White House Eyes Subsidies for Nuclear Plants To Help Meet Climate Targets (reuters.com) 241
The White House has signaled privately to lawmakers and stakeholders in recent weeks that it supports taxpayer subsidies to keep existing nuclear facilities from closing, bending to the reality that it needs these plants to meet U.S. climate goals, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The new subsidies, in the form of "production tax credits," would likely be swept into President Joe Biden's multi-trillion-dollar legislative effort to invest in the nation's infrastructure and jobs, the sources said. Wind and solar power producers already get these tax rebates based on levels of energy they generate. Biden wants the U.S. power industry to be emissions free by 2035. He is also asking Congress to extend or create tax credits aimed at wind, solar and battery manufacturing as part of his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan. The United States has more than 90 nuclear reactors, the most in the world, and the business is the country's top source of emissions-free power generation.
Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:2)
Fission plants make poison that lasts for thousands of years.
Re:Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:5, Insightful)
4 articles about nuclear fusion (Score:2)
5 Big Ideas for Making Fusion Power a Reality [ieee.org] (Jan. 28, 2020)
Developer Hits Nuclear Fusion Milestone [ntd.com] (May 4, 2021)
MIT: On Course to Create a Fusion Power Plant [scitechdaily.com] (April 30, 2021)
Fuel for world’s largest fusion reactor ITER is set for test run [nature.com] (Feb. 22, 2021)
Re:4 articles about nuclear fusion (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why you think it's a joke. The ITER has been been in the works for well over a decade, has yet to complete construction, won't come online for another 4 years, and (and this is worth capitalising) HAS THE GOAL TO PRODUCE POWER FOR EIGHT MINUTES. Eight. That's 8.
After the ITER runs and successfully completes its entire design goal, Fusion will still be 25 years away.
Come back to really man.
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That has nothing to do with the difficulty of fusion though, only with the difficulty in getting politicians to actually deliver the promised funding.
Fusion progress has been almost perfectly on track with the original 20-year estimates, provided you measure progress-per-dollar rather than progress-per-year. Funding has been cut practically every year since those initial estimates, with the result that reaching 100% funding has always remained about 20 years away.
It's like if a contractor told you they cou
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Nuclear (fission) isn't ideal, but I know that we need to meet certain power generation targets to maintain modern society. I'd love it if we could get everything on clean fusion, or some other form of clean power, tomorrow (or even a decade from now) but we know it will probably not happen that fast.
No society uses less power, on average, year to year. No, we continue using more power (in a
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Well, in the long term, that is certainly true.
Technologies such as CFL and LED lighting and electric cars have reduced energy use compared to what it would have been, but only by a modest amount, and that is most likely a one-time development that won't be repeated.
On the other hand, the growing middle classes in China, India, and Africa will likely fuel substantial increases in energy demand.
So, yes, while I don't think that existing fission plants are nearly as safe as they could or should be, especially
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Primary energy consumption is stable in the US for the last two decades:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov]
It has been decreasing in Europe for quite some time. The reason is that new technology makes it possible to use energy much more efficiently. And investing in these technological advances would probably a much better investment than subsiding energy production.
Efficiency (Score:3)
I really cannot agree with your conclusion on efficiency and Europe, here are my views:
Europe isn't using less energy because of efficiency. It can't use more energy, because it simply isn't available.
Don't agree with you.
- Several countries here around have had very large campaign to encourage more efficient use of energy (massive shift to more efficient lighting (incandescent -> LED) is an example; more stringent norms regarding idle consumption in electronics and home appliences; etc.) this all has contributed a tiny bit toward making a dent in the energy consumtion starting ealy 00s, way before other events leading to closing of power plants or shifts to more intermitent power sources.
- The push t
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Given the fact that we now have wind and solar (with batteries to smooth out variations) which can be rapidly deployed and are cheaper than any other energy source, why wouldn't we just scale them up? Why wait for unproven tech (fusion) or expensive slow old tech (fission)?
