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."

Comments

Re:U.S. only country really fighting climate chang

[PopeRatzo]

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.

There is nothing in this story that mentions or involves Donald Trump in any way. And none of the "incentives" to nuclear power discussed in this bill are new.

I say this on every nuke thread

[rsilvergun]

until you can convince me that it's cheaper to run a safe nuke plant than an unsafe one I'm not sold on nuclear. Fukushima was a completely pointless and preventable disaster that happened because the guys running TEP wanted to save a buck. Here in America we just poisoned Flint, Mi because nobody wanted to pay to treat their water properly for the type of pipes they had. You'll see the same damn thing with nuclear. Want me to drop the NIMBYism? Show me that a safe plant is cheaper to run. And I don't mean "Cheaper when you account for lawsuits" either. They'll just fold the corporation and/or tie it up in court until everybody's dead from cancer. Worked for the cigarette companies...

Re:Um... huh?

[LynnwoodRooster]

If the rest of the EU is like the UK, nuclear produces more power than solar and wind combined. And ends up being lower cost over 60 years, too...

Many are coming around. They compliment each other

[raymorris]

It's no coincidence that Greenpeace has that name, Green Peace. The early environmental movement was very much intertwined with the anti-war, anti-military movement, at a time with nuclear weapons were one of the major issues of the day. The Peace side of Greenpeace was churning out information / propagada against nuclear research and facilities because of nuclear weapons. You couldn't have Greenpeace both promoting nuclear energy and using scare tactics about nuclear research such as creating confusion between the slow, long-lived elements vs the fast ones that release enough energy to be dangerous. That legacy lasted a long time.

A lot of leading environmentalists are coming around, though, such as one of the founders of Greenpeace:

http://ecosense.me/2017/01/17/...
http://ecosense.me/2017/01/18/...

As the parent mentioned, solar and wind compliment nuclear very nicely. Both solar and wind are great - when the weather is right at the moment. When the weather isn't right, at night for example, nuclear is the very best, cleanest way to have your base.

For 70 years now we've been trying to find ways solar electric work on a nationwide scale, particularly working on the storage problem. All the while we've been running
oal burning plants while hoping for a revolutionary discovery in energy storage. It can work fine for a hunting cabin (just a little expensive), but after seventy years of burning coal while waiting for solar, we're still nowhere near the kind of revolutionary discoveries needed for something on the scale of powering the United States or Japan. The amount of energy is just so vast. As an example, pumped hydro storage sufficient to get the US through a large winter storm system would require flooding from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, nearly half the country.

If we want to not only replace the existing uses of electricity, but also power all of our cars and trucks from electricity, and industry such as steel and aluminum, we're going to need a lot more electricity. Dependable power for transportation can come from either fossil fuels or nuclear, because you can't have the entire state shut down due it's cloudy this week. You can use solar electric during sunny weeks, but food needs to be delivered to stores during storm season too, and Seattle's cloudy season.

People are starting to come around. I don't think we'll have to keep using mostly fossil fuels for another seventy years while hoping fot a miracle. We can wait for the miracle while drastically cutting CO2 emissions with nuclear.

PS -
Before you reply, be warned I know the gimmicks of dividing *electricity* usage (not vehicles or any other use of energy) by energy usage. Apple divided by orange is a useless number. I'll call you out on it, so don't bother trying to post a BS stat that conflates energy and electricity.

I'll also call you out on it if you try the propaganda of conflating long half-life elements which release energy slowly, over a long time, like a candle, vs short half-life elements that release it quickly like a firecracker. Energy released quickly is dangerous - for a short time, then it's done.

I was going to list two more propaganda techniques I'll call you out on, but let's just summarize with this:
I've studied for 30 years. I've written a comprehensive energy plan for the United States. I know the tricks, and I'll call you put if you try to use them.

Re:SMR

[Daemonik]

Problem with SMRs is that battery banks ala Tesla's project in Australia, are cheaper, safer and have a quicker ROI. As battery technology advances they only get better.

So you can drop a few billion on a white whale hoping that it's still useful in 50 years, or you can put that into wind/solar/batteries and get immediate benefits.

Re: Huzzah

[CrimsonAvenger]

How many people have died from solar and wind power vs nuclear?

Zero. If Joe Blow iron worker slips and falls to his death while working on a wind turbine, that's an industrial accident. Not a failure of wind power. Same as if Joe Blow is replacing an aircraft warning light on the side of a nuclear cooling tower and falls to his death, that's an industrial accident, not a failure of nuclear power.

Hmm, as of 2008, rooftop solar has caused 0.44 deaths per TWh produced. Nuclear is at 0.04 deaths per TWh.

Now, Fukushima has happened since then, so we should probably add the one (1) extra death (NOT per TWh) that happened as a result of Fukushima recently (saw it in the news last week or so). So, ~4500 TWh nuclear, one death, increases nuclear deathrate to 0.0402 per TWh.

Hmm, So, rooftop solar causes 11 times as many deaths as nuclear, even if you include TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Well, we all know that nuclear is by far the most deadly form of power ever invented, so obviously, these numbers are fabrications....

Oh, and note for the "but, but, radioactive waste for BILLIONS of years!!!", it should be noted that the short half-life stuff that makes nuclear waste, well, seriously radioactive is pretty much gone a week after shutdown of the plant.

Medium half-life stuff will be useful for a few centuries (yes, useful - it's actually possible to extract usable power from that crap).

And the long half-life stuff? Not nearly so dangerous as airplane flight. When I was in the Navy, I got more dosage flying back and forth between the USA and Holy Loch than I got from spending a couple months in the engineering spaces of a nuke boat between flights....

Re:SMR

[AmiMoJo]

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.

That is untrue. You end up with tonnes of high level waste that needs to be stored for extended periods of time. The rector case degrades and is the main limit on the lifetime of most designs. It can't be recycled.

This kind of hand-waving "we can just recycle it (with currently non-existent techniques that we hope to develop later, maybe)" is why investors aren't interested.

Re:U.S. only country really fighting climate chang

[bobbied]

Reprocessing is where this will eventually go. It simply has to. Dumping "waste" that is 80-90% usable fuel is about as stupid as it gets. Reprocessing will create new, usable fuel, reduce the volume of the high level nuclear waste and make the problem much more manageable. Burying spent fuel assemblies in some mountain is absolutely stupid.

Re: U.S. only country really fighting climate chan

[bobbied]

How much are you being paid by the nuclear energy industry? Neither solar nor wind power can render an entire state too dangerous to live for the next 10 thousand years.

What are you talking about? The absolute worst accident we've had, where a stupidly designed reactor was literally blown apart and burned for days didn't produce such a unlivable place for 10 thousand years, and certainly not a state sized portion of real estate. Even in Japan, where we blew apart multiple reactors, the situation isn't going to leave the ground uninhabitable that long nor is it the size you want to think.

I'm not going to tell you there are not risks, but I am going to insist on being reasonable about assessing those risks.

There are new reactor designs which are NOT going to catch fire and burn, won't suffer meltdowns and containment breaches even in the worst case dooms day scenarios you can imagine. But because you want to believe the fiction "China Syndrome" Hollywood depictions of what happened at TMI, we are stuck running rickety old 50 year old facilities (Even then with a safety record that is pretty darned good, with only ONE serious accident in the USA's commercial operating history, and that one being of nearly zero effect on the public, with the only negative effect being the hysteria.)

Longer lived than the USA

[sjbe]

The Chernobyl exclusion zone will not remain dangerous for 10 thousand years, only a few hundred.

It's expected to remain unlivable for longer than the USA has been in existence. When we are talking about time scales longer than anyone reading this will be alive it's a distinction without much of a difference.

But do get my point about that accident. It was the WORST conceivable scenario.

No it was not the worst conceivable scenario. Very bad yes but it's trivial to conceive of a worse one. Imagine an accident similar to Chernobyl had happened at Indian Point just 25 miles from New York City. If the wind happened to be blowing the right way it could render the city uninhabitable under the right conditions. Unlikely I'll grant but the probability is not zero.

In fact, BOTH cities where atomic bombs where used are inhabited and it's been less than 100 years since the end of WW2.

Chernobyl put 400X more radioactive material into the atmosphere than Hiroshima. Furthermore the types of radiation released from Chernobyl were much longer lasting than those from the two bombs dropped on Japan. You are comparing apples to oranges.

So, you are scare mongering with the "Laying waste to a state for 10,000 years" thing.

Read what I wrote. Did you see me write anything about 10,000 years? No you did not. You are responding to your own strawman. I said it "Nobody is going to be living in that 'state sized portion of real estate' for a very long time to come." which is 100% true. Stop trying to put words in my mouth that I did not say.

Yes there are risks, but nothing as dire as you claim.

The risks are absolutely that serious and we ignore them at our peril. The probability of catastrophic failure of a fission plant regardless of design is low but is not zero. Denial of that fact is dangerous. I think nuclear power is important and should be used but I'm not about to pretend it doesn't carry some serious dangers.

Re:Chernobyl exclusion zone size = Rhode Island

[LynnwoodRooster]

That's about 20% of the greater Los Angeles area. It's a VERY small area, all things considered. And Chernobyl was hardly a plant failure; it was a failure of thinking by those purposefully disabling the safety shutdowns. But also note that there is:

Resettlement of areas from which people were relocated is ongoing. In 2011 Chernobyl was officially declared a tourist attraction.

Meaning it was about 25 years, not the 10,000 years originally claimed. So IF you have people stupid enough to purposefully shut off all safety systems, run it hard, and then blow up a "reactor [that] is unique and in that respect the accident is thus of little relevance to the rest of the nuclear industry outside the then Eastern Bloc", and then it is safe enough to repopulate after 25 years, then yes - it can be an issue. Pretty different from the original claim, eh?