alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:Ironically, the same NIMBY's accept coal plants. BTW, WRT radiation, coal plants are far worse than nuclear. But I suspect that is hidden the same way that anti-nuke NINBY's are so easily found.
Coal is politically touchy because of the jobs that industry still provides.
I'm all for nuclear, as well. But it's not as simple as just authorizing some new plants. There's a whole network of special interests that has to be navigated. That's why it hasn't happened.
As for NIMBYs - there are two reasons a plant won't be built
1) Not enough political support statewide (minor flounder alert)
2) No ability to make money on it
There's almost always an area somewhere in the state that consistently votes the opposite way from the majority of the legislature. If there's over 50% support statewide, that's where the power plant is going in.
Small modular reactors: Rolls Royce
https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/nuclear/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/
Being in the utility industry Ive asked this question of people in the know. One of quickly increasing costs of utilities is the rapidly increasing maintenance costs due to threat of fire, old equipment, and cost of labor. Linemen are expensive. These are costs that are not likely to go away, even if we had a glut of supply. If suddenly everyone wants to charge their cars at home, this too will require significant system upgrade costs.
Ask any electric utility engineer who understands costs and rate structures, and they'll tell you the same thing:
Electricity could someday be free, but you'll always have a utility bill.
Basically, we'll have a flat rate system that is solely based on the local cost of maintenance and expected usage range. Have a big battery backup? Great, you get a discount because we don't need to worry about you. Have rooftop solar? You pay less because you have your own power source (but we're not paying you for it). Charge an electric car, have electric heat, range, pool heater, etc? $250
Imagine paying $250/month but it stays constant. You can be running your heat and pool heater and charging your electric car all the time, and your bill would never exceed $250. The electricity is free, but your paying for maintenance costs. A kind of energy subscription if you will.
For years, utilities and generators hated this idea because it meant building excess supply but not getting paid for it. Coal was notoriously bad at on-demand generation so peak and off-peak pricing was necessary to convince customers not to stress the system. Now they are getting into energy storage and on-demand generation and its changing the game. Solar, wind, and big battery farms are cheaper to maintain than big turbines, and natural gas reciprocating generators can provide on-demand power closer to markets with less transmission costs and considerably smaller footprints than traditional power plants. No water needed, either.
Personally, as a Leftist, I think the energy industry is making good strides in technology and renewable generation, but its really the NIMBYism that makes utilties nervous about being "forced" to do things. They dont want to be "forced" into building huge solar or wind farms but then have locals either gouge them for land prices or deny them permits due to local opposition. Everyone loves a windmill until its in their backyard!
I read about a different type of reactor that used thorium (I think) that the byproduct was lead or something less dangerous.
One was built, and it worked, but there was some opposition I don't remember right now.
I'm not sure why we don't go that way. It is basically a win win. Can somebody tell me why we shouldn't be using thorium nuclear plants?
Ive lived off grid for a long time but the short period of time I had a house in town it was like $80 a month for power and gas.
In reply to wvumtnbkr :
Thorium molten-salt reactors. Originally built and ran UC Berkley back in the 1960s for about 5 years, the plant they made produced about 4-5 Kw/hour of power and ran the school.
There's problems with Thorium fuel cycles, but it's all completely reversed from typical light-water fast reactors that were going up in that era; it was a functional prototype with only a small team who really understood it (contrast to nuclear which was going up seemingly everywhere and had billions and decades in development by then), requires an alpha-rad "starter" to begin working (i.e. needing another fuel, which typical nuke doesnt), can't be scaled as well up (requiring more, smaller plants to function) and expands/contracts as apart of it's design, thus required reoutine pipe replacements to carry it's molten salts (typically molten flouride).
We've solved most issues, and India is really leading the charge on them because they have a CRAPLOAD of Thorium reserve but almost no Uranium; they cannot meltdown and can even "burn" radioactive wastes as apart of their fuel cycle so they really have some wicked potential, but that "expanding" problem means pipes carrying fuels and salts have to be constantly replaced and last I read, still hasn't been completely sloved. In the 60s, Berkley was using graphite pipe that handled the temps fine but couldn't take the flexing. Last I heard, there was hope carbon fibre could replace it handidly.
In reply to 03Panther :
Nope, it's plant Vogtle in Georgia. It's not -quite- yet complete, but that's because of the (honestly massive) cost overruns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant
Nuscale modular reactors are also planned throughout Idaho, but won't see completion until late 2020s-2030, but the coming years could see that be HEAVILY pushed forward.
tTom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:Ironically, the same NIMBY's accept coal plants. BTW, WRT radiation, coal plants are far worse than nuclear. But I suspect that is hidden the same way that anti-nuke NINBY's are so easily found.
Coal is politically touchy because of the jobs that industry still provides.
I'm all for nuclear, as well. But it's not as simple as just authorizing some new plants. There's a whole network of special interests that has to be navigated. That's why it hasn't happened.
Just like people moved their families to support coal jobs, they can also move their families for nuclear jobs. Or even solar/wind jobs.
Maybe I've spent too much time behind a desk, but if I had to choose between a coal mine or coal plant vs. a solar plant/ solar array- I would pick the solar job all day long, and on weekends. Especially the plants- given how dirt is not good for solar panels, the plants would be remarkably clean places to work.
(which is why I'm so confused by the "jobs" argument- as one scales down, another has to scale up to replace- the job opportunities in solar and wind is enormous if we expand production in the US. Let alone the skill required to run a nuclear plant- work opportunities are pretty strong)
edit- to clarify my question I did a quick google search- right now, there are just under 55,000 coal miners in the US. Whereas there seems to be about 85,000 carreers in wind, the solar industry claims quite a bit more than that, and nuclear claims 100,000. Even if you include the coal plants, I don't see them being more than solar, wind, and nuclear.
There hasn't been much discussion of hydro power and more specifically small scale hydro power, and this website has information and even a formula to calculate available power https://www.bcsea.org/node/4063/bcsea-info
jr02518 said:....when will we be restricted to solar and wind generation of power to recharge our only mandated form of personal transportation?
I do choose to live in the Golden State. Yes, I can feel it happening.
If you live in CA, your question is a bit mute. CA has already mandated going full renewable. This includes of course getting rid of natural gas generation (which I find a bit absurd). Mandate vs reality = who knows.
The bill specifically requires that 50 percent of California's electricity to be powered by renewable resources by 2025 and 60 percent by 2030, while calling for a "bold path" toward 100 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2045
I think there is a more recent (accelerated?) version of this I believe, or maybe just talk of it.
I think there's already some days where Cali has hit 50% of all power from renewable thanks to the number of people with rooftop solar; of course, you then run into the issue of "We have all this power and nowhere to put it right now" and thus, Cali has to pay Utah and Arizona to take their excess. Thankfully, grid-tie battery is a field that gets all the advancements in mobility but has almost none of the drawbacks, though lord knows how a system with private generation feeding subscribed public/private utility would look like.
In reply to Rons :
Huh. I've seen little hydro setups before, but I wonder if it's really worth the investment.
In reply to aircooled :
In addition to what you posted, some cities are taking more aggressive approaches. San Jose for example. They realize that relying more heavily on wind and solar, along with more aggressive EV charging requirements, are going to add new problems for the grid. They are requiring new parking lots and garages to have a large number of EV charging stations, and an even larger number of charger ready spots- already piped and wired for future chargers. Plugging in thousands of cars at 9am would make it tough on the grid, so the parking facilities are also required to have battery storage systems to smooth the demand spikes.
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