- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- climate@slrpnk.net
First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled::NuScale and its primary partner give up on its first installation.
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Might save you a click:
Too many investors pulled out of the project, at least in part due to rapidly falling prices of renewables.
Interest rates too, I’d imagine. Investing in new nuclear and expecting a decent ROI would be a dumb move now.
I am surprised they got any investors. From what I see the only way to get investment money is to say you are making a new social media app or building a condo.
Hear me out … nuclear powered AI NFTs.
Does it support blockchain?
You know it does.
Yeah the same reason nuclear is being rejected everywhere, it’s economically unfeasible and a huge liability - no one wants to end up with a hugely expensive powerstation that no one wants to buy power from because it’s a thousand times more expensive per kWh than any other option.
It is time
I remember so many nuclear stans on lemmy a bit ago refusing to acknowledge that renewables are getting so good and cheap that they are more important to solving climate change than nuclear. I wonder how they feel seeing investors pull out in favor of renewables?
Like crap? Renewables are good in places where they work. Nuclear works everywhere and is more reliable.
Investors pulling out of a nuclear project like this just looks like a, really dumb kneejerk reaction. “Oh! New shiny thing!”
Nope, the writing was on the wall for almost a year on this one. The whole nuclear industry in general is a long history of cost and schedule overruns. This is more of the same. Investors are not dumb.
You can invest in a solar or wind deployment and have it running and producing revenue in six to twelve months. You can invest in nuclear with a stated schedule of five years, have it blow past that mark, needing more money to keep it going (or write the whole thing off), and then start actually getting revenue at the ten year mark. This isn’t mere speculation, it’s exactly what happens. Oh, and it’s producing at least half the MWh per invested dollar as that solar or wind farm.
It’s amazing anyone is putting any money into nuclear at this point. For the most part, they aren’t. The federal government has shown willingness to sign new licenses for plants. Nobody is buying.
SMRs do not appear to change any of this.
Now, something I think we should do is subsidize reactors that process old waste. Lots better than the current plan of letting it sit around, and probably better than storing it in a cave for millenia, too.
Well the costs and schedule is a regulatory thing.
Even if that’s true, what are you going to do about it?
Say you do a whole lot of research, and conclude that loosening regulations x, y, and z will not impact safety in any measurable way, and will substantially reduce costs. Even detractors with scientific credentials agree this research is solid. Best case scenario, here.
NIMBYs will still kill it. What you just did is hand them a way to say “they are cutting corners using unproven methods to let their investors line their pockets at the expense of the lives of their workers and everyone who lives around it”.
They may be wrong, but their arguments in front of a government body can still be persuasive. They don’t have to be right, just vaguely plausible to people who aren’t experts. That will be enough to kill it.
You can’t beat NIMBYs by having the best argument. You need to plan around them. Don’t hand them a weapon before the fight begins.
So nimby will appose everything. Want to build a solar farm nimby, what to make a wind farm, nimby. I have people turn against a wind farm once they learned it would make electricity for their city but for the whole power grid. Simple because they learned other people would be able to use that electricity. How dare something they can see help the other. Making the build time and cost better helps build around them.
Sure. What is your plan for dealing with them?
This. Green energy works best when complimented with nuclear energy. Then, we can ween away from big oil.
It’s the opposite. Nuclear outputs as close to 24/7 as possible, you can’t ramp it up and down to accommodate variable output from renewables for practical and economic reasons.
I mean you can vary it pretty significantly depending on the reactor type, but even if you couldn’t you can still put the energy to work in alternative ways, such as pumping water up into reservoirs/damns to generate energy at other points, or using the excess energy to split water. There are many ways to use excess energy.
So your solution to excess nuclear is to store it. The solution to shortfalls of renewables is also to store it.
Why do we need nuclear?
But storage without inpacting available energy requires an excess, and the current shortfall of renewables is that there isn’t enough energy produced for a significant excess (same goes for nuclear). Either way I was addressing the literal aspect of energy generation being 24/7 with nuclear.
Not to mention I could see viable uses for nuclear still, especially in processes that are effectively 24/7 hot water production via heat exchangers for providing heating to literal cities, energy production for large arc furnaces.
And don’t mistake my view of nuclear as not seeing the benefits of renewable, my father lived on a boat where the heating and appliances were all run via solar panels and forklift batteries for more than 10 years of his life.
It’s relatively easy to get to 95% renewables. We have tons of historical weather data on wind and sun patterns. You can then calculate the extent of the lull when you won’t have either one. Pad that number, then put in enough storage to cover it. Natural gas may be needed for that last 5% (it’s a lot more difficult to get renewables to 100% than 95%), but that’s minimal.
