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Economy Puts US Nuclear Reactors Back In Doubt
eldavojohn writes "Remember those 30 new nuclear reactors the US was slated to build? Those plans have been halted. A few years ago, it seemed like a really good idea to build a bunch of nuclear reactors. The environmental impacts of other energy production methods were becoming well known and the economy was tanking. Well, natural gas is now much cheaper, and as a result it looks like building a single nuclear reactor in Maryland is such a risky venture that Constellation can't reach an agreement with the federal government for the loans it needs to build that reactor. The government wants Constellation to sign an agreement with a local energy provider to ensure they'll recoup at least some of the money on the loan, but Constellation doesn't like the terms. So, the first of those thirty reactors has officially stalled, with no resolution in sight. It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US."
It will take an economic MELTDOWN to trigger nuclear reactor production
ha ha... good one subby
So in another words we only have to wait a few months for the project to resume.
Why wouldn't Constellation get a loan from the banks?
Don't banks kind of do that by way of its being their business?
Reactors are always going to be expensive. At some point the cost will make the power generated by the plant to be not profitable enough to sustain the operation - and maintenance - of the plant. This isn't all that surprising al all. If other sources of power can be built less, and produce power for less, then reactors are going to sit and wait their turn again. Unfortunately for the nuclear industry the approval process takes longer than the economic swings that make their product desirable.
Umm...
Wasn't sustainable energy supposed to be the really expensive one? Wasn't nuclear supposed to save us while the real sustainable energy is being developed?
It's funny how the costs of nuclear energy are structurally underestimated, while sustainable energy (wind/solar) continuously has to fight the image of being expensive.
It says enough that all 28 business plans for nuclear reactors are halted, partially because a regulatory system for greenhouse gases (the "cap and trade" system) was not put into effect.
So... public perception in summary:
- sustainable energy: requires too much subsidies, too expensive
- nuclear energy: financially more interesting, needs no subsidies
Reality:
- sustainable energy: growing market, although expensive
- nuclear energy: market stagnation, too expensive
Could we please build some breeder reactors to reprocess our spent fuel before we put it under the rug.
Its possible that all calculations use normal light water reactor designs. I bet the economics would be much better if you used advanced designs like thorium reactors or travelling wave reactors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_wave_reactor
Seriously though, this delay could be a good thing. They were going to build the wrong sort of reactors and perpetuate all the problems of the 1950s atom bomb production plants.
Thorium reactors, pebble beds..? Not on the shortlist. I'm guessing Westinghouse has plenty of lobbyists.
No sig today...
How about a government-sponsored plan or tax-incentive to put solar panels or shingles on all businesses and homes like they are doing for efficient windows and appliances?
It is time to move away from burning and nuking things for energy.
A simple, efficient and totally clean answer to our renewable energy needs. I am ready to go solar and so are many people I know.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Back when nuclear reactors were falling out of fashion I ran into a study that showed a huge percentage of the cost of a nuclear plant in the US was the legal fees for all the government submissions and approvals. The number that sticks in my head was 90% but I hope this was wrong. I suspect what ever it was it is probably worse now due to the lingering induced paranoia about anything 'nuclear'. And the approval process for any project going through the entrails of government is probably vast. Remembering the Manhatten project, Hoover Dam and the Transcontinental Railway as examples of huge projects that were at the edge of capability (and affordability) and yet were done in a period of a few years. And yet building a nuclear plant takes decades... I think we have just lost our will to survive.
Well, natural gas is now much cheaper, and as a result it looks like building a single nuclear reactor in Maryland is such a risky venture
Natural gas is only cheaper because we are using less of it. As soon as the economy rebounds the price will increase. This is the short sighted view that has gotten us into this mess over the last 30 years.
Only about 10% of the bailout money actually went to building things America needs rather than maintaining the illusion of prosperity in a number of states.
Imagine if the federal government had spent all $700B on infrastructure development. That would probably have put a few hundred thousand people back to work temporarily and gotten us at least the majority of those 30 nuclear reactors funded fully.
The federal government could easily then assign ownership of the loans to a corporation modeled on the Resolution Trust Corporation which was the federal corporation that liquidated the assets of the S&Ls.
The goal early on was to make the cost of meeting regulations so high that no nuclear power plants could be built. Looks like that goal, achieved several years ago, is still successful.
Well, natural gas is now much cheaper
Oh? If that's the case, then why the hell isn't my heating bill cheaper hmm?
fortifying the notion that if you take their mammon away, they'll be MUCH easier to herd.
never a better time to investigate the creators' newclear power plan/planet/population rescue/mandate. it cannot be any less successful that what we have now, which is no plan/power/peace.
because every leaf you turn over will provide a new group to challenge the building of a nuclear plant. Wind is not a competitor to Nuclear, it cannot fulfill the same role. Nuclear is base load, Wind can do peak. Wind is starting to feel the regulation and lawsuit issues Nuclear has, not to the same extent. It will, there are enough loons to oppose anything.
Look up how many "studies" are needed to put up a new reactor, even on a site with them, then compare it to the willingness to look to look the other way when putting up any power generation associated with "green". Then go read the stories where people can't stand the noise of wind farms and ask yourself, how long before that study increases costs to the point people think twice, three times, or more. Then to top it off, you can have your windfarms, provided only the poor are afflicted with them, and pretty soon no coast will be safe because of sight pollution concerns.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I seriously doubt that westinghouse has anything to do with Thorium based reactors not being on the short list despite their many benefits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Key_benefits).
I would say it has far more to do with the lack of ability to produce weapons with their byproducts. The US would prefer to get a little something extra out of the deal.
Not going to happen in the US. Licensing costs are too expensive to justify anything but the 1600 MWe behemoths using standard fuel cycles with proven technology.
I don't know how many lobbyists Westinghouse has, but I do have an idea of how many engineers they have working to satisfy the NRC's licensing requirements for their own designs. Likewise with Mitsubishi and General Electric.
Ah, so endemic security failures are forgotten. Such failsafes and regulations are needed to ensure that safety is not forgotten in the short term profit.
See BP and the Deepwater Horizon disaster for what happens when regulations do not say "put this secondary failsafe in".
But, for you, the problem is that government is making it too expensive...
You'd actually be able to solve the energy problem if you built nuclear reactors that output most of their energy as hydrocarbons.
You could get some better economies of scale with larger reactors than we build now but it's hard to transmit and distribute electricity from anything much larger then what we build now.
Imagine that instead of building 1-2 GW reactors you built a 25-30 GW reactor that produce 1-2 GW of electricity for the grid and about 20,000 gallons of gasoline every hour.
LFTR would be an excellent way to do this since it runs at such a high temperature and could supply a large fraction of the energy required to synthesize gasoline in the form of heat instead of electricity.
30 GW! /Doc Brown
That is 10 times the thermal power of the largest reactors in operation today. Quite an engineering challenge!
Not really - if you are using the LFTR design it would be much easier due to the unpressurized design. Adding thermal capacity is basically just a matter of using bigger piping.
I wasn't aware that the Calvert Cliffs plant was ever scheduled to be the first new design plant to be built in the US. At one time that label was applied to the South Texas Project, and I believe that the two new reactors at Vogtle are now in the lead. The Vogtle reactors use the Westinghouse AP1000 design, and the latest revision to that design is nearing presentation to the NRC for certification. (An earlier revision has already been certified.) The Calvert Cliffs reactor was an Areva EPR, which is still a ways from having US approval of its design.
At Vogtle there has already been a lot of dirt moved, and parts of the containment are already being delivered to the site.
Some rich bored guy should build a full up super-modern reactor (thorium, pebble bed, fast breeder, I have no clue), and put it near a city, where ever they feel like. Don't do any studies, don't ask anyone if its ok. Just put it there. The catch being that they don't put any fuel in it, and never have any intent of doing so. Its not really a nuclear reactor, so I don't see how it can violate any regulations. And it will just sit there with a website detailing its budget, schedule, and design as a lesson to us all.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
The efficiency of this one is less than the efficiency of producing biofuel which is staggeringly low in the first place. Separating CO2 from the air requires a staggering amount of energy as you have to liquefy air first. We are looking at under 5% efficiency for the entire process end-to-end here if not even less - around 1%.
No thanks.
I'd rather invest into finding ways to transport, store and use electricity and/or "simple" hydrogen more efficiently.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I don't know how many lobbyists Westinghouse has
Typical corporate situation where a zillion corps own parts of a zillion other corps. However they seem to have blown about a couple million per year. So I'd guess a high single digit number of lobbyist equivalents, but probably dozens each working part time? Congressmen would see maybe fifty faces, but only get a handful of person-years of work out of the group (insert joke about sounding like where I work...)
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lookup.php?type=c&lname=Westinghouse&goButt2.x=0&goButt2.y=0&goButt2=Submit
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Where you pulling those numbers from?
In the application Grumman claimed efficiency between 25 and 37 percent without even using high-temperature electrolysis.
In the aftermath of gas drilling micro-disasters (the nature of gas drilling results in localized environmental damage, but when it happens it is a disaster for those nearby), I'm guessing increasing regulation is going to increase the costs of gas drilling.
There's a moratorium on shale gas drilling (specifically on well stimulation by hydrofracturing, but no one is going to drill a well they can't frack) in New York State after the rampant water contamination incidents all over Pennsylvania. For example, the groundwater in Dimock, PA became undrinkable within a year or so of the commencement of drilling. People can actually light their tap water on fire now.
Gas is not a long-term option, and in fact, it looks like the way it is being drilled now is going to have severe long-term environmental consequences (it already has in many drilling areas). Nuclear is a long-term investment.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Fast Breeders are proven. They produce their own fuel and consume waste products as part of the energy producing cycle, for pity's sake!
Moar finkin by smarts peepul plox, guvunmunt. kthxbai.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
This is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
I guarantee you that places like submarines and space stations that need to remove CO2 from the air don't need to liquify it first. There are chemical means of doing so and they don't use all that much energy.
Natural gas is one of the more expensive. About 14p/kWh. But it responds to demand quickly (less than a minute, easy enough for spinning overload to even out). Coal is the cheapest absent externalities, but Wind is now equal and on a downward trend, unlike the price of coal...
Of this country.... Are morons, crooks, liars, thieves, and crappy humans.
That's pretty obvious by now... I wonder why we keep electing them...
Gotta be because the people are also morons...
Gee. That's depressing.
And this is why you shouldn't post while on Meth.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Nuclear would do fine too if it go an utterly unsustainable "renewable energy" credit of 1.25 cent per kWh wholesale.
