Interestingly, South Carolina produces most of its energy using nuclear already... It is too bad the broad public perceives nuclear as a 'risky' energy source. It is in fact the safest energy source we have ever developed, in terms of deaths per kilowatt hour. Its just that when something goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. That makes more of an emotional reaction in the general public than the scattered and sporadic deaths in other industries, in which there are sadly many, many more. So, it seems it is hard to get support to invest in newer, safer technologies in the industry. I do understand the short term economic incentives. Nuclear is expensive to build. However it is very cheap to operate, and relatively environmentally friendly. It takes long term planning on timescales of many years, and looking at safety data rather than focusing on the disasters on their own. Neither of which humans are any good at.<p>The one thing that turns me off nuclear power is how to store nuclear waste. The collapsed storage tunnel at the Hanford site this year is an example of how poorly this can be done. The waste will remain dangerous for thousands of years. How do you build a storage facility that keeps it contained for that long?
While the full article is gated at WSJ, John Cochrane and David Henderson write about the lack of quantifying economic costs when it comes to addressing climate change. Their last paragraph:<p><i>Climate policy advocates’ apocalyptic vision demands serious analysis, and mushy thinking undermines their case. If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable. It follows that the costs of genetically modified foods and modern pesticides, which can feed us with less land and lower carbon emissions, might be bearable. It follows that if the future of civilization is really at stake, adaptation or geo-engineering should not be unmentionable. And it follows that symbolic, ineffective, political grab-bag policies should be intolerable.</i><p>Here's Cochrane's write up about the op-ed: <a href="http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/07/on-climate-change.html?spref=tw" rel="nofollow">http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/07/on-climate-change....</a>
This brings to light a risk of nuclear power that's rarely mentioned: that the scale of practical projects is so great that the likely cost overruns and delays make the systems politically or financially difficult to fund. Not to mention the additional risk that when/if a nuclear power station goes offline (whether for maintenance, accident, or some other kind of failure), the gap in energy production is massive. Compare that to solar and wind energy projects, which are typically smaller scale (and can be much, much smaller), built with diverse technologies in multiple locations, in small units. The risks of disruption, project failure, cost overruns, and financial failure are all much smaller.<p>When we are seeking solutions to growing energy demand and climate change, the likelihood and ease of fulfilling the demand has to be included in the calculations.
Nuclear energy has a small carbon footprint when compared to fracked natural gas. It is insane to cancel and abandon two reactors because natural gas prices are low.<p>Doesn't anyone think long term anymore? How much CO2 will be dumped into the atmosphere due to this cancellation? What will be the collateral damage due to the inadvertent release of methane in fracking.<p>Nuclear power is clean and safe relative to fossil fuel power generation.
I live in the service area for this power company and toured the construction site last year. During the tour they told us that the reactors were "twins" of reactors under construction in China. In fact, they took regular trips to China to learn from the team there because they were further along in the construction process. I wonder how the Chinese project is coming along.<p>A lot of people were laid off yesterday and that's a tragedy. But even more tragic is that these reactors were supposed to be the solution for meeting the regions rising energy demands. Now what? There was no plan B.<p>note - this is a burner account for privacy reasons
It's right here:<p>"We’ve let our nuclear industry atrophy for 30 years, and we’ve lost the robust supply chains and expertise needed” in building reactors."<p>This can be said for lots of things. You put it on hold for a generation of engineers, and pretty much need to start from zero again. Imagine all the knowledge lost, as tradecraft is not recorded.
I see a lot of technocratie on this site bemoaning the dying of nuclear. We've tried for 70+ years and have as yet not succeeded to use nuclear as a financially feasible energy source. Anyone trying to argue against this please answer this:<p>Why has a nuclear facility never been able to be fully privately insured without government backing?! The answer is simple: nuclear is too risky as a technology such that even some of the largest companies in the world are unwilling to take the risk.<p>Nuclear is dying for a reason.<p>Ps: thanks for the downvotes on stating facts
> If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable.<p>This assumes that the costs are paid by the same group of people. The people who live within range of a meltdown might consider the threat of a meltdown a much larger threat to their future than the threat of a much more evenly distributed disaster. Alaskans didn't feel personally threatened by the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, but there certainly were New Yorkers who felt affected.<p>Also, "pose a threat" on the time scales of (Nuclear Power plant lifetimes and climate change) is as much about perception and values as it is objective fact. Different people and societies are likely to perceive different levels of threat from different sources. For example, rural Americans who fear ISIS and terrorism are least likely to be directly affected by it or to have actually seen it in person (excluding those individuals who sign up to be shipped to the place where those are actually existential threats), yet they overwhelmingly value policies which prioritize defense against terrorism over defense against climate change.<p>Discussions of nuclear power accidents and climate change generally should (but don't) include {probability, impact, and duration}. A nuclear power incident is likely to be low probability, high impact (within a state-sized region), and quick. Climate change is likely to be a high probability (of unknown effects), wide ranging impacts, and affecting many different regions of the world over a long timescale (perhaps longer than a lifetime).
