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Power Company Kills Nuclear Plant, Plans $6 Billion In Solar, Battery Investment (arstechnica.com)
Socguy writes: After being unable to complete the Levy County Nuclear Plant a few years ago, Duke energy abandoned it, leaving rate payers on the hook. Duke is now in the process of settling legal action as a result. As part of the settlement Duke will construct or acquire 700MW of solar capacity over four years in the western Florida area, construct 50MW of battery storage, undertake grid modernizations and install 530 electric car charging stations. "The Levy nuclear plant was proposed in 2008 and ran into hurdles early on," reports Ars Technica. "With cheap natural gas in 2013, Duke Energy Florida became nervous that it might not recuperate costs spent on the nuclear plant, especially with regulatory delays. The company cancelled its engineering and construction agreements in 2013 but said that it was holding open the possibility of returning to Levy someday. Over nine years, about $800 million had been spent on preparatory work for the plant. With Tuesday's announcement, those costs are sunk costs now. But overall, the changes will save residential customers future nuclear-related rate increases. Those customers will see a cost reduction of $2.50 per megawatt-hour (MWh) 'through the removal of unrecovered Levy Nuclear Project costs,' the utility said. The 700MW of solar won't exactly cover the nameplate capacity of the Levy plant, which was supposed to deliver 2.2 gigawatts to the region. But the Tampa Bay Times wrote that Duke 'is effectively giving up its long-held belief that nuclear power is a key component to its Florida future and, instead, making a dramatic shift toward more solar power.'"
Florida seems like a good site for a solar plant with battery storage. This might actually make sense.
That's the most impractical idea I've heard since I last read a tweet from Donald Trump.
They don't call it the Sunshine State, not even on the license plates. And they wouldn't need so many oranges if they weren't vitamin deficient from too little sun. And let's face it, they should just use the same generator powered by the soul of a Forsaken child as is used to keep Disneyworld operational.
that is all.
75% of Duke's generation mix is coal or natural gas. So, rather than offset any of that base load with a 2.2 GW nuclear facility, they'll supplement demand growth and cover peaks with solar and keep burning the coal and gas. It's cheaper and they get to wave the green flag etc.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Westinghouse, AREVA (Olkilouto 3), and now Duke Energy... More and more players seem to have trouble when trying to to re-start building new nuclear plants...
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sunk costs are costs that are already spent. The $800 million was a sunk cost long before this announcement. What you mean is those costs are now a write off due to obsolescence.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
... the Levy plant, which was supposed to deliver 2.2 gigawatts to the region ...
I don't know why they keep messing with nuclear power. They showed how to create 1.21 jigawatts of electricity way back in 1984... Why that research was discontinued? Who really shot such emmetinent scientists? Libyan terrorists? Or merceneries of the Big Power companies? I wonder...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But, they are not going to build large plants like this where the builders gouge the company. Once SMRs are going, Duke will jump all over them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In this thread /. "nuclear experts" will decry just how costly all this solar stuff is and how great and awesome and cheap nuclear power is.
/. in order to save their project.
All that on a story about how a multi billion dollar energy company couldn't get a nuclear power plant off the ground even after $800 million dollars. I'm sure all Duke needed to do was consult such expert
Fukishama was a result of 2 things; a management that cut corners by doing the least possible, AND a major slowdown in building new reactors that are much safer.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The fundamental problem with this whole scenario is that Duke charged a fee to all it's customers to pay for the nuclear plant it never will build. Now that it is officially cancelled after several years of waste they will remove the fee from future bills. So Duke faces no consequences for mismanaging it's customer's money and gets approval for another rate hike.
When this plant was proposed in 2006 nuclear was the most cost effective energy out there. Fracking drove the cost of natural gas into the basement and has remained there ever since. So nuclear is no longer the best bag for your buck in the energy industry and it comes with the NIMBY stigma associated with radiation. Duke probably ran the numbers and decided it was cheaper to take the hit and pay a fine rather than complete the project and be straddled with it for years to come.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
??? The plant in question was estimated to cost around $20 billion not counting finance and other unspecified costs (probably operational maintenance, fuel and disposal which can't be cheap) and was planned to produce 2200 MW, just a bit more than 3x 700 MW. So in what world does $6 billion equal $20 billion? If it's this one then please show me where I can go to trade up.
Do not make the error of comparing nameplate capacities ignoring capacity factors (i.e. how much of the nominal power is actually produced). Capacity factor for nuclear tend to be around 90%, for solar it's location-dependent but in California it may go as high as 25%.
