Michigan Nuclear Plant Aims To Be First Ever To Reopen In US (canarymedia.com) 109
The Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan has won a $1.5 billion conditional federal loan to reopen after being closed for decommissioning in 2022. Canary Media reports: If the loan is granted (subject to Holtec meeting closing conditions) and the 800-megawatt reactor located on Lake Michigan is repowered, it would be the first nuclear plant in the U.S. to reopen after being closed for decommissioning. Surprisingly, it would be just the second or third reactor to restart in the history of global civil nuclear power, according to Mycle Schneider, lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023, in an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Holtec purchased Palisades a month after it shut down with plans to mothball the site, but plans changed. Now the firm, which specializes in nuclear waste management and decommissioning (as opposed to rebuilding and operating nuclear plants), intends to revive the plant instead. Holtec plans to get the power plant restarted by the end of 2025, a breathtakingly aspirational target given nuclear's history of missing construction and cost targets. The Palisades plant was closed by utility Entergy in May 2022 due to financial issues after operating for more than a half-century. And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel rods and fuel-spill incidents. The site was shut down for the final time a few days ahead of schedule due to concerns about the reliability of a key piece of equipment.
When it was operating at its peak, the plant provided more than 600 high-paying jobs, many unionized. If restarted, the plant could drive up to $363 million in regional economic impact, according to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. That's why Whitmer and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers back resurrecting the retired reactor. Local business owners and residents are "largely supportive" of the plan as well, according to local news site MLive. The state's 2024 budget devotes $150 million to the project. Still, the revival of the dormant Palisades faces its share of headwinds.
Holtec purchased Palisades a month after it shut down with plans to mothball the site, but plans changed. Now the firm, which specializes in nuclear waste management and decommissioning (as opposed to rebuilding and operating nuclear plants), intends to revive the plant instead. Holtec plans to get the power plant restarted by the end of 2025, a breathtakingly aspirational target given nuclear's history of missing construction and cost targets. The Palisades plant was closed by utility Entergy in May 2022 due to financial issues after operating for more than a half-century. And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel rods and fuel-spill incidents. The site was shut down for the final time a few days ahead of schedule due to concerns about the reliability of a key piece of equipment.
When it was operating at its peak, the plant provided more than 600 high-paying jobs, many unionized. If restarted, the plant could drive up to $363 million in regional economic impact, according to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. That's why Whitmer and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers back resurrecting the retired reactor. Local business owners and residents are "largely supportive" of the plan as well, according to local news site MLive. The state's 2024 budget devotes $150 million to the project. Still, the revival of the dormant Palisades faces its share of headwinds.
Different Mission, Different Skills? (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting aside the considerable challenges with repair and restoration related to nuclear power for a moment, is a company that normally specializes in decommissioning and waste disposal, knowledgeable and capable of doing the opposite?
Operating vs. destroying usually identifies two completely different specialties and skillsets. Can the latter become the former in a matter of a year?
Re:Different Mission, Different Skills? (Score:5, Funny)
They just need to reverse the polarity of the tachyon beam as it passes through the phase array.
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They just need to reverse the polarity of the tachyon beam as it passes through the phase array.
Oh, is that all? Well hell, that’s easy. Here I thought they were gonna need a Beowulf cluster of flux capacitors in order to get the warp drive into fifth gear. Hope the new crew knows how to drive stick.
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They can sell it to the govt. as a jobs program and get $1.5b loan. Backed by a solid pinky promise. What is not to like?
Re:Different Mission, Different Skills? (Score:4, Informative)
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I would assume once you've got the whole "don't irradiate yourself" part down pat, everything else is a piece of space cake.
Re:Different Mission, Different Skills? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this one of those situations where they can't lose? Take the $1.5 billion federal loan, and if it all goes wrong...
