New nuclear reactor comes online in Georgia after years of delays
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2024
- Georgia is home to the nation's newest nuclear reactor. It's bringing clean energy to the state, but the project has run over budget and past its original completion date. Drew Kann, climate and environment reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joins CBS News to explore the effort.
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Sad that nuclear power has been so stigmatized. It’s by far the most enviormentally friendly high-yield power generation method.
Solar and wind are
@@andrewjoy7044solar and wind produce a fraction of the power of nuclear reactors and they still have environmental impacts of their own.
@@emh5745Could you explain what impact the energy used by solar cells and wind turbines has on the environment. Solar and wind are by far the cheapest way to produce electricity. The recently completed Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors cost $US35 billion for 2.2 GW. For the same price you could build 30 GE of solar or wind. If you have any info to the contrary please inform me.
What do we do with the nuclear waste? I agree that it is a great option and should be utilized and explored more but I feel that the nuclear waste will almost certainly become the issue of future generations. A solution needs to be found to the waste issue.
Behind Solar, wind and hydro power, of course.
A typical nuclear power plant produces about 30 tons of used fuel per year. A similar sized coal-fired power plant produces 300,000 tons of coal ash per year.
And the coal ash is also radioactive.
Yes, both are a foolish idea. Polluting our cherished biosphere for convenience and comfort. What happened to wisdom and even common sense?
@@Glen-uy4jt That convenience and comfort is an illusion.
*Both* of them are terrible by-products
@@beyondfossil Please identify the energy source that produces no by-products. The nuclear waste is not nearly as bad as everyone imagines it to be. It's actually quite stable and safe.
Now if we could just get South Texas Nuclear Project back on track.
Can’t believe they actually did it
I didn't even know we had any new plants. I recall it being close to 52 permitted. Cool
They're desperate for controlled energy.
The US really needs 1-2 new nuclear plants to come online every year, that way they can replace the old ones that need to be shut down pretty soon, and also have an experienced workforce for building them (plus the suppliers, etc.) It will be expensive, but unless they can get the SMR's going in the next 10 years, I don't see a better option.
@@shutinalleywdym controlled power 😭 all of its controlled.
ikr...?
the fact that nuclear reactors are being built in this country again is pretty huge. More nuclear plants means less need to rely on dirty coal.
Best part this nuclear reactor uses its on radioactive byproduct to fuel its ownself producing 1/10 of the nuclear waste of any other nuclear power plant. This is the most environmentally friendly nuclear power plant that we can build at this point!
It was planned 15 years ago and will be the last US attempt at conventional nuke. Only 4 were tried this century, 2 given up on with $9 billion wasted. These other two, fiascos that should have been.
We need more nuclear power, and ultimately fission/fusion power! It is the solution to the energy problem.
We already have a great Fusion reactor that has been going for about 4.5 billion years. It is called the Sun.
@@andrewjoy7044ohhh…. someone didn’t pay attention in school 💀
And what is your problem with the Sun. It has been providing energy for the entire world for about 4.5 billion years and will continue to be our main source of energy for the next 4.5 billion years or so. If you have any info to the contrary I would greatly appreciate being informed about it.@@Lumber91
I worked on this project for 8 years. Great experience!
I worked on it for 50 years
Cool, do you think if you did it all over again, it wouldn't be so overbudget and expensive.
as an employee in the energy industry i feel obligated to inform everyone that in 30 years the workforce has completely changed and so has the technology that goes into the manufacturing processes. In conclusion whoever made these reactors it was probably their employees first time building one and there could have been improvements made to al older design that involves a new manufacturing process.
They started building before the engineering was done. I'm pretty sure a bunch of the concrete had to be demo'd because they didn't pour it right. Ontario Canada is the perfect example of how successful nuclear build outs can be. They were bringing on average one reactor per year online for 20 years straight.
Lots of duct tape involved.
“…government staff and monitors wrote that they were “shocked” by an “astounding 80%” failure rate for new components installed at the site [Vogtle]. The results meant the components, when tested, “did not initially function properly and required some corrective action(s) to function as designed.”
