Google's Revived Nuclear Power Plant Gets $1.9 Billion Loan From US Government (techcrunch.com) 97
The U.S. Department of Energy has approved a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra Energy to restart Iowa's shuttered Duane Arnold nuclear plant, which Google has backed as a power source for its growing AI infrastructure. "The sizable loan is the second of its kind, suggesting that the Trump administration views revived nuclear power as a key source of electricity for tech companies seeking to power their AI data centers," notes TechCrunch. From the report: James Danly, Deputy Secretary of Energy, said that the Iowa power plant's restart in 2029 will "drive down electricity costs," though he did not explain how. Just 50 megawatts will be set aside for the local power cooperative, NextEra CEO John Ketchum said during an earnings call (PDF) last year. That capacity would cover 18% of Iowa's demand growth since 2021, the year before ChatGPT was released.
Google is reportedly looking to build up to six data centers near the Duane Arnold Energy Center, which hasn't operated since 2020 when an intense rainstorm damaged the power plant. Rather than repair it, NextEra decided to mothball it. At the time, cheap natural gas was flooding the market, making nuclear power economically unappealing. A lot has changed in the last six years, though. After decades of little growth in demand, the sudden rise of AI coupled with broader electrification of the economy meant that utilities and power providers were suddenly scrambling to find new generating sources of electricity. New data centers are expected to nearly triple the sector's electricity demand by 2035.
Google is reportedly looking to build up to six data centers near the Duane Arnold Energy Center, which hasn't operated since 2020 when an intense rainstorm damaged the power plant. Rather than repair it, NextEra decided to mothball it. At the time, cheap natural gas was flooding the market, making nuclear power economically unappealing. A lot has changed in the last six years, though. After decades of little growth in demand, the sudden rise of AI coupled with broader electrification of the economy meant that utilities and power providers were suddenly scrambling to find new generating sources of electricity. New data centers are expected to nearly triple the sector's electricity demand by 2035.
What could possibly go right? (Score:3)
I realize they're not just going to walk in and start throwing switches, but reopening this plant that's been shuttered all this time and doing it correctly has got to be seriously expensive, so what are the odds on whether it will be done correctly?
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I realize they're not just going to walk in and start throwing switches, but reopening this plant that's been shuttered all this time and doing it correctly has got to be seriously expensive, so what are the odds on whether it will be done correctly?
Pretty good, unless Google thinks it can withstand that kind of explosive scrutiny?
Chernobyl didn't exactly blow over for the USSR. And that Too Big To Fail gimmick doesn't really work out when your bailout revenue glows in the dark with a half-life of 10 business days or less.
Re:What could possibly go right? (Score:5, Interesting)
The big danger is draining people from TVA or other power providers. Data center electricians are pulling in $200k/year right now! A loan like this could draw out people from other plants for that big payout. But in reality, unless they plant to build new plants and use this to train up new nuclear workers, they're just going to hurt the existing energy industry.
But that's the big issue: no one can build a new reactor today. And no, not because of NRC regulations. America literally has no steel plants large enough to create a nuclear pressure vessel. These things are massive, and historically had to be transported by river or have specialized roads put in to move them. The last steel plant that could make these closed decades ago. The smaller reactors people are talking about are totally non-viable. Nuclear works because of the scale. Each pressure vessel and reactor core can provide 1Gw ~ 1.5Gw of power. All three TVA nuclear plants (max of 7 reactors between SQN, WBN and BFN plants
Re:What could possibly go right? (Score:5, Informative)
But that's the big issue: no one can build a new reactor today. And no, not because of NRC regulations. America literally has no steel plants large enough to create a nuclear pressure vessel. These things are massive, and historically had to be transported by river or have specialized roads put in to move them. The last steel plant that could make these closed decades ago.
"For very large 'Generation III+' reactors, production of the pressure vessel requires, or is best undertaken by, forging presses of about 140-150 MN (14-15,000 tonnes) capacity which accept hot steel ingots of 500-600 tonnes. These are not common, and individual large presses do not have high throughput – about four pressure vessels per year appears to be common at present, fitted in with other work, though the potential is greater than this.
