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Eregos posted:These guys went out of their way to comment and explain this to the EPA, Hopefully if there was a mistake made that helped correct it. Yeah, those poor grad students filing official comments with the EPA.  (That's pretty much resume building poo poo for them.)The Brookings Institute reads the potential rule the other way, benefiting nuclear: quote:The EPA estimates that 5.8% of the current nuclear power fleet is “at risk” of being retired between now and 2030. To encourage states not to close these plants, EPA includes this 5.8% as part of the denominator of the formula, allowing states that choose to keep nuclear plants open to be credited for maintaining this zero-emissions power source. That means that states with nuclear plants but no plans to retire them are essentially treated as already having made progress. The EPA adds megawatt hours reflecting 5.8% of a state’s nuclear fleet, along with any megawatt hours for under construction nuclear plants, to the denominator of the formula, resulting in the following version of the formula, where the subscript AR means nuclear generation at risk and UC means nuclear generation under construction. Remember, new nuclear power plants still count 100% so can't have a negative impact on building new plants.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:50
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CommieGIR posted:The problem being that cheap solutions such as natural gas are offsetting any desire to build new Gen III plants outside of the one TVA is building, and Fukushima induced fear mongering is taking care of the rest. If you take a look at the EPA's documents you'll find that even the 2030 target goals on a co2/kwh basis are above the average emissions of a new combined cycle gas plant, coal sucks that bad. You're correct there is only 1 Gen III plant under construction but there are also 4 Gen III+ plants (AP1000) under construction in the US too.
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Dec 2, 2014 18:55
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Elotana posted:This makes no sense. If you're predicting 5.8% of the nuclear fleet to be "at risk" of retirement, then surely the correct coefficient for the denominator is 94.2%. MWh not at risk it should be treated the same as the under-construction plants. The goal is reducing emissions so getting credit for existing nuclear plants is a bonus to keep them online. How do existing nuclear plants help reduce emissions from the status quo in the same way as a new plant would? CommieGIR posted:Most of the construction permits are being dragged out to ensure that they never happen. Not for those 5 plants under construction: Watts Bar 2: on schedule as of Nov 2014 (http://www.tva.gov/power/nuclear/pdf/wb2_9th-q_summary_nov2014.pdf) Vogtle 3 & 4: under construction, building main containment building as of Nov 2014 (http://www.southerncompany.com/what-doing/energy-innovation/nuclear-energy/gallery/new/) V.C. Summers 1 & 2: under construction, delayed 1-2 years due to fabrication issues (http://www.scana.com/NR/rdonlyres/CC6965BC-FFE3-4080-914C-1BFFE858EFE7/0/BLRA3Q2014.pdf) You might be confusing the proposed plants with these 5 that actually are being built.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:44
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CommieGIR posted:Possibly, but I knew me and my Physics professor were looking over the proposals that are currently stuck in court. Agreed that there are more far more proposals than the 5 under construction, but there are 5 under construction. Also, to the issue of storage, the NRC just finalized the rule-making response to the court case, which will remove that specific blocking point: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2014/07/24/waste-confidence-final-rule-now-before-the-commission/ If you want the finalized rule it is here: http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/wcd/documents.html Surprisingly wikipedia isn't up to date.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:49
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Elotana posted:Either I'm missing something here or you are. The Brookings Institute says that the purpose of the coefficient is to give them extra credit, but that's not what I see when I do the math. The goals are calculated using current emissions mixes as a baseline. Coal and natgas are in the denominator of the goal mix at 100% (+/- the redispatch coefficient, but that will skew things even farther towards natgas). Nuclear is the only technology given special treatment in the denominator. I think you're missing the point of this whole formula, which is to calculate the emissions level not to evaluate it. This forumula is how the EPA decides what emissions reductions are possible, not how they evaluate future emissions. Here's another report from Brattle consulting that goes into the details of the process here: quote:The EPA uses a formulaic approach to estimate the emission reduction achievable by each state from the four building blocks. In Figure 2, we illustrate the formula for calculating the emissions standard and the relative impact of the building blocks on an aggregate national basis.6 The starting point for the calculation is the average 2012 emissions rate of all fossil-fired EGUs, expressed as their aggregate CO2 output divided by their aggregate generation in MWh. We then apply EPA’s assumed impact of each of the building blocks sequentially to arrive at the national proposed EGU CO2 emissions standard for 2030. The first two building blocks, improving coal plant efficiency and re-dispatching away from coal toward gas, reduce the emissions rate by reducing the quantity of CO2 in the rate numerator.  The baseline is fossil fuel emissions currently, which nuclear is credited as reducing by 5.8% of total generation just because they could turn off the borderline nukes and we'd have to replace them with fossil fuels. Nuclear power plants aren't actually reducing current fossil fuel emissions at all of course, but they get a credit because keeping boardline plants on would prevent the need for more fossil fuel use. If a state offlined nukes and onlined fossil fuel plants to replace them, they'd still have to meet the baseline of current fossil fuel emissions not a baseline based on future emissions. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 21:22
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Elotana posted:And since the baseline is lbs/MWh rather than just lbs, a state with a currently high mix of coal can do just that by replacing the nuclear with natgas.  uh no, they can't? Replacing nuclear with natgas would increase lbs/MWh of fossil fuel emissions and they'd have to makeup the increased emissions from the natgas elsewhere. Replacing coal with natgas works perfectly fine to meet these goals however. Edit: Even the Nuclear Energy Institute doesn't think the rule will do what this thread is about, instead they just think the rule doesn't help nuclear enough: http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Despite-Intent,-EPA-Climate-Rule-Methodology-Wrong I do get the complaint about the at-risk % not being calculated at a state level and also the complaint about under-construction counting at all although I still think this is much ado about nothing from the nuclear industry. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 21:34
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Elotana posted:No, it would increase lbs/MWh of overall emissions. The fossil fuel emissions would go down in terms of lbs/MWh. And neither are being calculated by this goal formula, per your own second source: Ah I think I've determined the disconnect. The calculation is for [lbs of emissions from fossil fuels]/[total MWh]. It is a wonky measure to be sure but is why you can't just replace nuclear plants with natgas plants and have the formula work. Elotana posted:Why is only nuclear reduced by "new or at-risk?" The denominator only counts MWh from new nuke plants or plants unexpectedly kept online. That is, if a nuke plant already exists, and we expect it to still exist in 2030, it doesn't get counted. But it counts every MWh for fossils, and for non-hydro renewables. If a wind farm exists, and we expect it to still exist in 2030, why does it get credit in the denominator but a nuke plant doesn't? Check out that Brattle chart it helps explain the difference in the way fossil fuels and everything else is being calculated. Fossil fuels are in the denominator as a positive while at-risk current nuclear, current non-hydro renewables, etc are negatives. Since current nuclear isn't actually reducing future fossil fuel use the at risk nuclear plants are factored in as a potential future need for fossil fuels that can be avoided. Notice that the NEI didn't argue that the % should be increased to 100%, instead they argued that the EPA should convince/force states to agree to keep plants online. The 5.8% is actually a boon to nuclear operators, even if it isn't everything they wanted.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:13
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