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A comment on Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standard, White House says. Parent comment

Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by lumost on Friday April 02, 2021 @04:32PM (#26675648)
The follow-on question is why aren't these plants retrofitted to be secure? I'd somewhat naively expect that its simpler to upgrade an existing plant than permit a new plant in.a separate location.
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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by sliken on Friday April 02, 2021 @05:22PM (#26676138)
Each plant is unique, and not perfectly understood. Often the people that did understand it have forgotten, died, moved on, etc.

Understanding, improving, testing, and certification of a plan to protect against the huge risks involved is expensive and often in practice timelines and budgets often go significantly over.

There's numerous MUCH newer designs that: are much smaller, much easier to scale, absolutely identical, well understood, robust in the face of failure, and don't even need operators. Additionally since they are identical they get economies of scale and only need a finite number of experts on hand, not a group of them per site. You literally need a flat site, water, and electrical hookups. If you don't provide enough water for cooling they shut down. After their useful service life you put them back on a train car and ask for a replacement.

Some of these projects are ready to deliver, but the early customers have been cancelling. Bill Gates funded a project, and there's several around.

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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by andrewlgood on Saturday April 03, 2021 @04:45PM (#26684574)
To be clear, none of the new designs have been certified in the US by the NRC
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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by dundercoder on Saturday April 03, 2021 @12:34AM (#26678460)
Couple that with outages being so expensive. Each day offline is millions in lost revenue.
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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by antattack on Friday April 02, 2021 @04:35PM (#26675695)
Duane Arnold plant is being replaced with solar panels and battery storage:

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/duane-arnol...

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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by belorn on Saturday April 03, 2021 @12:57PM (#26682614)
A 615-megawatt facility coupled with 60 megawatts seems a bit low on the storage side. The more common approach I have seen with solar panels is 75% capacity for about 3-4 hours running time.

It should be quite clear that neither solution are even close to enough power to bridge the gap and require additional energy in the form of fossil fuels. It will be less fossil fuels than if the nuclear plant was exclusively replaced with fossil fuels, but it will be more fossil fuels than before and it will be adding to global warming in a time where the planet can't take more.

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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by benchaney on Friday April 02, 2021 @04:39PM (#26675741)
It’s possible that it would be more expensive to upgrade than to replace in many cases.

While I support expanding nuclear power capabilities in general, a straightforward rule like “don’t decommission old plants as long as fossil fuels are still being used” seems dangerous and irresponsible.

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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by andrewlgood on Saturday April 03, 2021 @11:10AM (#26681658)
The plants have been retrofitted to be secure/safe. The retrofits can cost $100+ million and do not make much sense if the power plants are losing money.
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