Reactor vendors prefer large forgings to be integral, as single products, but for large units split forgings are welded together. These welds then need checking through the life of the plant, and the fewer that are required in fabrication the better. Also, whereas Generation II reactors might have required some 2000 tonnes of forgings, the largest modern designs require about twice this amount. For example, Westinghouse has said that the minimum requirement for making the largest AP1000 components is a 15,000 tonne press taking 350 tonne ingots.
The very heavy forging capacity in operation today is in Japan (Japan Steel Works), China (China First Heavy Industries, China Erzhong, Shanghai Electric), South Korea (Doosan, Taewoong), France (Le Creusot), and Russia (OMZ Izhora, Atommash, Petrozavodskmash, ZiO-Podolsk).
New capacity is being built by these and other companies in Japan, China, South Korea, Czech Republic and Russia.
New capacity is planned in India (Larsen & Toubro, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bharat Forge Ltd). In China the Harbin Boiler Co. and SEC subsidiary SENPE are increasing capacity.
Nothing in North America currently approaches these enterprises.* The changed position of the USA is remarkable. In the 1940s it manufactured over 2700 Liberty ships, each 10,800 tonne DWT – possibly pioneering modular construction at that scale (average construction time was 42 days in the shipyard). In the 1970s it had a substantial heavy infrastructure, but today China, Japan, South Korea, India, Europe and Russia are all well ahead of it. Steelmaker ArcelorMittal, based in Luxembourg, now owns the US company which built most US reactor pressure vessels in the 1970s-1980s.
*In the 1970s, requirements were more modest: both US Steel and Bethlehem Steel had 8000 tonne presses and could handle 300 tonne ingots. US forging capacity has not been significantly upgraded since, partly due to lack of integration with steel mills and melt shops to supply the hot steel as 600-tonne ingots."
https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
The smaller reactors people are talking about are totally non-viable. Nuclear works because of the scale.
OPG has run the numbers and disagrees. On the bright side their SMR construction continues along on time so you will have some real examples to learn from soon.
https://www.opg.com/projects-s... [opg.com]
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Did you say nuclear wessel?
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Did you say nuclear wessel?
My hovercraft is full of eels.
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On the bright side their SMR construction continues along on time so you will have some real examples to learn from soon.
We'll see, if they ever actually start it. But there is absolutely no way in hell they can save money doing it AND not make it less safe.
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On the bright side their SMR construction continues along on time so you will have some real examples to learn from soon.
We'll see, if they ever actually start it. But there is absolutely no way in hell they can save money doing it AND not make it less safe.
It's not like they are not going to finish it. All the heavy forgings are done, it's just a big assembly project now. You can check for yourself what Ontarians pay for their primarily nuclear power. I live in another province but it is nonetheless quite reasonable. OPG just finished some extensive refurbs on their conventional reactor fleet on budget and on schedule so they have a proven track record at this sort of thing.
Also, this project comes at a time where, with the urgent need to diversify our
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The unsubsidised LCOE (CAD/MWh) for the BWRX-300 OPG's SMR is at least CAD$220/MWh. Renewables in the area max out at unsubsidised LCOE CAD$113/MWh.
But your not wrong even so. They are the government so they get to charge / subsidise whatever they want. I'm sure the numbers work out just fine.
On the positive side if they can drop the price by 1/2 by manufacturing 100's of them, this billions of government subsidy money might end up being seeding the start of a new ind
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The unsubsidised LCOE (CAD/MWh) for the BWRX-300 OPG's SMR is at least CAD$220/MWh. Renewables in the area max out at unsubsidised LCOE CAD$113/MWh.