If you take that into consideration then the difference between 2200 MV nuclear and 700 MW solar is almost ten-fold.
Real life is overrated.
With a spreadsheet in the boardroom.
What do you do with the waste?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"Government strangles a nuclear plant, plans to bribe the company with billions of tax money to build solar instead."
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
They are not actually designed by people in the state. They were going to use the AP1000 reactor design from Westinghouse.
It seems as though China is Westinghouse's main customer now for AP1000 reactor, with this Levy plant being scrapped.
A 700MW solar plant can't be directly compared to a 2200MW nuclear plant, one can operate at close to full capacity all the time, the other (solar) almost never operates at full capacity and averages well under 50% on a per hour basis on the BEST generation days.
Unless of course the solar has an energy storage system then combined capacity rates are near 60-70% and present a power prices that's 1/3rd nuclear's cost.
I like nuclear as much as you but the simple fact is it's been priced out of the market and that's not likely to change without massive tax payer subsidies. Solar costs have fallen 99.99% since 1970. You can now purchase solar panels at a price that's orders of magnitudes smaller than other sources and the only reason it's not taken over completely is the storage issue. Once the storage problem is solved Wind and Solar will be the only two power sources as wind will be cheaper than dirt cheap gas without subsidy by 2020 at current price trends. Solar is following the same track but is a little bit more expensive upfront but has lower maintenance costs long term.
You can't imagine how much wildlife has been displaced by the solar panels on my roof. Christ I haven't seen a single deer walking around on my roof!! I tell you it's a travesty of wasted wildlife access.
Here we see the effect of dismantling the Public Utility Companies Holding Act (PUCHA deregulation) in action. This 'New Deal' act to prevent a re-occurrence of the 1929 depression by Utility companies scamming taxpayers.
Duke received subsidies and tax incentives under provisions to build a nuclear reactor (that's the $2.50 per MWh they charged) and will now be able to activate cost recovery under "SEC. 638. STANDBY SUPPORT FOR CERTAIN NUCLEAR PLANT DELAYS" of the 2005 US energy policy act to the tune of half a billion dollars for these two 'proposed' nuclear reactors. Not a bad return on sunk costs of $65 million. Specifically SEC. 638, (d)(2)(A,B).
To those that cite NIMBYs, NIMBYs didn't make Westinghouse Nuclear go bankrupt and Duke is blaming the NRC for delays issuing the Combined License for the construction and operation of Levy, this is SEC. 638, (c)(1)(A). It would be interesting to know what Duke claims those delays were and US tax and ratepayers should be concerned that this isn't actually covered by SEC. 638, (c)(2)(C), i.e a normal business risk because Westinghouse can't build them a pair of AP1000s anymore and even if they could they can't pass the NRC regulations that make them safe in a hurricane.
Of interest is a 2011 Tampa Bay Times article which aired complaints that Duke have been scamming their customers $2.50 per Mwh since they proposed Levy probably under SEC. 638, (d)(4)(B). This clumsy episode shows exactly how the scam works. It's difficult to believe there was an intention to build a nuclear power plant and that the entire nuclear renaissance was a way for oil and coal companies to use the nuclear industry to plunder the taxpayer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Capacity factor for nuclear tend to be around 90%, for solar it's location-dependent but in California it may go as high as 25%.
It varies with climate, season, latitude, and topography. But a quick rule of thumb is that a good solar location in the continental US (little cloud cover, midlatitude, not too close to a mountain, etc.) averages about 5 solar hours per day - about 21% of nameplate power.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
http://www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy-storage ..
Heat loss is only 1âF per day
so what you just said is bunk
Only if it's a PV based solar farm. Thermal solar plants continue to produce power when the sun goes down.
No they do not. Molten salt is just a big battery. They can only produce what has been put into them (minus a little which is lost in the process). This doesn't change the maths behind the solar generation capacity of a plant in any way, it does however provide storage if you can generate enough so that you don't suffer as badly from the intermittent nature of Solar.
a storage system DOESN'T change the maths of how much energy it generates, it simply stabilises when the power can be distributed. 700MW system will still only generate the same amount with or without a storage solution, with a storage solution some of that production can at least be used outside of energy generation hours, however this does absolutely ZERO to the capacity being generated and in fact REDUCES overall capacity rather than increasing it as you will lose a little by sending it in and out of storage.