It's an interesting decision. The reactor is a PWR which is nearing end of life. PWRs have various issues with the steel losing ductility from neutron flux, and replacing those parts is impractical because they are high level nuclear waste. They have other lifetime issues like the fact that they usually use boron in the coolant loop, which is corrosive to certain metals.
They also have at least 30 tonnes of spent fuel on site, with nowhere for it to go since Yucca Mountain was abandoned. PWRs produce more fissile waste than other types, making it harder to deal with.
Good luck to them if they can actually do it for a reasonable cost, and produce reasonably priced electricity, but those are two huge ifs.
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PWRs have various issues with the steel losing ductility from neutron flux,
That's what a flux capacitor is for. It increases the capacity of the flux.
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This is Michigan, the place where they had lead water pipes dropping their IQ for years without doing anything about it until it was finally disclosed and they weren't quick about fixing it even after that.
So they are going to take old nuclear plants that likely were operating beyond their designed lifespan (as many in the USA are) with some upgrades to extend their lifespan. I find it a little hopeful that the cost is around as high as building new... it actually seems more expensive than building a new o
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In theory you can re-use spent nuclear fuel in the right type of reactor. Problem is that all the experimental ones of that type have failed in some catastrophic way, so nobody bothered to build any commercial ones.
The issues might get resolved one day, but we are already past the point where renewables are much cheaper, even with storage and grid upgrades to make them reliable.
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all the experimental ones of that type have failed in some catastrophic way
That's not true.
The truth is that reprocessing the fuel results in weapons grade material, which is a proliferation risk. Other countries not in arms control agreements are reprocessing just fine. This was a Carter administration decision back in 1977 during the knee-jerk "China Syndrome" / Three Mile Island scare.
Read more about it here:
https://www.gao.gov/products/e... [gao.gov]
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Which successful commercial ones exist? I can give you a long list of the experimental ones that failed.
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Reprocessing wastes recovers the U238 and plutonium bred from it. Plutonium is, famously, fissionable.
But.
The long amount of time the fuel in a power reactor runs results in a high percentage of the plutonium being, not Pu239, but Pu240 and Pu242.
These are also fissionable, but they have a high rate of spontaneous fission. For making bombs... this is a bad thing. It's very very difficult to get it to go boom. It used to be considered near impossible; the Carter administration went to extreme effort to
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Not against power from alternate sources, but have they figured out a why to dispose of the spent fuel rods? or is this just a it makes fuel but the waste.... we will figure out what to do with it 100 years from now.
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If there were no signs of the metal degrading then they were not checking properly and it should have been shut down on safety grounds.
It's just a normal part of the plant operation, it is happening constantly and expected.
Cost to produce a megawatt of electricity (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a reason nuclear plants are generally not brought back. It has less to do with safety and more to do with cost. Nuclear plants do not make any financial sense.
Estimated *unsubsidized* levelized costs of energy generation in the United States in 2023, by technology
(in U.S. dollars per megawatt hour)
Solar at utility scale (low estimate): $24
Nuclear (low estimate): $141
Source: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Holtec is asking the govt. to give it $1.5b to bring it back online. They promise to kick
Providing this isn't a jobs program (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally disagree and would rather see the money spent on wind and solar. That said a diversity of tactics is fine if the government remains in charge of the plant as it currently is going to be. Basically the nuclear regulatory commission is going to be running the entire plant. The company involved is just going to be there to soak up some free profit because Americans are obsessed with Private industry and if you told t
Solar maybe not a great idea after all (Score:2, Insightful)
I personally disagree and would rather see the money spent on wind and solar.
Solar might end up being a lot more expensive than nuclear [offthepress.com] - weather events can break solar and wind farms, will do nothing to nuclear plants.
For the amount of power it will supply, certainly this particular pre-existing plant is VASTLY cheaper than new wind/solar.
This is literally a reactor from the '70s so you can't even argue that modern tech makes it safe.
That's a really stupid argument since it was actually RUNNING JUST FINE
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And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel rods and fuel-spill incidents. The site was shut down for the final time a few days ahead of schedule due to concerns about the reliability of a key piece of equipment. https://www.canarymedia.com/ar... [canarymedia.com]
No jackass, it was not proven to be safe.
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Well. Lets hope they really try to operate it. Then when it inevitably blows up, we can gloat and the nuclear assholes have to shut up for a while. Or maybe they will claim that the plant was fine and the "liberals" or some "diversity hiring" was actually to blame for the inevitable accident.
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Still safer and cleaner than all those broken solar panels. Read the article, lots of fun toxic substances now under concern for polluting the area.
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I'd actually be more worried about the history of this site (as per the article which does not mention "solar" ) "The Palisades plant was closed by utility Entergy in May 2022 due to financial issues after operating for more than a half-century. And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel
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That's a really stupid argument since it was actually RUNNING JUST FINE from 70's onward until recently when they shut it down, it's proven to be safe.
As usual you demonstrate that you have no clue. This is on the same level of claiming that the bridge in Boston was completely fine and save because nothing ever bad happened to it if you ignore the last few days. In actual reality, a nuke can just blow up once.
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In actual reality, a nuke can just blow up once.
WHy mucst nuclear haters be so ignorant as to science?
If you knew anything about them at all, you would realize nuclear power plants of this design cannot "blow up".
But then I guess you prefer to remain stupid and wrong instead of getting with the program and actually trying to save the planet.
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Re:Cost to produce a megawatt of electricity (Score:5, Informative)
First it turns out existing nuclear is cheap for the consumer. - https://www.statista.com/statistics/184754/cost-of-nuclear-electricity-production-in-the-us-since-2000 [statista.com]. So this is going to save consumers money
Second how much does a kWh of solar cost at 9 pm? It turns out it is a hell of a lot more expensive than new nuclear.
LCOE
Mark Twain once said “there are lies, damn lies and statistics.” LCOE is a dishonest statistic that is also dishonestly applied.
LCOE is a dishonest metric that is calculated dishonesty and applied dishonesty. It fails in so many ways. It fails to include the costs associated with meeting demand and providing usable electricity. It doesn’t take into account transmission(which is significant for decentralized grid) and storage(which is an order of magnitude greater than new nuclear). When calculating LCOE Lazard ignores nuclear power plants actual lifetime when calculating lifetime levelized cost of electricity. They ignore other countries builds such as S Korean. Also the majority of cost of nuclear are interest on loans which is a solvable problem.
Even Lazard was forced to acknowledge the limitations of LCOE. They have said for years that you cannot fairly compare the LCOE of intermittent sources with that of baseload sources(which you are doing). They also have been creating newer stats like LCOE+ to overcome the inherit flaws in the calculation. There is also LFSCOE (Lifecycle levelized full system cost’s of electricity) which has nuclear much cheaper than intermittent renewables.
You know what LCOE is good for? Comparing like sources. For example comparing two solar projects with each other or two nuclear projects.
The flaws can be seen by looking at LCOH (lifecycle levelized cost of housing). According to LCOH the cheapest form of housing is tents. So the solution to the housing crisis in tents and only tents. Houses and apartments are too expensive and should never be built. We should only build tents. Now that is ridiculous just like using LCOE to justify only building solar and wind.
The cost of overcoming solar and wind intermittency is greater than the cost of a nuclear baseload. You are vastly underestimating the cost of backup.
Also look up LFSCOE which contains full system costs.
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This isn't "new nuclear" though. Wasn't it brought online in the 70s?
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Why? Also why's they even shut it down in the first place?
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"The Palisades plant was closed by utility Entergy in May 2022 due to financial issues after operating for more than a half-century. And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel rods and fuel-spill incidents. The site was shut down for the final time a few days ahead of schedule due to concerns about the reliability of a key pi
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Hmm. Not really conclusive, but it does look like the previous operators had some problems making a profit after paying fines and/or repairs plus compensating for downtime.
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I think tents would actually solve the housing crisis, but I'm pretty sure they're mostly outlawed like trailer parks or mobile homes. The real estate market would shit their pants if people started building tent cities.
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There was a tiny home community here in Seattle that was helping a *LOT* of people. Clean, regulated, with access to sanitation, drug treatment and mental health facilities nearby, it was working very well. Then a developer nearby wanted to put up some new condos, sued, and now all those people are living under bridges again.
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And the village idiots needs to add his statement as well. Pathetic.
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The same as normal. Only 5 plants shutdown in France due the water being too warm to release back into the river system. They didn't want to damage any wildlife. It lasted only a week. Nothing to do with safety. And France had plenty of other nuclear power plants.
The solution is simple. Dig ditch. Pour water into ditch. Let water cool. Release now cooled water back into the river.
Palo Verde is in the middle of Arizona where it gets to 110 regularly. If it can run there it can run anywhere.
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Oh good, all they have to do is decommission the old nuclear plants that shut down in heat waves and build new ones.
Except France is the same country that's been building a new nuclear plant since 2007 [wikipedia.org] and it still doesn't work.
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Unless you also have a low water situation and can't afford to divert the water and let a bunch evaporate to cool it down.
But while the solution to that takes longer and costs money, it's still straight forward: Build an air cooling tower.
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The water requirement for cooling a nuclear plant is surprisingly minimal:
- nuclear plants employing closed-circuit cooling towers operate at full capacity with just ~2m3/s of water, with approximately 70% being reused and 30% evaporated
- nuclear plants using open-circuit cooling systems, situated near bodies of water like rivers or seas, need ~50m3/s at full capacity. All water used is ultimately returned to the river or sea, albeit a few degrees warmer.
For comparison, in France, the Rhone river boasts an
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Yeah, I know that the rules are to protect wildlife, I just didn't think it was important to mention. IE there are regulations for how much water they're allowed to consume, how hot they can release it, how much water needs to stay in the river, etc...
There have been situations where the water was actually above their allowed release temperature for the river itself, such that they'd theoretically need to actually cool any water they withdraw to put it back, rather the opposite of using it as a heat sink.
Re:Cost to produce a megawatt of electricity (Score:4, Interesting)
Then go and tell that the French in person, if you dare.
I've already done it. Knowing French helps to understand their politics and reports, which aren't always translated. Knowing German also reveals the greenwashing happening there.
Then we are finally rid of your idiotic comments.
Said by someone who just posted a comment that brings nothing to the discussion at hand.
"Unite Behind the Science", Greta Thunberg
At least, reading your sig still makes me laugh. Not sure if you understand what that quote means though, but the irony of you claiming that is not lost.
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There is a reason nuclear plants are generally not brought back. It has less to do with safety and more to do with cost. Nuclear plants do not make any financial sense.
Estimated *unsubsidized* levelized costs of energy generation in the United States in 2023, by technology (in U.S. dollars per megawatt hour)
Solar at utility scale (low estimate): $24 Nuclear (low estimate): $141
Source: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Holtec is asking the govt. to give it $1.5b to bring it back online. They promise to kick $363m of it to the local economy and pocket the rest. And then later say oops. We made booboo. Can't pay back $1.5b. They can totally sell this terrible idea to the govt. if they grease enough hands and sell it as a jobs program.
It’s very difficult to try and discredit nuclear power like that. Imagine if we were here talking about MPG efficiencies and all we had to drive that conversation was a 50-year old boat of a Buick. We’ve come a LONG way from the days of leaded gas and 15MPG being considered “efficient”. As opposed to the ancient relics still driving nuclear power. We haven’t done enough with nuclear power to advance it and make them far more economic. We’ve been far too busy placatin
Big whoops - you forgot construction paid for (Score:1, Informative)
Nuclear plants do not make any financial sense.
