Nucular Powaaaaah (git gud 'murica)

[Blubbartron]

Well it's a shame that Bernie has either been horribly misled, or hasn't bothered to really investigate the realities of energy production. However, I consider him as a person to be far more likely to see reason and change his opinion than others. Considering his high regard for how many European countries are structured, it shouldn't be too difficult of a task to convince him that nuclear is the only rational option for the future.

[archibaldcrane]

He's hardly alone - most major environmental groups are supporting the same type of nonsense that he is.

I mean, the guy has been a Senator from a state that has nuclear power for decades now - if he hasn't figured it out by now...I doubt he will change.

[archibaldcrane]

Oh, circling back to Ivanpah - it cost 2.2 billion to build. To (hopefully) get 1/30th the production of Palo Verde, and it's intermittent, not baseload.

I mean, nuclear plants are expensive, but not 66 billion dollars expensive.

[Kryssan]

Well, the problem is the word "nuclear" itself. When people use it, they are referring to a very specific thing but encompassing the entire field. I am not against the specific thing, ie removal of Gen II or even some Gen III designs. We're stepping in the right direction ( but nearly 40 years late with regards to actual construction - not to mention the actual advanced plants like Fort St. Vrain where we had them and ditched them - and I'm not the hugest fan of AP1000 ), yet as long as we continue to be afraid of proliferation, breeders, or deviating from uranium fuel we'll be stuck in the same rut. I mean, even the Canadians do a better job at this than us ( CANDU; not to mention if fusion ever gets up the Canadians are sitting on all the heavy water... ).

Unfortunately, the popular opinion machine is driven by a limited understanding of said very specific thing, and they completely miss all the other things nuclear power is good for over the huge scale that it could theoretically be applied to. The world is very anti-nuclear ( with regards to the limited exposure they have to the nuclear field, that of Gen II commercial power ) now, again.


With regards to the recent solar articles, if you wanted to talk about Palo Verde you really ought to also talk about what's next to Palo Verde. Current design of nuclear power plants need water. Lots and lots of water. How do you build a nuclear power plant in a desert? I'll give you a hint: you take all the water noone wants and make it clean enough to put in a reactor.

You see those buildings in the background? The 6 short, stubby, silo like ones that take up an area almost similar in size to the actual nuclear power plants? That's the Palo Verde NPS water treatment station. They buy a butt-ton of wastewater from the 5 nearby cities.



I would - and not a new opinion - like to see the further development of SMR ( small modular reactor ) designs. I feel they hold the best advancement for nuclear power in the future, since it helps to mitigate the high startup cost of a site. Fast fuels with either liquid metal or gas coolant in the Gen IV or V pipeline that can be air cooled without fans and don't melt down ( reactor power declines as temperature rises, fuel melting point is > the temperature the fuel can actually achieve in a worst case loss of coolant accident ). I don't particularly care which fuels or coolants, but we've got to get away from the proliferation fears and the Uranium-only 1 use fuel mentality.

[dasva]

Oh, and



The land area needed to even start to chip away at conventional power is astronomical.

I remember doing some very rough numbers and iirc it would take covering all of California in panels to have enough solar to generate enough power for the country. And the sheer amount of materials for that and all the fuel for construction. And that's just generation you'd need a ton of land/materials for storage to have power on demand. And let's not forget that this is directly contributing to the ongoing tailing pond fiasco in china that if they ever break would probably be the worst manmade disaster every

[dasva]

I would - and not a new opinion - like to see the further development of SMR ( small modular reactor ) designs. I feel they hold the best advancement for nuclear power in the future, since it helps to mitigate the high startup cost of a site. Fast fuels with either liquid metal or gas coolant in the Gen IV or V pipeline that can be air cooled without fans and don't melt down ( reactor power declines as temperature rises, fuel melting point is > the temperature the fuel can actually achieve in a worst case loss of coolant accident ). I don't particularly care which fuels or coolants, but we've got to get away from the proliferation fears and the Uranium-only 1 use fuel mentality.

I remember seeing some development into SMRs awhile back but part of what was holding them back (at least in the U.S.) was NRC costs. By law 90% of the NRCs budget has to come from the industry most of it from the plants. This is done thru licensing and inspection and annual fee for generic regulatory expenses and other costs not recovered through fees for specific services. From what I've been led to believe a lot of these fees are more or less the same for each plant though obviously vary from year to year. And it's not exactly a small amount NRC budget is about $1 billion between less than 100 reactors. So having a large set fee just to be allowed to exist kind of financially forces people into larger designs.

[Kryssan]

I remember seeing some development into SMRs awhile back but part of what was holding them back (at least in the U.S.) was NRC costs. By law 90% of the NRCs budget has to come from the industry most of it from the plants. This is done thru licensing and inspection and annual fee for generic regulatory expenses and other costs not recovered through fees for specific services. From what I've been led to believe a lot of these fees are more or less the same for each plant though obviously vary from year to year. And it's not exactly a small amount NRC budget is about $1 billion between less than 100 reactors. So having a large set fee just to be allowed to exist kind of financially forces people into larger designs.

No. The NRC is not some hidden entity; the fees are not some magical stopgap preventing SMR development. We know exactly what the NRC's fees are: click here. It's not some magical entity blocking everyone via money claims. The capital costs of equipment at a power plant are astounding compared to the mediocre fees of the NRC.

The SMR mentality is not such that it would ever be 'mom and pop' and I did not mean to imply that with my statements if you read it that way. SMR merely allows you to offset the initial cost of the plant - instead of building one or two giant reactors that get upgrades / uprates later on and provide a surplus of power, you build 3-4 modular units with empty basins or cleared area and add in / replace units wholesale as power demands rise ( which amusingly enough happened anyway even with large reactor designs due to cancellation of new units in the 80s - which turned out to be a blessing, since the storage facilities for reactors that don't exist can handle the load for reactors that do exist and prevent failures like Yucca Mountain from being immediate cause of concern - it's just that SMRs are modular and thus much easier to deal with ). I haven't seen too many long term analysis studies, but I would not suspect that over-life costs of an SMR-based commercial design would somehow be significantly cheaper, it's just that the costs would be better spread out / managed.

SMRs are held back because they are predominantly fast fuel designs, and fast fuels are those that breed. Technologically, there are issues with some design development as well, which requires R&D budgeting they simply won't get. Breeder's a political no-go for America; and while the NRC is not supposed to be political... well. We have a system already established and it has a track record that can be pointed at for 50+ years, for better or worse. Regardless of the argument for / against nuclear weapons as a causal analysis for why we continue to use certain materials full well knowing the serious complications that are not and cannot be handled by using them, that's the way it is. As NPS units are commercial-profit entities, striking out in new directions is not something they'll typically consider without strong incentive.

And before anyone suggests the gov't do it, as they did with it before - do recall why the gov't footed the bill in the past; and just how well NASA's budget is doing right now. Again, the NRC fees are not the issue.

[dasva]

Wasn't really trying to imply they were magical or secret at all <.<. Just that they help push things away from smaller. I also said part of the reason. The whole industry has a ton of things really hampering it's ability to just continue let alone try "new" designs/fuels that make it rather risky financial venture. Adding another could easily discourage a line. At least here. Some other countries are much more accepting of different designs/fuels. Iirc India has been pushing Thorium MSRs a lot.

[archibaldcrane]

India and China are working on them, but still a ways off from utility scale production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriu...ar_power#India

[archibaldcrane]

With regards to the recent solar articles, if you wanted to talk about Palo Verde you really ought to also talk about what's next to Palo Verde. Current design of nuclear power plants need water. Lots and lots of water. How do you build a nuclear power plant in a desert? I'll give you a hint: you take all the water noone wants and make it clean enough to put in a reactor.

You see those buildings in the background? The 6 short, stubby, silo like ones that take up an area almost similar in size to the actual nuclear power plants? That's the Palo Verde NPS water treatment station. They buy a butt-ton of wastewater from the 5 nearby cities.

It is kind of wild that the largest nuclear plant in the US is one of the only (is it the only one?) utility-scale plants that isn't situated on a body of water.

[Kryssan]

Wasn't really trying to imply they were magical or secret at all <.<. Just that they help push things away from smaller. I also said part of the reason. The whole industry has a ton of things really hampering it's ability to just continue let alone try "new" designs/fuels that make it rather risky financial venture. Adding another could easily discourage a line. At least here. Some other countries are much more accepting of different designs/fuels. Iirc India has been pushing Thorium MSRs a lot.

