Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival

18 pointsposted a day ago
by marban
(ft.com)

25 Comments

PeterStuer

a day ago

Technologie has changed, but mankind has not.

It will still be the cheapest bidder, most corrupt, every corner cutting subpar material using fake report producing contractors building, inspecting, certifying and operating this stuff.

guenthert

a day ago

Exactly this is the problem. The physics and engineering are well understood, nuclear reactors can be built and operated reasonably safely, but that'll cost (particularly when considering malicious actors).

Well, then there is also the issue of long term storage of radioactive waste ...

MrHamburger

a day ago

> Well, then there is also the issue of long term storage of radioactive waste ...

You have that issue regardless if you have nuclear power plants or not as you have radiation devices in hospitals or industry.

manfre

a day ago

Your comment reads as "other industries have radioactive waste, so it's not a concern here."

The type and volume of waste differs and is very relevant.

MrHamburger

a day ago

Cobalt 60 from radiotherapy machine can kill you in exactly same way as spent Uranium rod from a power plant. For human body there is no difference between those two.

And we are not even getting to burning coal and subsequent nuclear fallout from it, which is completely uncontrolled.

bamboozled

17 hours ago

Yeah, Fukushima was a management disaster, not a technical one.

chvid

a day ago

The China Syndrome was a great movie! Looking forward to a revival of this great genre.

mrlonglong

a day ago

No it wasn't. That film wrecked the nuclear industry and contributed to climate change as people turned to other carbon rich electricity generating methods.

ta2234234242

a day ago

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl wrecked the nuclear industry. Why blame a movie when the real disasters were enough?

mrlonglong

18 hours ago

These two were caused by dumb mistakes. Nuclear energy is safe when they are designed to fail safe when errors are made. Mistakes will always be made and we should always fail safe in these situations. That's why it's incredibly expensive to build them.

preisschild

a day ago

It was a bad movie, because people started to believe it was based on reality...

sofixa

a day ago

Similarly, Chernobyl Nuclear power plant continued operating until 2000, 14 years after the incident.

Shutting down functioning reactors with no issues in an era where electricity consumption is growing on multiple fronts is wasteful, especially while there is no grid scale storage available and we need to decarbonise. Adding more reactors, as expensive as it is, will pay for itself over their lifetime (we have reactors today operating for 70 years and scheduled to operate past that, meanwhile solar panels and wind turbines have much shorter lifespans).

ViewTrick1002

a day ago

You can do the same calculation for renewables. There is nothing stopping us from building wind turbines with 70 year lifespans.

With the current crop of renewables you can reinvest the profit 2-3 times over the lira of a nuclear power plant.

Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years.

Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.

sofixa

a day ago

> There is nothing stopping us from building wind turbines with 70 year lifespans.

Why don't we then? And what about the associated storage needed to replicate what a nuclear power plant does?

And note, 70 years as of now, many as scheduled to go up to 90-100 years.

> Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.

Long term, not horrific.

> Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years

Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.

ViewTrick1002

a day ago

Because it is economic insanity to rely on your asset to have an economical life across 70+ years.

Then some storage boogeyman. Do check out California.

https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/

A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.

> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

> Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.

Great that you admit to having zero economic knowledge. That is the exact reverse of how it works.

Money now are worth way more than money in the future, even when adjusting for inflation etc.

Thus the need for short cycles and the huge risk premiums that get added when going above 10-20 years.

Here’s some reading for you:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/timevalueofmoney.asp

sofixa

5 hours ago

> Great that you admit to having zero economic knowledge. That is the exact reverse of how it works.

Not when we're talking about infrastructure at the state level. Project costs of big infrastructure projects, as well as inflation, mean that getting stuff done now is better and cheaper, usually, than waiting to do it in a few decades, or redoing it every few decades. State-level infrastructure investment doesn't have the same earnings potential as regular investment. It's practically all very long term, kind of by definition (if it were short term profitable, private investors would be all over it).

eesmith

a day ago

> and we need to decarbonise

It won't be used to decarbonize our economy. It will be used to further the profits of Big Tech, who are already preventing coal power plants from shutting down, in their desire to feed their data centers. (Eg, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/08/google-me... )

This will make it harder for other sectors to switch away from fossil fuels, by raising the price of fossil-free electricity relative to planet-killing sources.

As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area.

sofixa

a day ago

> As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area

Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start. Their other deals with small modular reactor companies will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life, and make it available and affordable.

eesmith

a day ago

> Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start.

No, it isn't. Tax corporate profits at rates we did in the 1950s, use the taxes and regulations to decarbonize, similar to how we used taxes to electrify and provide phone service.

If we build out 20% new non-fossil energy sources, and all of its goes to data centers, then we haven't decarbonized our economy in any ecologically meaningful way.

> will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life

And if it doesn't, we are 10-15 years later with even more CO2 in the air. This is a Hail Mary by companies afraid to suffer from the consequences of their pollution.

BenFranklin100

a day ago

Fantastic news. The combination of nuclear and renewables is the foundation for a carbon free future. I’m also excited at the prospect of the new nuclear designs being built by the hundreds which will dramatically lower the per unit cost. Abundant, 24/7 reliable, clean power generation will decouple economic growth from environmental damage.

deprecative

a day ago

The power generated won't be used to power homes. It will be used to train LLMs. This does nothing to move us away from carbon. I agree nuclear should be utilized but only for the benefit of the working class. Nuclear for the sake of capital interests is a recipe for disaster.

BenFranklin100

a day ago

Electrical usage will go to the highest bidder. If Amazon can stomach more $ kw/hr than a homeowner, prices simply rise and CO2 increases, not that LLMs simply don’t get trained. You need to understand how things work in the real world, not in an imagined socialist utopia.

ViewTrick1002

a day ago

How will nuclear power and renewables combine? They compete for the same slice of the grid, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition new built nuclear power loses due to be horrifically expensive.

Thus nuclear power becomes forced into ever more marginalized peaking roles.

Try calculate the cost for a kWh of electricity from a peaking nuclear power plant.

codewench

a day ago

How do they compete for the same role? Nuclear is the definition of base power generation, whereas solar/wind/etc (when backed with massive battery farms) are perfect peaker plants due to their near instantaneous demand response.