Do you have a reference? Those are very different from the numbers I've seen, but those were calculated at the very beginning of what is admittedly a big project.
https://smrroadmap.ca/wp-conte... [smrroadmap.ca]
Re: What could possibly go right? (Score:2)
The estimated cost is $21B [worldnuclearreport.org], but as most of that is upfront the real cost is interest. The LCOE you see most often is $149/MWh, which is calculated at an interest rate of 4%. 4% is the 10 year government bond rate - the "can't fail" rate. It can only get the because it is government guaranteed, so it's a subsidised rate. Energy utilities using established technologies with a well understood risk profile and a "no risk" government contract usually get around 8%, which translates to a LCOE of around $200/MWh.
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The LCOE you see most often is $149/MWh, which is calculated at an interest rate of 4%. 4% is the 10 year government bond rate - the "can't fail" rate. It can only get the because it is government guaranteed, so it's a subsidised rate.
Much of the world's nuclear fleet is some form of government owned or operated. I have no particular problem with this. I'm not a fan of big government at all but providing necessities of life like power and water is one thing I can get behind. Same deal with other big engineering projects like hydro dams.
None of those can compete with renewables, which usually come in under $100MWh.
The cost of renewables obviously varies widely with how much storage you need, and that differs with the various deployment scenarios - on-grid, island and industrial - envisioned in the analysis I post
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Near where I hark from, South Australia is sitting at 80% renewables [energy.gov.au]. The balance is CCGT. The CCGT works out at $115/MWh [climatecouncil.org.au], the renewables $60/MWh [aemo.com.au], averaging out at $72/MWh [leadingedgeenergy.com.au]. For a while it had the world's biggest battery [hornsdalep...rve.com.au].
South Australia has the most expensive electricity in Australia, mostly because because of this transition to renewables. Turns out rebuilding all your generation is an expensive exercise. But they had little choice as they have no coal or gas, so they were forced into this transition.
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The last steel plant that could make these closed decades ago.
That does not seem to be correct. The USA has two 50,000 ton presses in operation, plus two 35,000 ton presses [wikipedia.org].
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The last steel plant that could make these closed decades ago.
That does not seem to be correct. The USA has two 50,000 ton presses in operation, plus two 35,000 ton presses [wikipedia.org].
Interesting, thanks for that. I guess for whatever reason those are not suitable. I'm not an expert so I don't know if there are significant differences in the processes to forge aluminum vs steel but it looks like they are currently used to make aircraft parts. No mention of ingot sizes so that might be the difference as well. Did find this link interesting also;
https://www.gasparini.com/en/t... [gasparini.com]
Re: What could possibly go right? (Score:2)
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I realize they're not just going to walk in and start throwing switches, but reopening this plant that's been shuttered all this time and doing it correctly has got to be seriously expensive, so what are the odds on whether it will be done correctly?
A 1960's technology plant that was decommissioned in 2020, a little earlier than planned since it was damaged by a derecho, and was considered too expensive to repair.
Plus how will this be operated? By a company that abandons projects after a short time? Will it be operated with the standard profit motive? Tech bros needing to make more profit each quarter. Bean counters working hard to squeeze out profit. Gonna be interesting, apparently a privately owned old reactor working with corporate oversight.
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I haven't analyzed this plant restart, but one note, power prices are much, much higher than in 2020 and in 2020, we really didn't expect rates to move up except with 2-3% inflation. Since then electricity demand has surged (data centers, electric vehicles, conversion to electric heating, increased AC demand, etc), so we need to invest in more generation and this may be a small part of it.
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reopening this plant that's been shuttered all this time and doing it correctly has got to be seriously expensive
The article says "a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra Energy to restart Iowa's shuttered Duane Arnold nuclear plant", so, yes, I think you could call 1.9 billion dollars "expensive".
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Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:2, Insightful)
It will strike everyone as very puzzling. After all, everyone on slashdot and Ars Technica knows that wind and solar are far cheaper than nuclear and just as reliable. So why on earth is Google looking into nukes? Why do they not just build a huge wind farm, throw in a few batteries, and get unlimited cheap power?
Because the wind and the sun are free, after all. But instead they seem to be resorting to a ridiculously expensive nuke, and then on top of that, where you have to pay for the fuel, I mean, so
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFS says "US Government", so part of the mystery might be plain old corruption?
