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A comment on Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?. Parent comment

Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by photochemsyn on Thursday June 09, 2022 @01:50PM (#31684459)
Construction costs are only part of the picture and utility operators are well aware that they need to look at lifecycle costs. This includes everything from costs of fuel rods (look at the historically volatile uranium market), availability of large volumes of cooling water (see more frequent droughts), maintenance costs (maintenance being a major factor in the retirement of California's nuclear power plants), security costs, the cost of storing fuel rods onsite for decades, and finally, decommissioning costs (as reactors themselves become contaminated with in-situ activation products, i.e. radioactive cobalt/iron/carbon/nickel isotopes).

It's basically a huge long-term liability that just doesn't exist with solar/wind/storage, hydropower, or geothermal.

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by coredog64 on Thursday June 09, 2022 @04:41PM (#31686573)
The largest nuclear plant in the United States (Palo Verde) is in the middle of the Sonoran Desert and uses treated sewage output for cooling. People probably won’t stop urinating during a drought.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by cultofmetatron on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:35PM (#31687839)
oh thats cool. I imagine all the pathogens are effectively killed for free
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by ars on Thursday June 09, 2022 @08:19PM (#31688573)
Just in case you are not joking, the sewage is not exposed to radiation.

Water essentially can not become radioactive, and the sewage is used to cool water, not (directly) nuclear material. As you probably know all heat engines need a hot side (the uranium) and a cold side (the sewage) - the cold side is also those huge cooling towers you see while driving near a power plant.

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by derefr on Thursday June 09, 2022 @10:12PM (#31689215)
I don't think that's what they were implying; heat kills pathogens too.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by ars on Thursday June 09, 2022 @11:28PM (#31689653)
It's not hot enough for that, it's usually only 10 to 15 degrees above ambient.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by Andys on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:05AM (#31689902)
Just hot enough to make the bacteria thrive. Juicy.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by speed_spread on Thursday June 09, 2022 @07:51PM (#31688407)
It also gives arguments to both sides, "nuclear is shit" and "nuclear is the shit"
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by greyhair on Friday June 10, 2022 @08:29AM (#31693114)
Imagine all the pathogens that are mutated for free.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by cratermoon on Thursday June 09, 2022 @08:00PM (#31688461)
killed, or mutated?
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by greyhair on Friday June 10, 2022 @08:32AM (#31693138)
I said the same just now, before I saw yours. I know it is going to get down voted, because I didn't append the '\s' tag, and it was a little to obscure. Cheers!
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by dqpb on Thursday June 09, 2022 @04:05PM (#31686094)
> the cost of storing fuel rods onsite for decades

This environmental remediation cost is generally missing in comparisons with all other energy sources.

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by wolverine876 on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:15AM (#31689961)
That's a good point. Carbon is dumped in the air - for free! That's because there is no cost resulting from it. (Edit: Yes, the last sentence is sarcastic.)
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by anamexis on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:05PM (#31687549)
It’s generally missing from the other energy sources as well.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by joe_the_user on Thursday June 09, 2022 @09:55PM (#31689113)
What remediation costs do solar or wind have?
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by chinchilla2020 on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:24PM (#31697014)
There are massive mining/smelting/manufacturing costs in metal for solar and wind. Solar panels in particular generate massive waste due to the rare earth metals through mine waste, concentrator tailings, leftover leach solution, solution-extraction-electrowinning waste, slag, transportation fuel, etc. Let's not forget the massive fuel costs involved.

Solar panels may be tiny but they generate dozens of tons of waste material per panel.

There is a good reason all the large mining companies and several of the large oil companies market/lobby their contribution to 'green energy' so zealously. https://www.fcx.com/sustainability/environment#climate

(I used to work in this vertical)

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by Jedd on Thursday June 09, 2022 @11:45PM (#31689776)
Wind turbine blades are next to impossible to recycle or (at the scale we're talking about) re-purpose.

'What What happens to all the old wind turbines?' (bbc.co.uk) [2020]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265321

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by stephen_g on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:29AM (#31690067)
Even if that was always the case (I'm confident it won't be), compare it to, say, coal fly ash. In my country, coal ash is 1/5th of all waste generated (by weight, I think) over a year. 12 million metric tonnes per year [1]. And that's before even thinking about CO2 and other air pollutants.

Wind turbine waste is almost nothing compared to that. Still worth fixing, but perspective is important.

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-o...

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by Jedd on Friday June 10, 2022 @04:38AM (#31691567)
Oh, I don't think this is a significant problem - and agree that the volume of this fairly inert waste product is trivial in comparison to the huge volumes of nasties that come out of fossil fuel power stations.

I'm sure these turbine blades will likely continue to be iteratively re-designed to be increasingly recyclable or at least re-purposable as times goes on.