It's the other way around: nuclear/coal power plants need base-load customers, not the other way around, because those power plants are cheap per kWh delivered, but cannot adapt to demand.
Power sources should really be categorized in one of three classes: 1. Flexible on-demand (natural gas, hydro, battery storage); 2. Base load (nuclear, coal); 3. Uncontrolled generation power (wind, solar).
If you add #3 to the net, you should add #1 to balance. Or do cross-continental balancing of #3 to make it behave like #2, but it requires expensive investments in long-distance transmission capacity.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
"50MW of battery storage". How can a watt be a unit of storage?
You know the big problem with the solar panels on your roof? Well nothing technically other than the fact that it has nothing to do with the discussion.
On the other hand the 260 sq km of area needed to generate the 2.2GW of power, capacity factors taken into account, will have quite a different effect on those walking deers.
Solar belongs on roofs, it shouldn't be blanketing vast areas of nature.
I can't be bothered to look up the last major study on the subject again, but while it's a lot more than "a percentage point" of the cost, nationwide HVDC links do indeed pay for themselves, whether compared to the cost of more fossil peaking, or when compared to the cost of more renewable generation to help compensate for fluctuating output. A geographically high-renewables + HVDC grid is actually more stable than a low-renewables local-only grid because of the stabilization effects of HVDC and the reduction in the effects of single-point-of-failure generation / transmission issues.
Storage is also an option, although $50m for a 700 MW solar plant is not so much long-term storage as just buying you time to ramp up/down other sources (and eliminating the significance of random cloud banks drifting over the plant). Which should be obvious when you compare prices - they'll probably pay $1,5B or so for that solar plant; the battery buffer will be only 3% of that cost.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Except that, while nuclear plant operational costs are predominantly capital costs, they still have relevant operational costs (a much larger share than maintenance share of solar costs). Capital costs make up only about 3/4ths of the cost of a nuclear plant, vs. nearly 90% for a solar PV plant. They also have significant decommissioning liabilities at end-of-life. And are heavily subsidized in that they don't have to pay for their own catastrophic liability coverage, only base liability coverage - a simple factor that on its own would price nuclear plants out of the market if they had to pay for it on their own (I doubt they'd find any insurer who'd be willing to - or even could - cover them against Fukushima-scale disasters).
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Oh, and the average PV capacity factor in the US is 27,2%. A 700MW PV plant at average capacity factor is equivalent to 206MW of nuclear. So yes, there is a 10x difference in total generation; however, it more closely follows the demand curve, meaning that you can wholesale the power for significantly more per MWh, and the price you get for your power is the figure that really matters, not the total generation. Nuclear plants spend half their time generating dirt-cheap nighttime power.
Also it's worth noting that Duke's pricing on this solar plant is abnormally expensive; new plants in the desert southwest are coming in as low as $1,50/W (half as much). Florida's insolation is worse, but I'm not sure that fully explains the difference.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Who told you that wind was uncontrolled? They lied to you, and you're a tool for repeating it. Essentially all wind turbines can either be braked, or their blades pitched so that the wind doesn't turn them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The vast majority of worldwide solar is likely going to be concentrated solar in the world's deserts. Yes, there are a few beetles and scorpions that might have a few more shady places to rest during the day.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
It makes even less sense for solar; if you simply disconnect load from a PV junction, the PV junction doesn't magically blow up.
Ezekiel 23:20
I like nuclear as much as you but the simple fact is it's been priced out of the market and that's not likely to change without massive tax payer subsidies.
The only relation to tax payers and pricing nuclear out of the market, is how much of the tax payer investment goes into to handicapping the project from the start. Building and operating a safe nuclear power plant is neither difficult nor expensive. We just make it like that.
Unless of course the solar has an energy storage system then combined capacity rates are near 60-70%
I'm all for batteries that can store energy but you just described a battery that makes the sun shine at night. Where can I buy those?
Yep.
Power sources should really be categorized in one of three classes: 1. Flexible on-demand (natural gas, hydro, battery storage); 2. Base load (nuclear, coal); 3. Uncontrolled generation power (wind, solar).
They already are: Baseload - plants that you run full bore 24x7 Mid - cover the fluctuations between base and below peak Peakers - plants that can come online quickly to satisfy demand during peak hours.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Solar? Battery "storage"? Can we do the math on this one?
The cancelled reactors would have produced an average of 47.5 GWh per day @ 90% cap factor.
If the 700 MW of added solar uses modest DC overbuild, it will achieve something like a 25% cap factor, as a seasonal average.