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No, we can do both. I would like to see some additional US focused research on fusion power, as a long term goal but it's difficult to get Congress to fund efforts that may not pay off until 20-30 years in the future.
The US is a member of ITER [wikipedia.org] which should be coming online 2025-2030.
The US Navy I believe may still be funding research into Polywell reactors but they have been pretty tight lipped about the whole thing.
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At this point, commercially viable fusion within the next 15-20 years is a genuine unknown.
But that is an improvement from say 10 years ago, at which point it was a pretty long shot.
I'd suggest that we hope for the best on this front, but also prepare for the worst.
Re: Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:2)
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I'm far from a "climate change activist," but I still agree that fission is the best of the several less than perfect choices that we have, today, for generating the base load.
Two things could change this, for the better:
(a) Commercially and politically viable fusion; and/or
(b) Substantial improvements in our ability to store and transport energy, at which point, renewables can start to generate a significant portion of the base load, and reduce less desirable methods of power generation to eventual obsoles
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Fission plants take 10 years to build and are 3 to 4 times as expensive as solar, wind and batteries. Why would you invest in failed fission technology? Fusion tech is 10 years away (and always will be).
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Thank you, I think the residents of Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl would like to have had better regulation (if possible).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Compare with those who die from wind, solar and coal.
The hydro accidents have been truly devastating. Accidents with wind, solar and coal do not produce inland tsunamis.
Re: Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:3)
A coal disaster left a town in PA abandoned for decades due to an underground coal fire leaking smoke into the area.
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Should we wait for Fusion energy plants?.
I keep hearing this argument, but if we did so, the flat-earthers would only dream up new and equally baseless reasons to avoid using it. Biden's use of the N-word is a hopeful sign that while fusion research plugs away toward implementation, we could in parallel do such things as build breeder reactors that specifically use that "poison that lasts thousands of years" as fuel. It lasts thousands of years because it's full of energy. Let's put that energy to use replacing fossil fuels.
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I believe that proliferation is the main concern around breeder reactors.
It's unfortunate, but we do live in a day when nation-states, rogue or otherwise, have the ability to murder huge numbers of civilians and other innocents with literally the pushing of a button.
Efforts to keep potentially weaponizable materials out of the hands of some of the worst of these rogue nation-states, though probably at best a temporary solution, makes enough sense for now that doing otherwise is rightly viewed as a non-start
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Should we wait for Fusion energy plants?
Fission plants make poison that lasts for thousands of years.
Username checks out. After all there's nothing more analogous to fusion power than it being recommended by someone who chose the nickname Futurepower 20 years ago, and finds it still relevant today.
Long after people have forgotten who thegarbz ever was, fusion power will still be 25 years away in the future.
Re:Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear energy is a million times denser than chemical.
A kg of coal doesn't have much radioactive "poison", but a million kg has more than 1 kg of nuclear fuel.
When they burn coal, it puts that "poison" into the air we breath (along with lead, mercury, and dozens of other toxic chemicals).
Fission may not be perfect, but it's a damn site better than coal, so no, we shouldn't wait.
Re: Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:3)
Anyone running at the emissions levels allowed by federal regulations. That is, anyone who did not intentionally go above and beyond the federal regulations. That would likely be the majority.
Re:Wait for Fusion energy plants? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fission plants make poison that lasts for thousands of years.
So does fossil energy, except that they have a shadow nuclear waste system created through legislative exemptions they can hide it in, where it is handled cheaply and improperly. [desmog.com] So the nuclear industry's nuclear waste that gets handled the proper, expensive way, and is the result of non-fossil energy production, looks like a safer bet.
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We have been waiting for 50 years. They have been feeding us the same line, "fusion is only 20 years away."
Fission waste isn't bad if handled correctly.
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Should we wait for Fusion energy plants? Fission plants make poison that lasts for thousands of years.
