Wayne SW says:
January 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM

Well, you identified a major part of the problem. Those wind farms don’t harvest wind so much as they harvest subsidies. And governments are the ones who put those subsidies in place. In my state (Ohio), the state government is mulling removing the state portion of those subsidies, and the unreliable energy lobbyists are raising holy hell. They say they won’t proceed with any new projects without those subsidies. That right there tells me how they are making their money. And of course they also lobby for high-priced PPAs, while you have travelling anti-nuclear activists decrying PPAs for any company with nuclear plants (they say it shows the nukes need “subsidies”).

Brian Mays says:
January 12, 2015 at 8:05 PM

“The question arises: Were the decisions concerning this enormous funding for global warming research taken out of genuine concern that the climate is allegedly changing as a result of CO2 industrial emissions, or do some other undisclosed ideas stand behind this money, IPCC activity, Kyoto, and all the gruesome catastrophic propaganda the world is now exposed to? If this concern is genuine, then why do we not see a storm of enthusiastic environmentalists and United Nations officials demanding to replace all fossil-fuel plants with nuclear plants, which have zero emission of greenhouse gases, are environmentally friendly, more economical, and much safer for plant workers and much safer for the general population than other sources of energy?”

– Zbigniew Jaworowski

What I don’t believe is that society needs to seek to reduce either “man-made” CO2 or “man-made” radiation doses to near zero. There are reasons to limit both CO2 and radiation doses, but there is no logical or moral reason to impose too tight a limit on either one.

In fact, I’ve often found that people working very hard to impose such limits don’t even like other people and seek to restrict their access to economic prosperity and physical power.

Human Health and Welfare Effects from Increased Greenhouse Gases and Warming
-- John Dunn and David Legates

Claims that global warming will have net negative effects on human health are not supported by scientific evidence. Moderate warming and increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon-dioxide levels could provide net benefits for human welfare, agriculture, and the biosphere by reducing cold-related deaths, increasing the amount of arable land, extending the length of growing seasons, and invigorating plant life. The harmful effects of restricting access to fossil fuel energy and subsequently causing energy costs to increase would likely outweigh any potential benefits from slightly delaying any rise in temperatures. Climate change is likely to have less impact on health and welfare than polices that would deprive the poor living in emerging economies of the benefits of abundant and inexpensive energy. //

As this chart shows, by a wide margin, the Gasparrini et al. study illustrates that cold extremes kill far more people that heatwaves—and by a wide margin. They concluded:

Our findings show that temperature is responsible for advancing a substantial fraction of deaths…7.71% of the mortality…. Most of the mortality burden was caused by days colder than the optimum temperature (7.29%) compared with days warmer than the optimum temperature (0.42%). So cold produced 17 times the number of heat deaths.7 //

Underlying the concept of Net Zero is the LNT [Linear No Threshold - nuclear radiation] philosophy laid down more than three decades earlier: no net emissions of greenhouse gases are acceptable. There is no threshold that allows some net production of greenhouse gases such that at any level, the net emission of greenhouse gases at any non-zero level is detrimental to the environment and must, therefore, be stopped. The belief is that since urgent action must be taken to avoid any additional warming of the planet, greenhouse gases must be removed from the atmosphere.71 When “emissions released by human action are taking a catastrophic toll on our planet and propelling us further into an irreversible climate crisis,” no threshold is acceptable.72 //

Linear No-Threshold theory began in 1927 when H. J. Muller examined phenotypical damages in fruit flies resulting from x-ray exposure, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946.78

Ibid.
It was introduced in radiological risk studies in 1959 and subsequently into general cancer risk. Consequently, the U.S. National Academy of Science recommended use of the LNT model to the induction of radiation-related mutations in somatic cells and, subsequently, to the study of cancer initiation.79

Edward J. Calabrese, “Cancer Risk Assessment, Its Wretched History and What It Means for Public Health,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, Vol. 21 (2024). 
In low-energy radiation, The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation based its radiological protection system on the assumption that the radiation-induced risk was directly proportional (i.e., linear) to the dosage, with no dose threshold below which no risk exists.80

Dominique Laurier et al., “The Scientific Basis for the Use of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Model at Low Doses and Dose Rates in Radiological Protection,” Journal of Radiological Protection, Vol. 43 (2023), 024003.