That's 4.2 GWh per day, replacing just 9% of the foregone nuclear gen.
Most grid battery "storage" systems run for less than a couple of hours @ rated power (50 MW in this case) per day; many only have 10 minutes of rated runtime, just enough to allow paralleled quick-dispatch gas turbines (burning natural gas) time to spin-up.
So that's less than 0.1 GWh per day. The reactors would do nearly 500x times that.
Duke is planning to replace up to 90% of the nuclear with NATURAL GAS, mostly burned in high-efficiency combined-cycle turbines plus some in quick-dispatch simple-cycle turbines. The rest of the story is window-dressing.
I hope the "environmentalists" don't mind the GHG impact of this decision.
-- Mike Greaves
It is time to consider nuclear power generation using molten-salt thorium.
The oil and coal industry will not let a reactor technology flourish that competes with oil or coal. They are the one lobbying to have nuclear regulation made that works in their favor.
The US already had a closed loop reactor/reprocessing technology in the IFR that solve the existing plutonium and DU waste issues that could power the entire US for the next five thousand years producing electricity and hydrogen that would supplant oil but maintain the current vehicle fleet. There is no way that the oil and coal industry are going to allow Nuclear to overtake their market.
Molten-salt thorium may have been a great help if it was the first fuel cycle we choose however it doesn't help us now and simply creates a new waste stream of Thallium 233 and its many many many many many many decay products. It's not about the reactor technology, it's about oil and coal, always.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Now try make a wind turbine generate power when you feel like it. That is the tricky bit
There's always wind someplace. Our grid is BS. Let's upgrade the grid, which we should do no matter what kind of power we use. Also, more storage is coming, period. It's the recycling plan for most EV packs, and EV sales are rising over time even though fuel prices are low.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
did the same thing in Nawth Ca'lina years ago, and we're STILL paying for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
1) There is only a single HVDC interlink in South Australia (where the electricity problems have been) - Murraylink. It's old (26 years), short (180km), and has never been a problem (although since it's aging and not up to modern standards it's going to need some upgrades soon - in particular bushfire suppression systems, but also replacing some old equipment at the terminals)
2) South Australia's problems are because they started taking power plants offline with inadequate peaking or interlinks to replace it. They are preparing to fix it with 129 MWh / 100MW of battery storage.
South Australia is a perfect example of precisely the opposite of your point: what happens when you neglect your distribution infrastructure. Now they're considering (too late) building a new HVDC line ("Murraylink 2") to more than double the connection with Victoria - something that should have been in place years ago.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Because Industrial users require a different kind of electricity that can't be used by consumers? LOL.
Peak loads are during the day. The fact that some industrial users require electricity 24/7 doesn't change that.
Even in the UK, which is further north than anywhere in the USA except Alaska, peak loads are during the day. That's why the utilities sell electricity cheaply at night.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My proposed category #3 is missing from that list.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Wind is only "controlled" in that it has means to turn it down when there is too much. There is no way to turn it up if there is not enough.
That's like calling a bobsled a "controlled" means of transportation. It only works when you have a downhill slope, and even then you can only turn slightly, slow down, or accelerate at the rate gravity allows. To get to the top of the hill you need a snowmachine, or get off and push it back up the hill, or wait until a new valley appears below your feet.
Who told me that wind power is uncontrolled? I was told this by the people that build, operate, and install them.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm all for batteries that can store energy but you just described a battery that makes the sun shine at night. Where can I buy those?
It's called a nuclear power plant.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Nuclear plants spend half their time generating dirt-cheap nighttime power.
You seem to imply that is a bad thing. I thought we wanted dirt cheap power.
Solar power will always be expensive because it is unreliable. Sure, we know that the sun will come up at a given time so it's "reliable" in that way. What it can't do is provide power we can rely on being there when we want it.
I think I see what you are saying, a utility wants a return on it's investment so it's going to want to sell it's electricity at the highest price. That does not mean they want to sell electricity that costs them the most. They can demand (or at least try to demand) a higher price for solar because of it being inherently unreliable. People don't want to pay for unreliable power, especially if it costs more than reliable power.
For solar power to make any sense it has to be cheaper than reliable energy like nuclear and natural gas. People will be willing to pay for unreliable power if it means getting it cheaper. Making expensive and unreliable power can just mean no one is going to buy it. Certainly if there is electricity to sell then people will buy it at some price, but that means producing it at a cost lower then what people are willing to pay so they make a profit on their investment.
