Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

I feel like the fact that this plant coming online will <i>raise</i> the rates for Georgia electricity is basically the death-knell of nuclear power, at least in it&#x27;s current form of large central power plants[1].<p>By comparison, solar and wind seem like classic &quot;worse is better.&quot; They don&#x27;t run all the time, but they&#x27;re cheap and relatively simple, if you screw up a unit then you get no power from that one unit, but the nature of the tech means each individual unit isn&#x27;t very important, and failure means no power and maybe an eyesore, no catastrophic pollution.<p>One further consideration is the decentralized nature of renewables. As the war in Ukraine is showing us, for any country dependent on a small number of central power plants, those become extremely vulnerable weak points if your country is invaded, whereas a decentralized network of renewables is hardier and can degrade rather than hard fail.<p>I know the HN crowd loves big engineering, and that in theory all these problems could be solved with enough investment and practice building plants etc., but I think in the messy world of reality micro generation is going to swamp everything else in the very long run.<p>1: Perhaps the small modular nuclear reactors idea can eventually be proven out.

As much as I&#x27;d love more nuclear power on the grid, this project cost over double its initial bid and is actually <i>raising</i> rates for GA utility customers... I can&#x27;t tell from the story whether &quot;nuclear is hard&quot; or if &quot;contractors are idiots&quot; here. Reactor was supposed to open in 2016 - it&#x27;s very hard to cheer for a 7-year delay and a 140% cost overrun.

This is great news. Although disappointing how long it took. Still hoping for a nuclear resurgence. Between this and all the EV factories coming online in GA, GA will have quite the impact on climate goals.

How much solar could they have built for the same price? Just doing some <i>very</i> rough calculations, they could have built enough panels to output several times as much peak power as they can with the nuclear reactors. Even including storage costs, they still could have probably built a system with more productive capacity than the nuclear reactors. This project is almost certainly the last conventional fission reactor that will ever be built in the US.

&gt; Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms<p>Although he missed school, juounalist finds out about nuclear fission. I&#x27;m eager to see the title when he writes about nuclear fusion or public toilets. &#x2F;s

Seven years late and $20 billion over budget. Slow clap.

Oh, Georgia the U.S. state. I assumed that the <i>country</i> of Georgia had gotten a nuclear power plant.

wow that&#x27;s at least 240% over budget

Why are regulators allowing fission reactors, especially in a time of global turmoil, aren’t these easy targets for adversaries?

So glad we finally designated the permanent repository for nuclear waste in the United State. &#x2F;s<p>Since the waste will almost certainly not be accepted by another state, I would like to know where it will be stored in Georgia. I have some guesses, based on the demographics of adjacent populations, but perhaps the many HN nuclear boosters have some specifics?