Solar, wind and storage. Cheaper to maintain and build, plus more reliable.

Edit: I'm not anti nuclear, it's just not economical vs what I'm suggesting. It just takes engineering and planning to make it work. Pumped hydro, thermal sand storage, iron air batteries (no lithium), compressed air is even cost effective. Read up, nuclear, coal, gas are all going to be more expensive vs storage solutions.

I'm sorry...did you say solar and wind with a battery are more reliable than nuclear?

Lol. Solar generates 0 power at night. Wind creates 0 power when there is no wind.

That's what the storage is for.

Oh wow, a nuclear reactor project suddenly sees obscene time/cost overruns?

I. AM. SHOCKED.

Shocked, I say! This hasn't happened since the last time they tried to build a nuclear reactor in the US!

Who could have seen this coming???

Don't bother. They're thinking of powering a city, not a house. I want to go completely off grid at my house too, not gonna happen because my wife thinks the panels are ugly.

Why is storage not valid for powering a city?

Did they include costs for nuclear waste storage already?

Exactly what storage are you referring to?

Pumped hydro, pumped thermal ("Brayton battery"), various kinds of chemical batteries, hydrogen. For example.

Problem is there literally isn't enough global reserves of required resources for grid storage and electrifying the global transport fleet.

And we can't just pin out hat on new discoveries, tech or advances that could take a decade or more to reach market, because we are out of time now.

Tell me you think Li-ion is the only kind of battery without saying Li-ion is the only kind of battery.

Yes because cars run well on pumped hydro...

Redox flow batteries are scalable and there's already companies getting started on their first contracts right now.

The graph of innovation is so steeply curved upward, I think people forget that we're pretty good at improving things when allowed to do so

Well if that is the cost to operate, it’s already over market price.

This is not the same 50-megawatt reactor that was just approved by the NRC.

>NuScale and UAMPS attribute the construction cost increase to inflationary pressure on the energy supply chain, particularly increases in the prices of the commodities that will be used in nuclear power plant construction.

The biggest cost increases they list are for steel (shockingly high), but they also mention copper and electrical equipment. Plus, inflation is going up, which affects the cost of financing projects.

Pumped hydro currently has enough storage to supply...1 hour of the US electricity demand.

Getting more pumped hydro means building dams and flooding valleys - an ecological disaster.

Like miniaturizing nuclear reactors? Or is that the wrong kind of innovation?

The existing capacity is not relevant, because as long as most power is coming from burning fossil fuels such storage is pointless.

Pumped hydro would be installed off river. It does not require flooding any significant watercourses. The area flooded would be small compared to the area used by other human activities.

I didn't say battery, I said storage. There's literally dozens of methods and they all are cheaper than nuclear

So, you're walking back your comment about grid storage?

The batteries for transportation would be needed even if power were from nuclear, unless you're planning on putting nuclear reactors in cars.

And we'll need those too. Though we'll also need to bring on new mining capacity though which can take decades.

>we're pretty good at improving things when allowed to do so

We are. So why is fission not allowed to along side. People raise cost issues and overruns but that's a symptom of when you don't let an industry develop and a self-sustaining skilled workforce grow.

My point isn't too be pro-nuclear to the exclusion of all else. It's that it needs to be part of the make up because we are going to need resources spread around a lot of different industries.

It's innovation that has a poor history of innovating. That probably has something to do with the size of the units (even these ones) and the penalty for getting the design wrong. Design iteration seem to take forever and not really work well.

No one's arguing about the cheapness. We're arguing the reliability.

EDIT: And environmental concerns.

Or is it because fossil lobbies suppress all competing technologies?

Lol do the math and get back to me. Ep = mgh

Gosh it's almost as if when you stop trying to do something, you don't get any better at it.

I don't think it's there yet at capacity. The change over would be disruptive and that's a political third rail.

