First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia::ATLANTA — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.
Let’s play around with the thought of powering all of America with renewables. America’s coal, gas, petroleum and nuclear plants generate a combined baseload power of 405 GWavg, or “gigawatts average.” (Remember, a gigawatt is a thousand megawatts.) Let’s replace all of them with a 50 / 50 mix of onshore wind and CSP (solar), and since our energy needs are constantly growing, let’s round up the total to 500 GWs, which is likely what we’ll need by the time we finish. Some folks say that we should level off or reduce our consumption by conserving and using more efficient devices, which is true in principle. But in practice, human nature is such that whatever energy we save, we just gobble up with more gadgets. So we’d better figure on 500 GWs.
To generate this much energy with 1,000 of our 500 MW renewables farms, we’ll put 500 wind farms in the Midwest (and hope the wind patterns don’t change…) and we’ll put 500 CSP farms in the southwest deserts—all of it on free federal land and hooked into the grid. Aside from whatever branch transmission lines we’ll need (which will be chump change), here’s the lowdown:
Powering the U.S. with 500 wind and 500 CSP farms, at 500 MWavg apiece.
Steel ……………….. 503 Million tonnes (5.6 times annual U.S. production)
Concrete ………….. 1.57 Billion t (3.2 times annual U.S. production)
CO2 …………………. 3.3 Billion t (all U.S. passenger cars for 2.5 years)
Land ………………… 91,000 km2 (302 km / side)
35,135 sq. miles (169 mi / side)
(the size of Indiana)
60-year cost ……… $29.25 Trillion
That’s 29 times the 2014 discretionary federal budget.
If we can convince the wind lobby that they’re outclassed by CSP, we could do the entire project for a lot less, and put the whole enchilada in the desert:
Powering the U.S. with 1,000 CSP farms, producing 500 MWavg apiece.
Steel ………………. 787 Million t (1.6 times annual U.S. production)
Concrete …………. 2.52 Billion t (5.14 times annual U.S. production)
CO2 ………………… 3.02 Billion t (all U.S. passenger cars for 2.3 years)
Land ……………….. 63,000 km2 (251 km / side)
24,234 sq. miles (105.8 mi / side)
(the size of West Virginia)
60-year cost ……. $18.45 Trillion
#That’s to 18 times the 2014 federal budget.
Or, we could power the U.S. with 500 AP-1000 reactors.
Rated at 1,117 MWp, and with a reactor’s typical uptime of 90%, an AP-1000 will deliver 1,005 MWav. Five hundred APs will produce 502.5 GWav, replacing all existing U.S. electrical power plants, including our aging fleet of reactors.
The AP-1000 uses 5,800 tonnes of steel, 90,000 tonnes of concrete, with a combined carbon karma of 115,000 t of CO2 that can be paid down in less than 5 days. The entire plant requires 0.04km2, a patch of land just 200 meters on a side, next to an ample body of water for cooling. (Remember, it’s a Gen-3+ reactor. Most Gen-4 reactors won’t need external cooling.) Here’s the digits:
Steel ………. 2.9 Million t (0.5% of W & CSP / 0.36% of CSP)
Concrete … 46.5 Million t (3.3% of W & CSP / 1.8% of CSP)
CO2 ……….. 59.8 Million tonnes (2% of W & CSP / 1.5% of CSP)
Land ………. 20.8 km2 (4.56 km / side) (0.028% W & CSP / 0.07% of CSP)
1.95 sq. miles (1.39 miles / side)
(1.5 times the size of Central Park)
60-year cost ……… $2.94 Trillion
#That’s 2.9 times the 2014 federal budget.
Small Modular Reactors may cost a quarter or half again as much, but the buy-in is significantly less, the build-out is much faster (picture jetliners rolling off the assembly line), the resources and CO2 are just as minuscule, and they can be more widely distributed, ensuring the resiliency of the grid with multiple nodes.
And this is without even mentioning MSRs.
Was this project a complete shitshow of sheldon before seen-proportions?
Yes.
Does this mean that we should make the move towards powering the US from 100% renewables instead?
Well if you hate math and logic enough to even consider it, sure. Go ahead.
Uh.
The nuke plant is expensive. Renewables aren’t. And your argument ist essentially “but based on made up numbers that illustrate how inexpensive nuke plants could be, nuke plants could be much less expensive! Duh!”
Yeah, no. Build renewables.
I’m not quite why the argument is “nuclear or renewables.” It should be nuclear AND renewables.
Renewable energy generators have improved significantly in the last two decades. I’m sure they will continue to improve.
Nuclear power is a hell of a lot cleaner than coal. And it seems nuclear power plants have improved tremendously. We should use them.
It should be nuclear AND renewables.
It really shouldn’t be. Nuclear plants don’t emit co2, that’s right and that’s nice. However, they have so many disadvantages that I can’t wrap my head around how they could be considered a viable alternative to renewables.
- They are not economical. Full stop. Building and running them is expensive as fuck, like an order of magnitude over renewables.
- They’re risky. People usually argue that this point would be fearmongering, but there’s a simple solution for that: get insurance. That’s impossible though, no company wants to offer an insurance for nuke plants. Gee, I wonder why? This point adds to the economical issues - if the risk was properly calculated and the according price added to every watt, they would be even more expensive. The only solution here is to socialise the losses and risks - if one of them should ever blow up, society just has to eat it. There’s no other way to ruin these things.
- They need to be cooled. With the climate crisis just getting started, this is hard to calculate, but it’s already showing. France, with their 80-something percentage of nuclear power, has constant issues to power the country in summer when the rivers get too warm to efficiently cool the reactors. And god forbid one of those larger rivers ever running dry.
- The fuel is hard to get. Most countries need to import the fuel from countries you don’t want to depend on, like Russia. It’s also limited.
- It’s a very centralised solution. That means you’ll probably have to rely on corporate solutions, with community-run or private projects being essentially ruled out. That means, power will remain in corporate, for-profit hands. This is also the reason why I think a lot of astroturfing is taking place. Of all the carbon-neutral methods to generate electricity, this is the only one that is almost guaranteed to remain in the hands of the largest corporations. I also predict that any reactor that is at least said to be runnable by smaller communities won’t deliver on that promise for whatever reasons, probably safety and security.
- It’s not available. A new plant takes decades to build. Any of the new designs that are at least said to offer a solution to one or two of all those issues are not yet tested and will take even longer to be built in larger quantities. We need, however, to ramp up carbon neutral energy production now, not in ten years.
There’s my unpopular opinion.