It is your LCOE lies that do not make any sense. If you decide you can run a nuclear plant for decades longer, what does THAT do to LCOE? Why look, since all of the LCOE being high for nuclear is based around construction costs, it massively lowers LCOE when you extend the life of a plant - or re-open one. Because simply running a nuclear plant day to day is incredibly economical compared to solar or wind...
Re-opening the plant was cheaper than any solar or
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Holtec, a manufacturer of nuclear reactor equipment, has an unprecedented plan to restart the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan. Thanks to a conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, that plan is now $1.52 billion closer to reality. https://www.canarymedia.com/ar... [canarymedia.com]
Restarting the plan only works with government subsidies and continued government subsidies
If Holtec successfully repowers Palis
Hmm, what else does that apply to... (Score:1)
Restarting the plan only works with government subsidies and continued government subsidies
Solar and Wind entered the chat
BOOM
They don't live without subsidy and massive government expense either. The difference is that the nuclear power plant will continue to provide power for decades going forward, when the solar and wind farms would have had to be replaced four times over before the nuclear plant shutters.
Being anti-nuclear is simply the most retarded possible stance at this point in time.
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Thanks to a conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office
A loan is still a loan. It is not free money.
it will be able to garner federal incentives such as a production tax credit geared to help keep the current nuclear fleet competitive, as well as an investment tax credit
Likewise tax credits are simply forgoing revenue that they never would have had anyway with the plant closed. No actual public dollar expenditure is required for either of these things, indeed they are common across many industries, including wind and solar.
Re: Cost to produce a megawatt of electricity (Score:5, Insightful)
Levelized cost of energy is a laughably bad metric for comparing solar and nuclear power. LCOE was created with the purpose of comparing projects with substantially similar operating characteristics. Think a coal plant versus a nuclear plant. It IS NOT useful for comparing solar power to virtually anything else, because the operating profile of solar (inherently unavailable 8 hours-ish a day, low winter output, massive regional output sensitivity, etc.) is unlike anything else. And simply pairing solar with batteries also doesn't make sense from an LCOE perspective, as without a staggering number of short and long duration batteries you wouldn't get an equivalent operating profile to nuclear.
Imagine if I came up with a Levelized Cost Of Transport, and ranked bicycles against busses and semis and container ships. Then concluded that bicycles were the lowest cost per mile traveled, and thus all new transport should be bikes. You'd immediately see the issues with that right. Not only are other forms of transport accomplishing radically different things, but you wouldn't want just one type of transport regardless of what the per mile cost was. You'd want an integrated system, where various transport options were utilized with regard to both the task at hand and the regional limitations at play. That's basically the LCOE argument in a nutshell, and Lazard and others are playing a very irresponsible game pretending that it makes sense to use LCOE at all.
Ultimately the lowest cost energy system has to be done via integrated resource planning. That modeling virtually always shows that in a future where there is a high cost for carbon emissions, the resulting grid has tens of percent of generation provided by nuclear power at a minimum. The reliability benefits are worth that much. Mixed renewables end up being halfish of the grid with a lot of batteries, and the rest is some flavor of dispatchable baseload (combined cycle buring natural gas, hydrogen, etc.). That mix can be very different in small areas with unique constraints and resources (Hawaii, norway), but on a large scale the projections are surprisingly consistent for most systems.
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The other issue with LCOE is that it's basically impossible to calculate for nuclear, because nuclear is uninsurable.
Any analysis of the cost can't accurately factor in how much that subsidy is worth.
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The other issue with LCOE is that it's basically impossible to calculate for nuclear, because nuclear is uninsurable.
You should let these guys [amnucins.com] know that nuclear is uninsurable, ASAP.
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Maybe you should read their website. Under "insurance" it explains what they offer, and it isn't going to pay out for a meltdown. Only governments are willing to back that kind of risk, usually because they get a nuclear weapons programme out of it.
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Maybe you should read their website. Under "insurance" it explains what they offer, and it isn't going to pay out for a meltdown. Only governments are willing to back that kind of risk, usually because they get a nuclear weapons programme out of it.