Unfinished nuclear power plants are not uncommon and for anyone in Washington State, the Satsop plant near Olympia is worth a visit. The massive unfinished concrete containment buildings and cooling towers are awe inspiring, and on a quiet morning the place feels almost like some ancient monument. But then again, I'm a romantic.<p>Some photos from Satsop a few years ago:<p>- <a href="https://photography.mattbierner.com/Satsop-Nuclear-Power-Plant-Eve" rel="nofollow">https://photography.mattbierner.com/Satsop-Nuclear-Power-Pla...</a><p>- <a href="https://photography.mattbierner.com/Satsop-Nuclear-Plant-Morning" rel="nofollow">https://photography.mattbierner.com/Satsop-Nuclear-Plant-Mor...</a>
Are there any technical solutions solving the nuclear waste storage problem yet?<p>Before following the HN crowd and becoming pro-nuclear-power, I'd like to understand what problems it is leaving to our children and their children and so on.
Very sad to see. I see nuclear as the future *<p>Despite this however, I also recognize Nuclear is failing because of the Central Planning fallacy :( Instead of small, modular, flexible modules, we have one giant plant. I think we need to scale down, not scale up.<p>* = as in, if we're every visited by aliens their ships won't be powered by windmills :)
From an environmental perspective - I have always felt the failure to adopt nuclear power was a result of environmentalists that undervalued global pollution relative to localized pollution. Of course the safety concerns whether or not they are actually warranted may be just as big or more so the real culprit in the lack of nuclear dominance, but given the costs of switching the grid to solar and wind (the costs are as much the slow roll out as the actual dollars), nuclear seems reasonably priced. Cleaning up our atmosphere is going to be one hell of an endeavor.
I have to give the two utilities credit for pulling these projects. Sure they wasted $9 billion, but it would have been easy for them to keep building given the large amount of money and time already spent on the project. By cancelling the project, they avoided passing another $15 billion in costs onto rate payers. With this $15 billion saved, they can buy a hell of a lot of wind, solar, and batteries.
As a project management professional, I have to wonder why these project so-often fail to meet their objectives of cost, scope, and schedule? It makes you think that there have been so few of these projects, in the past 40 years, that any "lessons learned" from former projects are unavailable. Plus, the duration of such projects probably causes loss of knowledge via retirement of the smart people.<p>If you want to make these projects work, I would recommend spending much more time on planning and give project control to the project managers. My guess is, that since this was a "state owned project", they took a typical "state run" mindset, which always displaces the liability of incompetence and failure onto the endless bank account of the taxpayer.
What kind of nuclear reactors were these ?<p>Were the new molten salt reactors that require no cooling source ? Or were they the same old westinghouse models that require external cooling (and external power) and have the capability of melting down ?
Nuclear just can't succeed as long as every reactor is a custom job with unknown costs. Companies like NuScale are trying to fix this by creating modular plants with predictable costs. It is unfortunate (especially for my hometown of Pittsburgh) that Westinghouse didn't pursue a modular design for it's latest AP1000 reactors.
From TFA:<p><i>The cancellation means there are just two new nuclear units being built in the country — both in Georgia —
while more than a dozen older nuclear plants are being retired in the face of low natural gas prices.</i><p>So what is going to happen when gas prices skyrocket?
> Demand for electricity has plateaued nationwide as a result of major improvements in energy efficiency<p>How quickly can wide-spread adoption of EVs change this part of the equation?
Oh, come on. Just because old technology is too complicated to repair or upgrade doesn't mean the entire industry has stalled.<p>This is pretty much the definition of "cruft." An accumulation of old defunct artifacts in the face of technological advances. [0]<p><pre><code> [0] http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/cruft.html</code></pre>
In my opinion this article is completely wrong. There were problems with many early reactors. Now there is much exciting design work on fission reactors especially using Thorium and fusion options are showing promise. If you look at energy source development over the long term then nuclear power is looking exceptionally strong now. If anything keeping older iterations operating beyond their lifetimes would be a sign of stagnation.