I was just answering the question about remediation costs for wind turbines, as this feature of the current popular implementations is often a surprise.

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by duncanawoods on Friday June 10, 2022 @06:00AM (#31692027)
There are 100% recyclable blades (including production byproducts) currently being tested. They are using Elium as the composite material which can be chemically broken down back into glass fibre and resin for reuse.

https://www.lmwindpower.com/en/stories-and-press/stories/new...

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by iancmceachern on Thursday June 09, 2022 @04:35PM (#31686481)
And mining too
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by pmoriarty on Thursday June 09, 2022 @08:00PM (#31688454)
Also the insurance costs are so high as to make operating the plant unprofitable... which is where the taxpayer comes in, to foot the bill.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by MisterMower on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:13AM (#31689952)
We subsidize every other form of energy in a most convoluted way possible, so why not?
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by masom on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:03PM (#31696774)
Hydro power has some high drawbacks, including being affected by droughts. They're flooding large swaths of land, destroying ecosystems, are extremely energy intensive while being built, cannot be built anywhere you'd need one, and result in large destruction when they fail.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by spoonjim on Thursday June 09, 2022 @04:19PM (#31686254)
Can’t you just dump radioactive uranium into the bottom of the ocean? Can’t imagine it would do much damage with all of the water around it.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by MertsA on Thursday June 09, 2022 @08:13PM (#31688537)
If you vitrified it first honestly it'd probably be totally fine. An arguably better plan is just get serious about reprocessing and work towards cleaner processes than PUREX. Not even necessarily a completely new process, just better controls around handling waste and making sure there's no massive liquid tanks just waiting to leak into the ground like the Hanford site. Most spent fuel is depleted uranium and not exceptionally dangerous to be around. If you can separate out the fission products and transuranics then you could drastically reduce the amount of waste needed to be stored, store it for less time, and potentially recycle some and get some actual use out of what is currently considered waste.

Just dumping fuel pellets into the deep ocean would be a pretty terrible idea though. All the fission products and impurities that build up as the fuel is burned lead to the pellets starting to crack apart. Any cesium or iodine would leach into the water quickly, it would not be a good day for Shamu.

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by ncmncm on Thursday June 09, 2022 @09:54PM (#31689110)
Vitrified waste is, despite naive assumptions, porous
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by MertsA on Thursday June 09, 2022 @10:20PM (#31689275)
Er, but it's still vitrified and stable as a glassy material that's less prone to leaching fission products into any water right? As far as I understand it, the whole point of vitrifying it is to trap anything and everything aside from Xenon and Tritium into the vitrified end product.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by ncmncm on Friday June 10, 2022 @02:11AM (#31690669)
Momentarily, yes. Longer term, no.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by JodieBenitez on Thursday June 09, 2022 @04:26PM (#31686347)
There's life down there.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by raxxorraxor on Friday June 10, 2022 @07:04AM (#31692404)
Pretty basic one even that is in a fundamental part in the food chain many successive chains depend on.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by iancmceachern on Thursday June 09, 2022 @04:36PM (#31686504)
No

https://theecologist.org/2009/mar/01/somalia-used-toxic-dump...

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by Dylan16807 on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:56PM (#31688005)
That doesn't really show anything because it's such a huge mixture and the vast majority is random toxic chemicals, not plain old spent fuel.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by stormbrew on Thursday June 09, 2022 @05:23PM (#31687078)
I'm not saying I think dumping nuclear waste in the ocean is a good idea (though I am also curious if there's been specific impact studies done on it, if we're talking about very very deep ocean) but I'm pretty sure somalia isn't in the ocean.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by iancmceachern on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:43PM (#31687905)
They were dumping waste off the coast of Somalia, in the ocean
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by Dylan16807 on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:58PM (#31688025)
"Bottom of the ocean" here doesn't mean on the continental shelf.
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by greyhair on Friday June 10, 2022 @08:36AM (#31693182)
The historic problem of just 'drop it in the ocean' is that (so far) it almost always comes back to bite you. Hence the thousands of rusting barrels of DDT off the coast of California.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-04-26/ddt-was...

Did I say thousands? Wow.

Don't ever trust anyone that says "We'll just safely dispose of that in the deep ocean.".

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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by natmaka on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:10AM (#31689938)
WP's article about this is quite good, and leads to a terse but to the point "Ocean floor disposal" one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by spoonjim on Saturday June 11, 2022 @02:10AM (#31702364)
Most of this seems to indicate minimal environmental effects?
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by natmaka on Saturday June 11, 2022 @11:38PM (#31711159)
Minimal measured effects (few studies), the key here is the precautionary principle, applied here by the "London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Convention_on_the_Preve...
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Re:Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? by ateng on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:02AM (#31689885)
Isn’t what we’re doing right now is essentially dumping used fuel into a monitored and confined ocean (ie water tank on site)
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