"For the first time in 30 years, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. These are the first licenses to be issued since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The pair of facilities will cost $14 billion and produce 2.2 GW of power (able to power ~1 million homes). They will be Westinghouse AP1000 designs, which are the newest reactors approved by the NRC. These models passively cool their fuel rods using condensation and gravity, rather than electricity, preventing the possibility of another Fukushima Daiichi-type meltdown due to loss of power to cooling water pumps. Expected to begin operation in 2016 or 2017, the pair of new AP1000 reactors will produce around 2GW of power for the southeast. This is the first of the new combined construction and operating licenses ever issued by the NRC; hopefully this bodes well for the many other pending applications."
They will end up costing, if history is any guide $28bn at least. I remain highly skeptical about nukes are the government subsidies, and cost overruns.
I will dig into the financials for the first, and time will tell for the second. It does point out how hollow the GOP criticism about the current administrations energy policy is.
Who's financing construction loan? at what interest rate? Penalties for default?
What are the insurance caps? (iow, at what insurance payout level does the US taxpayer pick up the tab?)
Hopefully, we can see if this design becomes economically feasible for more. Not expecting it will be though. I think one way or another, environmentalist agendas will drive up the costs, beyond normal unstated or planned costs.
Why should they be subsidized?
we're doing it just to piss off iran.
Build them and start cranking out some power.
I would prefer if the government spent its money researching solar to get it at parity with current power generation methods. It is much cleaner and more abundant. We've got another billion years or so of solar power to play with.
Solar is still in it's infancy for all intents and purposes... Plus it's not like R&D on solar is going to be stopped...
For scaling immediate needs, this seems like a reasonable solution.
I have never been a fan of nuclear power. After seeing the incident in Japan last year I am even less of a fan. I would honestly prefer staying on coal fired plants and working on carbon capture techniques.
"For scaling immediate needs, this seems like a reasonable solution."
immediate? Probably not a milliwatt delivered before 2020
Is this the first time this year we agree?
Mark this day!
Relative to a nations existence, it is relatively immediate.
Infrastructure is pretty much always subsidized.
Even if delayed until 2020 (not sure where this date came from), it simply can provide with much more energy than solar in that lapse of time.
Solar isn't a non-viable tech. It simply still has to evolve (ie: better battery capacity and longevity, better power collection, etc). Right now building a massive scale solar project without having those hurdles worked out would simply be irresponsible.
Right now solar has evolved enough for smaller-scale generation, like a supplement of energy for houses. It's still evolving all the time, and one day perhaps it will make sense to build entire city power generators based on it. That day is not here yet.
"Solar isn't a non-viable tech."
iow, solar is a viable tech.
Even without energy storage, it's a viable, and exploding, tech.
"Right now building a massive scale solar project without having those hurdles worked out would simply be irresponsible."
There are 100s, 1000s of irresponsible massive scale solar projects financed and under construction, just an incredible momentum. And probably 1000000s of residential/small-scale projects, too.
"Right now solar has evolved enough for smaller-scale generation, like a supplement of energy for houses"
you are TOTALLY out of touch with solar industry.
Repug/oil/coal-dominated TX will of course lag badly in govt policies to encourage renewable energy. Feed-in tariffs as found in more progressive states and time-of-day electricity pricing will keep new coal and nuclear plants to a minimum.
eg, CPS charges $0.11 to sell you power (this will probably soon go to the TX avg of $0.13+/hr as SA metro grows but CPS has no new coal or nuclear imminent), but credits you only $0.02 for your fed-in electricity.
Top notch designs.
what about total life-cycle costs including mining, environmental destruction, and nuclear waste disposal?
The NRC approved the license over the objections of its chairman, Gregory Jaczko, who wanted the license to stipulate that the units would meet new standards recommended by the agency’s Fukushima Near-Term Task Force (NTTF) report:
“I think this license needed something that ensured that the changes as a result of Fukushima would be implemented,” Jaczko said in an interview after the vote. “It’s like when you go to buy a house and the home inspector identifies things that should be fixed. You don’t go to closing before those things are fixed.”
if anything theyll bring in jobs to an area thats starving for them
I don't believe the solar field is as weak as others believe. Working technology already exists, it just needs to be improved. In the years it will take to build a nuclear plant the technology will grow in leaps and bounds. If the proper time and resources are put into it I believe we will see exponential growth. If the government is smart and keeps parts production for the industry within the US it will also create a lot of jobs. If all this means slightly higher power bills for a short amount of time I think it is worth it to gain energy independence sooner.
IMO we're pretty close to small-scale solar being viable, but I think we're a ways off from large-scale solar projects being viable. I think solar's future is more about individual rooftops than it is about utility grade electrical generation facilities. At least for the next couple of decades.
Yep, hopefully someday we will see solar panels on top of the White House as a symbol of the future.
Solar's first use will be to replace expensive "stand-by" natural gas capacity.
Recent declines in natural gas prices have made that less economical, all things equal.
All things are not equal, however, and solar is benefitting rather from economies of scale and increased efficiency gains.
Between the manufacturing learning curve, efficiencies of scale, and the increases in capture efficiency, solar PV looks to cross some rather crucial thresholds when it comes to cost compe iveness with oil/coal/gas within about 10 years. Solar thermal is also on the same trendlines, as protoype plants move into operation.
Once that happens, new capacity will shift to solar, and older plants being decomissioned will start to be replaced by renewables. We are already seeing this with wind.
We will still make wide use of coal and gas for electricity and so forth, and certainly use gas for heating.
In the current investment environment with low interest rates, the long-term economics favor solar PV quite heavily. If interest rates stay low for another few years, as I think is likely, we are going to see a LOT of money poured into PV not because of any government subsidy, but because the economics will favor them heavily.
Solar has moved out of its infancy. I think it is closer to being a toddler.
Lastly, I would point out:
PV can start producing power from the very first months of a project, as they can hook up rows of panels to the converter as they build and install them.
Nuclear is a good base-load plant, but be aware of the high costs. Generally accepted figures in the cost analyses I have seen for installed watts are around $6,000. If you do the math, this project comes in right around there at $6300 for the "sticker" price. If they have the normal cost overruns that nukes seem to be subject to, that figure will balloon to about $13,000-$25,000, and end up making this a very pricey chunk of power indeed.
Oooh, snap. That was a good one. (tip 'o the hat)
(reference: solar panels put there by Carter, and subsequently removed, which is I assume what you are getting at)
A couple of things to bear in mind:
The first PV panels ever produced 50 years ago, still work. One of the complications of cost analysis for PV is that we have yet to figure out how long they will actually last, because they haven't worn out yet.
The costs per installed watt have come down quite a bit since Jimmy had the first experimental units put in. If I remember correctly the cost of a unit of capacity in 2012 is less than 10% of what it was in Carter's time.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