From $14 billion to $35 billion. Somebody's pockets got well lined.
mostly the non-manual "quality" field team.
"From $14 billion to $35 billion. Somebody's pockets got well lined." Whenever you stretch a major project out for a long period of time, the costs go through the roof. You have to pay a lot more labor and rental costs. Furthermore, there's usually interest charges on the money.
@@jeffjwatts
Also, another milestone in Man’s quest to efficiently boil water.😊
@@BigKandRtv "another milestone in Man’s quest to efficiently boil water" In ever larger quantities. Next up Fusion power and really, really large amounts of hot water.
Go Georgia
Congratulations Georgia. Thank you for powering through all of these challenges to give us this.
I delivered a crane there 12 years ago. Seen this and jaw dropped. It wasn't even running until now?! Wow.
They didn't mention this, but Georgia rate payers have been front loading the cost of this project for years, including all of the cost over runs. It's a big scam that allows the monopoly electric utility to continue to raise rates on customers due to their own negligence. It's things like this that make voting for your PSC which sets rates and allows increases so important. The monopoly electric utility should be non profit. No monopoly should be a profit driven company that provides any kind of public utility.
No arguments!
as always..we pay
Socialize it like roads and schools
Delays and massive cost increase is not something US specific, it is the same issue with new nuclear reactors everywhere. Long delay, cost increase multiple times of the initially expected cost. Flamanville in France, actual delay is 12+ years, cost increase from EUR 3.3 billion to EUR 19 billion. The French Court of Audit estimates the electricity production costs at 110 to 120 €/MWh, 3-4 times what competitive base-load generation would cost. Olkiluoto in Finland: 12 years delay, cost increased from EUR 3 billion to EUR 11 billion. Hinkley Point C in England: cost increase from EUR 19 billion to EUR 50 billion. None of the recently added nuclear power plants is competitive.
Only in the West. The two French EPRs built in China (Taishan 1 & 2) were built in ~8 years and mostly within budget. South Korea's 4-unit plant in the UAE was constructed in 8 years and on budget. Chinese reactors (e.g. Hualong One) are built in 5-6 years and on budget. This is the same as used to be the case for US, French, Canadian and Swedish new nuclear construction during the 1970s and 1980s.
It's a waste of resources and high risk.
Is it really the “same issue everywhere”? How much does it cost to build a nuclear reactor in China, India or Russia?
@@MayaPosch I used to work with Chinese contractors on several projects (HFO, CCGT, Solar PV). I'm very glad that none of these projects was a NPP considering the almost non existent QA/QC, sloppy OHS and the general behavior of these contractors especially dealing with problems, quality and safety.
No objection against KEPCO, seems that they have high work standards.
@@MayaPosch It's the environmental & safety regulations that drive the costs and the delays in the west.
Has there ever been a nuclear facility that came in under cost?
Not since Rickover.
No, since all politicians go with the lowest estimated cost so people like you don’t shutdown the project as soon as its infancy.
loooong overdue. we need 100 more units/reactors right now
Agreed. Isn't it odd France hasn't had any fiascos with heavy nuclear dependence.
@@aulusagerius7127
They are in China
And where are you going to store all the tons of radioactive waste that stays as such for hundreds of years?
@@anb7408one the waste from old FISSION reactor would usually be stored in abandoned salt mine as the salt crystal block and absorbed the radiation ontop of being sealin in concrete second this would be a FUSION reactor which doesn't use uranium or plutonium but hydrogen which when fused give of an infinitesimal amount of radiation that decays very quickly now back to the 70s with ya
We also need to legalize re-useing/recycling the fuel waste to reduce the nuclear waste total, and vastly diminish the half life it is dangerous.
The half life is a physical property of each radioactive isotope, it can't be changed by dropping the irradiated fuel rods into acids and solvents to extract the unfissioned uranium.
Molten Salt Reactors use spent Uranium as a fuel. Problem solved.
It is legal, however not economical feasible.
@@markrobinowitz8473well there's no way to clean radioactivity you can certainly reprocess it in a breeder reactor like the Japanese do and greatly reduce its half life. And we do that by mandating the breeder reactors are standard it's a regulation problem but that's also a problem nuclear too many regulations
@@markrobinowitz8473a breeder reactor uses the fuel more effectively greatly reducing its half life from over a thousand years to just a few hundred. As a significantly reasonable timeline to manage the waste
1 gram of deuterium - Tritium = 10000 barrels of oil.
That's fusion, but this is a fission reactor. Still better in my opinion than fossil fuels
What reactor is currently using this to generate power?
Hopefully they get Fusion going controlled to make steam turbines make power soon.
New recent advances in fusion look promising.
You're actually in the right spot for fusion reactor if they go live using tritium.
The clownish media never asks nuclear scientists or construction engineers, they ask the "environmentalist journalist" with the rose painting in the background who exaggerates the problems.
This actually rather impressive and something that makes me quite happy to see.
And mine and everyone else’s power bills have started to go up exponentially to pay for that overpriced pile of crap.
How is this good for the people when as soon as this thing is online Georgia Power increases rates TWICE!!!!!????
How is your levis good for the people when there price has went up. Its called accessibility to power, everything goes up you are just burning less coal. I'm not an anti coal guy, but go down to the river were one of these coal plants run take a deep breath, now go over to your two new reactors and take the same deep breath. I'd take the air buy the reactor so long as you guys dont melt them down. Always a catch have a great day.
Will this plant be supplying the Augusta area?
We used to be able to build nuclear power plants in 5 years for a few hundred million.
Good media coverage and interview! Thanks
much cheaper electricity, hopefully we will see cheaper electric bills!
They said that in the 50's "too cheap to meter" nucleat power and cheap electric bills is a fantasy.
Keep building them 🗣️🗣️
Modern nuclear reactor designs are the key to reliable and environmentally friendly power generation for industrial needs.
Sadly as of this past December, the overrun costs have been passed on to ratepayers, rather than coming out of power company profits
Too bad vc summer 3 and 4 didn’t get completed.
Back in the 70 and 80 the cost overruns where 500-800% and they have cheapest rates available. Cost over runs is difficult during construction however durning operations it’s ok.
Sunk cost fallacy. You don't throw good money after bad. That project should have been cancelled far earlier, and the money saved spent on solar and wind, especially offshore wind.
I believe Palo Verde in Arizona was last one to be built
+1.
How about we have 50 more built in the next 10 years. That's going to be one hell of an improvement for the environment.
I was waiting for good news
At 35 billion for 1 plant thats going to drastically limit the number of new plants even though its the best power source
My submarine USS Augusta ram on original nuclear fuel from 1982 until the sun was decommissioned in 2008. Never in its entire life did it have to refuel. Nuclear power is an unbelievably clean and efficient power source if the waste is managed properly.
Im going to take a personal field trip to see it
30 million Mwh a year is enough for 1M homes? So a home in Georgia uses 30 Mwh a year? In the last year I've only used 0.6Mwh. It'd be a lot easier to get people to cut their use than spend all that money on building a nuclear power plant. It always seems like these nuclear plants take far longer than expected and cost far more.
That's nearly impossible unless you power basically nothing. Explain how you only use 600 kWh in an entire year.
@@handlealreadytaken I think it'd be easier to ask how someone uses 30MWh a year. BTW, I've rechecked and it's closer to 1.8MWh a year but that's still 15 times less than 30MWh
@@sie4431 Businesses and factories use electricity too. A year of household use will run a steel mill about .000001 seconds.
I'm so glad we could have a talking head talking to a reporter about nuclear energy. You could have interviewed real experts in nuclear energy and the business and political aspects.
I am so for nuclear power, but I wouldn’t have chosen to designate any reactor as “reactor number four”
Carbon is plant food, plants are good
Think about how many trucks it takes to plant one windmill, raw materials to producing electricity. Climate impact ?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both experienced nuclear bombs yet they still have healthy populations, with no more genetic deformations than anywhere else.
Awesome
14 billion turned into 35 billion? May as well have left things the way they are. How long will it take to pay off that debt?
Probably around 2 decades at most. Most nuclear reactors turn a profit within 15 years.
Georgia Power is a private company. Not in the business of losing money. So don’t worry, they’ll recover the cost and make money out of it
Directly a few years. However when you add in the reduction in health care costs (coal plants let out a lot of nasty and/or radioactive pollution), not so long.
@alexanderfreeman3406 and lots of reactors in the US are set to reach 80 year lifespan. The problem is people see a big cost and don't want to spend the money even though in the long run its extremely cheap power. Fuel costs are cheap. The wages are high but that money goes back into the community.
@@pin65371 That and the other N word. Nuclear. Know why mri machines are called that? because they use Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, but you cannot use the nuclear word so it's just mri.
We need 1000 reactors to provide cheap power 24/7. We have insane power requirements coming up
Most excellent
VERY, VERY, VERY ENCOURAGING!! This is really good news! I find that people are learning to overcome their very irrational fears surrounding this literal miracle technology.
2:44
Nuclear is actually the most popular form of electricity production in the United States, according to the most recent polling, with about 75% of the population supporting its expansion. That'sa lot more popular that something like coal or even most renewables manage these days, according to the likes of Gallup or the Pew Research Center.
until you tell them how much it will cost. $170-180/ MWh LCOE
There is no more reactors under construction right now. Renewables are taking off big time now.
Things can take longer and then require more money to keep people on the job longer.
this should be a lesson on US exceptionalism, or the lack of it. lack of qualified contractors, cost overruns, general incompetence. the US needs to pick up the pace. fission power would not be so expensive if every plant were not a one off. they need to get modular production and quantity to get installation costs down. renewables can not meet the future demand. also there needs to be initiative to get recycling program going so fuel use can be optimized. nuclear is a good, clean energy source. its development and deployment in the US has been a cluster
Seriously, the contractor in the US is so incompetent in almost everything. The US has stopped building things so they don't have the most advanced technology at scale anymore.
Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Even if one assumes that nuclear power is safe it is so risky financially that safety is moot.
Three Mile Island
In March 1979, Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear station suffered a partial core meltdown. It was the most significant accident in the history of American commercial nuclear power. The accident taught us two important lessons.
1. Nuclear power is safe for people. Inadequate regulation, faulty design, imprudent operations and several coincidences all contributed to causing the accident. Bottom line - the containment held. No one was hurt. There was no catastrophic radiation leak. Damage awards were small.
2. Nuclear power is extremely dangerous for investors. John Graham, the Treasurer of General Public Utilities (owner of TMI) wrote in Journal of Commercial Bank lending - May 1980, “The discussion of whether to recommend a moratorium on new nuclear plants in the Report by the President’s Commission on Three Mile Island is somewhat irrelevant. I do not believe that there is a board of directors of an electric utility in the country which would now approve a nuclear plant as a new initiative.”
Why? Overnight, a billion dollars in revenue producing assets turned into a gigantic, unfunded liability. People were safe. Investors were not.
Yay!
Im all for Nuclear. Always have been, always will be.
about time!
As a person who worked in Solar Energy, nuclear energy is the long term solution. Even in solar we are running out of sand and not to mention our coating of chemicals for the glass itself 🙈
And how much is it costing for a KWH?
It's about reliability. If it makes the rate payers avoid situations with $800MWhr spikes like texas then it will be worth it.
Electrical supply reliability is worth far more than your kwhr you buy at your house
$1.16
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
@@DSAK55 Seven times what I'm paying now.😱
@michaelhowell2541 if you are comparing purly on a kwhr rate then you do not understand electricity
I think Plant Vogtle was very risky to build since it was designed as they went along with a "green" workforce and no economies of scale. Left out a few things. We should be building at least one hundred AP1000s now, more research reactors, and upgrade our grid to keep up with the need for more electricity on the grid. We also need massive REE co-operatives with storage, refining, and magnet development to compete directly with the CCP. No one died from the actual TMI & Fukushima meltdowns. And folks got a dose rate equivalent to a few x-rays. Most folks get exposed to more natural background doses than that, depending on where they live. LNT is BS. Our bodies need some radiation. Chernobyl had a terrible design and no containment: thanks USSR. We have the tech to recycle all of the spent fuel and get decades worth of energy out of it. It is just not economical yet versus buying new Uranium. PVs, windmills, and batteries will never provide enough energy for the USA to remain an economic power. Git er dun!☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢
Georgia required billions of dollars in federal welfare and other people's money in order to build this and the electrical company is already asking for higher electricity rates to pay for the increased costs.
Its worth it. Its endless energy for a very long time.
The corrupt government delayed that plant so they could use it as a money tree to pick billions from.
Thats the point of building it. Renewable energy from your houses roof is bad for business.
@@lawrenceleverton7426 No it's not. It comes at and extremely high cost. Integrated rooftop solar is energy forever at the cost of just maintenance.
@@lawrenceleverton7426It’ll close early.
Is my power rate coming down?
Probably not.
Rates are set to increase by $4 per month
Nope it’s to increase because this private company needs to pay off the money they used to build this nuclear reactor. Even though they got many federal grants and used tax payer money to build it.
No it won't immediately. But this is something that should last 50 plus years. So down the road it will 🤞 can you imagine how much it would have saved when fuel prices is spiked during the Russian Ukraine war. All of those cost externalities in fuel aren't usually calculated when comparing them to a nuclear generator. It's an investment in our future, Georgia currently has with the cleanest energy mixes in the US
This makes my day 🎉😊
Da!
7 years late and 21 billion.
I'm not anti-nuclear at all, but if you are going to be the "well acshually if we weren't so afraid of nuclear, blah, blah blah, renewables sucks, blah, blah blah" guy, that's a damning indictment of nuclear power.
It would have been nice to hear about some of the safety features on that plant, given that we've now had over 4 decades of research between this plant and the last one we building in the US in 1977. But no. We had to hear about muh climate change, as if that's any sort of meaningful problem. Supplying cheap, reliable energy is a problem. Doing it safely is a problem. We could talk about those issues. We could talk about why no one else is willing to try investing in another nuclear power plant. They're afraid of getting sandbagged by the red tape brigade like what happened with TransCanada and the Keystone XL pipeline. No one with any money is going to take the chance that some know-nothing bureaucrats from some "progressive" administration are going to destroy their project midway through the process. That's a great way to waste billions. Gov't idiots can get away with that garbage because the DOJ and Congress are corrupt, but you can't get away with it in the private sector.
You people should be celebrating, but you report this like it's a funeral. The last thing you want is prosperity in this country.
Good luck fellas ❤
AND woe be it to the ratepayers. Happy days for the executive board.
California needs to hop on the nuclear power train, especially with the insane advancements in Earthquake proofing and scram ability of new reactors. But PG&E has a deathgrip and likes their high power prices i guess
So this reporter was 100% useless. 1. CBI bid for the job, and went bankrupt. Westinghouse designed the reactor, and went bankrupt. 2. Fluor took over the job, but did a terrible job and got kicked out. 3. US Gov loosed up a bit with regulation along the way. 5. Bechtel came and finished the job for price premium.
Open up a repository to safely store the spent fuel. Yucca Mountain.
keep it in Georgia
@@rossr6616 Why would you not want to keep nuclear waste that generated to supply and support the east coast interconnection to be store in federally own facilities? Georgia simply does not have the geological condition for housing waste long term safely
@@gabrielmataleo4573Georgia could build an on site pyro method reprocessing facility.
Why is it NV problem? And why bury usable fuel?
@@waywardgeologist2520Great question, with enough incentive you can grow orange in Maine, but that doesn’t mean you should. Same with nuclear waste that still could generate power, it doesn’t mean it is cost effective to do so. NV being one of the less populated state that is far from coast and away from any major natural disaster prone region, with stable rock, and large amounts of federally owned land has one of North America best conditions for a deposit, with the event that these deposit post danger to the outside it will be far less damage. Waste rod are usually store deep underground and will be refilled with rocks and soils to cover waste deposit with water proofing to prevent ground water contamination (which NV is also pretty dry)
Nice!
So the site is about 3,500 MW capacity?
Why not just tell us how much electricity it produces
*Go back to Collage!*
@@johnslugger
Why would I go back to college. Just let us know the output capacity
Perhaps you don’t understand the difference 🤣🤣
I think the 2 new reactors wer 1 GW each. the 2 older reactors built in the 80s are also about 1 GW each giving a total of 4 GW. For the money they spent they could have built 30 GW of solar and wind.
@@andrewjoy704430 GW of capacity in wind?
@andrewday3206 well if it's 3500 MW (3.5 GW) capacity then if it was running at full power it would produce 3.5 GWh of power.
Vault-Tec Approves this message.
More Nuclear!
Lets gooooooooooooo
I Love it .... Guess what ... if we don’t start thinking outside the Box... we will bake in the sun til we die..
$1.16 per kilowatt 🤔
Yes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
The *MOST EXPENSIVE* electricity there is.
$0.05/kwh for wind
@@DSAK55Levelized cost of Electricity is an accounting scam. When the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing there is no electricity. Adding batteries increases the cost exponentially, far past coal or natural gas. In practice a solar and wind grid need 100% backup of reliable sources which in the US is natural gas and in Germany lignite coal.
@DSAK55 the energy regulator has a report and they say the average cost per kwh from nuclear in the US is 2.5 cents per kwh.
@@DSAK55 Levelized Cost of Electricity is bordering accounting fraud. Solar and wind are not dispatchable. They must be backed up 100% by reliables. In practice that means natural gas peaker plants. Sure it's cheap when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and that's the number used by politicians and corporations selling us "green" energy.
We need more Nuclear power plants. CO2 is very bad.
Billions of dollars overall for what ? There own profits ans tax payer expenses wtf big corporations win as we loose everything
Westinghouse went bankrupt, partially due to this project
At 35billion divided amongst 1million homes over 30 years is $97 a month. These "3 owners" dont stand to make much on this investment. After paying to keep and maintain the place, and disposal of certain materials also environmental cost and not being able to sell directly to the customer. i dont see these guys winning here.
Georgia Power (one of the 3 owners) has been passing the costs to ratepayers before the reactors were even online.
@@MrKDW1 power production and supply should be state and federally funded, owned and operated. We have PG&E on the west coast that has monopolized the power grid and gouges all of us every month. Same with Recology buying evey landfill they can get their hands on and shooting rates up. I'm glade these owners don't stand to gain much on their investment, but its unfortunate rates will inflate further
Finally
This is why the future of nuclear is likely to depend on smaller, factory built systems. There's got to better quality control of the process to prevent these delays and cost overruns. To be certain, large construction projects like this have been plagued with poor oversight and corrupt contractors for about as long as power plants have been built. Some have been so messed up they were never finished. GE is building compact nuclear power plants that can be mass produced and installed without all of these problems.
Rooftop solar and good batteries is all we need.
@@shutinalley Well, no. It will require a number of clean energy sources to meet demand. Roof top solar helps for certain. But, it won't be enough for a society going to electric only in a few decades.
SMR’s are already dead in the water.
@@shutinalleyyour nuts if you think the entire grid can be run on rooftop solar
@@annonimity276 It's the concept of the grid that's the problem. Distributing large amounts of energy from one place to several over long distances is outdated. With rooftop solar the community is the power plant. No more poles with power lines cluster%$#@ed all over the place.
Nuclear is on its death bed as we can build and commission 20+ solar + battery storage power plants to far exceed the energy generation of a single nuclear plant, for a small fraction of the cost and time as nuclear. This Vogel plant proves it.
But a much larger foot print. There is also the aspect that solar requires a massive increase in mining.
@@waywardgeologist2520 Show me a nuclear reactor on a domestic roof ; )
Solar is great, but it's complete dogsh*t when compared to nuclear. Not even close
@@SocialDownclimber it would go in the basement. Why would you put it on a roof?
@@waywardgeologist2520 Nobody has a nuclear reactor in their basement. Plenty of people have renewable power plants on their roof. Nuclear can't compete.
Because Americans have failed to reduce personal and corporate carbon use, we have no choice but to use proven non carbon energy. Americans are voting to build many more like this.
Here let me fix that for you "Americans are refusing to bow to the worlds largest polluters guilt tripping them for mowing their lawn when the ones in charge poison the water and air and dwarf the collective sum total of individuals in negative environmental impacts"
Post like this want makes me want to increase my carbon footprint
Nuclear energy is key to cutting carbon emissions! In CA, just one reactor (Diablo Canyon) provides 10% of our electricity!
Just in time to bring my solar online and pull the GA Power meter off the house. See ya cost over runs.....
Usa needs the Small-Micro Reactors to be a thing. they need to be able to be more used.
awesome! i love to see our nuclear power sector get developed :)
There are nuclear technologies that generate much less waste. And some could actually use present day waste as fuel!!!
You are referring to "fast neutron" reactors that are nothing new. They cost 3X more in capital cost and also 3x operating costs than even this. Neither fast nuclear reactors nor this are economically viable.
@@beyondfossil Its just another percolator to me. Westinghouse in Design. I've got 5 different types of Westinghouse and General Electrics under my belt. 21 years experience. Top in my field with a Nuclear Degree from MIT. Not trying to boast. But they couldn't pay me enough. Young mans sport.
@@lawrenceleverton7426 What's interesting with commercial nuclear is that its space-age technology combined with essentially old Victorian-era steam power. It's like a dichotomy of technology.
Whereas photovoltaic technology produces electricity far more directly by exploiting quantum and classic electromagnetic principles. Even wind turbines create electricity more directly than thermal based power generation like nuclear & fossil fuel.
The amounts of water that a nuclear power plant uses are an environmental concern. Some 2500L of water per MWh generation. Some of it heated water expelled into local waterways that promotes algae growth. I'll point out that wind and solar use practically zero water during their operation. Even expansive solar farms use dry-brush automated robotic cleaning.
@@beyondfossil Why change something that works? Victorian age steam power made me laugh. But you are spot on. Archaic, but tried and true. I'm also sure efficiency might have improved somewhat. Mankind is still trying to get to the perfect Carnot Engine. But still way off from 100 percent efficiency. I understand some of the basics in other forms of Power Generation. The primary source may be different but the end product is the same. Its probably easier to learn those from a qualification standpoint. I'm very happy with the Million Dollar Education the US Navy Provided. BTW most peeps in civilian nuclear field have a Navy Nuclear Background and they are sharp whipper snappers. But the stress involved in that job takes it toll. If you don't have the eye of the tiger. than you shouldn't be doing it. I survived, sorta miss it, but glad I don't do it any longer. I'll leave that in the capable hands of the young. I'm happy to use my power switch at home, know its gonna work hopefully and its someone else's job to provide it. At some reasonable cost. I live in hurricane country and within days Power is back on, should one hit. But I also have a Generator that is more than adequate if need be. Have a nice day.
@@lawrenceleverton7426 You can use your knowledge to DIY installed your own rooftop or ground based solar arrays and also setup your own home battery. You'll pay less than 1/4 to have it professionally installed.
Nothing is more American than independence. Grid tied solar with home battery will power many American homes 80+% of their annual electric consumption. I do it myself and get those numbers already. You can still be connected to the grid for back-up, but you'll be only paying the monthly minimum connection fee most months.
Residential & commercial solar start creating a *distributed* power architecture which is naturally highly resilient. Nuclear still represents old school centralized & monolithic power architecture which is much more vulnerable to threats both natural and man-made (terrorism, war, sabotage, human error).