Yep (Score:4, Interesting)
We can't have that because it'll start the discussion of publicly available electricity instead of private ownership of electricity. And we can't have that because we have to have the Epstein class ruling over us and taking some of our children off to an island to do terrible things to them. I haven't quite figured out why we have to have the Epstein class but about 40% of the country thinks it's essential.
Also starting up an old nuclear power plant has the advantage that it's dirt cheap to do as long as you don't care about safety which they don't.
That's what really scares me. Fukushima happened not because nuclear plants can't be safe but because private companies are run to be profitable for the next quarter and the next quarter but they could care less about disasters 20 years from now and you can always put off maintenance.
The CEOs who caused the Fukushima disaster and caused the city to be evacuated for 10 years went on television and cried a little bit and got away with it. They were repeatedly told they needed to build a large water break and they were repeatedly told they needed to buy expensive portable generators and have them ready to go off site. These things would have cost millions so they pocketed the money and when the inevitable happened did a public relations campaign blitz instead which was much much cheaper.
And I cannot emphasize this enough, when it was over the public blamed the engineers.
Private companies learned from Fukushima that they can skip maintenance pocket the money and let a disaster happen and we will blame the workers instead of the Epstein class psychopaths who made it happen.
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Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:1)
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well a new solar plant with batteries costs $1.2 billion for the same power generation. Given restoring an existing nuclear power plant costs slightly more at $1.9 billion, you are in a losing argument here.
Time is likely the premium being paid for here. Even being forced to adhere to every safety standard, I'm betting it's a lot faster to knock the dust off an existing nuclear plant than it is to build out a solar solution. Assuming you own enough land to build a solar solution relative to the data center site, which is a critical factor.
Positions are justified from the organizations perspective. Project is sunk as a long-term capital expense spread out over years of depreciation. AI revenue will dispose of that cost concern within weeks. If there were 100,000 bicycles run by the Pedal Power army sitting next to the data center site ready to be plugged into today, Google would go with that over nuclear or solar.
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:5, Informative)
Bring up a decommissioned plant will take years. Don't forget about the thousands of smaller systems that have to be tested and re-certified. Pumps that haven't spun in years. Seals and gaskets, wiring, the control computers. You can't just plop in a raspberry pi and write a pid loop. Everything inside that plant has to be audited and signed off. As the for sale listings like to say ran when parked.
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Everything inside that plant has to be audited and signed off.
I admire your optimism and wish I could share it. Sadly, to me it borders on naivete.
And even if you're right, corruption often finds a way around safety. The name "Boeing" comes to mind...
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:1)
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Those that do try to get away with anything regarding nuclear safety quickly get run out on a rail.
Literally the entire industry is about getting away with a bad decision regarding safety.
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:1)
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well a new solar plant with batteries costs $1.2 billion for the same power generation. Given restoring an existing nuclear power plant costs slightly more at $1.9 billion, you are in a losing argument here.
Um yeah, no. The only way that 1.9 billion is etched in stone is if they just stop refurbishing at 1.9 billion, and switch it on in whatever state it is in.
Nuc plants seldom end up costing what the first projection says. And anyone feeling warm and fuzzy about 1960's technology reactors is fooling themselves.
No. It's not puzzling. At all. (Score:2)
Nuc plants seldom end up costing what the first projection says. And anyone feeling warm and fuzzy about 1960's technology reactors is fooling themselves.
Your statement would actually hold weight and have meaning, if not for a modern society manufacturing planned obsolescence into every stock price your retirement fund relies on.
I dare you to find an American appliance from the 1960s that would outlast anything made in this fucking century.
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Nuc plants seldom end up costing what the first projection says. And anyone feeling warm and fuzzy about 1960's technology reactors is fooling themselves.
Your statement would actually hold weight and have meaning, if not for a modern society manufacturing planned obsolescence into every stock price your retirement fund relies on.