I really wish I could find it, but there was this old video of a guy giving a roadmap plan for cities to use less electricity with no loss of quality of life. He got down to things like how the motors in elevators are so inefficient because of how they get produced. And that's because of how ALL motors get produced to be the standards that we use. (bad paraphrase by me of course)

Nope. We literally do not have the resources/and or supply chain solely rely on alternatives for everything.

And I don't suggest nuclear to the exclusion of all else.

But battery tech that is barely out of research phase, small scale trials, or requires significant increase in supply capacity is still decades away from being a force in the industry.

What part of we are out of time do some people not understand.

To supply six hours of storage for 600 GW of power with a vertical displacement of 100 meters and water depth of 10 meters, you'd need upper and lower reservoirs with total area of about 3000 km^2. That's a tiny fraction (about 0.03%) of the land area of the United States.

That's a unit calculation. How many 600 GW units do we need?

I've done the math myself, that's why I know it's bullshit.

Yes. We can do it without using any excessive amount of any rare material. Storage can be done with cheap materials available in essentially unlimited amounts (steel, for example). The materials required are small compared to the materials used by industrial society as a whole.

You should have realized that your claim there requires that you know that no possible storage technology or combinations thereof could do the job. You are making a very strong claim that would require exhaustive analysis of all known or possible storage technologies that I am sure you have not performed. The claim that it could be done only requires finding some specific counterexamples.

Oddly, your never hear about the US submarine/carrier fleet having these problems.

Every couple of years they pump out a working, small reactor.

Is there something majorly different about designing a really small reactor vs a much larger one?

The reason for this is that the military is very experienced with building the smaller reactors. It also doesn't hurt that the reactors are remarkably small since they only need to power a single ship or sub.

There's also the reality that the military doesn't have to worry about expenses. They spend what needs to be spent.

In the civilian world, however, they're trying to build 'small' reactors that really aren't that small, and they keep trying to pitch them as 'cheap' to build. They're not.

Why? Because they need funding. That's it. Nuclear reactors, in the US, need decades of time to be built and decades more time before investors will see a ROI. That's a hard sell for anyone, so they pitch them as being cheaper than a regular plant. They undersell the costs and then start to come clean after a few years.

Could it be done quick and cheap? No. Time, money, quality. You get to choose two out of these three. You want quick with quality? That's going to cost you a ton of money. Quick and cheap? Low quality. Quality, with a cheap cost? That's going to take a fuckton of time.

Funny how this doesn't hsppen in South Korea

600 GW is roughly the average power used by the US grid.

EDIT: more like 470 GW. Ballpark.

600GJ PER SECOND is the average power used by the US electrical grid?!

Average power being put onto the grid, yes, around that.

World average rate of primary energy consumption is around 18,000 GW. This includes thermal input to all sectors: transportation, industry, commercial and not just fuel used for electricity production.

The South Korean government is in charge of their reactors.

Ours aren't.

Kinda? It's complicated. Anyway, that's more of an argument for changing regulation than against nuclear reactors.

You'll find that SKorean reactors are more safety-oriented than most US reactor models.

Yeah, that's what happens when you allow funding

Well, that's called nationalization. Americans call that communism.

The Korean nuclear industry isn't really nationalized, but I take your point. Yes, many Americans are stupid about such things. No, this doesn't make me wrong.

Thing is, we want to have the benefits of a government-run and funded nuclear industry, just with less safety regulations and no government oversight.

We are, essentially, a stupid nation.

It sounds unsound: $9.3 billion for a 462 MW capacity poweplant and $119 per MWh price without subsidies.

Current prices for off shore wind is generally around $4000 per KW capacity or $1.8 Billion for 462 MW capacity poweplant. So basically you still have $7.5 billion left.

24 hours of battery storage is around $2000 per KW capacity, and around $1 billion for 24 hrs backup of a 462 MW load

In practice Off-shore, can be much cheaper, a recent project was $1.4 billion for 600 MW capacity, and a $55 per MWh price.

So basically the final per MWh price projection of the NuScale project with government subsidies has progressed like this:
2016: $55 per MWh
2021: $58 per MWh
2023: $89 per MWh (or $119 MWh without government subsidies)
On shore wind is around $32 per MWh
Off shore wind is around $84 per MWh, projected to decline to $60 by 2030

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I think that's oversimplifying some things but not entirely wrong. Still doesn't make nuclear the problem. Stupid is the problem.

Those reactors are also not generally ones you want in civilian hands. Those reactors while still subcritical run a more enriched uranium mix that could be problematic if it were more common.

>your never hear about the US submarine/carrier fleet having these problems.

Because it's only reported in like 3 magazines. The new Columbia Class is 50% over budget and it's budget could instead pay for free housing for all Americans for 10 years, college education for all prisoners, or a mars shot. Despite this it's approved because there's no debate regarding it, only like ~21 people want to dismantle the Navy's nuclear program and they are all fringe Republicans (and Bernie Sanders). For a more direct comparison: Republicans killed the X-33 when it was over budget, for the competing Lockheed product the F-35 which was also running over budget. We stopped hearing about that after Obama took office when it became uncool to criticize the military.

>Is there something majorly different about designing a really small reactor vs a much larger one?

yes because the supply chain doesn't exist, and what suppliers do exist are setup for more lenient military standards concerning fuel density and hazard level. Even then, it's the sort of huge government contractor that is impossible to easily monitor, there's no transparency, and all the workers are Unionized. It's big fat and slow compared to coal, gas or solar panels which are readily importable.

You can build a working small reactor, but can you build it so the energy is cost competive. On a ship, you need a small compact system with a lot of power output. You can't do that with wind.

Wait, what? Nuscale is working on more than one reactor design? That defeats the whole purpose of mass production using a single design. Time to abandon this horrifically expensive one and stick with the design that's been approved.

Do you know if the cost of R&D is being included for this reactor? If so, the subsequent reactors would have much more favorable economics

That's because the military doesn't release the full costs of their reactors. Naval reactors are almost guaranteed to be even more expensive because that's how the navy works.

It's not the design but inflation pressure on the supply chain.

I own a small steel fabrication business and have been feeling this personally since early COVID. I have been steadily bumping my prices for the past two years including a massive 35% jump this year just to keep my head above water on steel costs. It's absurd. Industry wide we are seeing large scale project delays and even cancellations (which carry significant penalties) as project budgets get blown out of the water by steel costs.

As someone in the industry, have you seen the quality of materials fall at the same time? Sure feels like it from here.

Not to mention the cost of regulatory compliance

It's been hit and miss. I've had some structural orders that look like they sat in a port for months (Hilariously that is what actually happened). Tons of rust, more bent flanges than typical. I think suppliers are struggling to source material so material they would normally chop the bad parts out of and scrap they are trying to sell instead. So to answer your question, Yes.

Sure if more expensive to build than wind, but have you included the cost of the fuel?

The wind is 100% free fuel source. Not sure how they’re gonna beat that metric.

TVA's reactors are all owned by the government and they cost far more to build than the private ones. This was decades ago, but the government hasn't gotten more efficient in that time.

Besides, it's actually more expensive than traditionally nuclear power, which has a LCOE of about 65$/MWh according to the IPCC and NEA, costs, say, 10 billion to build for a 1600MW power capacity, and performs better than gas power plants in the long term. It turns out there's a good reason nuclear reactors are typically built huge.

Where are you going to find 750,000 ac. to build a 10 meter deep reservoir with a 100 meter fall? Plus this is using 100% efficiency. When in practice you are lucky to get over 60%. Look up Raccoon Mtn in Tennessee.

For a neighborhood. You are off buy a few 0s.

More enriched, it's 93% Vs about 3.5% used in normal reactors.

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I hear Indiana is one of the few locations on CONUS that could start to scale steel production and replace some of the import load. Do you have any read on that?

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You need to calculate in Energy storage and multiple sites to counter the variability of wind

Yeah, maybe according to what NuScale is saying. But if you look at the cost increase percentages of the manufacturing materials they don't add up to the increase in cost NuScale is claiming.