The issue with fusion is that we don't have materials to handle 1,000,000C heat and using magnetic bottles is very hard to make energy efficient. There probably won't be a commercial fusion plant in our lifetimes. Making fusion isn't hard, it is making it energy and price efficient that is the problem. We aren't even close to the stage where the engineers and accountants come in and tell us how much fusion costs. Depending on the types of fission and fusion you are talking about, there are types of fusi
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Depends on the reactors and the fissionables used. Uranium in Modular Pebble-Bed Reactors [wikipedia.org] or Thorium in Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors [wikipedia.org].
An additional advantage to Thorium reactors, is that the fissionable element are suitable for power generation, but not for the production of nuclear weapons. And Thorium is far more common than Uranium: an easily-available source is fly-ash from may coal-fired power plants. . .
The tech is there, all that is needed is the decision to deploy it . . .
Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:5, Insightful)
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A good energy policy is a Diverse Energy Policy.
Solar and Wind are good power sources, especially if they are also connected to some sort of energy storage, be it batteries, flywheels, or pumping up water a tall mountain. However we are not able to scale it up fast enough to cover our energy needs.
Nuclear is a clean source of energy, at least in terms of CO2 (which is our biggest issue, at the moment), and Nuclear Waste can be managed and controlled. We also have already in place a good sized Nuclear Power
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He thinks the power will go out if the wind dies down or a bird shitting on a solar panel will cause a blackout. If only there were devices capable of storing energy for later use... We are fools not to take advantage of the sun's energy.
Re:Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:5, Informative)
He thinks the power will go out if the wind dies down or a bird shitting on a solar panel will cause a blackout. If only there were devices capable of storing energy for later use... We are fools not to take advantage of the sun's energy.
And you think we have an infinite amount of Li, Ni and Co. The current global battery output is on the order of 35 GWh/yr. To store just CA's grid (~1% of worldwide energy usage) needs would be several times that and would need to be mined again every 20 years. And that is before we talk about what mining you have to do to make the windmills and PV panels. It is really amazing to me that environmentalists think that wind and solar are real solutions over any time horizon. They are inefficient uses of valuable resources extracted at great environmental cost that only provide power for short periods of time. This is an optimization problem. You want to do the most with the least. You don't do that by starting with the most inefficient source of power. You do that by using the most efficient source of power (fission).
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LiFePO4 batteries don't use Ni or Co. Lithium is the third most abundant element on earth.
Most energy storage battery makers use LFP. Even Tesla MegaPacks are switching to LFP.
Re:Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:5, Informative)
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It's well understood that today's batteries don't make sense for grid-level energy storage. Newer chemistries not yet proven to be commercially viable, like sodium-ion, may change this, but there aren't any guarantees yet.
They do make sense on a more modest scale, e.g., that of a vehicle, possibly a home, possibly more.
For grid-level storage you're looking at either pumped-storage hydro, possibly compressed air, or some other technology with a very high capacity and low cost per unit storage, compared to t
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Yes, but the main issue with your comment is that's stupid, and I've considered it carefully. Batteries won't do shit at the entire-grid level.
A mix of Nuclear and renewables is absolutely the way forward, I don't even understand how it's still a debate. Sure, nuclear is expensive as shit but a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of global warming.
It's like these fucking ding-dongs whining that Pfizer et al. made "OMG billions!" off of selling the vaccine and "OMG they're making risk public and privatizi
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All he said was:
All these windmills and solar panels will not provide baseload necessary for a functional energy grid.
And he's correct. He never said don't do windmills and solar panels. But even if you put out enough solar panels and windmills out there, you can't account for cloudy or calm days. That's why you need backup storage either via batteries or using a myriad of methods. [discovermagazine.com] But more to his point, we won't have enough storage methods and capacity. The electricity the world uses is mind-boggling [wikipedia.org], and U.S. is #10 on per-capita usage. No matter how you cut it, we can't store enough energy to jus
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Wind and solar cannot make a stable grid because we have a history of them failing to do so. I will believe wind and solar can meet all of our energy needs when they have a history of doing so somewhere.
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What history? When have we ever had enough capacity to run that experiment?
There are examples of nuclear failing to live up, such as in France during hot weather.
Re:Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit.