About a decade after receiving the Nobel Prize, Muller admitted that he did not discover small mutations in fruit flies with the x-ray exposure for which he was heralded; rather, the high-energy radiation nearly obliterated large portions of their chromosomes. However, his Nobel Lecture argued that no safe radiation dose existed and that the LNT model must replace a threshold-dose-response model.81

Ibid., and Edward J. Calabrese, “Flaws in the LN Single-Hit Model for Cancer Risk: An Historical Assessment,” Environmental Research, Vol. 158 (2017), pp. 773–788; Edward J. Calabrese, “From Muller to Mechanism: How LNT Became the Default Model for Cancer Risk Assessment,” Environmental Pollution, Vol. 241 (2018), pp. 289–302; and Edward J. Calabrese, “Ethical Failures: The Problematic History of Cancer Risk Assessment,” Environmental Research, Vol. 193 (2020), 110582.

A Better Rule. An obviously better rule than LNT (and to net zero and other greenhouse gas–reduction strategies) is that of Paracelsus, a Swiss physician and alchemist of the 16th century: “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison” (Sola dosis facit venenum).82 //

Eighty percent of modern energy is produced by burning petroleum, natural gas, or coal to turn the turbines inside electricity generators. (See Chart 2.) Running 24 hours a day and seven days a week, a traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear plant requires about 12.5 acres per megawatt of electricity. By contrast, solar (43.5 acres per megawatt) and wind (70.6 acres per megawatt) arrays occupy vastly more land area and have a much larger negative impact on the local habitat and its environment.93

Nuclear medicine is one of those cool specialities that doesn’t get enough attention. While nuclear energy has enjoyed a revival in recent years, little attention has been paid to nuclear medicine. That’s probably partly because explaining it in technical terms inevitably removes some of the magic and partly because many people fear radiation and don’t want to think about it.

But nuclear medicine deserves attention. Not all of the world's nuclear reactors are used for producing energy; they are also used for producing radioisotopes for medicine and industry, training, and other purposes. They are known as research reactors, and there are currently around 220 research reactors in 53 countries. In the heyday of nuclear development, in 1975, there were 373 neutron factories in 55 countries. //

Outside of the wealthier nations, there is a significant shortage of equipment and workforce for nuclear imaging around the world, and one study found that:

A comprehensive scale-up of imaging, treatment, and care quality would avert 9·55 million (12·5%) of all cancer deaths caused by the modelled cancers worldwide, saving 232·30 million life-years. Scale-up of imaging would cost US$6·84 billion in 2020–30 but yield lifetime productivity gains of $1·23 trillion worldwide, a net return of $179·19 per $1 invested.

Healthy people benefit humanity. For those living in the poorest nations to gain access to improved healthcare, nuclear medicine will play a vital role going forward, although when and how that will happen remains to be seen.

In reporting on a radiation study, a nearly universal practice of the 'experts' is to show us only the subjects' total doses. They do this despite the fact that usually what is measured is the dose rate profile, often in the form of daily doses. The total dose is computed by adding up these daily doses, and then tossing aside everything but the total. Analyzing radiation harm by only looking at total dose is like an electrical engineer attempt to analyze a complicated circuit by only looking at the annual energy input.

The human body is an extremely complex circuit. It has to be analyzed dynamically. The essential element of SNT [Signmoid No Threshold] is not the shape of the acute dose response curve, it is chopping the dose rate profile into repair periods, and analyzing each period separately. //

Where would we encounter 1 and 2 mSv/d dose rate profiles for decades? That's an easy one. Space travel. The astronauts in Low Earth Orbit get between 0.5 and 1.0 mSv/d, with occasional spikes during solar flares. High Earth Orbit or a trip to Mars will about double that. If LNT were valid, the shielding requirements would be prohibitively expensive.