I dare you to find an American appliance from the 1960s that would outlast anything made in this fucking century.
I think you are misreading what I posted. I'm talking about only coming in on budget, not appliances and planned obsolescence. PO is an issue, but not this issue.
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Not really. A few rainy days and the economics go sideways. Nuclear power is ideal for a steady state workload like a couple of datacenters. I'm quite sure Google did the math.
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It's partly optics. Concerns about AI pushing up power prices by competing with small business and households.
Here Google (and Microsoft, in the article) are increasing capacity by bringing back mothballed generators with a generous loan.
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:4, Interesting)
A few rainy days and the economics go sideways.
It does not.
As Google did, you can also do the math. Duane Arnold [wikipedia.org] had a net power output of 581 MW or 14 GWh output per day. To store 14 GWh of electricity right now, you have to pay about US$560 Mio (or $40 per kWh). With the 1.9 billion dollar grant, you could build enough capacity for four days of continuous rain. And differently than a nuclear power plant, this battery capacity could do power arbitrage, charging when electricity is cheap and provide it when prices are high, generating revenue and at the same time damping electricity price pikes and stabilizing the grid.
Re: Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:2)
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The examples comparing prices are all comparing them to battery-backed systems that can continuously produce the rated power. The solar panels or wind turbines will be capable of far higher peak power that is used to charge the batteries. I have no idea whether any numbers being quoted here are accurate, but the posters are absolutely describing "base power" when quoting their prices.
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The plant is supposed to supply a data center.
So it is not a base load plant.
Obviously you would try to run it "like a base load plant" and orchestrate the data center around the available power, or sell excess power to somewhere else if the grid is okay for that.
nice try at sarcasm ... (Score:3)
... but it doesn't go well with ignorance. gigawatts worth of solar plants are working/commisioned just for ai in the us, google has a good share of them. a simple google search would have saved you the embarrassment.
just in case your's was a serious question, i guess they're all scraping everything they can, money doesn't seem to be an issue. nor does profitability apparently. long and mighty be the bubble! or maybe they're guessing now that a nuclear winter is a possibility?
Re:Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:4, Insightful)
> I mean, it cannot be that wind and solar plus a few batteries are actually more expensive, could it?
Nope. The TL;DR version: It would actually be cheaper to build wind/solar and batteries, if not for the fact that the cost of building the plant was covered fifty years ago and they're getting another $1.9B in free money for it.
But of course this was never about you "missing something" - this is about you having an agenda. At least I hope it's about having an agenda, because the economics of the situation are so plainly evident you'd have to be an incredible moron to genuinely be "missing something."
For one, the plant is not owned or operated by Google. It's owned by NextEra Energy - a multibillion dollar, multinational energy company. Google's name only appears on this story in so far as they want to build data centers and that gives NextEra Energy a reason to get the plant going again. NextEra also does wind and solar power and if they had local projects that were on hold instead of a mothballed nuclear plant the story would probably be about them resuming those projects instead.
For two, the lion's share of the capital costs for the plant have already been spent long ago. The Duane Arnold Energy Center started operating in 1975. It makes a lot more sense to revive the plant that is actively losing money every day it's not operating (because NextEra still has expenses to pay on it) than to keep paying the upkeep and spend even more money building new infrastructure elsewhere.
For three, there's a lot more federal money available for NON-wind/solar power under the current administration, which is openly hostile to those technologies. $1.9B worth in this case. For the equivalent ~615MW the existing nuclear plant is expected to produce, that would be about $700M in new wind construction even if you triple it to add 24 hours worth of battery storage at 615MW (an absurd amount) you're still comparable at about $2.1B. That versus, $1.9B in basically free taxpayer loans, is not a hard decision to make.
So basically the only time it financially makes sense to go with nuclear power is when you already have the nuclear power plant and you can get a bunch of free money to put a fresh coat of paint on it.
=Smidge=
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Also NIMBYs. The plan already exists do they can't object to it, but solar and wind farms, and battery storage arrays would all be new. In fact it being an industrial site already probably makes it easier to get the datacentre built there.