France switched from fossils to nuclear half-a-century ago and consequently it's carbon footprint is tiny compared to the rest of europe.
Think about that for JUST A SECOND. Just one bleeding second. Don't give me any whataboutisms, or cute little gotchas based on misreading some headline. Low GHG emissions are The Shit, right? That's supposed to be the bottom line, isn't it? You're worried about global warming, right?
One more time, we're supposed to be worried about global warming right? Please tell me this isn't some tribal jihad to promote your favorite warm fuzzy tech,
Don't post now, first go and look in the mirror and say "I am completely sure that I am not helping to get the planet fried", then get back to us.
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Nuclear has been good for their emissions (but don't look too closely at where the fuel comes from or goes to) but it's been very expensive for France. That's the main reason they are ditching it, it turned into corporate welfare for the likes of EDF.
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It is certainly true that France's investments in to nuclear in the past saved a lot of CO2 emissions and still helps saving CO2.
But this does not answer at all the question whether even more CO2 could have been saved by investing into renewables in the past or what makes more sense today. Considering the high cost of nuclear, many people believe not that the money is better spent elsewhere.
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Uecker wrote:
Yes thank you. And that's supposed to be the bottom line, If only the rest of the world had reacted to the 70s "energy crisis" the way France did, we might not
have so much of a global warming problem now.
Maybe. Maybe it would have been to expensive for some countries, which are not large industrial nations with a military interest in nuclear technology. Maybe there would also have been some proliferation issues which would have prevented use of nuclear in many countries... Counter point: What if had triggered the dramatic growth of renewables we see now in the 70s instead of in 2000s? This growth was triggered by creating an economy of scale which causes the prices of renewables to drop dramatically and t
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Nuclear is low carbon only if you don't count the CO2 from the steel and cement, mining, refining and decomissioning of nuclear waste.
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This is a canard promoted by a godawful "study" by Sovacool that's been completely and throughly shot down, but here in the modern world, the zombies never die.
You can get good full-life cycle figures for carbon emissions from different energy sources from many places-- try the wikipedia page. Spoiler: anything that doesn't involve burning shit looks great. The idea th
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Yes, way lower, and that's just what we're after, right?
Nope. Like I was saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Nuclear is supposed to be a little better than solar, for example, but that's quibbling. They're all superb compared to even natural gas.
That looks like some high figures, but in any case, the cost figures you see cited compare a full baseload solution (nuclear) to an intermitta
Re: Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:3)
Nuclear power is twice as good as coal, with the energy embedded in the power plant and fuel offsetting 5% of its output, equivalent to an EROI of 20:1. Wind and solar perform even better, at 2% and 4% respectively, equivalent to EROIs of 44:1 and 26:1.
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If nuclear can meet our needs then why does the government have to spend billions making it happen? I have a feeling you're hinting at Texas and their inability to winterize anything.
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That is exactly the right question to ask.
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Nuclear power doesn't need subsidies, it needs permission. When nuclear power plants are forced to reduce power to make room for intermittent wind and solar that makes it difficult to compete. Nuclear power plants made it clear that they can't stay open if they are not allowed to compete.
Don't subsidize nuclear power. They don't want it because subsidies tend to come with handcuffs. Instead get rid of the subsidies on wind and solar so that nuclear power plant operators know that they can make a profit.
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If you're referring to Texas. That was a spectacular failure of natural gas distribution and generators. Solar and wind were fine.
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So when has the wind stopped all over the United States? On what date was there not enough wind power for the entire country?
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The peaks will be flattened out by shifting demand. As we move towards more and more electric loads (cars, heating etc) there will be even more opportunities to shift demand through pricing.
For very short peaks batteries work well.
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As far as I've been able to discern, the general complaint against solar and wind is that the sun only shines on solar panels during the day and windmills will only turn a dynamo when there is sufficient wind to move them - the major premise there being that those two factors (sufficient sun and wind) are uncontrollable by humans, and thus would be unreliable as the sole inputs for one of modern society's critical infrastructures (ie, generally available electricity).