That is roughly 25% of wholesale power price. Many wind farms sell power in middle of a night at a loss (litterally pay people to take power) because if they don't they lose the 1.25 cent per kWh credit.
Let me know when wind/solar can produce 100 GW of power without a 25% subsidy.
Reality:
- sustainable energy: growing market only with an unsustainable 25% wholesale power subsidy.
I thought Breeders were banned in the US because of some nonproliferation bs.
Jimmy Carter banned them by executive order.
Regan overturned the order but no one has tried to build one since then regardless.
Simple thermodynamics. Claiming such efficiency is not attaining such efficiency: the patent doesn't fail to apply if the efficiency is overstated.
The Journal of the American Water Works Association had a significant article this month dealing with the effects of fracking on watersheds. Those of you who think natural gas is clean have no concept of what drillers use to get the natural gas from shale in places such as New York state.
In fact, the regulations themselves are not aligned to balance these considerations in any way. Drilling rights are completely disconnected from watershed concerns.
Something needs to happen here... Over the shorter term, we'll need both the energy source and the clean water.
Over the longer term, we need better nuclear plant designs. The designs on the board right now leave much to be desired...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Such as?
Nuclear power is an expensive frivolity: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly I doubt that economic hard times could be a help in pushing it along.
A sample reactor is already under construction in Jordan called JOAN1 for 100mw.
100 milliwatts? I believe your SI-fu is somewhat weak...
Eventually (one year? five years?) the world economy will pick back up, and energy supplies will tighten back up again. When that happens, having spare base load electric generation capacity will be very valuable.
I live near Washington DC, and I'm pissed that the local utilities can't see this coming. I've grown used to having the lights come on when I flip a switch, dammit.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Look at it like this: a gas fueled CHP plant varies in efficiency from about 33% when generating alone to as much as 65% when used for heating as well. Companies are now making exhaust heat recovery exchangers as well, so the heating efficiency can reach over 80%. Over the year in Northern Europe, the efficiency can average around 50-55%. That is vastly better than the end to end achieved by the grid. Use micro natural gas generators to replace coal plants, and you have a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions right there, using mainly off the shelf components and with 24h availability. That is what nuclear power has to compete with.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The whole point of LEADERSHIP is not to invest in alternative energy when other energy sources are prohibitively expensive (how quickly we forget $150/bbl oil), but to shape the future so that when energy costs increase again the infrastructure is already in place.
I am disappointed that the US government believes that spending trillions of dollars to create inefficient, artificial jobs is more worthwhile than investing in the future of the country in terms of solid infrastructure. Those nuclear plants will not be cheaper to design and build in 20 years.
In the 1930's FDR went about building the interstate system, completing the Hoover Dam (which provided energy to California, Arizona and Nevada), the Tennessee Valley Authority which provided power to the South-East. This cheap power, as well as the roadways which permitted goods to be moved across the country cheaply, heralded new economic growth.
Today's government instead would have scrapped these types of projects in favor of repainting federal buildings in Washington, hiring analysts to make sure that homes didn't get foreclosed, while at the same time forking over more money to the banks.
While nuclear power may be expensive, peak oil is coming and there's no way to stop it. China continues to grow, and India will soon start demanding its share as well. There are not enough straws in the oil milk-shake, and putting more straws in only means that the shake will be finished a lot faster. When oil prices begin to rise again it will only be a matter of a few short months before we hit $150/bbl. In the meantime other "alternative energy" types (wind/solar) continue to be far, far less efficient than nuclear power.
But hey, we were warned.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What people need to ask, is: how do presidents get a say in energy technology? Presidents shouldn't have this type of power, that's not what the president is for.
I'm not being facetious, I've watched a few documentaries where the scientists guessed we'd have viable fusion technology in 10 years or so. I'm not talking in cars, I'm talking power plant scale.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You are getting argued into a corner a million miles away from what was suggested above. Getting carbon dioxide to react with something and bind to it is one thing, making aviation fuel (as an example of a hydrocarbon) from air is another and getting into an extreme realm of energy consumption and general weirdness that really shows the above poster doesn't know what they are talking about.
It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US.
Well, that ought to happen soon enough. What, did you think that the steady devaluation of the dollar was going to magically reverse itself or something? :p
Premise: Economy Puts US Nuclear Reactors Back In Doubt
Conclusion: It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Only about 10% of the bailout money actually went to building things America needs rather than maintaining the illusion of prosperity in a number of states.
And your source for this stat is to be found --- where?
Imagine if the federal government had spent all $700B on infrastructure development
It takes time.
Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1922, the Reclamation Service presented a report calling for the development of a dam on the Colorado for flood control and electric power generation. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc., which began construction on the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and the lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned over the dam to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. Hoover Dam
So then, tell me why construction took decades in Iran? The French shoot protesting NIMBYs, so why does it take so long there as well? How about in China - even the little pebble bed prototypes took a long time.
IMHO your theory has no worth apart from providing a cardboard cutout figure to blame. If those hippies were really so powerful as you pretend the troops would never have been sent to Iraq because there has never been an anti-nuclear protest anywhere near as big as the anti-war ones.
Government regulation can slow things down but that's sometimes uncontrolled empire building and regulation for it's own sake which is a completely different story to the one you are pushing.
I voted for Kodos.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
business decision. Nothing to do with anti nuclear. It's the same type of deal they would expect no matter what the energy source. Constellation is just trying to hold the people hostage until they get a special deal. Kudos to the feds for not caving.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually they just don't care if electricity is so expensive that the peasants can't afford to use it.
Clinton re-instated the ban, and cut off all funding to breeder reactor/IFR research.
The patent you linked to is from 1981... Doty Energy advocates essentially the same thing, except they use off-peak wind power to split the water and carbon dioxide molecules.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I don't think it would be wise to waste the energy making gasoline which only has a 15-25% efficiency conversion in internal combustion engines (and also lots of other nasty pollutant outputs, nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, etc.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There's enormous amount of infrastructure that uses gasoline and there's currently no portable source of energy storage that can match hydrocarbons when it comes to joules/unit volume.
This is a topic I've been trying to research a bit more lately, but Wind and Solar are not, perhaps, as 'green' and safe as everyone seems to assume. Just because the energy itself is provided 'free and clean' by the Sun, doesn't mean that the technologies used to harvest the power are safe and green. There is a website I found, called "Learning About Energy", but a senior nuclear engineer named Ted Rockwell who has been part of the nuclear industry since almost the beginning - so, he's maybe not the most 'neutral' person, but it also doesn't mean he's wrong (I mention it mostly for full disclosure).
He wrote a paper (It's something like 20 pages long), called the Nuclear Facts Report, to try to address some of the claims made by opponents of nuclear/proponents of other 'renewables'. The paper mostly brings together and summarizes information from a variety of other studies and papers from all sorts of different sources.
In the sections discussing wind and solar, he talks about some of the safety and environmental issues associated with wind turbines and solar panels.
Some of the points he raises include the fact that there are an increasing number of accidents and injuries related to the installation and maintenance of Wind Turbines (they are, after all, hulking giant machines operating a fairly high mechanical energy levels). Now, that's not to say there's any huge amount of deaths associated with them - I think we all realize that at a certain level, life is dangerous, and nothing can be made totally safe - but there are 'reasonable' levels of risk. But, my point is, if we go to a big wind turbine buildout, while there may not be huge numbers of deaths, I can guarantee that more people will be killed in accidents involving Wind Power.
As far as environmental costs associated with wind, if you install it on land, if there's forest in that area, you have to clear-cut the forest under the wind-farm, as everyone knows, but, and this is a topic I'm trying to research more, I wonder what kinds of pollution might be created when we manufacture wind turbines? Of course, when you manufacture *anything* you will probably create some pollution (the same goes for Nuclear Plants, of course). Nobody ever talks about the environmental costs of manufacturing and installing all those turbines?
In the section on Wind Power, Ted calls out the fact that there is apparently some very toxic byproduct which is produced in fairly large quantities when manufacturing what is currently the most commonly used solar photovoltaic panels, and there are also toxic metals which are embedded into the panels themselves, which when the panels reach their end-of-life, could become a disposal problem.
Another approach to creating electricity from solar energy is the solar-thermal power plant concept. Ted also addresses safety issues related to them - there has apparently already been problems with fires at one or two of the experimental solar-thermal plants that have been built, and additionally, they haven't proven to be cost effective. (Which, might sound like an ironic claim in a discussion on an article about nuclear power being stalled because it's too expensive - but nuclear power, if you can fund it and get the plants built, does actually have a record of generating LOTS of electricity (about 16% of national demand in the U.S.) at competitive prices over the lifespan of the plant [about 60 years] - it's just that they are so expensive to build in the first place, it's hard to get all the funding together to build them, but the actual electricity they produce does not end up being expensive - much cheaper than solar or wind over the course of 60 years, at least with current technologies).
I don't know that solar and wind end up being any worse for the environment than Nuclear - that's something I'm still trying to get enough data to answer; but, there is certainly reason to be concerned about the real environmental cost of wind and solar technologies. It'
It was done because of proliferation concerns, under the guise of National Security. And while the President / Executive may not have the ability to outright ban private construction of something, he *can* issue executive orders that deny the licensing of such things, or deny the government-backed loans necessary to construct it.
It's a back-door way of banning something, but it's effective.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
"Yes of course, unproven reactor designs will certainly be cheaper!"
Well, they won't *certainly* be more expensive (they *might* be more expensive, they might be the same, or they might be cheaper) - we won't know till we try them, will we? However, a LOT of engineering (3 or 4 decades of it) has gone into some of these new designs with the *specific primary design goal* being to create plants that are SAFER, while also being cheaper because they are designed to be simpler, with fewer welds, pipes, valves, and other 'support equipment' that increases the costs of anything.
It's a true-ism in engineering that generally, if you can accomplish the same results with fewer components, the design will be cheaper. You generally don't need a lot of 'testing' or 'proving' to show that a design with fewer expensive components costs less. The proving just needs to show that it is as safe as it is believed to be, and works as well as it was designed to work.
Also, a lot of the newer designs are for smaller reactors that can be factory manufactured to a standardized, proven (well, eventually - they aren't proven yet, so we need to start the process of proving them) design. It's also generally a true-ism that something mass produced in factories will be cheaper than things which are custom designed and built-to-order on site (which many of the older power plants basically were).