Solar power is cheap right now because the government deems it so. Nuclear power is expensive because the government deems it so. If the government just got their collective heads out of their collective asses then we'd have nuclear energy so cheap that solar panels would never be considered for utility power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The truly sad part up is he got marked insightful for such a moronic statement.
Solar is a lot cheaper to install in fields (or on big-box-store roofs) than to install one-panel-at-a-time on private houses.
Nighttime power is dirt cheap because it's in excess.
No, solar power is not cheap "because the government deems it so". It's cheap because panel prices has plummeted as silicon prices have plunged in the face of new production technologies, and panel production technologies and particularly scales have improved exponentially. And solar and wind prices are cheaper than most baseload technologies, and much cheaper than nuclear.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
You are vastly overstating a valid point. Reactor problems can, and have, affected large areas. Solar panel problems only affect small areas. But neither noticeably affects 1/8 of the planet. Hundreds of miles, yes, and even that's in strongly decreased amount.
Chernobyl is a better extreme case than Fukishima, because it affected people as far away as Sweden. But the effects were minor.
There are worse case events than we have seen so far, but even one of them wouldn't noticeably affect 1/8th of the globe.
Still, if nuclear plants had to budget for all their externalized costs they'd be out of business. But so would coal. And oil would be a lot more limited. I don't have a good figure for solar or wind, because they both use lots of specialized materials that have a hefty environmental cost to extract, and they don't handle recycling their retired or non-functional products. I suspect both would easily double in costs. Society tends to hide the real costs of the sources of energy that it depends on for existence.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Solar panels will need more than hosing down. They'll need to be lifted vertically. (Of course if they're on a roof top, they'll get lifted automatically when the house is jacked up onto stilts...though I don't know how well that plays with hurricane wind resistance.
I'm assuming that the flooding you are talking about is due to sea level rise (which is measured in fractions of an inch per decade)...but which does mean that some places that used to be usually dry now frequently end up under a bit of water. If you're talking about storm surges, this only gets amplified a little bit unless it's really true that move violent storms are becoming more frequent.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I believe you are mistaken.
https://www.instituteforenergy...
Nuclear is still cheaper than solar. The cost of solar power increases once it reaches a certain threshold too.
https://www.instituteforenergy...
I'll believe solar is much cheaper than nuclear when it reaches 20% of electricity production like nuclear power has. As the paper I linked above points out, that simply cannot happen. When solar power reaches about 6% of total grid power it starts to get real expensive.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You know, I tried to get the solar installer to do one panel at a time but he kept insisting on installing them on racks in rows of 20 at a time. Lazy bastard.....
My proposed category #3 is missing from that list.
Yes, because you can't have uncontrolled generation; load dispatchers need to be able to properly balance land to keep the grid working.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm assuming that the flooding you are talking about is due to sea level rise (which is measured in fractions of an inch per decade)
Actually the rate of sea level rise since 1993 is at least 3.2 mm/year which is well over an inch per decade.
That is funny but it's also insightful. Nuclear is one of the more expensive ways to generate electrical power.
Good choice.
What most people don't get is that even in Canada (which if you weren't American, you'd realize is the country to America's north), solar and wind are cheaper than nuclear energy.
Economics cares nothing for your failed ideology. It won't save fossil fuels. It won't save fission nuclear energy.
Fusion will mostly be used by the military for the next 20 years, of course. We're not supposed to talk about it, but it was developed here.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Once death and taxes
summed the certainties of life
Add Cutting Corners
PlaynBass
Sadly it is people like yourself and those that modded you up that do the economic models of these projects.
Sorry, I forgot that rise isn't evenly distributed around the globe. Locally it's fractions of an inch/decade (though not small fractions) but on the US East Coast it's considerably more. But still a lot less than 2 inches/decade.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
For now. Sea level rise is expected to increase as time goes on.
That is not a "paper"; it's not peer-reviewed, and is simply something created by a conservative think tank (Institute for Energy Research) and put on their website. The previous job of the guy who founded and runs it was as a policy analyst for Enron.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
"Solar panel problems only affect small areas."
The pollution problems (mainly hydrofluric acid leaks) associated with solar panel production in China have the potential to wreck the potable drinking water of at least 40 million people downstream of the factories.
Right now there's a huge waste lake that noone knows how to deal with. If it breaches, the consequences will be catastrophic. Just because it's not happening in _your_ backyard doesn't mean it's not a problem associated with the technology.