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America's Nuclear Reactors Can't Survive Without Government Handouts (fivethirtyeight.com)
Slashdot reader Socguy shares an article from FiveThirtyEight:
There are 99 nuclear reactors producing electricity in the United States today. Collectively, they're responsible for producing about 20% of the electricity we use each year. But those reactors are, to put it delicately, of a certain age. The average age of a nuclear power plant in this country is 38 years old (compared with 24 years old for a natural gas power plant). Some are shutting down. New ones aren't being built. And the ones still operational can't compete with other sources of power on price... without some type of public assistance, the nuclear industry is likely headed toward oblivion....
[I]t's the cost of upkeep that's prohibitive. Things do fall apart -- especially things exposed to radiation on a daily basis. Maintenance and repair, upgrades and rejuvenation all take a lot of capital investment. And right now, that means spending lots of money on power plants that aren't especially profitable... Combine age and economic misfortune, and you get shuttered power plants. Twelve nuclear reactors have closed in the past 22 years. Another dozen have formally announced plans to close by 2025.
A professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University points out that nuclear power is America's single largest source of carbon emissions-free electricity -- though since 1996, only one new plant has opened in America, and at least 10 other new reactor projects have been canceled in the past decade.
The article also describes two more Illinois reactors that avoided closure only after the state legislature offered new subsidies. "But as long as natural gas is cheap, the industry can't do without the handouts."
[I]t's the cost of upkeep that's prohibitive. Things do fall apart -- especially things exposed to radiation on a daily basis. Maintenance and repair, upgrades and rejuvenation all take a lot of capital investment. And right now, that means spending lots of money on power plants that aren't especially profitable... Combine age and economic misfortune, and you get shuttered power plants. Twelve nuclear reactors have closed in the past 22 years. Another dozen have formally announced plans to close by 2025.
A professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University points out that nuclear power is America's single largest source of carbon emissions-free electricity -- though since 1996, only one new plant has opened in America, and at least 10 other new reactor projects have been canceled in the past decade.
The article also describes two more Illinois reactors that avoided closure only after the state legislature offered new subsidies. "But as long as natural gas is cheap, the industry can't do without the handouts."
There STILL is no long-term waste storage or reprocessing program in place. Nuclear is no-go until this problem is dealt with on a Federal level, period. Thousands of pools around the country waiting to explode is not acceptable.
Unless you're a Dominionist and actually believe that the Earth is going to end soon anyway, you can't defend saying that it's okay to keep burning fossil fuels, even so-called 'clean burning' natural gas. It's just plain stupid. Meanwhile I'm not going to defend the long-in-the-tooth nuclear reactors that are still operating; they're outdated designs, they're flawed designs to start with, and should be retired -- after being replaced, that is. There are better designs, and better fuels than what they're using. We can't keep relying on fossil fuels, we can't run everything off solar, wind, and hydroelectric, and if anyone thinks that there's ever going to be less of a demand for electricity, then they're dreaming, there will only ever be more demand, unless there is a die-back of homo sapiens sapiens around the world. So come on you NIMBYs and nuclear power-haters, it's time to bite the bullet and admit that there aren't any other alternatives at the moment , and nuclear power in one form or another is what the situation calls for. Stop being irrational about it and accept the logic. The alternative is an energy crisis.
I would be fine with 100% of the nuclear power costs being subsidized... but you realize, that means they'd be owned by the government. That means no private company making a penny off them, and that translates to cheaper electricity.
But, it's not a single choice.... nuclear OR carbon dioxide. Wind, solar, geothermal, wave.... all of those things provide the same "no CO2" benefit, and none of the "radioactive contamination for 10,000 years" downside. Additionally, solar can be applied small scale, like solar panels on rooftops, which is an immense benefit as you don't have to invest billions just to get a single site up and running.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/so... read the Carbon Debt section to see why your "nuclear has a smaller footprint than any other" is wrong. The first generations of solar panels, for example, are made using energy from conventional power generation (whether it's coal or natural gas in that area), BUT, as those solar panels get put into use, the origin source for the energy to make the next batch changes... it no longer comes exclusively from coal or natural gas. And that process accelerates.
Showing concern that the first of something is going to be more expensive than the 100th, or 1000th (whether in actual dollars, or in this case a carbon debt) really is only an argument for never, ever, doing a damn thing to innovate anything.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
If you really were scared of CO2 emissions, you would be fine with 100% of nuclear power costs being subsidized, to reduce emissions.
Why? The risk that you and I die due to CO2 emissions is basically zero.
The risk to die in an reactor accident or due to fall out is higher than that.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It has never harmed anyone in human history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster - Truly, "AtomicAlgebra" you deserve to die from acute radiation exposure for your lies.
The vast majority of nuclear waste is not spent fuel, it is decommissioned equipment and disposable maintenance supplies that have been made radioactive by exposure to ionizing radiation. None of this stuff can be reprocessed in any meaningful way. Yet, frustratingly, it is still dangerous.
While I am pro-nuclear, I do not think we win when we make strawman arguments.
Care to compare that with the number of people who dies in the actual disaster, which was the tsunami?
Care to compare it with the number of people dead from coal mines (directly, ignoring the polution), or solar installers, wind, natural gas plants? any of them?
Thought not.
Hell, more people died from the stress of relocation at Fukoshima than would have died IF THEY HAD STAYED PUT, thats how smart people have got.
BTW, why dont you push out the '10,000 years uninhabitable' boat while you are at it? After all, the centers of Hiroshima and Nagasake are empty deserts.
Oh, sorry, no they are thriving cities.. oh well. But you must be right!
they would have standardized on a single reasonably modern design ten of fifteen years ago
They did. It is the AP1000. It didn't solve any of the problems that you claim it magically would.
The future of nuclear power is still happening ... in China, where government subsidies are less controversial.
I was a project manager for the AP1000 projects Sumner and Vogtle. I've told this story before, but these projects failed - along with the rest of the failed nuclear renaissance in America because of NIMBY and a conjoined abomination of regulation and oversight. For example: In ~2011(ish) ASME redefined SA316 Stainless Steel to change the tensile strength and allowable radius of forged material, which in turn affected the sourced materials and design plans for already purchased / designed / built components in stage 2 containment. These designs required congressional approval, which ASME is not beholden to.
The changed definition of SA316 required congressional approval....but congress wasn't in session. Tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns not withstanding, this tiny little thing caused a two year delay. Add together dozens of these type of issues happening across a myriad of issues, and that's why we can't have nice things.
But nuclear plants can't compete with the subsidies that wind and solar receive in the form of exemptions from onerous environmental regulations.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why yes, now that you mention it, it does look an awful lot like a propaganda outlet. Thanks for getting me to check it out.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That belief _is_ reality.
Actual victims of nuclear power do exist, but their numbers are several orders of magnitude lower than the victims of fossil fuel. What he said about "More people died today from fossil fuels than have ever died from nuclear energy" is absolutely true, there is no way anyone can fudge the math to make that not reality.