The first US nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia
The first US nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia
A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation. Georgia Power Co. announced Monday that Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, has completed testing and is now sending power to the grid reliably.
ATLANTA (AP) — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.
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The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but are now on track to cost their owners $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.
The third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016 when construction began in 2009.
A reactor that starts being built today will cost way more and will be delayed way more than these and they are already at least 14 years in the making not counted for the planning phase and 7 years late to be producing power and no they are not fully powered yet, because it takes another 1-2 years to get them to full power, not to mention drought and war threats.
Nuclear will not play any role in fighting climate change. A reactor starting planning today will most likely just replace an old model that is falling apart and to dismantle that and keep the parts safe somewhere costs another fortune.
Ironically, a major reason for this is environmentalists themselves. Nuclear power would be way cheaper if it wasn't for their panic over things that contain atoms.
Ironically, a major reason for this is environmentalists themselves. Nuclear power would be way cheaper if it wasn't for their panic over things that contain atoms.
In terms of safety, there's a big difference between nuclear technologies that fail elegantly like LFTR and more traditional designs that tend to use weaponized isotopes with very long half-lives, and can meltdown and explode when operated incorrectly.
I can understand why environmentalists look at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and say, hmm, maybe we shouldn't do that.
The issue is you have a fairly large contingent that unknowingly bought the fossil fuel company kool-aid and wholehearted think all nuclear is bad
LFTR costs so much up front and if it does fail which is why it isn't utilized, which sucks because it's massively more efficient, cheaper to fuel, and like 1/10th the size. So over time it's ultimately cheaper than current gen reactors. Even with the failure cost replacement, there's no fallout because of its walkaway design, so yeah it's a LOT cheaper than a normal reactor failing.
Also it's the only reactor design so far that could work in space like on the moon or Mars.
I really doubt that environmental regulations more than doubled the price. Especially when they knew about those regulations when they were planning it.
Protests against nuclear power have certainly helped prevent many counties, US included, from investing in new reactors over the last 30+ years.
Right, but unless nuclear energy regulations have changed significantly since they started planning it wouldn't have increased the cost.
Or maybe it costs $15 billion to drag some hippies out of the way, I don't know.
That's the easy way out, just blame it on panic and not numbers, because you do not have numbers that make nuclear power look good compared to renewable energy. This is not about grandma being scared, this is about scientists presenting scientific facts and studies.
There have been 3 fairly dangerous and catastrophic meltdowns rendering partial or whole plants inoperable within 4 decades. These meltdowns have caused long term environmental damage, killed people, etc.
If you're averaging almost a meltdown a decade, and where each time we have been lucky it hasn't been worse, I reject any claims that this is a safe technology that we have under sufficient control for it to make sense, especially when we have such cheaper and less dangerous ways to get the power we need now.
If you're including Chernobyl in that list, it was a hopelessly out-of-date design and the operators basically did everything they could to make it melt down as part of some kind of misbegotten "safety test."
If you're including Fukushima, that one didn't actually kill anyone. Though the tsunami that caused it killed over ten thousand.
Do you happen to know how many people get killed by hydro dams bursting, or by the side effects of coal power plants? Or the environmental degradation caused by the chemicals required for manufacturing solar panels? Nothing's completely safe, but nuclear power happens to be one of the safest by comparison.
Now compare that with the amount of people killed by conventional power generated or how much of the planet was damaged when a spill occured. Bet the numbers don't look so bad when you compare the two. Hell, let's take it a step further and include the cancer causing effects of power generation on the people living in the vicinity of plants.
Nuclear has its problems, but quit spreading FUD.
The future won't be these massive reactors, they'll be the small modular ones that can be built in a factory and brought to location.
Lots of smaller micro grids that will be substantially easier to bring online
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/05/30/small-modular-reactors-produce-high-levels-nuclear-waste/
“Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study,” said study lead author Lindsay Krall, a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). “These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”
and
“Small modular reactors won’t achieve economies of manufacturing scale, won’t be faster to construct, forego efficiency of vertical scaling, won’t be cheaper, aren’t suitable for remote or brownfield coal sites, still face very large security costs, will still be costly and slow to decommission, and still require liability insurance caps. They don’t solve any of the problems that they purport to while intentionally choosing to be less efficient than they could be. They’ve existed since the 1950s and they aren’t any better now than they were then.”
Yeah, people use this same argument for why fighting climate change is a bad idea.
It’s just way too expensive to switch to renewables, or improve public transit, or use more sustainable agricultural practices, or retrofit our shipping industry, or switch to electric vehicles and transit, or ban single use plastics.
Doing those things costs too much! They simply can’t be a part of fighting climate change.
It’s the same old tired oil propaganda. Anything that isn’t fossil fuels is too expensive!
And repeating their rhetoric for the last 50 years has served wonderfully to entrench fossil fuels.