So your proposal to an unproven technology is other even more unproven technologies

And materials are only a fraction of the total cost of making something.

And in fact you get worse, as the knowledge in the brains of your people degrades or walks out the door.

A utility scale solar field costs about $1/W to build, a factor of 20 cheaper than a NuScale SMR. Yes, the capacity factor is lower, but not a factor of 20 lower.

That LCOE for nuclear would involve unrealistic assumptions. The LCOE from Vogtle 3/4 will be much higher than that.

Nuclear stans will explain it's always someone else's fault. Reliable as clockwork, they are.

The math only allows for one solution to carbon-free energy for humanity. Being ignorant doesn't change the math.

It does nothing of the sort. Stop lying.

Huh? Nobody tells Apple to stick to making only the iphone...

LCOE isn't calculated on the basis of outliers.

I read it as a joke.

Doesn't appear so.

That's the benefit of the grid. The wind is always blowing somewhere.

Solar, wind, and storage already exist around the world.

How much storage do you reckon we need?

I meant to delete that edit when I realized it was wrong.

Reliability is encompassed by cheapness, though. You deal with intermittency by adding storage and CO2-free backup, and this appears to be cheaper than doing things with nuclear.

For example: you can back up the entire grid with combustion turbines burning hydrogen or other non-fossil fuel. A combined cycle power plant has a capital cost of about $1/W, a simple cycle one, $0.50/W. Compare this to the nuclear plant at $10-20/W.

They increased the capacity from 50 to 77 megawatts. It's largely the same design. The 77 MW is likely to be approved soon.

Apparently it should be computed on the basis of old, irrelevant historical data? Or maybe on the basis of promises on Power Point slides.

Sure, but burning fossil fuels isn't the only environmental concern.

The Rolls-Royce 470MW SMR takes up 10 acres (40,500 m^2.) A 1 MWp solar farm takes about 10 acres.

Now assume that the 470MW outputs 400MW/hr 24 hours per day. That's 9,600 MW/day. A solar farm can only generate about the peak equivalent of 5hrs per day, so that 10 acres is only going to give you about 5MW per day (in perfect weather conditions.) To reach the same 9,600 MW/day that the SMR puts out, you'd need 3 square miles of land (7.77 km^2).

And that's not taking into account all the extra land you'd need for the storage and backup systems.

Land use is a complete canard.

We can estimate the value that society gives to putting land into a wild state by looking at other uses of land. In particular, we can look at agriculture. The value of crops produced per acre is not much. It's an order of magnitude less than the value of electrical energy produced by putting a PV field over that same land.

If the "wilderness value" of land were an obstacle to use of PV, it would absolutely be a showstopper for agriculture. And yet society doesn't treat agriculture that way at all (for example, by banning raising of crops for animal feed). So I conclude society doesn't value wilderness to an extent that would present any real obstacle to mass rollout of PV.

I'm not arguing on behalf of society. Obviously society agrees with you, which is why we see the massive construction of solar farms compared to very little construction of new nuclear power plants.

I'm disagreeing with society. In the next town over from where I live a private company was given a variance by the state to construct a 2 mi^2 solar farm on protected wooded wetlands. A SMR could easily provide the same output without compromising protected wooded wetlands, and it would've created more specialized jobs in the area.

Those kinds of projects shouldn't be happening. If you want to build a 10 mi^2 solar farm out in the middle of the Mojave, then I'm all for that, but if we're switching to green energy to protect the environment, then we shouldn't be compromising the environment to do it.

So, to be consistent, you should also be campaigning for the abolition of agriculture, and its replacement with food artificially synthesized with energy derived from nuclear reactors.

Are you doing this? If so, I'd maliciously love to hear how that suggestion plays out in the public sphere.

Yes, wind and solar are proven large scale grid storage that doesn't rely on specific geography or large amounts of lithium aren't

Food is not electricity. That's one of the worse false equivalencies I've seen in a while.

