mheslep said:
Difficult for nuclear and coal, but if closures are an indicator of financial soundness, not for gas and wind.Hiddencamper said:
Great way to make clean electricity. In the US, nuclear is also currently an expensive and decades long way to make electricity. It was not so in the US under the AEC, and is not so in China, S. Korea.jim hardy said:
Metric Clinton and QC All Wind and Solar
Capacity 3 GW 3.8 GW
Net generation 24,600,000 MWh 10,800,000 MWh
% of total state generation 12.2 % 5.6 %All of these assertions should be qualified imho.schmikah said:
Indeed.etudiant said:
Astronuc said:
Vote libertarianmheslep said:
Aye, or for whoever can make regulation transparent, streamlined as in Korea, China.anorlunda said:Vote libertarian
The reporting on the event was very limited, because secrecy is very much the norm for government nuclear related operations. Any disclosure was very uneven and really driven by responses to local community fears, rather than any coherent plan.mheslep said:
In the US and Europe, I imagine the possible disruption from Gen IV (.i.e new cheap nuclear) is the most serious threat to existing big nuclear. Given its emissions, gas can replace coal and the oldest most expensive nuclear plants, but I doubt gas poses much threat to the majority of the US fleet with the pressure to reduce overall emissions. As big existing nuclear and the NRC have an interchange of people, the NRC has incentive to block new cheap nuclearanorlunda said:
...A threat to the the *US* nuclear industry where nuclear has capital costs to 5 or 6 times that of gas plants and have ~10 year build times. Not so much of a threat in China, S. Korea, where nuclear goes in in ~5 years with capital cost 2 times gas.
Nuclear need not be at exact par with gas build times and capital cost as even cheap US gas ($3 or $4/mmbtu) is several times more expensive per kwh than nuclear fuel. Planned retirement time can be many decades, a century, *if* the initial investment is low so investors get their money back early in the case of disruption via innovation.
mheslep said:
)What difference does it make to the initial investor if they get there money back early? That is, how does the cheap plant differ from a building that lasts a hundred years, from the perspective of the investor? Buildings don't require 7 year closures.anorlunda said:Yeah sure. What corporation or agency in this world can be trusted to exist a century from now? What country is certain to exist in a century? (Other than Switzerland
If so it would be for existing nuke tech, not necessarily gen IV. Nuclear owners have gone bankrupt. Where did the follow up fall on the public?
Washington Public Power Systemmheslep said:
WPPSS was a case where the government issued municipal bonds for a plant that was never completed in the wake of TMI, not an operating nuclear plant where the owner failed and the government had to decommission and clean up. Govt risks capital anytime it finances a big project, sports stadium, bridge, etc. The nuclear industry pays into a fund to handle cleanup.anorlunda said:
Theres already been a license granted for 60 years (60 + 20 more): Oyster Creek. I doubt 100 yrs is unthinkable for a plant with low overhead.
Ft. Calhoun had a number of problems before the flood and fire. The flood and fire just added to the list of things to be corrected. The article mentions that one of the workers, Brock Lindau, who has spent most of his career at the Fort Calhoun, helped install almost $700 million worth of upgrades that got the plant through a flood and a fire, and helped get it licensed to operate until 2033. I suspect many of the workers were there in order to complete the upgrades.mheslep said:
WPPSS defaulted on bonds. I think LILCO was close to bankruptcy over Shoreham, but the state intervened. I don't recall the involvement of LIPA and the state with LILCO, but taxpayers and LILCO customers bore a significant burden.mheslep said:
That's a legitimate argument. Or, one can argue that it should also be possible to scale down the workforce at single reactor plants. If not, I would like to know how much of the staff is required by the NRC on a per plant basis. If the NRC requires, say, an unjustifiable couple dozen NRC employees at every plant, and requires a similar number of counterparts from the operator, then the ~300 MW SMR projects under development are not feasible.Astronuc said:
Astronuc said:
That may be just operations. There is a previous statement - "Development and construction employs about 380 workers annually and yields about $824 million in economic benefits for the state." I don't know if that applies now that the plant is finished, since is uses present tense indefinite, rather than past as in 'employed'. Otherwise, the utility may use service contractors who would be on call, and don't count as employees.mheslep said:
I am unsure as well. As far as I know, the decommissioning fund is fixed and dedicated to decommissioning the plant.mheslep said:
There's likely a roving, plant to plant, periodic maintenance crew, but after construction is complete, what else is there? No daily reports to the NRC for the staff of a gas plant.Astronuc said:
Even with an aggressive nuclear energy program, China is investing a lot more in wind, hydro and other renewables.
The crisis with AREVA is old news since 2015.
As with everywhere else, when very large 'renewable' figures are mentioned, the large majority turns out to be hydro projects with thousand mile transmission lines, or biomass combustion plants, and not so much wind or solar. Chinese hydro is increasingly some 100 TWh per year, wind is a 5th of that. I don't believe there is a great cry for the US to build more hydro projects because China does, nor burn up trees at 8GW because Germany does.Astronuc said:
Astronuc said:
mheslep said:
Neglecting losses, which I think you underestimate, other problems: Cost between one and two million USD per mile, theft of private property under "eminent domain," degraded visual landscape...nikkkom said:
mheslep said: