil Fuel industry ventures through lobbying, and thanks to a lack of regulation and oversight, companies can keep their money. I disagree that what is preventing the US from converting to nuclear by 2035 is profit for the point I was alluding to earlier and simplified by Phantic - China is not afraid to spend the environment, money or lives on nuclear and they have scaled back their plans due to their lack of ability to scale - it is not a case of well the US just should just pay everyone willing to be a nuclear worker 1 million dollars each a year and then we will have all the suitably trained and experienced nuclear architects, welders, auditors, operators and maintainers we need in the next five years. The original US and French nuclear industries cost a bomb to set up over decades and come at the cost of lives harmed and sites environmentally wrecked in ways not tolerable now. The institutional knowledge that completed the build outs are mostly retired or deceased now so you are not starting from 1980 we just finished 50 reactors lets keep going but from 2020 we just finished one reactor lets think how to build hundreds more. When you see the word "cost" when it comes to problems the scale of climate change - think in terms of lives, culture and environment - not dollars, cents and profit. You want a centralized all powerful and effective unlimited budget solution well then you give Curtis LeMay the orders to increase the use of nuclear and by golly he will achieve it but at what cost? None of this is to say that I think the US couldn't or shouldn't go hard in on nuclear - it will take many solutions to the problem and I strongly believe nuclear is a big part of the long term answer (along with renewables and storage). Just that the environmental agitation against nuclear was very effective and is going to take the industry decades to spin back up.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 17:27
|
|
|
Anything that isn't solar or wind gets laughed at by a certain, fairly significant, segment of the environmentalist population. Large scale nuclear isn't going to happen until that changes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 17:48
|
|
|
ilkhan posted:Anything that isn't solar or wind gets laughed at by a certain, fairly significant, segment of the environmentalist population. Large scale nuclear isn't going to happen until that changes. Sure, but at the end of the day there is no other way. You need about 30-35% to come from nuclear and hydro if you want to remove fossil fuels completely from energy production. Massively scaling up solar and wind should be a given, but you can only get so far.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 17:54
|
|
|
I think France is the best example of what is possible. Nuclear power in France quote:in the 1950s a civil nuclear research program was started I haven't about heard about significant damages caused by the nuclear program in France, and the list of accidents doesn't seem unreasonable.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 18:00
|
|
|
Saukkis posted:I haven't about heard about significant damages caused by the nuclear program in France, and the list of accidents doesn't seem unreasonable. France has other problems (river water temperature is one of them). Which is why it is scaling up renewables now while essentially pausing almost everything nuclear going forward (will move from 75% nuclear to under 50% in the following decades). Dante80 fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Aug 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 18:07
|
|
|
The new reactor designs have impressive passive safety features, but then you see things like 30% of Americans wouldn't take a coronavirus vaccine despite the pandemic and I'm not sure you could ever get a lot of new plants built no matter how much you tried to educate the public. But now that we actually have experience building them again, it'd be a good time to build another one or two, then three or four, etc, as we get better.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 18:14
|
|
|
ilkhan posted:Anything that isn't solar or wind gets laughed at by a certain, fairly significant, segment of the environmentalist population. Large scale nuclear isn't going to happen until that changes. Environmentalists have nothing to do with why we’ve been shutting down old nuke plants and failing to build new plants in the US. It is entirely because operators don’t want to invest in complex and expensive projects that can easily be ruined by any single company in the supply chain cutting corners. SONGS and Crystal River are great examples of that. Even when we have pre-permitted sites they still cost overrun by billions because that’s capitalism baby, the bigger the project the more profit must be milked.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 18:53
|
|
|
Environmentalists absolutely do throw a shitfit whenever people suggest nuclear power though, you can look at Europe and it's complete abandonment of it in Germany and instead moving to mass fossil fuels to compensate for it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 19:10
|
|
|
ChaseSP posted:Environmentalists absolutely do throw a shitfit whenever people suggest nuclear power though, you can look at Europe and it's complete abandonment of it in Germany and instead moving to mass fossil fuels to compensate for it. And now the Natural Gas lobby is going hard on Natural Gas as a "Green" Energy. Electric Wrigglies posted:I disagree that what is preventing the US from converting to nuclear by 2035 is profit for the point I was alluding to earlier and simplified by Phantic - China is not afraid to spend the environment, money or lives on nuclear and they have scaled back their plans due to their lack of ability to scale - it is not a case of well the US just should just pay everyone willing to be a nuclear worker 1 million dollars each a year and then we will have all the suitably trained and experienced nuclear architects, welders, auditors, operators and maintainers we need in the next five years. The original US and French nuclear industries cost a bomb to set up over decades and come at the cost of lives harmed and sites environmentally wrecked in ways not tolerable now. The institutional knowledge that completed the build outs are mostly retired or deceased now so you are not starting from 1980 we just finished 50 reactors lets keep going but from 2020 we just finished one reactor lets think how to build hundreds more. China is still constructing 12 right now to add to their portfolio, with another half dozen scheduled to start construction. And c'mon, LeMay, really? The cost is already going to be paid in lives: Global Warming is going to come with a cost in bodies. LeMay is a poor example. Groves was the leader of the Manhattan project, he's a far better example for Government leadership of a massive civilian effort. The Environmental impact is ALREADY being paid for NOT doing it, go take a glimpse at the ever growing wildfires in California. The cultural impact is going to be significant, but its not going to be Nuclear doing it, its going to be Global Warming And the Institutional knowledge didn't disappear: Nuclear engineering is still a significant field, with huge representation in the US Laboratory system. That knowledge didn't disappear, it was passed on, and is strictly tested via NRC licensing and training. We do not live in a society where knowledge is passed on by word of mouth only. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Aug 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 19:45
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Nuclear shouldn't be privately operated, period. Speaking as a federal civilian employee, nuclear shouldn’t be publicly operated, either. loving government managers can’t operate their way out of a wet paper bag.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:Speaking as a federal civilian employee, nuclear shouldn’t be publicly operated, either. Still better than privately operated.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 19:56
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Still better than privately operated. What are you basing that on? Because it's sure not by a count of melted-down cores. CommieGIR posted:Nuclear isn't expensive in that its too much to build, its expensive in that companies don't want to be responsible for actually following regulations and oversight. This is crazy. I've quoted this before in this thread, and I'm gonna do it again. http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html quote:Several large nuclear power plants were completed in the early 1970s at a typical cost of $170 million, whereas plants of the same size completed in 1983 cost an average of $1.7 billion, a 10-fold increase. Some plants completed in the late 1980s have cost as much as $5 billion, 30 times what they cost 15 years earlier. Inflation, of course, has played a role, but the consumer price index increased only by a factor of 2.2 between 1973 and 1983, and by just 18% from 1983 to 1988. What caused the remaining large increase? You can be as socialist as you like and you're still not going to make the opportunity costs of making nuclear power plants cost 4 times as much go away. That's what I meant when I said to not confuse costs with being concerned with profit. Dante80 posted:Sure, but at the end of the day there is no other way. Yes, but at the end of the day it is precisely that claim that gets laughed at by a certain, fairly significant, segment of the environmentalist population. Because they don't actually understand physics or economics, they just like the smell of their own farts. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 21:45
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:What are you basing that on? Because it's sure not by a count of melted-down cores. LMAO, this is a loving lovely take. Are we counting all the ones they purposefully melted down or the DOD projects that were run without oversight by contractors? Phanatic posted:This is crazy. I've quoted this before in this thread, and I'm gonna do it again. We do NOT have a choice. And that time is running out fast. We are not getting out of the sheer destruction we've caused over 100 years of Industrialization and Emissions by being cheap and citing numbers. Its going to be expensive to fight Global Warming. Just how much is the future worth to you?