Yes, stationary battery technologies (el
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Has there ever been a time in history when the wind stopped blowing everywhere?
If you look at the stats there is always more than enough wind energy, particularly off shore.
Re: Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:3)
Re:Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:4)
Just curious - how many lawsuits were brought against the fission plant? It took, what, four years to build the very first fission plant. There's no excuse other than "Nuclear is EVIL!!!" that it should take 30 years to build one now....
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The US has real issues with construction costs, especially on infrastructure since the 70's/80's for a myriad of reasons. Compared to Asia and the EU it typically costs the US twice or more and double the time to build large projects, be it bridges, tunnels, nuclear plants or railway systems. Some of it is the ease of legal complains, some of it is onerous environmental reviews, the ability for NIMBY folk to stop construction and some of it is that our construction system simply does not have the processe
Re:Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:4, Informative)
The US has real issues with construction costs
It isn't just America.
Hinkley Point [wikipedia.org] in the UK and the Olkiluoto Nuke [wikipedia.org] in Finland are facing similar delays and massive cost overruns.
Even China is scaling back its nuclear ambitions and accelerating wind turbine installations.
Re:Finally, some sane energy policy (Score:5, Interesting)
My time working in nuclear overlapped most of Vogtle's construction. I got to speak to many people involved in the planning and building of that plant, which is only just now getting close to firing up. The real issue, from what I could tell from presentations by management folks, is that Vogtle and Summer (the second site that got canceled when the firm building them went bankrupt) were loss leaders. Before the fracking boom nuclear was clearly the cheapest power source available, and the climate for it was improving. But we hadn't built a plant in decades, let alone this newest generation of AP1000's. These two projects were expected to be rough going, and I didn't get the impression anyone thought they were going to make money building them (on the construction side). They were done to build that knowledge base and skilled workforce back up, because the technical skill to make nuclear plants to specification is nontrivial to say the least.
One story I remember is an RP manager complaining because some genius engineer had located the plant count room right next to reactor containment. Yeah the dose wasn't a concern, but there was plenty of stray neutrons to fuck up delicate counting equipment and ensure you couldn't meet detection limits without absurdly long sample count times. And it sounded like that was just one of many issues of that type, all of which delay things way more than they should.
Following the breakthroughs in fracking and the enhanced safety requirements from Fukishima, basically every utility that hadn't already broken ground decided it would be cheaper to just put up gas plants. Not just from an absolute cost perspective, but you have to remember that there is a cost of capital associated with tying up 20 billion dollars for a decade. Without the prospect for future projects that would make money the american division of the firm building them just closed up shop, adding even more time to those projects. Southern Company decided they had the expertise to finish, but the smaller state run utility (and partners) in South Carolina building the new reactors at Summer didn't think they could pull it off.
Anyway, thought that might interest some people. A lot of the high cost of construction in the US isn't just legal action, it's just brain drain. Now that the Chinese have built that skilled work force up, they'll have a much easier time building new reactors. If you want to know what they'd really cost were we to kick into economies of scale, look at the Chinese cost and timelines to build for the plants they put up over the next ten years.
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I don't know about Vogtle, but is generally not true that most delays and cost overruns in nuclear power plant construction are due to lawsuits. For Hinkel Point C the one of main reason for incredible cost overruns are said to be "difficult ground conditions".
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That's essentially a handwave that hasn't actually been demonstrated any where, has it? [1]
It would be nice if things like this worked out, but it's not anything you'd want to bet the planet on.
[1] I looked at the Clack et.al. paper at one point-- which concluded we could do 80% "renewables"-- and they had some curves that expressed how well distributed wind sources could cover for each other. I cou
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So the plant subsidized by the government, is also being sabotaged by regulators working for the same government?
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So the plant subsidized by the government, is also being sabotaged by regulators working for the same government?
You naive surprise at the fact that government often acts in wasteful or outright schizophrenic ways is indicative of your naive and incoherent value system.
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The exact same plants (AP-1400s) were built in China and Korea
The Korean APR-1400 and the Westinghouse AP1000 are different designs.