This is all achievable by 2030, the time when we want to drastically cut emissions. In contrast, there is no plan that gets nuclear in place by 2030. If you had all the permits signed and dirt starting to be dug today, you couldn’t make that time line.
Nuclear does not help us reach these goals. It takes too long, is too expensive, and doesn’t synergize with renewables well at all.
You can do the same with excess power from renewables though. My point was that you need something to fill in the gaps when renewable output is low, whether that be from batteries, pumped storage, peaker plants, etc.
Nuclear doesn’t fit in here, there are no nuclear peaker plants.
The problem with solar is that the sun doesn’t shine overnight. The good thing with that is that we use much less power overnight than we do during the day.
If you’re relying a lot on solar, you need to build a big-ass battery that you charge during the day and use at night.
Alternatively, you build a nuclear or gas plant sized to overnight usage and run them 24/7. Then, you build way smaller batteries to handle dispatchability and smoothing demand over the course of a day. Nuclear is good for baseline power, and doesn’t come with the environmental costs of a gas plant. It has a niche.
HOLY SHIT THE SUN DOESN’T SHINE AT NIGHT, WHY HAVEN’T WE THOUGHT OF THIS?
Peak load is during the day, so initially it’s not really a problem. Going from a grid that’s 0% solar to 10% solar is really easy. The solar is going to just displace peaker plants. You don’t really have to worry about night.
Going from a grid that’s 70% solar to 80% solar is way more expensive, because you’re probably using all that power at night.
You don’t go all in on solar, that’s dumb and unnecessary. The wind blows when the sun doesn’t shine. We have lots of historical data on how the two would perform and how long a lull would be when neither are performing. Pad that number, put in enough storage to cover that period, and there you go.
Getting to 95% solar/wind/storage is relatively easy. Nuclear does not help this mix. It just makes it more expensive.
The problem with solar is that the sun doesn’t shine overnight.
Big if true. Winds tend to be stronger at night though.
if you’re relying a lot on solar, you need to build a big-ass battery that you charge during the day and use at night.
Or pumped hydro, compressed gas, molten salt, green hydrogen, etc.
Nuclear is good for baseline power
Base load. See here: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-power/
3 people got killed by one of these like 60 years ago due to blatant design flaws that could’ve been solved. This means they can never exist again.
That is massively understating the damage Chernobyl did as well as the number of people who died from cancer and radiation poisoning, to the point of sheer dishonesty.
Also remember that time that they wanted to test a safety system so they disabled the other safety systems and the protocols said they should have shut down the reactor instead of doing the test due to other factors but they did the test anyways and it exploded? Oh and their “emergency off” button was actually an “emergency increase power then off” button. Clearly there’s no way to do these things safely.
I was talking about the one that exploded in Idaho. It was a “small” reactor. The control rods had to be adjusted by hand. Clearly there was nothing they could have done instead to avoid human error /s
Lol I wasn’t familiar with that one.
But my point was that even the big ones that have had big failures were caused by dumb shit that was entirely avoidable. All three of the famous ones could be designed away in new reactors.
The problem I have is these problems are all caused by corner cutting and yes we could live in fantasy world where corporations don’t cut corners to save money and will just keep pouring money into a pit just to be safe even when they’re already losing money hand over fist due to not being able to compete with kWh pricing from renewables - but we don’t live in that world.
We’ll end up with minimum wage staff working without proper training, safety systems turned off because they’re too expensive to repair, and leaks not reported because company policy is broken. They’re going to be run by the same companies the are dumping oil into the Niger Delta for the last however many decades simply because it’s cheaper than fixing the issue - putting faith that ‘we’ll do it properly this time’ is incredibly dumb based on the near limitless examples of that never happening.
I’m in both camps. We need massive amount of renewable energy installed and we should keep going.
But there comes a point where the last 20% will be extremely expensive to do via renewables. We will do the last 20% much cheaper if we keep our nuclear expertise and plants going.
I’m not saying “build only nuclear”. I’m saying “keep it going”.
I agree with this. I like nuclear, I think it’s neat, but I think it will be a minor player in solving climate change and meeting energy demands (unless there is some miracle breakthrough in fusion). It is perfect for specific locations/contexts.
I’m just bothered by:
People who think nuclear everywhere is the only possible solution to getting off fossil fuels, and have unrealistic expectations about its ease of building and price
and
People who trash talk solar and wind while being wholly uninformed about how effective and cheap those things are, and how fast they are getting cheaper and more effective.
For some reason, these people are often the same people.
I wouldn’t say 20% is a minor player. But agree we can get 80% there with renewables, in some locations (like Scandinavia, blessed with abundant hydro and wind) probably to 90%.