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2020 21:58
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:And now the Natural Gas lobby is going hard on Natural Gas as a "Green" Energy. 12 under construction is not even close to going to cut it to change all US construction away from carbon emission by 2035 and anther half dozen is scheduled to start does not sound like getting towards the multiples of 12 that are needed. The reason the Chinese are not going faster is not lack of money or lack of willingness to harm communities or the environment or even lack of centralized control - it is simply not feasible for the size of their industry and the Chinese nuclear construction industry is significantly larger and more mature (as a whole) than the US industry. You just plainly don't understand the importance of institutional knowledge when it comes to complex systems and large organizational skills. The Chinese do and consequently have only sized their (by US standards) large build out to not be close to replacing fossil fuel anytime soon. LeMay was chosen specifically because of course you don't want LeMay, but with a centralized all eggs in one basket organization that you propose, a very possible outcome is that the leadership chosen is not suitable but will not be able to be changed without wrecking the schedule. Manhatten was allowed to bop along like it did because there was no pressure on the Manhattan project as far as ending the war. They had the luxury of working in secret with just scientists doing scientist things with a large budget at their own pace with the possibility of it all being for naught or maybe unveiling an awesome new weapon. LeMay had pressure to be constantly and at whatever cost to be working towards ending the war with no option of being for naught and consequently his actions had a lot more collateral damage associated with it than Manhatten. Lemay was publicly solving large world political problems as they evolved within the realms of technical possibility, Manhattan was secretly solving technical ones in the fullness of time. Out of the two, Lemay is the fellow that would win the interview process for leading the US organistion for massive application of nuclear power in the US nearly every time. Again, I will restate that I believe the US should go hard in on nuclear (along with other methods concurrently) but that even if it was a cultural revolution great leap forward, the US is not capable of scaling nuclear to the extent you believe possible.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2020 10:01
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:LMAO, this is a loving lovely take. Are we counting all the ones they purposefully melted down or the DOD projects that were run without oversight by contractors? Neither! Because, you know, governments don't have a profit motive, so obviously safety and efficiency are goals they can pursue unimpeded by all these temporal concerns with profit. quote:We do NOT have a choice. And that time is running out fast. We are not getting out of the sheer destruction we've caused over 100 years of Industrialization and Emissions by being cheap and citing numbers. Ah, yes, "gently caress the evidence." Look at it this way: all that expensive regulation is, in Cohen's words, "the political expression of difficulties with public acceptance." The NRC licensing process looks the way it does, plants take as long to build as they do, mainly to appease people who are poo poo-scared of nuclear power. We have effectively driven the price of it so high because *people do not want it*. Yes, they're dumb for not wanting it, there's no reason for them not to want it, yes we need it, but the fact remains they do not want it. What do you propose we do about that? Keeping in mind that this is still at least titularly a democracy where the government is supposed to pay some heed to the desires of the electorate. Because if your solution is something along the lines of "Well if we just nationalized the industry we wouldn't have to follow all those regulations we've placed upon private industry (you know, the ones you just attacked private industry for not wanting to be responsible for complying with) and could just build plants without all the fooferaw," I've got some bad news for you: you can chant "We do NOT have a choice" until you turn blue in the face but that isn't going to make the citizenry okay with what you want to do.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2020 15:13
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:Neither! Because, you know, governments don't have a profit motive, so obviously safety and efficiency are goals they can pursue unimpeded by all these temporal concerns with profit. Something being against the will of the majority has never stopped us before. See: *gestures vaguely at everything*
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2020 15:35
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:Neither! Because, you know, governments don't have a profit motive, so obviously safety and efficiency are goals they can pursue unimpeded by all these temporal concerns with profit. There are loads of areas of public policy which do not align with a straight up opinion poll of "do you want X". Changing nuclear power regulations to include a "NIMBYs eat poo poo" section and be easier to comply with while still ensuring nuclear is several times less deadly per MWh than every other widely used form of electricity generation would hardly be unprecedented in terms of government action.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2020 16:13
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
Phanatic posted:Neither! Because, you know, governments don't have a profit motive, so obviously safety and efficiency are goals they can pursue unimpeded by all these temporal concerns with profit. Nationalized does not mean unregulated. Thats never been loving true. We didnt want Trump and we got him. I'm sure people will find a way to tolerate not dying from famine/heat exhaustion. When it comes to energy, especially petroleum we seem very capable of ignoring and overriding nimbyism. Its practically an American cornerstone of policy. If the French can build out nuclear infrastructure in 15 years, you have practically no excuse for the US not being able to do it. Phanatic posted:Ah, yes, "gently caress the evidence." Exactly what evidence did you present? I presented the fact that we have less than 30 years before we really start feeling the impact of Global Warming, and that timeline keeps accelerating, not decelerating. You better come up with a better response than "NIMBYs will never accept it" because that's a load of poo poo in the US, the US Government LOVES telling NIMBYs to gently caress off all the time to protect its own interests. TVA and the Manhattan Project, again, good examples. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Aug 23, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2020 16:39
