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425 points nixass | 90 comments | | HN request time: 2.592s | source | bottom
1. philipkglass ◴[] No.26674051[source]
I hope that the federal government can provide incentives to keep reactors running that would otherwise close prematurely.

5.1 gigawatts of American reactors are expected to retire this year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46436

It's a shame that the US is retiring working reactors while still burning fossil fuels for electricity. Reactors are far safer and cleaner than fossil electric generation. It's mostly the low price of natural gas that is driving these early retirements. Low gas prices have also retired a lot of coal usage -- which is good! -- but we'd make more climate progress if those low prices didn't also threaten nuclear generation.

Some states like New York already provided incentives to keep reactors running for climate reasons:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41534

Federal policy could be more comprehensive.

replies(6): >>26674195 #>>26675068 #>>26675523 #>>26675557 #>>26679016 #>>26681646 #
2. DennisAleynikov ◴[] No.26674195[source]
if we are to come out the other side of this climate emergency we must keep our reactors online. the purity testing of what do we do with the waste is not helpful critique when we are still reliant on coal
replies(2): >>26674304 #>>26674654 #
3. snuxoll ◴[] No.26674304[source]
The ignorance of the externalities of fossil fuels and a bipolar hyper focus on those of nuclear energy is mind boggling at this point.

I’m all for developing renewables, but we cannot abandon the one good technology we have for generating massive amounts of energy our base loads demand without polluting our air.

replies(4): >>26674563 #>>26675442 #>>26675993 #>>26676267 #
4. SCHiM ◴[] No.26674563{3}[source]
Indeed that is the strangest thing. By _any_ metric coal is far worse. Even the metric "amount of radioactive material that ended up in the atmosphere per watt of energy." (Coal contains trace amounts of radioactive material, that gets spread when burned).

The fact of the matter is, that we can dump all our waste on a couple of football fields worth of space. Or even better: store it in a cave somewhere deep and dark and away from rivers.

replies(5): >>26674746 #>>26674763 #>>26675485 #>>26675780 #>>26683896 #
5. thisisbrians ◴[] No.26674654[source]
The way I think about the waste: for nuclear, the waste can be reliably (and safely) contained in a very small area, far from civilization and habitats, where it can't cause much of a problem. When we burn hydrocarbons, they pollute the atmosphere — for the entire planet.
6. Multicomp ◴[] No.26674746{4}[source]
This is probably one of those hacker news comments where it sounds good for 1 second then when you stop to think about it it falls apart, bu here goes.

throw the waste in a bucket strong enough to survive hitting earth at terminal velocitty. place bucket in spacex falcon9 rocket. launch rocket into orbit with escape velocity. watch nuclear waste vanish into vacuum of space forever. if crash, collect bucket and restart with new rocket.

financially costly? yes. solves the 'what about in 5000 years when someone opens it or it leaks?' questions, yes.

replies(7): >>26674837 #>>26674878 #>>26674889 #>>26674925 #>>26674997 #>>26675319 #>>26678109 #
7. w0de0 ◴[] No.26674763{4}[source]
Pay spaceX to shoot it into the sun, why not?
replies(6): >>26674943 #>>26675113 #>>26675969 #>>26676394 #>>26676994 #>>26678845 #
8. cperciva ◴[] No.26674837{5}[source]
The standard answer is "there's too much of a risk that an explosion would spread nuclear waste through the atmosphere". These days I'm not sure if it's true -- we've learned a lot about building containers which are safe even during rapid unscheduled disassemblies, and used them e.g. when sending nuclear powered rovers to Mars -- but that's the usual concern.
replies(2): >>26674894 #>>26676043 #
9. shadowgovt ◴[] No.26674878{5}[source]
Ironically perhaps, the best reason not to do this is "It is extremely likely that, given sufficient time, we will either figure out a way to use the waste besides high-yield weapons or a cheaper way to dispose of the waste."

Earth is huge. At the rate reactors create waste, the amount of land consumed by storing it is staggeringly low (the higher risks are transportation, which unfortunately the rocket idea doesn't solve unless we build a dedicated rocket site next to each reactor). Low enough to justify the risk-over-time of securely sequestering it instead of throwing it away.

10. whatshisface ◴[] No.26674889{5}[source]
One hundred million years later, a tribe of evolved cats sees an asteroid streak through the sky...
replies(1): >>26675109 #
11. throwaway894345 ◴[] No.26674894{6}[source]
I mean we’re wishing for a bucket that can survive terminal velocity impact with the earth and is yet light enough to ride a rocket, why not add to that wish that it could survive explosion from said rocket?
12. yellowapple ◴[] No.26674925{5}[source]
Another crazy idea would be to put nuclear reactors themselves in orbit, and then beam the energy down to the surface. Space is already pretty thoroughly radioactive, so a meltdown goes from "ZOMG WE'RE GONNA GROW EXTRA ARMS AND DIE OF CANCER" to "meh, just another Tuesday".
replies(6): >>26675218 #>>26675261 #>>26675262 #>>26675322 #>>26675390 #>>26675923 #
13. yellowapple ◴[] No.26674943{5}[source]
Given unlimited money, this might be reasonable, but it's worth noting that the delta-V requirements for shooting something into the Sun are pretty astronomically (pun intended) high.
14. VT_Dude ◴[] No.26674997{5}[source]
I'm torn on which one second response is best. Contenders are:

1. Reprocessing is a better technological solution.

2. That waste is much safer in it's current location in a dry cask in the back lot behind a power plant than it would be on even the safest rocket.

3. Even if we punt waste disposal or reprocessing to future generations, we are still better off stacking waste in dry casks in the back lot behind power plants than burning coal.

replies(1): >>26675689 #
15. notJim ◴[] No.26675068[source]
I couldn't agree more. Retiring reactors before a green replacement is available has been a total disaster for Germany. To be honest, I'm pretty agnostic as to what the replacement is, but at least keep them going until it's available.
replies(3): >>26675238 #>>26675494 #>>26675596 #
16. secfirstmd ◴[] No.26675109{6}[source]
Haha. I've often said cats would likely take over.
17. _Microft ◴[] No.26675113{5}[source]
From Earth, it is much easier to eject something from the solar system than to get it to fall into the sun by the way.

Well, not just Earth but from almost everywhere in the solar system (assuming being on an almost circular orbit).

replies(1): >>26675325 #
18. cpeterso ◴[] No.26675218{6}[source]
But then you have nuclear-powered space lasers, which will scare people.
replies(1): >>26675764 #
19. rjzzleep ◴[] No.26675238[source]
it's basically what happens when decisions are made only based on ratings to get you through the next 4 years, instead of long term strategy.
20. ed25519FUUU ◴[] No.26675261{6}[source]
How does one efficiency “beam down” gigawatts of energy? Or at all?
replies(2): >>26675314 #>>26675708 #
21. DennisP ◴[] No.26675262{6}[source]
I support nuclear but if you're beaming power from space, it might as well be from solar panels. In geostationary orbit you have power 24/7, with 5X more sunlight per day than panels on the ground. The only time your satellite goes into shadow is for a few minutes per day around the equinoxes, half an hour max. Capacity factor is still over 99%.
replies(3): >>26675346 #>>26675400 #>>26675463 #
22. cthalupa ◴[] No.26675314{7}[source]
Light. Focusing mirrors or lasers.

But as others have pointed out, why would you bother with building space based nuclear plants and then converting that energy to light when you could just use the sun?

23. BurningFrog ◴[] No.26675319{5}[source]
There are a lot of schemes that will solve the factual problem.

But I think the real problem is emotional. People are afraid of mushroom clouds and mutants.

They don't say that because that's not how we're wired. We come up with better sounding arguments to believe. But what need to be solved is the emotional problem.

24. Keyframe ◴[] No.26675322{6}[source]
We already have that nuclear reactor beaming energy down for us to collect.
replies(1): >>26675713 #
25. eloff ◴[] No.26675325{6}[source]
You'd need to fire the rocket to slow down sufficiently to fall into the sun right?

Just imagining the solar system as a bowling ball at the center of a trampoline surrounded by fast moving billiard balls. The problem is probably the speed the earth is moving at, plus the speed we had to get the rocket up to, to get it off earth.

replies(1): >>26675481 #
26. 8note ◴[] No.26675346{7}[source]
With geostationary? Don't they track a location on the earth? Is the satellite not in the earth's shadow at night?
replies(1): >>26675413 #
27. bserge ◴[] No.26675390{6}[source]
Interesting idea, but my next thought was "how are you going to cool that thing?!" :D
replies(1): >>26675570 #
28. bserge ◴[] No.26675400{7}[source]
Basically Gundam 00 haha. I was young when it aired, but it left a long lasting impression of what the future of space exploration might be like. Space elevators and massive solar arrays around the planet.
replies(1): >>26684446 #
29. mikepurvis ◴[] No.26675413{8}[source]
Geostationary is super far out— you're effectively in constant sun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

Except, as the parent noted, very briefly during the equinoxes.

replies(1): >>26676371 #
30. stjohnswarts ◴[] No.26675442{3}[source]
I simply don't understand those people who claim to want to fix the problem but balk at nuclear. It's like they'd prefer going back to rubbing two sticks together for heat and building lean-tos for shelter. Which is where we might end up going back to if we keep overpopulating and destroying the earth and climate.
replies(1): >>26675642 #
31. stjohnswarts ◴[] No.26675463{7}[source]
It's too easy for space junk to destroy it, also a single point of failure or attack. It's a terrible solution as long as we remain a warlike species.
replies(1): >>26675888 #
32. pdonis ◴[] No.26675481{7}[source]
> You'd need to fire the rocket to slow down sufficiently to fall into the sun right?

Yes, which is around 30 km/s of delta-v, as compared with only 12 km/s delta-v to boost an object from Earth's orbit (assuming you launch it in the same direction that Earth is traveling) to escape velocity from the solar system.

33. lainga ◴[] No.26675485{4}[source]
I'm going to sound tinfoil-y, but coal doesn't have dual strategic purposes which made it in the Soviet Union's best interests to focus opposition on it. Look into what happened to funding for the CND in Britain after 1991.
34. legulere ◴[] No.26675494[source]
I would call it unwise, but there has been no disaster. Electricity production through fossil fuels went down, renewables reached 50% last year while Germany still has one of the most stable electricity network worldwide:

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...

replies(2): >>26675799 #>>26677679 #
35. legulere ◴[] No.26675523[source]
The question needs to be asked how new power plants that have to cope with much higher building costs can be more cost-efficient than already existing ones. It’s not like that nuclear has any cost-cutting progress like wind and photovoltaics still have.
replies(1): >>26684766 #
36. antattack ◴[] No.26675557[source]
About Iowas Duane Arnold plant that is being closed:

"The Mark I containment was undersized in the original design; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Harold Denton estimated a 90% probability of explosive failure if the pressure containment system were ever needed in a severe accident.[18] This design flaw may have been the reason that the tsunami in 2011 led to explosions and fire in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.[19]" (Wikipedia)

It's likely that many old power plants are just not safe and too costly to operate reliably.

replies(2): >>26675648 #>>26675701 #
37. kelnos ◴[] No.26675570{7}[source]
Not sure in which direction you're joking, but heat dissipation can actually be a difficult problem in space, at least as close to the sun as Earth is, while outside Earth's atmosphere. For example: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/a...
replies(1): >>26675621 #
38. jhayward ◴[] No.26675596[source]
> has been a total disaster for Germany.