The whole argument against nuclear power, that it is "too expensive", is somewhat dumb, because we know that we can build them cheaper than they have been or currently are being built. Much of the expense isn't inherent to nuclear power, and isn't required for safety (that has been, I believe, a driver of much of the cost increases of nuclear power, but a lot of the things I've been reading about which add to the costs, don't realistically add to safety - they just add to the cost without providing any real additional safety).
I don't really know how much we could reduce the costs, but it wouldn't at all surprise me if we could eventually cut the cost of new plants in 1/2 compared to current prices - at 12 Billion per plant (or maybe that's per-reactor, not sure), it seems like there is a lot of room to reduce costs without reducing safety - I, of course, wouldn't advocate reducing costs at the expense of safety, but I can't believe we can't get those costs down other ways.
Step 1) Start using more diesel cars
Step 2) Make biodiesel
Step 3) Profit!
Plus, diesel engines are a far better choice than gasoline for moving big SUVs around at low engine revs (which seems to be what Americans want)
No sig today...
Because it was a big issue with he Russians. In order to get them to reduce Nuclear capabilities, we had to make concessions. It was a stupid one to make, since we could make them anyways. Well, not stupid really, but short cited on the part of the Russians.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thank you for addressing this very concern. Fracturing the sub strata and polluting more drinkable water will only increase the costs associated with cleaning it up, something that is not afforded presently with drilling.
Step 2) Make electricity (wind, solar, nuclear)
Step 3) Profit!
Most fuel use is for daily commute which for most people is well within the range of electric cars. Infrastructure is already in place (there is electric service everywhere... just need to install plugs).
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
If you're making synthetic diesel then your plan works.
The reason that everybody uses gasoline now is because when you refine oil you get a lot more gasoline than diesel and there's not really anything that can be done about it that doesn't waste a bunch of energy.
The elegance of verbosity in your argument is astounding....
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
In CA they deregulsted ONLY the wholesale power.
Retail pricing was heavily regulated (and virtually impossible to change).
So that means when you power company needed more higher cost power it COULDN'T raise the price it charged you but wholesales could charge whatever they wanted.
So there were times when the power company (person providing delivery and billing) would have had to buy power and then sell it for less than what they were buying. They opted for rolling blackouts instead.
I mean imagine that with any other industry. Say you run restaurant and the govt says you can't charge more than $20 for steak but then there is a bad year for livestock and your operating cost is $25 a streak. Are you going to lose $5 on each steak or simply not sell steak when price is too high? Most likely you would opt for a "rolling blackout" on streak.
So even the basic economics are that nuke plants are subsidized by the public with loans, among the many other public subsidies (eg. security, R&D, insurance). These things never are worth the trouble, and are always worse than at least one of the many alternatives.
We should instead build thousands of geothermal generators. They're mostly the same steam turbine electric systems as a nuke reactor, generate the same scale of baseload energy around the clock, and can be put online in a couple-few years, instead of the decade that nukes take because of their complexity and hazards. Geothermal doesn't depend on the rarest, most toxic and geopolitically dangerous elements in the world, either, but instead on very widespread resources that don't pollute at all.
But geothermal's no good for bombs, so we like the shiny nuke plants instead.
--
make install -not war
As such it is energy intensive to produce CO2 from air.
Virtually all commercial CO2 is produced from methane because CO2 from air is too expensive.
I can understand why you would be confused w/ all the talk about CO2 in the atmosphere but it is only ~400ppm. Another way to visualize it is imagine a football stadium with 10,000 people in it. Now imagine they represent composition of air. Only 4 of them would be CO2. Finding, extracting, and storing the 4 out of 10,000 is energy intensive.
Now if you have a huge CO2 sink (like building reactor need coal plant, steel refinery, or active volcano) that would change the economics.
What the builder is bitching about is not interest rates on the capital cost. Those are lower than they've ever been in US business history. It's the down payment. The issue for private lenders is that an unfinished nuclear plant has zero to negative value. So the company has to put in enough up-front money to convince lenders the job will be finished. The industry had convinced the U.S. Government to subsidize the down payment, but there's a sizable charge for that to be paid over time, and this builder is bitching about it.
Actually you have to remove the CO2 and water before you liquefy the air because it'll clog the machinery. There are probably better ways to remove CO2 from air than physically, most likely removing the CO2 from limestone and letting the resulting lime reabsorb CO2 from the air would work better than direct removal from the air.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Once again, horribly misleading summary. According to The Fine Article, it is only this one reactor in Maryland that is actually cancelled...
"The risk vs reward simply isn't there. I love it when, in the end, the true face of capitalism shows pops up. If we, the US, supposed world leader, continue on this path of 'economically rewarding' in the short-term, we will wake up one day and realize we've been surpassed by China as the technological and economic front-runner. Capitalism defeated communism. Not war, famine, or religion."
It is the TRUE FACE OF FREEDOM. Do you want to put all of YOUR savings into something that has a high likelihood of FAILING? NO? No one else does either.
The US Government set the terms of uranium, now no one else wants to BET AGAINST the government and its 30-50 years of plans and experience. It is extremely difficult to compete against the force of government.
It is not a question of capitalism, it is a question of freedom. If you feel that strongly, organize a movement to fund it. It is a (semi)free country. But don't castigate others for exercising their freedom NOT to do so.
Well he did say it was experimental. You have to start small lol...
Electric cars have a major problem which can't easily be solved - energy density of batteries.
Biodiesel is carbon neutral, the delivery infrastructure is already built, the cars are already available, it's just marketing.