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Nationalized does not mean unregulated. Thats never been loving true. So your point is to literally keep all the regulations in place that have ratcheted up the cost of nuclear power plants to where they are today, and just change the ownership of the plants? What problem do you think that will solve, exactly? quote:Exactly what evidence did you present? It's right there on the page, dude. Do I really need to quote it again? Look, we are in full agreement that a significant buildout of nuclear power is part of any meaningful addressing of global warming. And further we agree that this probably requires government intervention! But if it's the same Federal regulators that have managed to increase the time required to build a plant, and the cost to build a plant, by a significant multiplier, that you are relying on to make building plants fast and inexpensive by the simple expedient of keeping the same regulatory environment and waving a magic wand called "nationalizing nuclear power," I think I see some problems with your plan. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Aug 23, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2020 17:56
|
|
|
hey remember NuScale, the poster-child for the "Small Modular Reactor" concept that was going to use assembly line manufacturing and low-enriched fuel to break through the cost and saftey barriers? yea thats over now https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluor-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-project/ quote:The Fluor/Nuscale scheme to finance the development of this reactor by enlisting many small municipal utilities to subscribe to the power is only about 30% subscribed, and two municipalities recently dropped out while one new one opted in.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 15:35
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:So your point is to literally keep all the regulations in place that have ratcheted up the cost of nuclear power plants to where they are today, and just change the ownership of the plants? The cost incurred by the effects of global warming will be many orders of magnitude greater than even the cost of going to a global grid that is 100% powered by nuclear power plants, and even if we tripled the regulatory cost of every new plant going from this point forward, and even if we replaced literally every old nuclear power plant with a new one. So the problem is that the free market is unable to internalize these massive forthcoming global-scale costs; that's not something that free markets have ever really been able to do, and nobody really expects them to. The return on investment may not be seen for decades and would largely not be reaped by the owner of the nuclear power plants but by society itself benefiting from less fallout caused by global warming. Thus, the task should fall to governments, who in the past have done exactly this kind of thing to significant and great effect, who are able to overcome the limits of the free market, and who typically operate on the much longer time scales that are required to tackle a problem as large and as far-reaching as global warming.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 21:02
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:The cost incurred by the effects of global warming will be many orders of magnitude greater than even the cost of going to a global grid that is 100% powered by nuclear power plants, and even if we tripled the regulatory cost of every new plant going from this point forward, and even if we replaced literally every old nuclear power plant with a new one.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 22:06
|
|
|
Without money and focus, time will be squandered and expertise won't materialise. With money and focus, time and expertise are both solvable variables. Use standardised designs, stagger the builds and rotate expertise in at each site as needed, both to perform the work and teach others, so production can be scaled. A lot of regulatory bullshit goes into site-specific approvals. That can be minimised with standard designs. Consider BWR's for district heating, refurbish and upgrade hydro plants/dams so they support pumped storage where possible, the list goes on. But first of all: tell the NIMBY's to gently caress off.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 23:22
|
|
|
Pumped storage is nice where possible but the environmental impact can be insane.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 23:32
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Pumped storage is nice where possible but the environmental impact can be insane. Yeah, it's not my first choice. But a lot of hydro can be regulated quite well, and that gets you a lot of the way there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 23:36
|
|
|
Wibla posted:Yeah, it's not my first choice. But a lot of hydro can be regulated quite well, and that gets you a lot of the way there. True. TVA has done an OK job balancing conservation and water management
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2020 23:39
|
|
|
The problem is all the easy pumped hydro locations are already in use. We really shouldn't rule it out however.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 00:35
|
|
|
Exelon just announced that they are going to shut down two nuclear stations in Northern Illinois at the end of next year. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200827005445/en/Exelon-Generation-Retire-Illinois%92-Byron-Dresden-Nuclear It’s part posturing, but for Dresden, was likely going to happen soon regardless. The Dresden units are getting kinda old. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some funds to support Byron, as that station was completed in the 80s, and is certified to run longer. If the State and/or PJM call Exelon’s bluff and both those stations get shut down, the summer of 2022 could get interesting with 4,000 MW missing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 14:50
|
|
|
Hey California is down 5,000MW of gas generation and everything has been perfect
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 17:58
|
|
|
New nukes are always going to be hard politically, but Trump putting the knife into the travelling wave reactor demonstration plant with China was a complete clusterfuck.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2020 03:39
|
|
|
Nuscale seems to be lurching along despite recent setbacks: https://twitter.com/nuclearkatie/status/1299413398195785740?s=20 Beffer posted:New nukes are always going to be hard politically, but Trump putting the knife into the travelling wave reactor demonstration plant with China was a complete clusterfuck. I'm really hoping that we get an in country demo of a TWR, it would change the game re: Nuclear Waste recycling.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2020 20:04
|
|
|
its not modular anymore now though, its just small
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2020 23:05
|
|
|
MightyBigMinus posted:its not modular anymore now though, its just small No, its still modular, the core design is designed around the core being able to be removed and refurbished offsite. I haven't seen any changes there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2020 00:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 04:11 |
|
|
This presentation seems relevant. The economics of the Micro modular Reactors he’s describing don’t seem great. Only competitive with diesel generators. https://youtu.be/7gtog_gOaGQ
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2020 01:26
|
|