
America's newest nuclear plant shows why nuclear power is dying in the U.S - adventured
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-america-s-newest-nuke-plant-20151011-column.html
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helper
This is my favorite book on the state of atomic energy:
[http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-
Disasters-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-
Mountains/dp/1605986801). The book looks at the history of atomic accidents
from an engineering perspective right up to Fukushima. The author is a nuclear
engineer and understands the systems he talks about.

Interestingly I came away from a book about atomic disasters being pretty pro
nuclear, at least more so than I was before reading the book. Here are my main
take aways:

\- The US needs to start back up the waste reprocessing program. Jimmy Carter
banned this in the hopes of setting a good example for other countries (one of
the byproducts being plutonium). But everyone else continues to process
nuclear waste except for the US and it just makes the waste storage problem
that much harder. 95% of the fuel that comes out of a rector is harmless
U-238. We should only be burying a tiny fraction of what we currently bury.

\- We need to start innovating beyond PWR and BWR reactors. Things like liquid
metal fuel reactors have the nice property of not having to worry about them
melting down because they are already melted.

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burnte
I'll keep saying nuclear is one of the best technologies we can use for power
generation. In addition to the fact that the falures at Fukushima, TMI, and
Chernobyl were all caused by HUMANS interfering with engineering plans and
systems, or not being trained proeprly (Fukushima designers called for higher
seawalls, overrulled; TMI was human error massively compounding a simple
mechanical failure which could have been recovered from _; Chernobyl had key
safety systems disabled). There are several newer, much safer designs that
when used with proper training and engineers being listened to, can provide us
with very clean power with stability and land use that solar and wind can 't
match. You combine that with wind/solar/water during the day, and you have
yourself an amazingly clean power grid that works 24/7.

_ I was 1, living in Pittsburgh. My father was called in among many others to
help determine how to recover.

~~~
oroup
The problem is we don't even know what it means to deal with waste for 10,000
years. If the Romans had used nuclear power, we'd still be guarding their
waste. And they likely would have put it somewhere really out of the way -
like London. If some of the technologies that can transmute waste intro
shorter lived stuff come to fruition, fantastic. But until then nuclear power
is just the worst kind of deficit spending, kicking the unknown and huge costs
way into the future.

~~~
gwern
London wasn't out of the way. Londinium
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium))
was the heart of their administration, the provincial capital, and a
commercial center as well, which could merit imperial visits. Romans storing
nuclear waste there would make about as much sense as Americans storing
nuclear waste in Okinawa or Baghdad or Kabul (that is, none).

Somewhere out of the way then would be like the Sahara, which not
coincidentally, is still out of the way; and desert regions are also where
it's usually proposed to store waste.

~~~
jrochkind1
I'm actually pretty sure if the U.S. thought it could get away with shipping
it's nuclear waste to Kabul, it would do so.

------
DennisP
Last week I sat in a meeting with representatives from half a dozen startups
attempting GenIV fission reactors, along with a public utility that's
investing in that type of work.

They said their main problem was the NRC. It has regulations designed for
large light-water reactors. If you're attempting, say, a small modular molten-
salt reactor, you have to pay several hundred million dollars up front for an
extensive, detailed design and regulations to fit. Then the NRC makes one
binary decision: if you're lucky they approve you, in which case all you have
so far is a piece of paper that allows you to build something. If you're
unlucky they deny and leave you with nothing.

Not surprisingly, it's hard to find investors in this environment. They said
if we at least had a phased approach, so they can get some assurance for
investors, it'd be an improvement. Even better would be a more flexible regime
similar to Canada's.

~~~
rgbrenner
Why do you think Canada hasn't built a nuclear power reactor in 30 years? [0]

If Canada's system is better, then there must be another problem here that's
shared with the US and Canada. Since neither is actively expanding nuclear
power.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Canada#Curren...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Canada#Current_power_reactors)

~~~
DennisP
Terrestrial Energy is developing a molten salt reactor in Canada.

Meanwhile Terrapower is building their prototype in China, which is developing
half a dozen advanced reactor types and currently building a couple dozen
conventional reactors.

~~~
rgbrenner
Hmm... one project that's currently in the conceptual design phase, and won't
start preparing blueprints until late 2016 (if everything goes as planned).

One exception is hardly a vibrant industry that the US needs to copy.

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Shivetya
well four new reactors are being built in the South East, two in South
Carolina and two in Georgia. They are scheduled to be online in 2018 and 2019
adding about 1200mw per reactor.

Far from dead they do however show that we aren't even trying to be at the
forefront of the technology anymore. While the AP1000 reactors are more modern
they are still old school in many senses.

We still need a good solid base power source, renewable sources tend to be
highly weather dependent and cover a large area to generate power. It is not
reasonable to claim we can store it through batteries to replace the power
currently provided by coal, gas, and nuclear. Unless some breakthrough storage
means comes out its not going to happen

~~~
mikeyouse
> They are scheduled to be online in 2018 and 2019.

Unfortunately as is universally the case with nuclear construction (see the
debacle in the UK as well), both reactors recently announced significant
delays of ~18 months and at least an additional billion in cost overruns.
There may be an economical way to build nuclear but we clearly don't have it.

[http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2015/05/delays-at-
vogtle-v...](http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2015/05/delays-at-vogtle-v-c-
summer-still-not-threatening-nuclear-ptc.html)

[http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/energy/2015/03/uti...](http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/energy/2015/03/utility-
says-latest-delays-to-georgia-nuclear.html)

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douche
You know, if we hadn't had such a "Nukes are bad, m'kay" moment in the 70s, we
wouldn't be limping along with so many old, past-their-prime plants now, and
there'd have been more incentive to continue refining designs for nuclear
power. What plants we have are less efficient than they could be, and are
pushing up against their designed lifetimes.

Damn hippies

~~~
Theodores
Wrong. The Cold War was why we built the nucular power stations we did. The
uranium in those tens of thousands of nucular weapons came from somewhere -
nucular power plants. Electricity was a mere by-product. None of those power
plants were viable without there being the aspect of the Cold War imperative.