In this day in age with highly polarized national & international politics combined with increasing effects from climate change, resiliency will be highly sought after.
things always go wrong - the only bad thing - particularly with less optimal designs
Hopefully India or Chine will build better nuclear reactors so we can build them cheaper in U.S.
China has already done that.
Keep building them
Modular reactors that are designed once and deployed repeatedly are the future of nuclear power production. There is a lot of potential to reduce both construction cycle and installed cost per MW. We will never satisfy the majority of our voracious power appetite from wind or solar, it is unrealistic to believe that 'renewable' energy sources will provide reliable, base load capacity - yet we must dramatically reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. So that leaves nuclear as the logical solution.
35 billion could have built 35,000 megawatts of wind. You only got 3500 megawatts of nuclear out of this project so that's 10 times more expensive than wind
What are you going to do when there is no wind? Nuclear power runs 24/7 wind or no wind, night or day.
Do you mean capacity? What about the necessary batteries and increase in transmission line requirements?
@@ms-tw4sj The same thing they do when they shave to shut down the nuclear plants for maintenance.
@@SocialDownclimber When nuclear power plants are down for maintenance, the power company buys the deficit power from some other power company. Please explain how one could do this with wind and solar. If it's night time here, it's night time everywhere except on the other side of the planet. Winds are unreliable.
In Germany, when there is no wind or sunlight, they have to depend on standby coal plants. AND, They buy excess electric power from neighboring France, which generates 70% of it's power from Nuclear plants
@@ms-tw4sj And when France can't run its nuclear fleet at capacity they import power from other countries. Seems like you answered the question yourself. They can buy power from wind, from hydro and from batteries.
hey... >:)))))))))))))))))))
One million homes is not much electricity considering the cost of building this power plant.
The cost returns because upkeep is next to nothing, it’s fuel source is pound for pound dirt cheap and incredibly efficient and energy dense, and a million homes is most of central New York, almost all of it, spread out to cities not as dense, that’s the majority of an entire state excluding similarly massive population centers, all in one plant, the average coal plant for comparison, has significantly more upkeep and maintenance costs for well under 300’000 homes, not even 1/3 and it will impact your taxes much more
Rooftop solar would immediately make this obsolete.
@@shutinalleyWhat happens at night? Batteries exist but they are very expensive too
@@drewwassel3367 graphite batteries, and perovskite if it actually does what it says when it hits market in the next year can work in moonlight.
@@drewwassel3367 Batteries are still cheaper than distributing large amounts of energy from a power plant. Look up solid state batteries. When they're marketed to scale it will end the need for power plants. Those behind power plants know this is coming and will do everything they can to stop it. Including manipulating world war 3.
For that much money, it is way cheaper for solar panels and wind mills. $35 Billion!
till there is no sun and wind when we need power... lol
You need nuclear but the best idea is to build all of them . Solar wind and nuclear together would solve many issues while also being backup.
You need to produce reliable energy night time.
For that price you could build about 30 GW of solar or wind compared to the 2 GW built. Not value for money in my opinion.
@@JoeBidenIsGreatWe don't need wind and solar. I will never understand why people think we need to have WORSE energy sources, when we have BETTER energy sources.
Simply have only the one that's better. Nuclear is better than everything, and its only downside is high startup costs (which it will more than make up for in the long run)
BAHAHAHA Old AP1000 Pressure Cookers. Outdated foolish reactor design.
Perpetual motion - stars ✨
*Now we need 1600 more smaller reactors to charge those 150,000,000 Electric cars in the next 15 years!*
The most expensive and most heavily subsidized energy production method we have. Hardly a win for anyone but the plant operator.
It's the CHEAPEST per amount of energy produced.
Nothing comes close.
Solar, wind and hydro are for poor countries that can't afford the startup costs of nuclear.
Ideally, we'd use nuclear for absolutely everything, and we can abandon all other renewables as well as coal. We should at this point be 100% powered by nuclear and nothing else. Only thing better will be fusion.
Is it just me or did anyone else think this would lead into the hush money trial while they had him on camera ?