If the Trump admin wasn't so hostile to renewables they would probably be buying European and Chinese offshore wind and batteries, and deploying it already.
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There was a plan to put a solar farm + batteries on that site but they were scrapped for reasons I'm sure you could guess.
=Smidge=
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Also NIMBYs. The plan already exists do they can't object to it, but solar and wind farms, and battery storage arrays would all be new.
It's funny seeing the same tactics used against solar and wind that has been used against nuclear for so many decades. Different era, same kind of people.
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Re:Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:4, Insightful)
... everyone on slashdot and Ars Technica knows that wind and solar are far cheaper than nuclear and just as reliable. So why on earth is Google looking into nukes?
I dunno - might it be the $1.9 billion government loan referred to in the first sentence of TFS?
The current regime is against wind and solar power, largely because Trump is an illiterate idiot who makes a not-terribly-bright third-grader look like a Nobel laureate. Also, welfare recipients - among whom I include the vast majority of tech companies - seldom turn down money. Hence, Google Nukes.
If Google was offered money to revive a dead coal-fired power plant with sufficient capacity to power a major data centre, I'm sure they'd jump at the chance. They are utterly conscienceless, and are also eager to see the end of the world as we know it so they can rule over the smoking ruins. They'll grab all the money - and all the power of ANY kind - that they can.
Re:Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Help me understand this! Its a great mystery. Unless I have missed something. But what could that be?
You are missing the fact that they are not building a new power plant, they are restarting an existing power plant. The capital cost is already paid for.
In essence, it's like my question "should I buy a new car, or just get the one I have fixed?" New cars may get much better gas mileage, but the car I have is already paid for.
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While the energy source of wind and solar are free, building and maintaining the plants is not free.
If all they were building were a single 100MW data center, sure: renewables would be cheaper to build. But they evidently are planning a major campus that will consume most of the plant's 615 MW output over the next 25 years.
A solar installation, in a favorable location, capable of supplying 600MW around the clock (with battery backup) would have to be roughly 1800MW in capacity. It would be among the larges
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It will strike everyone as very puzzling. After all, everyone on slashdot and Ars Technica knows that wind and solar are far cheaper than nuclear and just as reliable. So why on earth is Google looking into nukes? Why do they not just build a huge wind farm, throw in a few batteries, and get unlimited cheap power?
Because the wind and the sun are free, after all. But instead they seem to be resorting to a ridiculously expensive nuke, and then on top of that, where you have to pay for the fuel, I mean, someone has to dig the stuff up and refine it. Whereas the wind just blows and the sun just shines, so they obviously are cheaper.
They have accountants and lots of MBAa, so they must see this, so the question is why they are going against what their analyses must show them. If it was coal or gas we would know, they were in thrall to the fossil fuel industry. But is there a nuke lobby, and are they not bigger than it anyway.
Help me understand this! Its a great mystery. Unless I have missed something. But what could that be? I mean, it cannot be that wind and solar plus a few batteries are actually more expensive, could it?
The present government is discouraging wind and solar power generation. The government was definitely not giving a loan to build wind and solar farms. Red states (which just happens to be the states with the most potential for wind and solar farms) are falling in line with the government anti wind and solar farms. There is your answer.
So Google paid a fraction of the cost (Score:3)
Risk costs money, this is a subsidy for Google.
As expected.
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I'm not sure about the US, but in the rest of the world, every form of power get subsidies, one way or another.
Better to be subsiding nuclear (and batteries for solar) than coal and gas, I suppose.
Whats this I hear about Trump paying out billions to NOT build wind farms though?
nah - never mind, I'm not sure I can take any more of that stuff.
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Whats this I hear about Trump paying out billions to NOT build wind farms though?
nah - never mind, I'm not sure I can take any more of that stuff.
It happened to me! Well, here in this county.
We needed the jobs and the power, now we get neither.
