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US Nuclear Comeback Stalls As Two Reactors Are Abandoned (theaustralian.com.au)
Brad Plumer reports via The New York Times (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source): In a major blow to the future of nuclear power in the United States, two South Carolina utilities said on Monday that they would abandon two unfinished nuclear reactors in the state, putting an end to a project that was once expected to showcase advanced nuclear technology but has since been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The two reactors, which have cost the utilities roughly $9 billion, remain less than 40 percent built. The cancellation means there are just two new nuclear units being built in the country -- both in Georgia -- while more than a dozen older nuclear plants are being retired in the face of low natural gas prices. Originally scheduled to come online by 2018, the V.C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina had been plagued by disputes with regulators and numerous construction problems. This year, utility officials estimated that the reactors would not begin generating electricity before 2021 and could cost as much as $25 billion -- more than twice the initial $11.5 billion estimate. The utilities also struggled with an energy landscape that had changed dramatically since the large reactors were proposed in 2007. Demand for electricity has plateaued nationwide as a result of major improvements in energy efficiency, weakening the case for massive new power plants. And a glut of cheap natural gas from the hydraulic fracturing boom has given states a low-cost energy alternative. Facing those pressures, the two owners of the project, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper, announced they would halt construction rather than saddle customers with additional costs.
"At the beginning of the 1980s, only one of the five WPPSS plants was nearing completion. By this time, nuclear power had been reexamined and was found to not be as clean as was originally thought. Some cities boycotted nuclear power from the plants before the facilities were even up and running. The cost overruns reached the point where more than $24 billion would be required to complete the work, but recouping funds would be a tricky matter because of less-than-promising sales. Construction halted on all but the near-completed second plant; the first plant was once again being redesigned. WPPSS was forced to default on $2.25 billion worth of municipal bonds."
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/0...
The NRC needs an overhaul. Modern designs are very safe and emit less radioactivity than burning coal. People are needlessly scared. People perceive threat wrong. They fear terrorist attacks and nuclear meltdowns but don't even know that smoking, heart disease and driving are considerably more likely to kill them.
The prime factor in this decision, the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, isn't mentioned in the article until you get halfway through. I guess factors such as these don't really fit the narrative of "nuclear bad".
People are more than willing to pay more for energy sources that don't produce CO2.
1. Many people are NOT willing to pay more, hence the election of our current president.
2. The people that are willing to pay more don't have to, since wind is already cost-competitive with FF and solar will be soon.
"Standardized" nukes like the AP1000 were supposed to lower construction costs and reduce maintenance. But so far they have NOT lowered costs, and appear to be worse in every way. There is no path forward for nukes in America, but to go with a complete redesign, and no one wants to pay the NRE for that.
My prediction: Hinkley Point will also be cancelled before it goes live.
Here is an alternative link since TFA is paywalled (at least for me).
I'm so glad that we abandoned air travel after early deadly crashes showed how unsafe the technology was (really? people flying in heavier than air vehicles - absurd and obviously stupid).
I'm sure some people who continued to dream of air transport claimed that the technology would only get better and safer. Perhaps some even made absurd claims such as "In less than one hundred years, we may see more than a five year span where no one died in a crash of a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world" which, of course, would have been an absurd prediction. Fortunately, we largely ignored such idiots.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The same left that hasn't gotten a single policy past since Medicare/Medicaid since the 60's? Tthat couldn't get a Public Option through congress much less single payer? You're a complete idiot if you think the left has any power.
This is under the same government that DGAF about mass poisonings in leaded drinking water or DuPond runoff, that exports fracking to the world, and lets BP go on incompetently drilling of the coast after trying their best to run the Gulf of Mexico?
But once the reactors enter operation they'll pay for themselves in just a couple of years.
This is the most ridiculous sentence I have read so far today. Do you have the foggiest notion of how much these reactors cost and the value of their annual production? "A couple of years"???
Well, when an aircraft crashed, you never had to evacuate and cordon off 2,000 square miles around the crash site for the next 50 years.
Russia has the world's only power-generating fast-neutron reactor (BN-800) and is preparing to build the second generation (BN-1200) of this reactor type.
From Wikipedia:
"In 2015, after several minor delays, problems at the recently completed BN-800 indicated a redesign was needed. Construction of the BN-1200 was put on "indefinite hold",[1] and Rosenergoatom has stated that no decision to continue will be made before 2019."
That's why people aren't rushing to build these things. They are wonderful until someone notices that some unforeseen design flaw needs to be rectified, or some unforeseen stupidity mode comes to light, and suddenly it's delayed for a decade and billions are added to the price.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, no.
You can tell that this narrative about the Left ruining everything is nonsense by how it only ever applies to things that failed. If they were really that powerful we wouldn't be burning oil in our cars or scrapping Obamacare. And if it really worked the right wing NIMBYs would have blocked every wind farm from ever being built.
The Chinese cancelled most of their new reactors, just finishing the ones they have already started, shortly after Fukushima. Not entirely due to safety concerns either, but because they realized that the market for nuclear power was failing and renewable energy was the smart investment. Look at China now, leading the world in wind, in electric vehicles, even giving the Tesla/Panasonic gigafactory a run for battery production.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Meltdowns are almost always a combination of bad reactor design + human error. Both of these can be mitigated.
In theory yes, but in practice there are budgets and profitability to think about. Part of the reason why nuclear is now so expensive is because we realized that those "bordering on impossible" scenarios are actually not that unlikely and need to be addressed.
People seem to conveniently forget that france has generated > 50% of its grid electricity from nuclear for over 50 years without a single major incident.
Yes, it was a great welfare programme for the energy companies. The French electorate has got fed up giving them money though, which is why they are struggling to raise the funds to build plants in other countries like Hinkley C, and having to rely on Chinese investment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC