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US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last week, the House passed a bipartisan bill that originated in the Senate called the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (S. 97), which will allow the private sector to partner with U.S. National Laboratories to vet advanced nuclear technologies. The bill also directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to lay the ground work for establishing "a versatile, reactor-based fast neutron source." The Senate also introduced a second bill called the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (S. 3422) last Thursday, which would direct the DOE to actually establish that fast neutron reactor. That bill also directs the DOE to "make available high-assay, low-enriched uranium" for research purposes. The Nuclear Energy Leadership Act has not yet made it past a Senate vote. The report also mentions a recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling to keep older reactors online. "The court said that subsidies for nuclear energy proposed by Illinois don't cause any interference with federal control over interstate power markets, which is prohibited," reports Ars.
"In 2017 the state of Illinois agreed to offer a Zero Emissions Credit that included nuclear energy (PDF). The credit was opposed by fossil fuel generators and by the Electric Power Supply Association, who sued the director of the Illinois Power Agency. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Justice filed a joint brief in the case several months ago, saying those federal agencies had no problem with Illinois' credit system, according to Utility Dive."
"In 2017 the state of Illinois agreed to offer a Zero Emissions Credit that included nuclear energy (PDF). The credit was opposed by fossil fuel generators and by the Electric Power Supply Association, who sued the director of the Illinois Power Agency. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Justice filed a joint brief in the case several months ago, saying those federal agencies had no problem with Illinois' credit system, according to Utility Dive."
It's ironic that Trump is derided for leaving the Paris accord, when he's the only one taking actions to significantly improve the climate.
You mean like rolling back pollution rules to help coal plants? https://abcnews.go.com/Health/...
I'm all for advancing nuclear power technology, but I wouldn't give Trump any credit for it. The bill was passed by Congress. The Trump administration was only mentioned once in the article and even that was about nuclear being bundled with his attempts to save the coal plants.
The White House wants to push advanced nuclear, and supports nuclear power legislation - unlike the previous Administration. That's all that's really needed here - Congress will actually pass nuclear power bills now there is a President who understands the benefits of nuclear power.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So what you are looking for is a Small Modular Reactor. These are relatively small reactors that can be produced on an assembly line and shipped to the installation site, so they are cheaper than conventional nuclear designs. Most don't require active cooling, which means you don't get meltdowns. Also, you can bury them in a vault for protection from attack or sabotage. They require no maintenance. You run them until their fuel is spent, then you pull one out of service and recycle it. You end up with a few pounds of waste material per unit over the course of it's lifespan, which is a couple of decades.
Russia has been actively developing these things for decades, and are piloting several models.
NuScale has an interesting design ready for licensing, and TerraPower has a design that uses liquid sodium cooling and depleted uranium fuel, which makes it essentially impossible to melt down.
Think of it this way. The expensive part of old water-cooled nuclear reactors is maintaining the elaborate water cooling system. It's also the primary point of failure. Getting rid of active cooling makes reactors cheaper to build and maintain, AND makes them safer.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The previous administration struggled to push legislation, because the GOP openly had a policy of "We wont allow any bill that comes from the democrats" regardless of its merits. Even if it was completely apolitical (in the left/right sense) or whatever, it was blocked because a democrat raised it, or Obama proposed it (ESPECIALLY if Obama proposed it).
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
If Obama never had a filibuster proof majority in Congress during his term, then how did Obamacare pass with zero Republican votes?
The fact is he had a filibuster proof 60 votes in the Senate until Massachusetts decided their proposals sucked so much they voted in a Republican to replace Kennedy, Scott Brown was sworn in on 2/4/10. Prior to that they had Democrat Paul Kirk replacing Kennedy.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Is that really worth it. That, and if the wind weren't going out to sea, thousands, now would be dead.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
And Obamacare was the rightwing ideal, it started off the same as Romneycare, and STILL the republicans demanded more pro-corp BS.
And STILL we get to hear this lie repeated. This was NOT a rightwing idea. As Romney plainly said, multiple times during his failed presidential campaign, if a STATE wants universal healthcare, they are free to try it. The problem is the federal government is NOT the proper place for such social experiments. But your side passed it anyway.
Democrats simply want to share the blame for this disaster of a law. Well, it was good enough for your side to pass it over the objections of the Republicans, it's your law to defend and your mess to own, not ours. It's not our fault that you guys passed the lemon of a law, that you didn't even read it or accept ANY input from the other side of the isle.
I know who lied about this, it wasn't the Republicans. Remember "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan!" and "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor!" and my personal favorite "It will save a family of 4 $2,500!" Well, My plan changed, my doctor changed and my costs went UP.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess...
Lifetime emissions of a nuclear plant are around 100g/kWh. Better than coal but considerably worse than wind/solar+battery.
Every once in a while I see a citation and a fact that challenges what I know. I follow the source. 9 times out of 10 the "fact" is a misleading representation of the citation. This is one of those misleading representations. The document has a table that provides the assessed minimum/median/maximum carbon emissions for a power source. This table gives following values for nuclear (in gCO2eq/kWh):
minimum: 3.7
median: 12
maximum: 110
Suffice it to say that the parent post, by approximately citing the maximum number, is quite misleading.
In comparison, here are a few other sources (in terms of min/median/max gCO2eq/kWh):
Nuclear: 3.7/12/110
Coal: 740/820/910
Gas (Combined Cycle): 410/490/650
Geothermal: 6.0/38/79
Hydropower: 1.0/24/2200
Concentrated Solar Power: 8.8/27/63
Solar PV—utility: 18/48/180
Wind onshore: 7.0/11/56
Based on these numbers (purely considering lifetime CO2 emissions--from your source), nuclear appears to be pretty competitive with wind/solar, etc.
Please help keep /. factual. Mod parent down or this post up. Thank you.
The Chernobyl exclusion zone will not remain dangerous for 10 thousand years, only a few hundred. In fact, it's quite habitable now if you are older and avoid specific hot spots where radiation doses might get too high. They used the second reactor on site for decades more after the accident, meaning human occupation is perfectly acceptable. The issue around Chernobyl is that the hot spots are hard to know and avoid, so it's easier and cheaper just to keep people out for now. Eventually, it will make economic sense to finish the clean up and when it does, they will.
But do get my point about that accident. It was the WORST conceivable scenario. Such accidents where never possible outside of the Russian sphere of influence as such dangerous designs would NEVER be put into industrial operation. Even so, the accident wasn't responsible for laying waste to the land for even a thousand years. In fact, BOTH cities where atomic bombs where used are inhabited and it's been less than 100 years since the end of WW2. Plus the WORST accident in the western world was in Japan where multiple containment structures where destroyed. The exclusion zone from that will be cleaned up before I die and is currently more about an abundance of caution and avoidance of liability than anything else. It's just cheaper to toss everybody out and raze the whole thing than play the creeping liability and punitive damages game in the courts. They will clean up that land, but it's going to take a bit of time to get around to it as they are concentrating on decommissioning the damaged plants first.
In the USA, the *worst* accident we have was TMI, which was a nothing burger for the general public, though it caused financial issues for the operator. We literally had a partial meltdown in the middle of a highly populated area, but even after decades of looking we cannot find where anybody was harmed, had a latent cancer or any other kind of issue caused by the accident. We had like two onsite excessive radiation exposures for plant workers during the clean up, but zero evidence of anything for the general public.
So, you are scare mongering with the "Laying waste to a state for 10,000 years" thing. Yes there are risks, but nothing as dire as you claim.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101