NASA can't afford LNT. That's why it ignores all the EPA and NRC limits. The EPA says more than 1 mSv per year is unsafe. NASA says 1 mSv per day is routine. That's the difference between the top and bottom of Figure 1.

NASA is not the only entity that cannot afford LNT. Space travel is a luxury that humanity may or may not be able to afford. The benefits of manned space travel are at best speculative. The benefits of cheap nuclear electricity are undeniable and cornucopic. If we can correctly trash LNT to go into space, surely we can junk this counterfactual hypothesis to get cheap nuclear.

The Israeli attack on Iran in late October destroyed an active top secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, according to three U.S. officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.

Why it matters: The strike — which targeted a site previously reported to be inactive — significantly damaged Iran's effort over the past year to resume nuclear weapons research, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

   One former Israeli official briefed on the strike said it destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it.
   Iran has denied it is pursuing nuclear weapons. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a statement last week that "Iran is not after nuclear weapons, period."
   The Iranian mission to the UN declined to comment for this story.
   The incoming Trump administration will include several key national security and foreign policy officials who are hawkish on Iran, which could lead to increased U.S. pressure on the Islamic Republic.

Some added flavor here:

Flashback: Last June, the White House officials privately warned the Iranians in direct conversations about the suspicious research activities, Axios reported.

   The U.S. hoped the warning would make the Iranians stop their nuclear activity, but they continued, the officials said.

A U.S. official said that in the months before the Israeli attack "there was concern across the board" about the Iranian activity at the Taleghan 2 facility.

   The Iranian nuclear weapons research even led the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to change its assessment about the Iranian nuclear program.

You don't say?

The news comes on the heels of the arrest of a former CIA official for leaking classified documents regarding Israel's plans ahead of the strike. //

Cafeblue32 Musicman an hour ago edited

Just make us a net exporter of fuels again instead of an importer, and Trump can drop the price of oil by dumping more in the market. He did that in 2020, in April taking it down to 20 bucks a barrel. He told the bad actors that are oil nations that he would drop it down to 1o bucks if they kept it up. That's why we didn't have war. A strong military deterrent is smart. But using business to make it to they couldn't afford war is how we had no wars last time without firing a shot.

Trump knows what Democrats will never admit: whoever controls the oil controls the world. He proved it last time.

What is it Roosevelt said? "Speak softly, but carry a big stick"? With Trump we have the double whammy- a great business strategy to drive the baddies broke, backed by the most terrifyingly badass military ever seen on earth. Under Hegseth, I expect we'll see that.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft dive into costly deals that aren't generating anything yet. //

Nuclear power contracts signed by hyperscalers show they're desperate for reliable "clean and green" energy sources to feed their ever-expanding datacenter footprints, however, investment bank Jefferies warns that these tech giants are likely to end up paying over the odds to get it.

Atterus
Ars Tribunus Militum
6y
1,830
Wednesday at 1:02 PM
#8
Gee... it seems like nuclear can actually provide a ton of clean power for high demand applications.... maybe we can, i dunno, build larger ones for general load? Had that been done before? Derp?

Oh, and the crazy costs are always government red tape and activists almost requiring a plant to be built three times with nutty reqs as regs are arbitrarily changed repeatedly and facilities are fined for stuff the govt is supposed to handle (Yucca). Always lots of pointing out the "uneconomical" costs and totally ignoring other advanced nations are reliant on it and seem to have solved the base load issue...

One of those was laughing at Russias/OPECs death grip on energy costs, btw. Oh, also found a ton of the animosity against nuclear is fanned by hostile revanchist nations afraid of everyone cutting them loose. Again, gee, imagine China pushing solar! Imagine Russia pushing wind and solar! Both suppressing nuclear abroad while pursuing it themselves. Wowsers! Whodathunk? (The nuclear sector for the past 40 years)

If other nations can be powered largely by nuclear, so can we. Any other argument is hypocrisy for sustainability and pandering to lobbyists afraid their "green" stock or fossil stocks will crater as a result. Interesting as soon as nuclear gains headway, the lobbyists do everything they can to stall it...