Korea has never built an AP1000.
China built four AP1000s but has canceled plans for more.
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Distributed wind can provide steady power. Calm winds in one area mean stronger winds in other areas.
Having lived through a couple droughts in my life I know this is a lie. I remember summers seeing my dad watch The Weather Channel day after day waiting for news of winds to bring in rain. This was not isolated to our little piece of the US Midwest, this was nationwide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Large nations like the USA, Canada, Russia, India, and China might have enough land area and diversity of climate to have winds and storage from hydro to keep the lights on but that's not a way to run a nati
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Build some more* and I'll stop thinking they're unserious.
*which means putting legislative and regulatory structures in place at both the federal and state level that don't allow nimby/tree-hugger/antivaxxer "soccer moms" to sue the things out of existence before ground is even broken.
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Nimby/tree-hugger/antivaxxers aside for the moment, nuclear power plants are very big projects that move slowly and take a long time from conception to an actual working power plant. Solar/wind projects are a lot more scalable and agile. With energy storage costs going down, it's questionable if any new nuclear projects started now will ever be worth completing.
In the long run, we probably don't need as many nuclear reactors as we already have. Of course, we can't get rid of them entirely. We need them to p
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A battery big enough to run my house for one cloudy day at *half* my typical winter load costs something like 20k.
If I get rid of my oil burner and get a ground source heat pump (as Massachusetts is likely to mandate over the next decade) , then my typical winter load will look more like my typical summer load and that battery will cost closer to 30k.
Being generous and assuming that centralizing batteries will save 50%, that's still between 10k and 15k per household per day of backup capacity.
At the very mo
Re: Good (Score:2)
I *know* it drops to 10% or less of what it yields when it isn't cloudy. And I also *know* that it generates exactly zero power during the long winter nights when heating demand is highest.
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In a climate like the Northeast or much of the Midwest, solar provides only modest output even on the best and sunniest of days.
Output drops to 10% or less of the already low "normal" when there is substantial cloud cover, and where I live (Cleveland, Ohio area) that is about 80% of the time.
Solar can work, even here, to supplement base load, but to actually provide that base load seems unlikely in the foreseeable future.
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What the fuck does a nuclear power industry have to do with making nuclear weapons? Does North Korea have nuclear power? They certainly have nuclear weapons. There's nations like Iran that have been trying to hide a nuclear weapons program behind a veil of a nuclear power program but this hasn't been working since a nuclear power reactor is quite different from one that produces weapon grade material.
We do get valuable isotopes for medicine and science from nuclear power, we don't get isotopes for nuclea
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The actual question is whether we need to avoid shutting down already bought and paid for nuclear power plants, so you're changing the subject.
But I'm game:
There's no question construction costs (amplified by delays) have been a problem in places like the United States. Why that is is a question-- it's not as bad in some places, and hasn't always been so bad here. A
Finally a serious plan (Re:Good) (Score:3)
Build some more* and I'll stop thinking they're unserious.
Exactly. A serious energy plan will include building more nuclear power plants. An unserious energy plan is one that leaves out nuclear power. Nuclear power is the safest energy source we have available to us. Nuclear power is plentiful, reliable, inexpensive, can be sourced domestically, and has a lower CO2 footprint than even wind or solar. Ignoring nuclear power is a path to poverty and environmental destruction.
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Nuclear fission will last longer than fossil fuels, but it's still a limited resource and will put off efforts to shift power production to sources that will last as long as humans are around.
Today's estimated uranium supply should keep the lights on for around 230 years at current consumption rates. And I doubt consumption rates will remain constant - if the power is available, we'll use it, then become dependent on it for our way of life.
With breeder reactors we can extend the fuel supply by about 100x.
Re: Finally a serious plan (Re:Good) (Score:2)
Guy, there's a difference between kicking the can down the road 2 months, 2 years, 20 years and 200 years.
On the one end you've got "short term thinking" and on the other you've got "long term planning."