No sig today...
Diesel-from-oil is step 1 - get diesel cars on the road, get people used to driving them (hey, they're not so bad as we were told!)
Step 1 on its own is worthwhile - diesels produce much less CO2 than gasoline.
Once the cars are out there and there's a demand for diesel you can start building algae farms or whatever...that's step 2.
No sig today...
Too dangerous, way too expensive, no way joe homeowner can payoff his energy bill. I much prefer fusion power, and right now that means solar panels and biofuels. I'm working my way towards personal energy independence, not all the way yet but getting there, while all the schmucks are wishing for one cent a kilowatt hour fission power that they will *never, ever see*. You think these big energy cartel billionaires have YOUR best interests in mind, or that their puppet politicians do, or wall street "investors"? Hell no, they want you financially tied to them permanently, so that all your household needs and transportation needs mean they keep getting a check from you, and no way to get any sort of price fix. And it always goes up over the long term, doesn't it? Solar power, eventually yes you can pay it off, after that, it's gravy for you, YOU get to profit from it.
Fission is for suckers and for people who fail at economics, and double fail at looking at global economic trends. Being in favor of fission is akin to being in favor of last century's six ton vehicles with fender fins and 6 MPG, the tech is no better, certainly no cheaper. Whereas solar has gone from 10 grand a panel to a few hundred and keeps dropping, and all of them have a multi year "free" payback to you after their cost is paid off, assuming of course you actually live some place sane that gets some decent sunlight. Any naysayers simply have not run the real math and are puking out rush limbeau pro energy cartel talking points that have been debunked numerous times.
That is true, I don't know how is it in America, but here in Europe diesels are quite popular.
Unfortunately, biodiesel in its current state is not really good for engines. Most German diesel cars have a "not for biodiesel" sticker on them. I have heard anecdotes that it clogs the engine.
Over the summer, I worked in a lab that was measuring the content of biofuels in diesel and gasoline, and the more bio-heavy samples are much less stable. Fossil fuel don't change at all over a period of a year, while biodiesel changed both colour and radioactive properties.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
The summary's hyperbole is completely opposite to reality. The reason the energy companies aren't building so much these days is because electricity demand has dramatically decreased compared to 3 years ago. Natural gas prices have fallen so much that many gas turbine plants are frequently as cheap or cheaper than coal in some regions. 3 years ago, the electrical demand in this country increased every year, which required the building of new plants constantly. Now, the demand has been mostly flat for the last couple of years. It doesn't make sense to build anything new until the economy IMPROVES and people start buying new toys and running manufacturing plants at full capacity again.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
"natural gas is now much cheaper" cheap does not mean better!! http://gaslandthemovie.com/
It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US.
From where I sit (somewhere *outside the US of A*) that does not seem entirely unlikely in the reasonably forseeable future.
Seriously folks - how long, hard, and deeply to you need to fuxor your economy before *even the retarded aussie dollar* is starting to look good? (clue: you've done enough, you can stop now)
Or are you claiming that any economy that outdoes Zimbabwe is "in good shape".
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Seriously though, this delay could be a good thing. They were going to build the wrong sort of reactors and perpetuate all the problems of the 1950s atom bomb production plants.
Thorium reactors, pebble beds..? Not on the shortlist. I'm guessing Westinghouse has plenty of lobbyists.
Huh? The Westinghouse design is pebble bed. They backed out of Phase 1 of the NGNP because of their ties to PBMR (which went nowhere). Are you thinking of General Atomics who is developing a prismatic core?
GasLand is an excellent HBO documentary on the effects of hydrofracturing deals on the lives of homeowners:
https://thepiratebay.org/search/gasland/0/9/0
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
With respect, it is very clear that you really have nowhere near the amount of understanding of the simplest concepts here if you are going to write things like the above. Go look at a fucking picture showing how a power station works and you may get a clue.
A lot of that waste is effectively sand stuck together, and most of the heavy metals end up in the ash dam anyway.
Now your turn, get back onto nukes, although you probably have no clue there either becuase you are not up to date enough to mention synrock which has only been a major contender for dealing with nuclear waste for thirty fucking years.
I sure do love it when money halts progress. Such a worthless piece of paper.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
LOL. Actually it would take an economic upswing.
You know, we'll get the sweaty big-name investment bankers on the radio/tv where they're starting to yell "Oil is going to be $100!!!!" and then sit and wait for people to see oil at $85 and think... you know, that'd be easy money... and start buying oil futures. Demand goes up, so does the price. Investment banker is laughing their ass off, as they are making profit from these transactions. Then they say a week later "See?! Told you so!! Oil is going to be $110!!!" etc. etc.
When they finally talked oil back to $150 a barrel, THEN alternatives to oil become interesting again (be it nuclear or otherwise).
Go live in Somalia--it's completely deregulated. Libertarian paradise. Have fun.
Noise from the windmills? I've heard it. sometimes it gets louder than the wind noise. Then it sounds like a whoosh and a bit of gear noise. Hardly a big deal.
Wind also suffers from one same problem as nuclear power, and that is that there are some people who don't have a problem with us returning to the middle ages. They hate everything. I'll bet there are people who don't like solar panels because they might accidentally blind blue jays.
Sight pollution? You need to come with me on a tour of north central Pennsylvania. There are these odd orange rivers that are devoid of life, and probably will be for the next 100K years. Much of the land has been ruined, stripped and left with big open pits. Completely worthless now, you can't buils houses on them, thay don't grow trees or crops.
Then you'll know what sight pollution is, not the windmills, which actually look pretty cool to me.
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
Burning coal for electrical power releases more radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere than all the nuclear testings (and bombings) conducted by man since the beginning of known history, every year, in the USA alone. And as bad as things are here, if you don't think China's plants are regulated more poorly than ours, you have a new think coming, and they are putting up coal plants as fast as they can manage. Given that we're talking about China here, that's pretty fast. A billion ants can run off with your entire lunch in no time.
These people are not making rational decisions. They're being whipped into a froth by some talking head they trust.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You could get some better economies of scale with larger reactors than we build now but it's hard to transmit and distribute electricity from anything much larger then what we build now.
You were saying what again?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There's enormous amount of infrastructure that uses gasoline
Yes, and it was built up over tyme. Rebuilding the electrical grid would be faster, as well as allowing more generation to be added easily. With a smart grid geothermal energy could be tapped where feasible, we recently had an article about how West Virginia was Geothermically active, and solar and wind where they are available.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You think so?
Go to the DOE web site and look up just how much fossil fuel energy we use compared to electrical energy.
Hydrocarbons are in practically everything and they aren't going away any time soon.
While I want more things to be electrified in the long term we need massive capabilities to synthesize the stuff right now.
Even with your supergrid we'll need to make hydrocarbons for the chemical and agricultural industries so we might as well get started bringing this capability online as soon as possible.
Licensing costs are too expensive to justify anything but the 1600 MWe behemoths using standard fuel cycles with proven technology.
Citation needed.
Here's my own, The average non-fuel O&M cost for a nuclear power plant in 2009 was 1.46 cents / kWh. That includes licensing. Or this:
Issue #1: The New Licensing Process [ppt]
As if that's not enough here are some more links:
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
"Cost overruns, delays in building reactors are sapping a nuclear revival"
"The Frog Jumps: The Ontario Story. Last week the Ontario government put plans to build 2 new next-generation reactors on hold, after it received bids "more than three times higher than what the Province expected to pay", according to a story in the Toronto Star. The only "compliant" bid -- one where the supplier would be sufficiently at risk if costs exceeded the amount quoted -- was reportedly a $26 billion quote from Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd, equal to roughly $10,800 per kW."
Should there be a Law?
Indeed, other countries have been able to build quickly.
Really? If that's what you really think you haven't seen many reports about construction delays. Try this one: Hooked on Subsidies:
"Investors are also wary of nuclear plants because of the construction delays and cost over-runs that have historically plagued the industry. For instance, the Areva/Siemens nuclear power plant being built for TVO in Finland-the first nuclear power plant to be built in a relatively free energy market in decades-once scheduled to be operational within 54 months, is now two years behind schedule and 60% over budget. Nor have these construction delays had anything to do with regulatory obstruction or organized public opposition."
"The General Electric ABWR was the first third generation power plant approved. The first two ABWR's were commissioned in Japan in 1996 and 1997. These took just over 3 years to construct and were completed on budget. Their construction costs were around $2000 per KW. Two additional ABWR's are being constructed in Taiwan. However these have faced unexpected delays and are now at least 2 years behind schedule."
"CEZ Declines for Second Day as Czech Utility Delays Nuclear Investment
"The company postponed the selection of suppliers for two additional reactors at Temelin until 2011, supervisory board member Eduard Janota said today. Construction may be delayed by as much as several years, Hospodarske Noviny newspaper reported, citing a CEZ employee it did not name. CEZ will also reduce investments in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, the newspaper said."
Those were in the Czech Republic, Finland, and Taiwan not the US, so US environmental regulations can't be blamed. People say how France gets a lot of energy from nuclear power, yet it was the French company Areva which is majority owned by the French government, that was building Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If coal is so cheap then why does it get more subsidies than other energy sources?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'd feel much better about dumping nukewaste that we know will be harmless in a couple years, than dumping, say, heavy metals that we know will never, ever be harmless.
Nuclear Wasteland. "France's engineers tried harder than those in any other country to build and run breeder reactors reliably at a commercial scale, but ultimately they failed. The result is that even in France--the best real-world model of what reprocessing can accomplish--the technology remains a tantalizing but only partial solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So do those who support nuclear power. The nuclear power industry is Hooked on Subsidies. Notice that link is to CATO, an Individual Liberty and Free Market institute and the article was originally printed in "Forbes" magazine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Rebuilding the electrical grid would be faster, as well as allowing more generation to be added easily.
You think so?
Go to the DOE web site and look up just how much fossil fuel energy we use compared to electrical energy.
What does using more fossil fuels have to do with how fast the grid can be rebuilt?
No matter where energy comes from the grid has to be rebuilt, making it smart as well will allow the payoff to be sooner. Understanding the Cost of Power Interruptions to U.S. Electricity Consumers [pdf] estimates "the annual cost for power interruptions to U.S. electricity consumers is $79 billion." It goes on saying it can be as high as $135 billion or as low as $22 billion. In shorter form, Berkeley Lab Study Estimates $80 Billion Annual Cost of Power Interruptions.
Even with your supergrid we'll need to make hydrocarbons for the chemical and agricultural industries so we might as well get started bringing this capability online as soon as possible.
