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Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standard, White House says

(arstechnica.com)
425 points nixass | 8 comments | 02 Apr 21 18:00 UTC | HN request time: 1.031s | source | bottom
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philipkglass ◴[02 Apr 21 18:07 UTC] 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.

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antattack ◴[02 Apr 21 20:24 UTC] 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.

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1. lumost ◴[02 Apr 21 20:32 UTC] 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.
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2. antattack ◴[02 Apr 21 20:35 UTC] No.26675695[source]▶
Duane Arnold plant is being replaced with solar panels and battery storage:

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

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3. benchaney ◴[02 Apr 21 20:39 UTC] No.26675741[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.

4. sliken ◴[02 Apr 21 21:22 UTC] No.26676138[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.

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5. dundercoder ◴[03 Apr 21 04:34 UTC] No.26678460[source]▶
Couple that with outages being so expensive. Each day offline is millions in lost revenue.
6. andrewlgood ◴[03 Apr 21 15:10 UTC] No.26681658[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.
7. belorn ◴[03 Apr 21 16:57 UTC] No.26682614[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.

8. andrewlgood ◴[03 Apr 21 20:45 UTC] No.26684574[source]▶
To be clear, none of the new designs have been certified in the US by the NRC