What do you define as 'a total disaster'? Coal fuel consumption is down enormously, supplanted by renewables and a tiny bit of gas generation growth.

replies(1): >>26675768 #
39. bserge ◴[] No.26675621{8}[source]
That's exactly what I meant. Running a nuclear fission reactor (along with the high power beams to Earth) in vacuum might prove... problematic.
40. jhayward ◴[] No.26675642{4}[source]
I simply don't understand those people who claim to want to fix the problem but insist on only getting 1/10th the electricity for their invested dollar, and at a schedule 10x slower than renewables. It's like they are being deliberately obtuse.
replies(2): >>26675881 #>>26683923 #
41. lumost ◴[] No.26675648[source]
The follow-on question is why aren't these plants retrofitted to be secure? I'd somewhat naively expect that its simpler to upgrade an existing plant than permit a new plant in.a separate location.
replies(4): >>26675695 #>>26675741 #>>26676138 #>>26681658 #
42. numpad0 ◴[] No.26675689{6}[source]
4. “Actually, giving up nuclear and politics on Earth and using said rockets to start building space habitat on L2, L4, L5, Moon surface and so on and do life and society and nuclear up there makes far more sense”
43. antattack ◴[] No.26675695{3}[source]
Duane Arnold plant is being replaced with solar panels and battery storage:

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/duane-arnol...

replies(1): >>26682614 #
44. effie ◴[] No.26675701[source]
Yes but their safety could be improved, new containment system can be built etc. Governments should step up and change the incentives to keep the good plants in operation. Being unprofitable is not a good reason to decommission a nuclear plant.

> DAEC's operation helps avoid the emission of nearly 4 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, which is the equivalent of taking almost 800,000 cars off the road

replies(2): >>26675817 #>>26678343 #
45. DennisP ◴[] No.26675708{7}[source]
Microwaves. Ground station has to be several square kilometers, but it's cheap and birds can fly through the beam without harm.

For economic reasons you pretty much have to use phased array transmitters, with a reference signal from the ground to make it coherent, so if the beam gets repointed it gets a lot more diffuse than that.

replies(1): >>26676008 #
46. DennisP ◴[] No.26675713{7}[source]
It's just too bad the planet keeps getting in the way.
replies(1): >>26676373 #
47. benchaney ◴[] No.26675741{3}[source]
It’s possible that it would be more expensive to upgrade than to replace in many cases.

While I support expanding nuclear power capabilities in general, a straightforward rule like “don’t decommission old plants as long as fossil fuels are still being used” seems dangerous and irresponsible.

48. yellowapple ◴[] No.26675764{7}[source]
Yeah, but if people don't like it, what are they gonna do? Complain? That'll just draw the attention of the nuclear-powered space lasers :)
49. sir_bearington ◴[] No.26675768{3}[source]
While non-hydroelectric renewables have gone up, fossil fuel usage remains largely flat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...

Germany's CO2 intensity of electricity isn't actually very good. It's worse than the UK, and 7 times more than France.

replies(1): >>26675784 #
50. dls2016 ◴[] No.26675780{4}[source]
> Even the metric "amount of radioactive material that ended up in the atmosphere per watt of energy."

My old man worked at TMI. We moved to a new house and one day he set off the radiation monitors going into work. Turns out we had a radon problem. This part of PA isn't exactly coal country, but close enough.

My bro was an auxiliary operator at TMI until a few months ago... shut down.

replies(1): >>26675831 #
51. jhayward ◴[] No.26675784{4}[source]
Your use of that graph is misleading. It's not a graph of CO2 emissions.
replies(1): >>26675836 #
52. effie ◴[] No.26675799{3}[source]
50% of german electric energy production is from high availability sources (nuclear+fossil fuels) and Germany's network is connected to the continental network, so of course the network is stable. It will be hard to get these sources down and maintain that stability. Maybe it can be done with energy storage, but so far it is not built.
replies(1): >>26676229 #
53. ThinkBeat ◴[] No.26675817{3}[source]
There are a lot of advantages to designing a better nuclear plant to be built than to retrofit one that is designed wrong from the beginning
replies(1): >>26676096 #
54. effie ◴[] No.26675831{5}[source]
Please define you acronyms. What is TMI and PA?
replies(1): >>26675925 #
55. sir_bearington ◴[] No.26675836{5}[source]
The above comment didn't say CO2 emissions, it said that coal use is "down enormously" with a "tiny bit of gas generation growth". The reality is that overall fossil fuel use remains largely the same, coal reductions were matched by natural gas increases.

Likewise, CO2 reductions aren't very large, and is still above average for EU member states: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...