There’s no doubt that integrating renewables is cheaper than nuclear right now, partly as a function of how little nuclear we’re building, but majoritively a function of how much steerable generation we have from fossil fuel (mainly gas) plants. But as steerable capacity disappears, we will need to build more and more very expensive storage to keep integrating renewables.
The fora I’m in where nuclear is discussed seems fairly even tempered to me. But it may be that you’re encountering some immaturity in renewable fora you’re in - I just haven’t come across very much.
Ah, the specifc numbers, 80%/20%, or 90%/10%, I’m not sure we exactly agree on, but hypothetical future specifics like that aren’t productive to argue about, I’m sure it will be solved by practicality at the time it becomes relevant.
But also important, and I should have said something about it before, battery and other power storage method technology is also getting cheaper and more effective, faster and faster. 2023 battery tech is better than 2022 battery tech and 2024 battery tech will be better yet, all by noticeable margins. It doesn’t really concern me, they get better faster than we can build them. And we are getting more efficient at recycling the rare materials too, we aren’t far from it being cheaper to recycle a battery than mine new rare materials.
Eh, classic problem. By the time we all realize something was actually a good solution and should be used, it’s time to move on. And some people don’t get that memo as quickly.
Nuclear stans? Us vs them thinking here.
Yes my political opponents are the people I disagree with. I don’t see your point here.
Fixing our energy demands so they stop fucking the planet doesn’t require us to hold hands and sing together, we just have to invest in the proper energy infrastructure. Arguing about what energy infrastructure is proper is a good way to make sure we are looking at all sides of this.
Edit: man, quiet downvotes annoy me. Please, let me know what I said that drew your ire so I can determine whether I’ve made an ass of myself or if we just don’t agree.
I’m not the one who downvoted you, but I understand where you’re coming from. I just think that both technologies are useful. Nuclear has clear advantages over all fossil fuels, so it would be a good thing to invest in. This would be in addition to solar, wind and battery farms.
Apparently most people from this assumed I was anti-nuclear, when actually I am just very pro-renewables. I don’t really have a problem with nuclear, not unless it is used improperly or inefficiently. I just recently had seen many arguments on lemmy where a lot of people seemed to be against using renewables in favor of nuclear.
I have no idea why you would want to pick one over the other when both have their specific uses and will both be needed to replace fossil fuels for electricity generation. I’m just lucky enough to live in a city that’s almost entirely hydroelectric.
Might be easier to get people’s opinions if you don’t insult them in the first sentence.
“stan” is a common word for excessive fanatic. It isn’t always purely an insult. I also was specifically referring to people that were pretty rude in their behavior before. Feel free to assume I’m not talking about you, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with people who like nuclear.
Think of me as a solar stan if it makes things simpler
Ah the classic “sorry if YOU were offended”.
I just needed a phrase to refer to the group of people that really, really liked nuclear power, and only wanted nuclear power to be the solution to fossil fuels, and were pretty rude to anyone who disagreed with them about this. “Nuclear Stan” seemed accurate to that, and I didn’t mean it as an insult, just a description of their position on the issue.
So why does it bother you? I’m not trying to be rude.
It was such a unnecessary opinion that turned up so often on social media that I have to imagine it was seeded by mining companies.
I feel indifferent. Nuclear is good way to do shitload of energy. Not sure about the small reactors
Not only a lot but STABLE energy.
and one of the most clean to boot, all the residue is accounted for and stored solid in big concrete barrels to decay until harmlessness
Well you still can’t meet normal demand with how unreliable renewables are.
We still need the good and cheap batteries that doesn’t exist yet for it to be viable as a baseline power source.
It’s already a baseline source in many areas.
Hi! Your information is outdated and we very much have the technology necessary to meet energy demand with renewables.
Damn
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nuclear power provides energy that is largely free of carbon emissions and can play a significant role in helping deal with climate change.
One hope for changing that has been the use of small, modular nuclear reactors, which can be built in a centralized production facility and then shipped to the site of their installation.
Their smaller size makes it easier for passive cooling systems to take over in the case of power losses (some designs simply keep their reactors in a pond).
The government’s Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project.
Under the plan, the national lab would maintain a few of the first reactors at the site, and a number of nearby utilities would purchase power from the remaining ones.
NuScale CEO John Hopkins tried to put a positive spin on the event, saying, “Our work with Carbon Free Power Project over the past ten years has advanced NuScale technology to the stage of commercial deployment; reaching that milestone is a tremendous success which we will continue to build on with future customers.”
The original article contains 505 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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We’ve wasted so much money in r&d simply because it’s a tech that allows the rich to maintain their power monopoly, if we’d spent all that on more sensible options we’d be far closer to an ecologically sustainable future.
What’s not sensible about nuclear power?