Many insurers also don't cover Acts of God or Acts of War. I hope you don't lose too much sleep over it.
Also, the vast majority of countries with nuclear power programs do not have nuclear weapons.
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The issue is not the cause of the failure, it's the magnitude of the damage.
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The other issue with LCOE is that it's basically impossible to calculate for nuclear, because nuclear is uninsurable.
Any analysis of the cost can't accurately factor in how much that subsidy is worth.
I'd contest that "subsidy" is a pretty biased way to look at the situation, especially given that the "subsidy" in question has yet to cost the American taxpayer a penny. The obvious answer here is only nation states can claim enough assets to hedge an infinitesimally small risk of gigantic consequence, which is why you can't get insurance for meteor strikes either.
But fundamentally I don't think that's even the right way to look at it, because the US government takes an active role in literally every aspec
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It's just a matter of time. That subsidy has already cost the Japanese taxpayers half a trillion dollars equivalent.
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dispatchable baseload
That is an oxymoron.
If you do not know what an oxymoron is, google it.
If you do not know what dispatchable means, google it.
If you do not know what baseload is, google it.
You look extremely stupid by using words in a way you think they mean, but they means something completely different.
A baseload plant is by purpose not dispatchable, it is a cheap plant that runs for years constantly at 95% maximum power. YES, if you are an arsine autistic nitpicker, you can "dispatch" it from 0% load
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baseload refers to the minimum required constant supply of energy
a dispatchable baseload would refer to a constant fuel meeting a constant demand. maybe you should google what a regular moron is
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And you should google what nonse you just wrote 5555
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dispatchable baseload
That is an oxymoron.
If you do not know what an oxymoron is, google it.
If you do not know what dispatchable means, google it.
If you do not know what baseload is, google it.
You look extremely stupid by using words in a way you think they mean, but they means something completely different.
A baseload plant is by purpose not dispatchable, it is a cheap plant that runs for years constantly at 95% maximum power. YES, if you are an arsine autistic nitpicker, you can "dispatch" it from 0% load to 95% load in a course of a day. And if you are even more arsine, if one of your 20 plants fails, you can "dispatch" the other 19 to ramp up from 95% to 99% ... But I'm equally arsine: that is not what dispatchable means!
Dispatchable and baseload are complete opposite things: baseload is constant - more or less. So you have a fixed set of baseload generating plants that run on close to max level, to provide CONSTANT BASE LOAD. That is the intrinsic meaning of BASE LOAD.
Dispatchable means: oh, fuck somehow I need more power than we planned, I have to dispatch a pant! What is the cheapest under this conditions? Ah, that one: ramp it up!
"Ring! Ring! Ring!"
Wow, that's some pretty aggressive ignorance.
That's not what dispatchable means, in utility terms. A dispatchable resource is simply one you can ramp up or down on command. Solar is not dispatchable, neither is wind. "Dispatchable Baseload" is not an oxymoron, as baseload does not imply 100% utilization in all circumstances. In fact, most baseload units (nuclear excepted, typically) in the modern era ramp up and down daily, often quite aggressively, following the amount of non-dispatchable power (wind, so
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A dispatchable resource is simply one you can ramp up or down on command.
And you can not do that with a base load plant. Idiot very much?
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>Levelized cost of energy is a laughably bad metric for comparing solar and nuclear power.
It seems to me that if you want to compare nuclear to solar, you need to include the requirements for matching operating profiles.
In other words, solar isn't just panels; solar is panels, day/night cycles, weather, and storage. To compare it to nuclear power, you need to do the math and figure out how much excess capacity you need and how much storage you need in order to match the nuclear plant's output, and inclu
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In other words, solar isn't just panels; solar is panels, day/night cycles, weather, and storage. To compare it to nuclear power, you need to do the math and figure out how much excess capacity you need and how much storage you need in order to match the nuclear plant's output, and include those in the initial and ongoing costs.
You know that, I know that. Most reasonably intelligent people know that. But sadly I think we are a minority.
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>Levelized cost of energy is a laughably bad metric for comparing solar and nuclear power.
It seems to me that if you want to compare nuclear to solar, you need to include the requirements for matching operating profiles.
In other words, solar isn't just panels; solar is panels, day/night cycles, weather, and storage. To compare it to nuclear power, you need to do the math and figure out how much excess capacity you need and how much storage you need in order to match the nuclear plant's output, and include those in the initial and ongoing costs.
It ends up being pretty unfair to renewables to judge them based on that standard. If I required a solar facility to be able to operate uninterrupted for a year at a time, and provide its own frequency stabilization, the costs would look insanely high. Imagine the batteries it would take for a solar facility to maintain output over the dark of winter. And it isn't necessary. The goal that matters is that the system as a whole meets some defined level of stability, usually measured in number of hours where
Re: Cost to produce a megawatt of electricity (Score:1)
Re: Cost to produce a megawatt of electricity (Score:1, Interesting)
Between 1950 and 1970 the US deployed nuclear plants at a cost of $1500/kWe with most of them still operational today, total regulatory cost for all of them was $1B across those 20 years. Today this cost has quadrupled as the regulatory cost is nearing $0.5B per plant per year.
There is no reason for this other than the green energy shills (started with Jane Fonda, Ralph Nader and Andrew Cuomo) who wanted to drive up costs to see their favored technology and in the case of Cuomo, the energy companies that pa
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Yep. Pretty much what is going on here.
If you want this to make financial sense... (Score:2)
* Apply a reasonable carbon tax to the alternatives that burn stuff
* Apply a storage cost / carbon tax for peaking power to the alternatives that are intermittent
Nuclear will definitely look better after you do that.
There is a lot of debate about how much better or worse, but there's no denying that intermittent sources have distributed costs that are hard to capture (grid resilience and running power up from consumers), whereas nuclear has centralized costs, making it an easier target.
It's because Joe Biden is pro nuclear (Score:2)
Even that I could deal with but my concern is that at some point the government will be pulled back like it was with Boeing and you'll have a nuclear power plant built in the 1970s with Reagan era deregulation powering it. That's a dis
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it's ok we have an no homers rule
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Hey, I re... Oh, you said Homers, carry on.
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Presidential History. (Score:1)
I'd be all for it if I thought that Americans were smart enough not to privatize things but this is one of the things I disagree with Biden on. The entire plant is basically going to be run by the US government with a private corporation allowed to skim profit off the top.
I believe I can sum up the Presidents motivation for that setup in one word.
Burisma.
Found the Russian (Score:1)
Good work comrade, but don't you have more influential websites to do your subversion? You are not fooling that many people here, who have heard the news of your Russian manufactured scandal (Burisma) in collaboration with the impeachment revenge scheme led by the MAGA nuts.
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Also - why do we need farmers? I get my food at Safeway!
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Morons probably think the electricity to charge their teslas comes from the wall plug and the only think standing in the way of total electrification is that Home Depot charges $1.50 for all those 20 amp receptacles instead of giving them away for free.
To be fair to people living in apartments, the problem really is that the landlords are too cheap/lazy to install some outlets. Some people assume an EV charger means installing a bunch of these [wikipedia.org], but in the case of housing where you can charge overnight, you plug in an EVSE [tesla.com] into a NEMA 14-50 outlet*. [wikipedia.org] So, the problem literally is fixable by installing some outlets.
* You might be more familiar with it as the outlet your stove plugs into, if you have an electric stove.
Re: Now do Pilgrim (Score:1)
Whoosh.
Really.
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right, 50 or 100 outlets in a parking lot with means to bill to correct party wouldn't cost much?
It's more complicated and expensive than what you imagine
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Also: of the five apartment/condo buildings I've lived in:
4/5 had a 30 amp stove/oven as their biggest per-unit electrical load.