Even though I oppose his motives, which was all about water, T Boone Pickens had a plan that dealt with your concerns, the Picken's Plan. Essentially the plan was to replace natural gas fired power plants with wind turbines and use the natural gas as fuel for vehicles. Of course that would still require a rebuild of the grid, but wind turbines can continuously add capacity as the grid is built. Erect 10 5 megawatt turbines a month and you add 600 megawatts of electricity a year. The largest nuclear power plant in the US is Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and it averaged 3.2 Gigawatts of power in 2003. It would take all of 5 years to replace the plant with wind, can another nuclear power plant that big be built in 5 years? As I linked to already the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, built by the French government owned Areva, is already 3 years behind schedule, it was originally supposed to start operation last year but isn't scheduled to before 2012 now. It's cost overruns are about $2.4 Billion too.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Nuclear is base load, Wind can do peak.
Geothermal can do baseload too. As can natural gas.
Wind is starting to feel the regulation and lawsuit issues Nuclear has, not to the same extent. It will, there are enough loons to oppose anything.
Unfortunately you're right. Ted Kennedy opposed Cape Wind, a plan to put wind turbines off of Cape Cod.
Look up how many "studies" are needed to put up a new reactor,
Look at Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, it is 3 years behind schedule and $2.4 billion over-budget.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Sorry mate, physics doesn't work like that, and if it did we'd be reading about a Nobel prize on this subject on the front page of just about every newspaper on earth.
There are things like incorporating the nastiest isotopes into synrock before burying it deep that make disposal easier but please leave magic out of this.
Nuclear power is very interesting technology but every discussion about it here seems to be ruined by blind zealotry and magical thinking.
That the usual rigth winger anti anything-socialism nutters will be begging for government money to jump start one of their favourite pet projects.
Hypocrates.
Nuclear energy is not economically viable.
It has to be provided by the government on the tax payer money.
"Socialism" in the parlance of the idiotic US right.
So it will be up to evil European Socialist governments (like the UK's Conservative lead one)and China (I will not use evil to describe them, I don't want a Nobel Peace Prize) to implement this technology.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lets face it. Half of the US population are beyond redemption.
Tea Party, Sarah Palin, religious right, Murdoch's Fox. The list is endless.
If all these people would have been around when FDR started those projects they would have demanded his head in a silverplate for appeasing the forces of Communism (actually there were people that made those and similar claims back then, the Neocon movement has its roots in intellectuals that opossed many of the measures started during FDR's time in office).
You are getting the kind of action that the country is demanding, which is no action at all, because as soon as half of you vote for a progressive President like Obama, the other half will do everything on their power to make sure he gets nothing done.
Many of you will be manhandling Obama by delivering a Republican Congress, so don't blame him if he can't accomplish anything, you, the US people, are not giving him the political leverage he needs to move your country in the right direction.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So an unlinked video proves everything and everyone else is wrong. How convenient.
Hey dumbass, in case you didn't notice, the holding company referenced above is a government-owned corporation.
No, neither government nor the nuclear power industry wants full transparency. No matter who is running the government they don't want the public to know. And the industry is Hooked on Subsidies.
Oh, please note that that link is to a free market institute webpage not an anti-nuclear power group.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's interesting - the costs, I mean.
I wonder why it's a different story in the UK, where this has just been published in their 'The Independent' - note the comment about there being no 'public subsidy':
"The Government today dropped plans to build a 10-mile barrage across the Severn estuary to generate "green" electricity from tides.
An official study said there was currently no "strategic case" for investing public money in such a scheme, the costs of which could run to more than £30 billion, although it said it could be reconsidered as a longer-term option in the future.
But the Department of Energy and Climate Change paved the way for new nuclear power plants at eight sites - Bradwell, Essex; Hartlepool; Heysham, Lancashire; Hinkley Point, Somerset; Oldbury, South Gloucestershire; Sellafield, Cumbria; Sizewell, Suffolk and Wylfa, Anglesey.
The coalition Government has already said it will give the go-ahead to companies who want to build new nuclear plants, provided there is no public subsidy involved, despite the Lib Dems opposing new nuclear power stations in opposition. "
I wonder why it's a different story in the UK, where this has just been published in their 'The Independent' - note the comment about there being no 'public subsidy':
Where's the link to the story? Here's one of my own: British Energy. Notice how it says "It operated former UK state-owned nuclear power stations: eight nuclear power stations and a coal fired power station." Googling for British Energy Generation Limited profit I found this article from May 2008: British Energy profits hit by nuclear shutdowns. While it does say the company made profits, it says those profits were higher than expected because of higher prices. Another article, British Energy Plc Business Information, Profile, and History says British Energy was privatized in 1996. Considering the source, www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk is a big hint it's anti-nuclear power, but Nuclear Subsidies - how the market is rigged in favour of dangerous nuclear electricity [pdf] explains how nuclear power in the UK is subsidized. Also biased Greenpeace has the pdf Invest in a Clean Energy Future which also says nuclear power gets direct and indirect subsidies. Googling British Energy Generation Limited subsidies results in more links saying nuclear power does get subsidies. As does British nuclear power subsidies.
"The Government today dropped plans to build a 10-mile barrage across the Severn estuary to generate "green" electricity from tides.
Okay, the UK dropped plans to subsidize a tidal energy project.
But the Department of Energ
Should there be a Law?