56. effie ◴[] No.26675881{5}[source]
It's not about money, but about replacing the coal and gas power plants. Renewable sources can't do that alone, they need massive energy storage facilities (which so far do not exist).
replies(1): >>26676438 #
57. DennisP ◴[] No.26675888{8}[source]
I hate to break it to you but most of our power stations are vulnerable to attack already. Certainly anything near the coast could be taken out by our major adversaries, even with conventional attack.

For a lot of plants, an anonymous cyberattack could probably do it. That'd be way worse than an attack to geostationary, which very few actors could manage, and probably nobody could pull off anonymously.

Space junk seems a more serious problem:

https://physicsworld.com/a/space-debris-threat-to-geosynchro...

I've seen various proposals to clean it up but it'd take some work.

58. panzagl ◴[] No.26675923{6}[source]
Or it could blow away the Van Allen belts and fry everything else in orbit, then drop plutonium somewhere.
59. complexworld ◴[] No.26675925{6}[source]
Three mile island, Pennsylvania
60. notriddle ◴[] No.26675969{5}[source]
As long as you're sure it'll actually go into space and not just explode in the upper atmosphere.
61. arithmomachist ◴[] No.26675993{3}[source]
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl loom very large in the imaginations of the boomers and gen x, respectively. Nuclear plant meltdowns are world news on the few occasions they've happened, whereas horrifying explosions and accidents at fossil fuel plants aren't considered remarkable. It's the same reason people overestimate the risk of flying relative to driving.
replies(1): >>26678535 #
62. zdragnar ◴[] No.26676008{8}[source]
I've seen how this plays out in SimCity. No thank you!
63. perardi ◴[] No.26676043{6}[source]
I think there’s a few orders of magnitude difference in the amount of radioactive material in an RTG in a probe bounds for Mars, and the total radioactive daughter particle output of a nuclear reactor.
64. Lammy ◴[] No.26676096{4}[source]
Are retrofits and new construction equally possible in today's regulatory and media environments?
replies(1): >>26678455 #
65. sliken ◴[] No.26676138{3}[source]
Each plant is unique, and not perfectly understood. Often the people that did understand it have forgotten, died, moved on, etc.

Understanding, improving, testing, and certification of a plan to protect against the huge risks involved is expensive and often in practice timelines and budgets often go significantly over.

There's numerous MUCH newer designs that: are much smaller, much easier to scale, absolutely identical, well understood, robust in the face of failure, and don't even need operators. Additionally since they are identical they get economies of scale and only need a finite number of experts on hand, not a group of them per site. You literally need a flat site, water, and electrical hookups. If you don't provide enough water for cooling they shut down. After their useful service life you put them back on a train car and ask for a replacement.

Some of these projects are ready to deliver, but the early customers have been cancelling. Bill Gates funded a project, and there's several around.

replies(2): >>26678460 #>>26684574 #
66. legulere ◴[] No.26676229{4}[source]
Those fears have been discussed endlessly. Just look at the graph I posted to see the change in the last years that is still continuing.

Availability has nothing to do with what you are talking about (it’s much higher for photovoltaics anyway). Out of the 49.5% non-renewables only gas which makes up 12.5 percent of electricity can really be used to follow demand. Coal and nuclear are too slow for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_factor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/presse-und-medien/news/2020...

replies(1): >>26677261 #
67. godelski ◴[] No.26676267{3}[source]
There's also an ignorance of the externalities of renewables. Yes, they are magnitudes better than fossil fuels, but it amazes me how much people bring up uranium mining and ignore everything to do with rare earth mining in general. Or talk about waste storage of heavy metals and lithium. The problem is that everything has a cost. You can't make good comparisons if you only look at the costs of one system and the benefits of another. These are extremely complicated equations that people act like they are simple. I also frequently see a lot of belief that the issues are purely political (renewables and nuclear) when there is so much technical challenges still left.

There's no free lunch.

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say "nuclear > renewables" or even "renewables > nuclear" (this is a dumb comparison imo), but rather that every time we have these conversations in HN and most places we aren't even attempting to make a one-to-one fair comparison. I just wish that, especially on a technical form, that the conversations would focus on technology and science rather than the politics. Though I understand that not every (anyone) is really qualified to talk technically so we talk politically because we still want to engage.

68. yellowapple ◴[] No.26676371{9}[source]
And even that seems "easy" to circumvent by having redundant satellites, such that during the equinoxes (equinoxen?) only a fraction of said satellites are shadowed out at once. Alternately, a massive battery or capacitor bank could give the receiver enough buffer to hold out through an equinox-induced shadowing.
69. yellowapple ◴[] No.26676373{8}[source]
And sometimes the moon.
70. ldbooth ◴[] No.26676394{5}[source]
Why not? Because the environmental cost of a failed launch is massive. It's radioactive roulette. Where it lands... Depends on which way the wind is blowing.
71. ldbooth ◴[] No.26676438{6}[source]
Because storage isn't tax credit incentivized, at least in the US. Coal still is. And FYI California will install 1.3GW of storage this year, and a storage tax credit is likely by end of this year. It's coming. Hopefully we find something more elegant or ways to recycle storage/battery materials.
72. w0de0 ◴[] No.26676994{5}[source]
You people are atrocious pedants.
73. effie ◴[] No.26677261{5}[source]
By availability I meant fraction of time that it is available for power generation. This is closer to technical term "capacity factor", which is higher for nuclear energy than for PV energy, so my point stands.

Modern nuclear plants can do load following and they do so in France and in Germany. So why is "nuclear too slow"?

replies(1): >>26679040 #
74. belorn ◴[] No.26677679{3}[source]
Here in nearby Sweden we are currently giving subsidizes to oil and gas in order to act as "reserve" energy, ie stability. Those fossil fueled plants get paid first once just to keep the engines running, the fuel tanks full and employees ready, and then they get paid a second time if demand start to rise and energy is actually produced.

I suspect Germany does the same thing, but it would be interesting to hear if my guess is correct.

Sweden is also currently investing heavily in connecting power lines with nearby countries in order to increase the capacity to buy energy with countries that produce energy through fossil fuels when needed.

75. Blackthorn ◴[] No.26678109{5}[source]
Nuclear waste is a lot more than spent fuel. It's water, piping, tubes, maintenance tools...basically anything that went through or was part of a reactor.

The fuel itself is just a small part of it.

76. dundercoder ◴[] No.26678455{5}[source]
The NRC and DOE levy so much regulation, I really can’t imagine how anyone can make a profit with any changes.
77. dundercoder ◴[] No.26678460{4}[source]
Couple that with outages being so expensive. Each day offline is millions in lost revenue.
78. petre ◴[] No.26678535{4}[source]
Just wait until a lithium battry storage facility catches on fire.
79. AngryData ◴[] No.26678845{5}[source]
Too dangerous to send up in a rocket, especially considering we can reprocess and concentrate our nuclear waste into a absolutely tiny amount and bury it so far down that it will never reach the surface of the earth ever again. But of course without a large stable nuclear industry there is no demand/profit to be made from nuclear reprocessing when you can't get the materials to reprocess long term. We also have to deal with a bunch of old and outdated rules that give hard no's to certain reprocessing technology which was decided before we understood how most if it even worked.
80. imtringued ◴[] No.26679016[source]
That's incredibly stupid. Do you really want to waste your budget on expensive disaster cleanup of a single nuclear power plant? If you decommission old nuclear power plants you save the 200 billion needed to clean them up in an accident (think of Fukushima). That money could have been used to build 5 modern power plants and do a non disaster cleanup of the old power plant.
replies(1): >>26684763 #
81. imtringued ◴[] No.26679040{6}[source]
Total pollution is the only factor that matters. Intermittency is irrelevant for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and fighting climate change.

Intermittency is mostly relevant for 100% zero carbon energy which is a goal that is incredibly far away. At least another 10 years before we even think about it and then another 10 years to do it.

82. andrewlgood ◴[] No.26681646[source]
Nuclear power plants have become incredibly expensive to operate. You are correct that some states such as NY, IL, and MA have provided subsidies, but these have been about saving jobs and tax base, not as much about the government. In NY the subsidy is for the Rochester-area plants, not Indian Point. Indian Point produces 12% of the state's power and an even larger % of power for NYC.