Yes, the Russians keep pushing / allowing the designs forward. Unfortunately, the Russians also keep breaking them. Lenin, Kirov, Taimyr... practically any nuclear ship in mothballs ( Admiral Ushakov, Admiral Lazarev, most of the sub fleet... ) not to mention the obvious stuff like Chernobyl-4. Then you have other issues like the politics / money delays of Project 20870 which has even been mentioned on these forums before.

Your post was predominantly about NRC fees, so that is what I focused on. Regardless of your regulatory agency across the world, the fees are not even a starter problem for all the issues. And most of those issues are political or public-perception based fed by ignorance and poor public history track records of companies / groups more interested in the money of now than the safety of tomorrow.

It is kind of wild that the largest nuclear plant in the US is one of the only (is it the only one?) utility-scale plants that isn't situated on a body of water.

It's the only one. It was a huge deal during construction, people all sorts of freaked about putting a nuclear power plant in the desert. As wiki (link) would tell you:

Due to its location in the Arizona desert, Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of above-ground water. The facility evaporates water from the treated sewage of several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling needs. 20 billion US gallons (76,000,000 m³) of treated water are evaporated each year.[9][10] This water represents about 25% of the annual overdraft of the Arizona Department of Water Resources Phoenix Active Management Area.[11] At the nuclear plant site, the wastewater is further treated and stored in an 80-acre (32 ha) reservoir for use in the plant's cooling towers.

The water treatment station was built first, then the NPS. Quite a few employees start at the treatment station and slowly work their way into the nuclear field that way if they're tracking through Palo Verde. It's an oddball way to go but it works for some.

[archibaldcrane]

One thing I didn't realize is how much more efficient nuclear power has become - mostly with the same plants!



There were basically no new plants built between 1990 and 2013, but existing plants productivity soared in that timeframe.

[Dantrag]

I can't even imagine how good a brand new plant would be compared to what we built 60 years ago...

[archibaldcrane]

I don't know if even new plants get much higher than 91% capacity factor. Most of the loss is from routine maintenance, with a tiny bit being from weather (where they have to go offline from tornados/floods/hurricanes - I think mainly because it's not safe for workers to come to work because of conditions).

Nuclear still dominates for having the highest CF:

[Thunder]

Are there any candidates besides trump who have openly said they're pro US getting more nuclear power?

[Churchill]

Everyone is against nuclear power because they are politicians.

[Thunder]

googling shows trump saying "we do need nuclear power" right after fukushima so I assume he's still on board if that didn't shake him


this man's going to win everyone over pretty soon

[archibaldcrane]

double

[archibaldcrane]

At a February 18, 2007 campaign rally in Columbia, South Carolina, Clinton stated, "I think nuclear power has to be part of our energy solution... We get about 20% of our energy from nuclear power in our country... other countries like France get much much more, so we do have to look at it because it doesn't put greenhouse gas emissions into the air."[16] Subsequently in a July 2007 Democratic debate, when asked about nuclear power as an alternative energy source, she said, "I'm agnostic about nuclear power. Until we figure out what we're going to do with the waste and the cost, it's very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that's where American technology comes in. Let's figure out what we're going to do about the waste and the cost if we think nuclear should be a part of the solution.

I voted against Yucca Mountain in 2001. I have been consistently against Yucca Mountain, looking at all the reasons why Yucca Mountain is not workable. The science does not support it. We do have to figure out what to do with nuclear waste. I have consistently and persistently been against Yucca Mountain, and I will make sure it does not come into effect when I’m president.

That's about all I can find on Hillary, but it's all from '07-'08. Her climate plan announced over the summer was about expanding renewables to 30% of the grid by 2030, and

Although Mrs. Clinton has emphasized fighting global warming as a priority in earlier speeches, the role of a single large donor, Mr. Steyer, in apparently influencing the details of her proposal was suggested by her press secretary, Brian Fallon. On Twitter he said, “Counting nuclear, as Steyer does, she exceeds his 50 percent goal” for 2030.

The only way that would be the case is if existing nuclear stays online, but that's a real reach to say she's particularly supportive of keeping older nuclear operating (as opposed to Bernie).

Agnostic / Hilldogging it until she has to be nailed down would be the best characterization.

edit: her clean energy plan does at least pay lip service to nuclear:

5) Innovation: Increase public investment in clean energy R&D, including in storage
technology, designed materials, advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and
sequestration. Expand successful innovation initiatives, like ARPA-e, and cut those
that fail to deliver results.

[Kryssan]

How did you double post an edit archie? lol