For the record, we need a mix, but nuclear IS the solution overall. It's goofy seeing real world examples work for cost and people get all sticker shocked at govt inflated prices but are okay blowing trillions on pipe dreams... that still don't match nuclear...

Edit: correction, reference to Russias pushing for Europe to adopt solar and wind power pre Ukraine war to control their reactions when base load couldn't be met with those sources and control them via gas prices as a result, for a while.

New Google agreement could boost development of small modular reactors—if they work.

He even takes the step that I rarely see from even the most reasonable of “reasonable” nuclear critics and concedes that “nuclear still has important uses — in particular, where land and sunlight are scarce.” He concedes so much that I’m not always entirely sure what it is we’re disagreeing about.

But a big part of the difference, I think, is probably that Noah lives in California and hangs out with a lot of tech/engineering types for whom all the points about nuclear that he’s conceded are conventional wisdom, and he’s annoyed that a lot of these people have an image of solar (and especially batteries) that’s stuck in the 1980s, rather than seeing these as dynamic, forward-thinking economic sectors. I live in DC, and I hang out with lots of people who work in or adjacent to Democratic Party politics. And among the people I know, the conventional wisdom is toward much too much complacency about the current state of renewables. Many people think that because photovoltaic panels are now cheap, all the problems are solved and the big issue is that you need to say you’re pro-fracking to win Pennsylvania, and they’re looking for linguistics gurus to help them defeat fossil fuel propaganda.

I think that this is all wrong, that the world will remain much more dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future than a lot of progressives want to admit, that there are a bunch of difficult and outstanding problems that need to be solved, and that nuclear policy may provide important solutions to some of those problems. There is, of course, no way of knowing exactly what the future of any technology may hold. But I think nuclear fission remains extremely promising if — and it’s a big if — we change Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules to allow for more innovation.

Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident beginning on 11 March 2011. All three cores largely melted in the first three days.

In 1971, the AEC proposed a radically new regulatory philosophy requiring all nuclear plants be designed to hold all radioactive emissions to levels such that "exposures were as low as practicable". In other words, there is no limit. And the criteria is not whether the benefit of further reduction outweighs the cost. The criteria is: can you afford the reduction?

This was such a departure from standard regulation that, despite their desperation to get plants on line, it did produce push back from industry. But after considerable debate the policy was formally adopted in 1975 with the wording changed slightly to "as low as reasonably achievable" or ALARA.

In practice, As Low As Reasonably Achievable is interpreted by the regulators to mandate any regulation that allows nuclear to remain competitive with alternate sources of power.

On Tuesday, Google announced that it had made a power purchase agreement for electricity generated by a small modular nuclear reactor design that hasn't even received regulatory approval yet. Today, it's Amazon's turn. The company's Amazon Web Services (AWS) group has announced three different investments, including one targeting a different startup that has its own design for small, modular nuclear reactors—one that has not yet received regulatory approval.

Unlike Google's deal, which is a commitment to purchase power should the reactors ever be completed, Amazon will lay out some money upfront as part of the agreements. We'll take a look at the deals and technology that Amazon is backing before analyzing why companies are taking a risk on unproven technologies. //

X-energy's technology is based on small, self-contained fuel pellets called TRISO particles for TRi-structural ISOtropic. These contain both the uranium fuel and a graphite moderator and are surrounded by a ceramic shell. They're structured so that there isn't sufficient uranium present to generate temperatures that can damage the ceramic, ensuring that the nuclear fuel will always remain contained.