In Ohio, the subsidies we so large they led to bribery payments of $60 million by FirstEnergy (former owner of the nuclear plants) to the Ohio Speaker of the House. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal

Low gas prices have accelerated the decision to close down existing nuclear power plants as gas prices look to be low for the foreseeable future thus keeping power prices low.

As for new nuclear, I do not think there will be anymore after the Vogtle 3/4 plants are online. The certified construction and capital costs were estimated at $14 billion in 2017. In 2018 the costs were estimated upward to $25 billion. Analysts are now estimating an additional $1-2 billion due to COVID. With the estimated completion dates of Nov 21 and Nov 22 likely being pushed back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

A sister set of plants (Westinghouse AP1000) design were begun in South Carolina (Summer 2/3). In 2008, costs were estimated at $9.8 billion. Project was cancelled in July of 2017 after $9 billion spent and total cost to complete was estimated at $25 billion.

We do not know how to build new nuclear power plants even remotely cost effectively. The French have tried and it bankrupted their lead nuclear developer, Areva, in 2016. China has built some new nuclear power plants, but has not started a new one in a number of years.

One last side note, another item damaging nuclear power plants, particularly in the Midwest is the structure of the subsidy for wind power. Wind power tax credits are a Production Tax Credit (PTC). To earn the tax credit, the wind turbine must generate power into the grid. As a consequence, wind turbines have a tax incentive to produce power in negative price environments (e.g. overnight). Nuclear power plants cannot turn on and off easily so they end up paying to produce power at these negative price time. Not helpful for profitability.

83. andrewlgood ◴[] No.26681658{3}[source]
The plants have been retrofitted to be secure/safe. The retrofits can cost $100+ million and do not make much sense if the power plants are losing money.
84. belorn ◴[] No.26682614{4}[source]
A 615-megawatt facility coupled with 60 megawatts seems a bit low on the storage side. The more common approach I have seen with solar panels is 75% capacity for about 3-4 hours running time.

It should be quite clear that neither solution are even close to enough power to bridge the gap and require additional energy in the form of fossil fuels. It will be less fossil fuels than if the nuclear plant was exclusively replaced with fossil fuels, but it will be more fossil fuels than before and it will be adding to global warming in a time where the planet can't take more.

85. redwall_hp ◴[] No.26683896{4}[source]
I've always said that if coal's waste was conveniently in solid form instead of destroying the entire planet's ability to host mammalian life, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

It's the pinnacle of "perfect is the enemy of good."

86. redwall_hp ◴[] No.26683923{5}[source]
I see two options:

1. They're ignorant and follow a fallacious "appeal to nature" mentality. They seriously think that some sort of return to nature will result in a utopia instead of disease and famine.

2. They're Malthus apologists who want to cause an energy crisis and cause people (who aren't them) to die.

It also overlaps with the anti-GMO types.

87. snuxoll ◴[] No.26684446{8}[source]
It’s not the worst idea, but we kind of need to get the whole orbital elevator but done first before the massive planet-spanning solar array.

Truth though: I think Gundam 00 showed a shockingly plausible future (sans mechas, most likely) for our planet if we do not get over our reliance on fossil fuels. Global conflict on a scale that makes WW2 look like child’s play is an inevitability if we cannot mitigate the environmental impact and eventual depletion of fossil fuels, and that includes support to help less developed nations move away from them.

88. andrewlgood ◴[] No.26684574{4}[source]
To be clear, none of the new designs have been certified in the US by the NRC
89. andrewlgood ◴[] No.26684763[source]
You don't waste your budget on either. You build solar/wind with natural gas combined cycles. Then you shut down the existing nuclear plant that is hemorrhaging cash and never build the new nuclear. The only new nuclear power plant under construction in the US is Georgia Power's Vogtle 3/4. As described above it is incredibly over budget. What investor would seek to try again? It is not like we build 1,000 of these a year and the industry get more adept. We are building 2 units over 10 years.
90. andrewlgood ◴[] No.26684766[source]
Exactly