First Look at the Amazon's Nuclear Facility Planned For Washington State (geekwire.com) 43
Amazon is investing hundreds of millions into the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, a next-generation small modular reactor project in Richland, Washington, developed with X-energy and Energy Northwest. "The question now is will it be enough to kick off a new wave of U.S. nuclear energy innovation -- a field that America largely soured on by the 1980s?" writes GeekWire. From the report: The facility will be located near Richland, Wash., near Energy Northwest's Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant. The initial goal is to install a cluster of four small modular reactors (SMRs) that can produce up to 320 megawatts of power, but the overall vision is to construct 12 reactors total, with a capacity of nearly one gigawatt. If all the funding, permitting and public support come together, construction should start within the next five years, with the plant coming online in the 2030s. [...] For Amazon, its support of the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility is part of a much bigger initiative. The company has set a goal of deploying 5 gigawatts of nuclear power in the U.S. by 2039.
"One thing that Amazon does well is scale technology," said Brandon Oyer, Amazon Web Services' head of power and water for North and South America. "We've done this over and over again ... We'll go and make an investment and then learn how to scale that up, drive out cost, make it more readily available." Targeting SMRs for amplification was a "natural fit," Oyer added. The company believes nuclear aligns with its climate ambitions. Amazon matches all of its electricity use with clean power and is the largest corporate purchaser of wind, solar and other renewable sources. That said, it is struggling to cut its carbon footprint to reach a goal of net-zero emissions by 2040 as the AI-boom stokes energy use.
Amazon reported that its carbon footprint grew by 6% last year. Amazon has dibs on half of the 320 megawatts of electricity that will be generated by the first four reactors at the Washington site, but will take all of it if the power prices are too high for local utilities to afford. Cullen said that if everything goes well with the initial phase, it would be straightforward to build the other eight reactors as the permits will encompass the complete build out. The added reactors would produce enough electricity for about one million homes and should come at a lower cost. "Amazon recognizes the role they can -- and are willing -- to play," Cullen said. The company can take some of the early risk and bring that catalytic capital, he said, which is "every, very difficult for utilities to do."
"One thing that Amazon does well is scale technology," said Brandon Oyer, Amazon Web Services' head of power and water for North and South America. "We've done this over and over again ... We'll go and make an investment and then learn how to scale that up, drive out cost, make it more readily available." Targeting SMRs for amplification was a "natural fit," Oyer added. The company believes nuclear aligns with its climate ambitions. Amazon matches all of its electricity use with clean power and is the largest corporate purchaser of wind, solar and other renewable sources. That said, it is struggling to cut its carbon footprint to reach a goal of net-zero emissions by 2040 as the AI-boom stokes energy use.
Amazon reported that its carbon footprint grew by 6% last year. Amazon has dibs on half of the 320 megawatts of electricity that will be generated by the first four reactors at the Washington site, but will take all of it if the power prices are too high for local utilities to afford. Cullen said that if everything goes well with the initial phase, it would be straightforward to build the other eight reactors as the permits will encompass the complete build out. The added reactors would produce enough electricity for about one million homes and should come at a lower cost. "Amazon recognizes the role they can -- and are willing -- to play," Cullen said. The company can take some of the early risk and bring that catalytic capital, he said, which is "every, very difficult for utilities to do."
THE Amazon's? (Score:1)
Will it be powering the Brazilian rainforest?
Is Queen Hippolyta in charge?
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Hanford announced last week that their spent fuel vitrification plant is officially in operation, converting nuclear waste into glass ingots that can be safely stored for millenia. If they keep going for about a century they might be able to vitrify the spent fuel we already have. But we still have no place to store the ingots.
All these small modular reactors have the same deficits. They require high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) produced only in Russia. They're a proliferation risk. They require a sub
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Not all are HALEU designs, NuScale in particular isn't. I'm a little curious why NuScale hasn't had more success in moving forward with construction of one of their designs as they seem to be significantly further along the process than everybody else. For a project with a 50-year design life it would seem that being able to be operational 2-3 years faster would be a meaningful advantage.
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NuScale did get further along than anyone else — their VOYGR-6 design is still the only SMR to have full NRC design certification. The problem wasn’t the tech, it was the business model.
Their flagship project, the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) in Idaho, was supposed to build a 462 MW plant for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS). When the estimate jumped from $58 to $89 per MWh and construction costs ballooned past $9 billion, several municipal utilities dropped out. By late
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Thanks. Still curious though how other players are going to get lower costs out the gate. Say the reactor vessel has a manufacturing cost of $500 million; as you scale you might get that down ~25% (if you are lucky) by SN20, but there is not that much room on other costs-- especially given inflation and steel costs.
It would seem much more prudent to consolidating resources to get a single design online as a consortium as quickly as possible, and work to improve from that point rather than so much effort bei
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All these small modular reactors have the same deficits. They require high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) produced only in Russia. They're a proliferation risk.
Canada will be providing our own fuel for the SMRs currently under construction by Ontario Power Generation. You are obviously not well educated on this subject. We are also starting construction on our deep geological waste repository, much like the one they just opened in Finland. Just FYI.
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But we still have no place to store the ingots.
What do you mean no place to put the ingots? If the radioactive material is vitrified then it's not going to get blown away in the wind, or seep into any water supply. Dump it in the bottom of a lake, a few feet of water will protect everything from any radiation. Maybe ship it off to some desert location like the aircraft "boneyard" the US Air Force operates in Arizona. Put up a fence and some signs and call it done. So long as the fence is a few hundred yards from the vitrified waste there's not like
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in a path of a 9 richter scale earthquake
The site is hundreds of miles from the Cascadia fault line.
and massive tsunamis
There is a major mountain range (the Cascades) and many miles of desert between the site and the coast.
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https://www.yoursourceone.com/... [yoursourceone.com]
So that problem is being solved. There are not thousands of square miles that are uninhabitable.
The last point is also covered by the article.
The alternative is to turn off the data centers at night but no one wants to do that. The green line below is wind plus solar. Feel free how you are going to power a data center with that. And the last few days have been sunny.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
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It has never killed a single human being in its first 0.005% of its half-life. How reassuring.
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What the fuck are you talking about? All of the highly radioactive isotopes will have decayed completely before placing it in cask storage. In fact they completely decay inside of 5 years which is why we cool used fuel in water for 10.
For something to be radioactive enough to harm a human being it has to have a short half life like iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days. That completely decays in ~6 months. The only medium radioactive isotopes left when placed in cask storage are cesium and strontium w
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It's only reasonable for you to add a disclaimer to your post that what you are saying only applies outside of the body. Plenty of that stuff is very nasty due to radiation if it ends up in the human body. Especially the more bio-available stuff. Then there's also the fact that, even if it were not radioactive, plenty of it is chemically toxic, even without the radioactivity. That's not to say that there's massive amounts of it compared to other toxic stuff that can end up in the environment. However, we do
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Proven for a whole 40 years on the site of nuclear power plants. Not really an impressive record compared to what we're talking about here. Basically you're talking about plans to manage things for hundreds of years or more that pretty much require ephemeral entities like corporations to continuously exist to take care of them. This is the same bad plan that has been used for all kinds of non-nuclear toxic waste forever. How many times have we heard stories about holding ponds for mining companies and other
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Of course nothing will convince you otherwise. You have made it perfectly clear that you are a fanatic.
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The world leading climate scientists James Hansen has repeatedly said "Nuclear energy paves the only viable path forward on climate change." I guess he is a fanatic as well!
As for used fuel. It has always been a bullshit excuse for continuing to burn fossil fuels. Cask storage works. Otherwise you would be able to cite an example of it failing( hint - there isn't one).
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The world leading climate scientists James Hansen has repeatedly said "Nuclear energy paves the only viable path forward on climate change." I guess he is a fanatic as well!
It's not that James Hansen is a fanatic, it's that he he is in his mid eighties and formed many of these opinions earlier in his life. He was ten when the first power generating nuclear reactor came online and 12 when the "atoms for peace" initiative started. So, we have a budding young future scientist who grew up in what they were trying at the time to dub the "atomic age" which was when the US government most heavily propagandized nuclear power. That's bound to leave an impression. Likewise, his impressi
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mid eighties
Or maybe he is a scientist. To date there are zero examples of a country deep decarbonizing with solar and wind. Scientists rely on these pesky things called "facts" which antinuclear people tend to forget.
Nothing has changed about the tech. Solar never works at night. Wind still needs wind. Both are intermittent. Grid level storage is still prohibitive.
It doesn't take a scientist to see France at 19 g CO2 per kWh and Germany at 283 g CO2 per kWh and conclude that nuclear has a place in any potent
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Or maybe he is a scientist. To date there are zero examples of a country deep decarbonizing with solar and wind. Scientists rely on these pesky things called "facts" which antinuclear people tend to forget.
Those renewables have only been financially viable due to technological and industrial advances for a little over a decade. Wh inat examples are you going to present for a country "deep decarbonizing" with nuclear power? I am guessing you are going to hold up France as an example. The problem is, if you include the requirement that it be financially viable, France no longer works as an example. Their nuclear push was done with significant military and energy independence goals that led to the real costs bei
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The problem is, if you include the requirement that it be financially viable, France no longer works as an example
Yes it does.
If Germany spent the same amount of money on new nuclear they would have succeeded. If the just kept their existing nuclear power plants open they would have phased out coal and would be approaching 100 g CO2 per kWh.
Following your logic there is no viable solution since a solar, wind and storage grid is much more expensive and slower to construct. Also the grid itself is harder to build and maintain.
The point is that his opinions on this were formed in the past and it is unlikely that they will change at this point, despite the fact that the foundations he built his opinions on have changed.
Intermittency is still an issue. And while there have been some notable improvements in
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Yes it does.
I'm not going to listen to someone who doesn't understand the concept of opportunity cost in investments try to tell me what is financially viable and what isn't.
It just goes on and on and on. You just keep saying things that everyone knows are not true. Everything with you is just, to paraphrase: "No, it's actually the opposite", but you never provide anything remotely resembling evidence, you just say whatever you fell like to promote nuclear power. Because you're a fanatic who, highly ironically, uses th
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Opportunity cost is such as wall st douchebag term. It's killing a lot of industries. One example is movies. They are making significantly less comedies(which are historically profitable) claiming opportunity cost. In their minds making 100 million profit is bad because they just lost 900 million not making a superhero movie. Another is Intel. Intel killed of profitable sectors of their company claiming opportunity cost. Any one citing opportunity cost is just another wall st douchebag.
you never provide anything remotely resembling evidence,
Germany at 2
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Opportunity cost is such as wall st douchebag term. It's killing a lot of industries. One example is movies. They are making significantly less comedies(which are historically profitable) claiming opportunity cost. In their minds making 100 million profit is bad because they just lost 900 million not making a superhero movie. Another is Intel. Intel killed of profitable sectors of their company claiming opportunity cost. Any one citing opportunity cost is just another wall st douchebag.
Opportunity cost is a very basic concept. If any of your examples are even real (and I would love to see you actually cite something), then they would be examples of people who, like you, clearly do not understand the concept. I should mention that opportunity cost applies to more than just finance. It is very simple to understand. For a simple example, you have two opportunities, A and B, which are mutually exclusive. If you do A, the opportunity cost of A is whatever the benefits of B would have been. If
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Blah, blah, blah.
There is an opportunity cost in not supporting new nuclear energy. Failure to support new nuclear energy will result in failing to meet climate change goals which will result in significant temperature changes worldwide.
There is not a viable alternative to nuclear energy. The closest one is hydro and that is environmentally destructive and location dependent--meaning it won't scale. Atoms before dams!
Germany is at 283 after spending 500 billion euros and 15 years. If they supported new
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There is an opportunity cost in not supporting new nuclear energy. Failure to support new nuclear energy will result in failing to meet climate change goals which will result in significant temperature changes worldwide.
Once again, you're not quite getting it. Opportunity cost requires weighing it against alternatives. The really tricky part is that not all of the alternatives will be known. For example, consider the opportunity cost of spending your time. There's a whole world of things you might do. Maximizing your return is hard to calculate, but if you compare two things like licking a spot on the wall for five hours versus going out on a date with your significant other, then, by most valuations, the opportunity cost
The reason it was "soured on" is nuclear waste. (Score:2, Troll)
Re:The reason it was "soured on" is nuclear waste. (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Make money now (even if these assholes have massively more than they need and deserve), let others pay later.
Honestly the waste wouldn't be what worries me (Score:2)
But what worries me is when they start cutting back on necessary maintenance. That's what happened in Fukushima and it'll happen with these slap dash nuclear reactors being thrown up to feed AI data centers.
10 years. That's how long the city of Fukushima had to be evacuated. If you lived in that area around the disaster you just lost everything except what you could carry when you fled.
America is
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Do they have a prototype that did run a few years? (Score:2)
No? Then this is essentially a scam.
Re:Do they have a prototype that did run a few yea (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. They are using the Xe-100, tested in Germany.
Note, small, modular nuclear reactors have been thoroughly tested over the past 40 years. This is basically Nasa Readiness level 6/7 for quite a while. The technology has been delayed by fear, not engineering.
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No, there was no Xe-100 tested in Germany.
You are probably meaning the THTR-300 [wikipedia.org], but the concepts are quite different and hopefully so, THTR-300 was a complete mess and is still lingering around, costing money.
You mean you guys are ... (Score:3)
... putting the people who came up with such brilliant ideas like the Rings of Power in charge of a nuclear fission plant? Think that's a good idea?