So it is the war-mongers and not the hippies to blame for whatever happened to
nucular power.

~~~
douche
Yeah, the breeder reactors in the first generation were terrible and not good
for much other than making A-bomb material.

That doesn't really have anything to do with the dozens of nuke plants that
were canceled in the 70s, at the height of the Cold War, and the virtual (and
in some countries, legal) moratorium on new construction that was pushed by
anti-nuclear activists. Well-intentioned people dedicated to saving the world
made things worse us and held back technological progress at the same time.

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ChuckMcM
Not a very well informed article, but it starts from a bad premise and just
follows it along. The big reveal of _" But flaws in the program were becoming
clear: nuclear plants were expensive to build, produced waste that was
impossible to dispose of safely and generated power far more expensive than
had been projected."_

Is not even wrong, but I don't expect the author to do any research about the
costs of nuclear power, nor to track down cost inflators (regulatory delay,
post start regulation changes) or disposal methods (reprocessing,
vitrification, incineration) or cost per megawatt.

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musesum
It's not dying:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4)

~~~
vernie
Cool, when can I look forward to a power plant using such a design?

~~~
toomuchtodo
10 years and $2-4 billion later, if nothing goes wrong. Which is exactly why
nuclear is dead.

~~~
pdkl95
"... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve
to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that
challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
postpone, and one we intend to win..." -JFK

We used to see difficulties like that as a _challenge_ we could overcome,
instead of running away in fear of risk.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> We used to see difficulties like that as a challenge we could overcome,
> instead of running away in fear of risk.

Why build a reactor on earth that isn't cost competitive when you can better
use the one in the sky?

It is a challenge. Train Americans to install solar and wind across the
country. Install it. Problem solved.

~~~
pdkl95
See the other posts in this thread, where this has already been covered:
_solar and wind are not a replacement for coal_. By rejecting nuclear, you are
_choosing_ coal, de facto, for the base load.

Why build a reactor? Because it's _safer_ than solar, and cheaer in the long
run. Why do you want a power source that kills more people per kWh?

Nuclear has very low running costs (practically no fuel) and a lot of the
startup costs are temporary (new design approval). Intermittent technologies
like solar and wind need expensive extra redundency and battery storage. Show
me the batteries you are going to use, at a price cheaper than _both_ coal and
nuclear, Not some vaporware future technology, something we can buy right now.
(the grid isn't a battery, even though most people using solar right now use
the grid as if it was).

Nuclear isn't easy or cheap, but it's the _least worst_ method we have for
generating power. Other technologies will always have niche uses, of course,
but choosing to wait for some mythical future technology to become available
is choosing to let coal plants continue polluting the world.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> By rejecting nuclear, you are choosing coal, de facto, for the base load.

I'm not. I'm picking natural gas, which while still a fossil fuel, is much
cleaner and releases far less CO2 per kwh generated.

Nuclear still takes a decade to build. A decade. I don't have to show you the
batteries _today_ , as long as they're built and in production in the next 10
years, _which they will be_. The Tesla Gigafactory will produce 50GWh of
battery capacity _per year_ :
[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/corner-office-
mar...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/corner-office-
marketplace/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-future-runs-batteries)

Nuclear isn't the least worst method. Solar, wind, and batteries are the least
worst method.

> but choosing to wait for some mythical future technology to become available
> is choosing to let coal plants continue polluting the world.

Safe nuclear is this mythical future technology you speak of.

~~~
pdkl95
> releases far less CO2

That's not a small amount. Nuclear releases 0 CO2.

> 50GWh of battery capacity per year:

Thank you for making my point for me. At that rate, we might have enough
battery power (assuming no replacements) in a _century_ or two. We need TWh
capacity, not GWh, to change the world over to intermittent generation
sources.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production)

> Safe nuclear is this mythical future technology you speak of.

Of course not. Nothing is without risk. Do I need to remind you of the
problems natural gas can cause?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explos...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion)

[http://www.news.com.au/world/cctv-footage-shows-natural-
gas-...](http://www.news.com.au/world/cctv-footage-shows-natural-gas-plant-
explosion/story-fndir2ev-1226535030467)

You have a strange sense of "least worst", given incidentsw like these happen
fairly regularly in the oil and gas industries. Nuclear hasn't killed anywhere
near this many people.

------
pjc50
Meanwhile in the UK, Hinkley Point C is in trouble for requiring far too much
subsidy (guaranteed price of £90/MWh):
[http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2420378/report-hsbc-
rai...](http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2420378/report-hsbc-raises-
concerns-over-hinkley-point-nuclear-subsidies)

------
Simulacra
I keep hoping we'll try a thorium or non plutonium producing reactor design.