And we're also not getting an alternative.
what are the odds (Score:3)
This, in my opinion, is more like a grant - a giveaway. What is the public benefit for the risk being assumed by the taxpayer? Given the current government's love of ownership stakes [cato.org] (despite decrying "socialism" with a pearl-clutching gasp), why not provide the money in return for stock? Or make it a corporate bond such that, if NextEra defaults on the terms, the rest of the corporate bond market can extract their own form of punishment?
And furthermore, if this turns out to be a flop, will the politicians in favor of it get raked over the coals the way Obama was over Solyndra? Heck, that was only $500 million of lost taxpayer money!
Re:If you are made about (Score:5, Insightful)
100% bullshit.
My goto example is the Barakah plant over in the UAE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You think there were leftists and environmental protesters slowing construction over there? Plus it was joint effort with South Korea.
As with every nuclear plant it was years late and ended up costing $32 billion instead of the projected $20 billion.
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My goto example is the Barakah plant over in the UAE.
My goto example is China, which has built more reactors in the last 15 years than the rest of the world combined.
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amazing how things get done in a dictatorship: no sacrifice to great
They will be happy to sell reactors to democracies as well.
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The Story Doesn't Say (Score:2)
The story doesn't say how old this reactor is, why it was decommissioned, how much the government or consumers paid for the stupidly expensive shutdown process and likely ongoing maintenance, how much it will cost the government or consumers to shut it down again in the not too distant future... Decommissioning takes 10 - 15 years. Expensive, union labor.
I'm all in favor of nuclear power. But there is a considerable cost at the end of the line that always seems to get forgotten about until suddenly the util
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There's two events that stick out in my mind that demonstrate to me how opinions are changing on nuclear fission for energy. The first event was seeing Andrew Yang advocated for nuclear power in his campaign for POTUS.
lololololol
Statistically nobody gives even one single solitary fuck about anything Andrew Yang ever said, let alone while "running for president" which was not really a thing that happened since he had less than zero chance to win. He was running for attention so someone might know who he was.
Can't Afford Plant--then Can't Afford Cleanup (Score:2)
Wikipedia: "A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political,
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I see what you're saying, but that's just not the regulatory environment. See: 10 CFR 50.75 [ecfr.gov] which shows that the operator of the plant has been putting aside decommissioning costs into a trust / escrow for the lifetime of the plant license, so that the problem you are speaking of doesn't happen.
The NRC was early on making sure the taxpayers didn't become bagholders for nuclear waste cleanup if an operator goes titsup.
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The NRC was early on making sure the taxpayers didn't become bagholders for nuclear waste cleanup if an operator goes titsup.
"Approximately 70 percent of licensees are authorized to accumulate decommissioning funds over the operating life of their plants. These owners â" generally traditional, rate-regulated electric utilities or indirectly regulated generation companies â" are not required today to have all the funds needed for decommissioning [nrc.gov]."
Can someone please explain... (Score:4, Insightful)
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is the answer Bitcoin?
help me understand...
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Because tax free / interest free loans are cheaper than spending your own money, and always has been?
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...why a company with a 4 trillion dollar market capitalization and a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash needs to borrow lass than two billion dollars from the government?
Because it's almost always better to spend someone else's money than your own. Failing that, it's almost always better to spend future money rather than current money. The "almosts" are there because the terms have to be scrutinized, but if the terms are good... you hang onto the cash and revenues you have. Having cash gives you flexibility and enables you to take better advantage of opportunities. And if you end up not needing the cash for anything, you can always invest it. This may not be the first
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..why a company with a 4 trillion dollar market capitalization and a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash needs to borrow lass than two billion dollars from the government?
Because it's almost always better to spend someone else's money than your own.
It's also apparently better to answer your own question instead of the one that was asked. No one was confused about why they would rather get an interest free loan. They were obviously alluding to the fact that this is bullshit nonsense from the feds designed to kill renewables.
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When it comes to scammers... (Score:2)
...Trump is a distant second to the TechBros. Your tax dollars at work folks, fueling the bubble.
Borrowing $10 to a millionaire? (Score:2)