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Joe Biden isn't concerned about the next 200 years, I'm quite certain of that. He's worried about the next 2 years, when Democrats will have to run for office while nuclear power plants close, union jobs are lost, energy prices rise, and CO2 emissions go up as well.
Democrats are scared shitless over global warming and are desperate to show progress in lowering CO2 emissions. They can get that by keeping the current nuclear power plants open, and perhaps breaking ground on new ones. If this works then we
Nuclear has the best land-area to clean power rate (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine turning off all 90 of those nuclear reactors and replacing them with other zero-emission sources such as solar or wind. Nothing even comes close in terms of providing huge amounts of power relative to the land-area required for that power plant. Nuclear provides so much clean energy and already exists.
It at least makes sense to subsidize existing nuclear until such time as it can be replaced by new clean sources. But turning off nuclear (like they did in NY State recently with Indian Point) only to be replaced by natural gas seems like a huge mistake.
Re:Nuclear has the best land-area to clean power r (Score:5, Insightful)
in terms of providing huge amounts of power relative to the land-area required for that power plant.
Why is this an important metric?
Solar panels on a rooftop don't "use up" the space.
Wind turbines in a North Dakota wheatfield don't prevent the wheat from growing.
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Area needed for power is important because there is a minimum power per area needed to maintain a modern economy.
Wind, solar, biomass fuel, and other "renewable" energy will have a power per square meter somewhere between 1 and 100 watts. Nuclear fission power gets 1000 watts per square meter of land. That's an order of magnitude or three difference.
Taking this from another angle what is consumed is materials and labor. Putting those solar panels on rooftops will take people, and stuff we mine from the e
Re:Nuclear has the best land-area to clean power r (Score:5, Informative)
"renewable" energy will have a power per square meter somewhere between 1 and 100 watts. Nuclear fission power gets 1000 watts per square meter of land.
Wind turbines installed on farmland reduce agricultural use by about 0.25 acres per turbine.
The average turbine produces 1.7 megawatts of power.
That is 1600 watts per square meter.
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Nothing even comes close in terms of providing huge amounts of power relative to the land-area required for that power plant. Nuclear provides so much clean energy and already exists.
The land use of nuclear is difficult to work out. Apparently it is around 700 acres per GW (variable depending on, for example, availability of a river). I am not completely certain though if that number is talking about 1 GW electric or 1 GW thermal. Either way nuclear power also requires fuel. From what I can find, it is supposedly around .06 acres per GWH worth of uranium (and, once again, I don't know if that's electric or thermal). In any case, that works out, when you add in the space required for pro
Breeder Reactors (Score:5, Insightful)
Emissions free? (Score:2)
Does that include all the trees cut down to publish reports on how evil nuclear power is, create and comment on changing requirements as plants are built, or to file compliance documents for those new regulations? What about the micro-plastic pollution from the laser printers printing those reports and documents? All the jet and bus fuel burned to bring in protesters as needed?
How strange.. (Score:2)
I'm moderately surprised they're not already subsidized, considering how tightly they should/are regulated.
What? (Score:2)
We can't just forego 18% of US base load power generation for the feels?
That was a bigger shift than reported (Score:3)
Molten salt - maybe a moon shot project (Score:2)
I know the DOE has a strong bias toward evolution of current designs over new ideas (even if they're not new at all). Maybe a Musk or Bezos moon-shot billion dollars could help us keep up with the Chinese who are building prototype modern molten salt reactors right now in the Gobi. It would suck to be forced to lease them from Chinese state-owned enterprises in 25 years because we won't invest today. No idea if it's the end-all-be-all solution, but the possible advantages are strong enough as to be worth
tax credits are a just a band-aid (Score:2)
"Production tax-credits" might help, but I think what we really need is saner environmental policies. Here in California the Diablo Canyon plant is *still* slated to close as fall-out from demands that it cease using ocean cooling water as designed, and I submit that since they've been doing this for decades without any serious problems they can probably keep doing it for a while longer. Compared to global warming, some coast-line restoration project can wait a while...
Then over in New York, the Indian
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)