1/5 had a gas stove and oven and no dishwasher or disposal at all (maybe 50A/unit total load, to accomodate lights and two wall unit ACs)
5/5 has gas-fired boilers for heating the building
Adding an additional 30A or 50A load for even a quarter of the units in a large building may well exceed the capacity of the building's grid connection.
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the grid does get beefed up over time though, in decades we went from 30 amp service (1930s) to 60 (when I was kid in 1960s), to over 100 to now 200 being default.
Certainly there would be way with microcontrollers (not standard now) to link a parking spot to a unit's electric bill and to provide security against theft too, but such a thing is a massive amount of money I don't see landlord in next 20 years shelling out for.
I'm wondering if EV are a mistake and we could be doing something much smarter with bi
problems with Palisades (Score:3, Informative)
Reactor head needs replaced, has issues and the plan to replace was scrapped when plant shut down. That's not something you order on Amazon, takes years to make at a couple hundred million dollars. One of the steam generators was replaced which was done cutting a hole in containment that was patched (
too big for entrance), and the other or both might need replaced now. Yeah and cutting and patching holes in containment, gives you warm fuzzies doesn't it.
Sounds like restoring an old clunker car.
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Sounds like restoring an old clunker car.
There's an argument to be made that it makes economic sense to drive something until the wheels fall off, but when it comes to a nuclear plant I'm not so sure.
When things go wrong with a reactor it's probably a lot worse than the time my old clunker almost lost a wheel, I ended up having to pull over at some really sketchy motel (complete with an equally sketchy outdoor Bitcoin ATM) and wait hours for a tow. That didn't end with people getting radiation poisoning and the area becoming an exclusion zone. A
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I know that I would absolutely prefer to see a new reactor built there instead. New reactors are more efficient and safer.
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Sounds like restoring an old clunker car.
Given the age, it basically is.
Only difference is when that blows a head gasket, you end up with a nice big exclusion zone for Government to babysit for decades, along with a few more politicians being trained in the fine art of pretend-drinking for all those tap water debates 17 counties downstream from the new nuclear preserve.
Re: problems with Palisades (Score:1)
Most big infrastructure like this can basically be ran forever. It becomes a bit like the ship of Theseus, similar to how some pubs in England are from like the late Roman period, theyâ(TM)ve just had everything replaced over time but the stones are still there.
Trains have a lifespan of decades, power plants do as well, nuclear power plants could easily keep producing for centuries and if properly done, will produce a barrel worth of waste per year.
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That is theory, but even Indian Point and all reactors that have been dismantled globally thus far has been proven that does not appear on the time scales we know of so far (20-50 years). According to reports, the steel pipes, turbines etc coming out of those reactors is as clean as the day it went in, they are so well maintained, there is not even corrosion to be found.
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Where did you get that nonsense? Flow accelerated corrosion wears out even the parts of nuke plant not dealing with radiation; that has caused accident with several fatalities.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
A 1960s designed nuclear plant can't operate for a century with any amount of replacements, get that nonsense out of your head.
And yes I was engineer at nuke plant, won't say which one but guess from post that started this thread.
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As you said, that was the side not dealing with radiation and the fatalities thus had nothing to do with exposure to the nuclear part of the plant which is what we are talking about. Someone slipped and fell on the ice outside because the maintenance crew didn't salt, that doesn't mean the nuclear plant is going to explode.
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Well HERE'S another fine mess... (Score:1)
Let me see the hands of ALL who think this is safer than 1000 wind farms, which is a cheaper alternative?
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Re: Handouts (Score:3)
That's because corporations are people, and people are not people.
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I'm tired of these government handouts! this is America, not socialist Europe.
Look at the bright side. This is the first time I've seen the word "conditional" put in front of a hand-out from our government in I don't know how long. Usually it's just, "Here's massive piles of taxpayer dollars. Have fun!"
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you're confusing profit expectation of the monied class with actual power.