Most food is entertainment. Food just for human existence requires far less land than food that satisfies aesthetic concerns. For example, beef is enjoyed by many people, and it wastes something like 90% of the calories in the feed that goes to fattening the cattle.

So, most of the land used to grow food in the US is for making life more enjoyable, just like ultimately all the things are that energy is used for.

The problem is we funded all nuclear power thru the DOD for decades so our reactor technology is optimized to generate bomb material not power.

You're just making the false equivalency worse. Borderline strawman territory.

I'm disagreeing that the equivalency is false.

I want you to explain how one can consider eating beef to be in any way different from using the land to instead make energy for industrial society. Why the inequivalence? Why is beef production somehow morally privileged? Justify, don't just assert.

What is the more reliable, albeit slightly more expensive way to produce and equivalent amount of beef at the equovalent rate to that which is already being produced on agricultural land?

Additionally, how many new agricultural projects are slated to begin on protected land?

You're the one claiming they're the same thing. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate how your equivalency is not false.

EDIT: Your equivalency is false because it's founded on the basis that I'm claiming electricity is a superfluous luxury, which I've never claimed.

> What is the more reliable, albeit slightly more expensive way to produce and equivalent amount of beef at the equovalent rate to that which is already being produced on agricultural land?

Animal feed can be made from microorganisms grown on synthetic chemicals. This was done half a century ago:

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8452715/pruteen-sample-sample-synthetic-protein

The methanol there was made from natural gas, but it could be equally made from CO2 reacted with hydrogen produced by electrolysis.

> Additionally, how many new agricultural projects are slated to begin on protected land?

That's not the point. How much land could go back to wilderness if we weren't growing food on it? You are arbitrarily ruling out the value of land converted back to wilderness in this fashion, privileging food production on existing land for no reason other than inertia.

But suppose we go along with that, and just stick with existing farmland and consider it usable for any purpose just because we're already using it. Converting some of that farmland to PV collectors, and then allowing beef to become a bit more expensive (perhaps making some synthetic feed to compensate), would be a profitable thing to do -- the value of energy from PV on former agricultural land would be at least an order of magnitude higher than the value of the animal feed produced on that land. Would you object to this? If so, why?

> You're the one claiming they're the same thing.

In economic analysis, we can trade X off against Y. The tradeoff is based on the economic value of the activities. If land in a wild state has value, it has value regardless of whether we were considering to use that land for farming or for solar energy collection (or for any other use.)

The central point here is that farming doesn't deliver all that much value per acre. Why are you so hung up on preserving this, but objecting to the far more lucrative use of that land for PV? Your position is hypocritical.

> That's not the point.

That is the point. That's my point. It's irrelevant whether it's your point or not because we're not arguing about your point. We're arguing about my point.

I didn't say anything about land converted back to wild land. I said protected wild land shouldn't be being converted in the first place.

> It has value whether we are considering to use that land for farming or for solar energy collection.

So...you're saying that what you just claimed isn't the point actually is the point. I'm not saying it's okay to put agricultural land on protected woodlands, but not solar farms, and I'm not saying that no land anywhere should be used for energy generation. I'm saying that protected lands shouldn't be being released from their protected status so they can be razed for solar farms when there are perfectly viable alternatives. Feel free to re-read what I said if you think that wasn't my point (although I stated it explicitly by saying I don't care if you want to build a 10 mi^2 solar farm in the mojave.)

You're trying to discredit my position by equating lands already in agricultural use with protected wetlands and woodlands. It is both a false equivalency and a strawman.

You keep trying to use economics to manipulate my opinion, but my point was never an economic point to begin with. My point is an environmental point. The environment should be preserved when it can reasonably be preserved, even if it's not the most economically viable option.

If there is a more reliable, albeit slightly more expensive way to produce the equivalent amount of beef at the equivalent rate to that which is already being produced on agricultural land that also requires the conversion of less wild land than conventional agricultural techniques, then I'll advocate fully for its use, provided that it's not being carried out on otherwise protected land.