The design is meant to run at high temperatures and extract heat from the reactor using helium, which is used to boil water and generate electricity. Each reactor can produce 80 megawatts of electricity, and the reactors are designed to work efficiently as a set of four, creating a 320 MW power plant. As of yet, however, there are no working examples of this reactor, and the design hasn't been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. //

SetsChaos Smack-Fu Master, in training
28d
4
I'm excited at the prospect of having new nuclear energy in the US. There's been a huge NIMBY push since at least TMI that's seen a lot of regression in the field, despite the science clearly showing advantages for nukes as a base load power source. As much as I want LLM and AI to go the way of NFTs, I am happy to see something revive nuclear.

SMRs are a step in the right modernization direction, but it'd be really cool to get some thorium mixed in here, too. //

Unimportant Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
5y
154
I am optimistic about the nuclear renaissance but I am concerned about labor shortages in the supply chain and among operators.

The premier modular reactor operator, the U.S. Navy, faces a critical shortage of skilled shipyard workers. Repair backlogs can run into year. New construction isn't meeting its goals. Subcontractors that make low volumes of critical parts are affected as much if not more.

It didn't use to be this way but capacity was cut back over the years after the Cold War. Shipyards were closed.

There's a public-private nonprofit entity receiving millions to recruit workers:
buildsubmarines.com

Join the Team Building the Next Generation of U.S. Naval Submarines
Take the first step to join our mission of constructing advanced U.S. Naval submarines. Discover numerous career opportunities across various disciplines and make your mark in this new era of manufacturing.

They have a comprehensive job board with jobs across the supply chain. They're advertising nationally.

New reactors will need the same people. //

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction permit on September 16, 2024 to Abilene Christian University (ACU) to build a molten salt research reactor. This marked the first university research reactor approval in 30 years. It is the first liquid fuel reactor ever approved for construction by the NRC and only the second advanced reactor approved since the NRC was created in 1974.

Aside: The first advanced reactor construction permit was issued to Kairos for its Hermes in December 2023. End Aside

Natura Resources is the technology supplier for the important new facility. Andrew Harmon, Natura Resources Vice President of Operations and Business Development visited the Atomic Show to fill in some of the backstory about the project origins, the decision to pursue a research reactor as a step towards their ultimate goal of supplying a large number of factory-produced 100 MWe molten salt reactors, some of the major successes and challenges along the way and the level of community support that the project has attracted.

While active, the natural reactor generated fission waste byproducts similar to those produced by modern nuclear reactors at power plants. This provided some useful evidence for the scientists, who found that the radioactive waste products created by this natural process, including those with million year half lives, have decayed away. The byproducts have also barely moved - according to the US Department of Energy, the plutonium “has moved less than 10 feet from where it was formed almost two billion years ago.”

This means that when the Oklo reactor was discovered in 1972, the fission products had been harmlessly lying in the same place for around a billion years.

Also, in the hundreds of thousands of years it has operated as a nuclear reactor, Oklo has never had a meltdown or explosion. Scientists found that “the combination of aluminium phosphate grains to trap radioactive materials and the groundwater to regulate the reaction allowed for an extremely safe reactor.” Mother Nature knows best.

So next time someone tells you that solar and wind are the only ‘natural’ forms of energy generation, tell them about the natural reactors in Gabon. I’ve yet to hear about solar panels and wind turbines sprouting up naturally and generating electricity without human intervention anywhere in the world in the history of our planet. The blunt truth is that nature created fission well before humans were capable of building nuclear reactors. If that isn’t a clear definition of ‘natural’ energy, I don’t know what is.

The REPOWER plan rests on four pillars:

1) Replacing all subsidies and mandates with a CO2 fee, which shall be set by Congress.

2) A grid of ratepayer owned coops which provide local power distribution and backup power.

3) Coops or consortia of coops contracting with merchant providers for the bulk of their power, or possibly building their own base load plants.

4) Unshackling nuclear from a regulatory system based on the Two Lies. Nuclear's remarkable energy density, combined with competition will drive the cost of nuclear down to its should-cost of less than 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The end result will be a largely nuclear grid, backed up by local fossil generation and supplemented in some areas by hydro, wind, or solar. //

The REPOWER plan has been criticized on the grounds it not only does not get rid of fossil fuel, it requires extensive expansion of fossil fuel capacity. The goal here is reducing CO2 emissions, not eliminating fossil fuel capacity. And we must reduce CO2 emissions in a way that uses the planet's resources efficiently. If we end up in a situation where we could have both less CO2 and less cost, we are being criminally stupid.

REPOWER will result in nuclear at a naive LCOE of less than 3 cents/kWh. That makes drastically reducing grid CO2 emissions so easy it's almost automatic. Figure 1 summarizes the results of a study of the German grid in which nuclear's overnight CAPEX was set at $2000/kW. (In the 1960's, we were building nuclear plants at less than $1000/kW in today's money.) //

Currently, the grid is producing about 25% of man-made CO2 emissions. If we cut that by a factor 20 with should-cost nuclear, we are down to about 1% of the total. At that point, we are far better off going after the other 99%, then expending resources on further reducing the 1%.
Takeaway

Unless we have cheap electricity, decarbonization in going nowhere. The Good News is we can have both very low grid emissions and cheap electricity. All we have to do is:

a) Put the ratepayer in charge of the grid.

b) Let the underwriters balance nuclear safety and cost.

The likely cause is the plant is essentially fully-depreciated //

CGNP's key finding was obtained by dividing PG&E's DCPP net cost forecast of $418,407,000.00 by the number of megawatt-hours (46,519,200 MWh) the plant would be producing if it ran 100% the time during this period. (PG&E must supply the replacement power any time the plant is not producing power, such as during an outage.) The net result was $8.9858 / MWh. Since there are 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in a MWh, this corresponds to only 0.8958 net cents per kWh. This net cost is similar to the cost of running a large hydroelectric dam, the least-expensive means of grid-scale electric power production. //

Finally, DCPP's owners are not economically compensated for providing substantial synchronous grid inertia (SGI) to the California power grid. CGNP located a relevant 2018 filing from ERCOT, the Texas grid operator that underscores the economic value of nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants contribute substantial capacity and SGI. ERCOT considers SGI so important that they post the current SGI value at their overview dashboard. CAISO should emulate ERCOT in properly valuing DCPP for its abundant capacity and SGI contribution to stabilize the California grid.

Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs.

Inertia refers to a system’s capability to resist change. For a power grid, greater synchronous inertia confers greater ability to resist frequency changes. //

In contrast to gigantic 2,256 megawatt nuclear power plants such as Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) near San Luis Obispo, California which provide very large amounts of synchronous grid inertia, so-called inverter-based resources (IBRs) such as solar powered generators, wind power generators, and batteries supply negligible amounts of synchronous grid inertia. //

Prior to the introduction of significant penetrations of IBRs, each power grid's synchronous generators (coal and natural gas-fired generators, large hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants, and nuclear power plants) had sufficient synchronous grid inertia to assure power grid stability. The synchronous generators have a large amount of rotational inertia as a consequence of having massive rotating turbines and massive rotating generator rotors. (See photograph below.)

As a simplified example, each of the pair of DCPP’s generators have rotating components which weigh in excess of a million pounds (500 tons.) DCPP’s turbines rotate 30 times per second. The rotating magnetic field induces the 60 cycle per second (Hertz) AC voltage (25,000 Volts) and AC current (45,120 Amperes) in the stator windings of each unit. In response to perturbations in grid frequency, the rotational kinetic energy can be instantaneously converted to changes in the output power of the generator which tend to stabilize the generator’s output frequency and voltage.

The Biden administration has announced plans to reignite a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant with a $1.5 billion loan that, combined with other nuclear announcements yesterday, suggests the US federal government is right now all in on nuclear energy.

The 800-megawatt Holtec Palisades plant, located on Michigan's southwest coast in a relatively low-populated area, shut down in 2022 mainly due to it struggling to afford to stay operational while competing against cheaper fossil fuels.