[yellowcanoe]

If your home-building contractor (or subs) came in at twice the price you were originally quoted, well before the home was completed, would you object? Just roll over and pay up? Would you care much if the general contractor said the cost/time overruns were out of their control? At least you could likely legally walk away and find another place to live. These rate payers have no choice but to pay up or get their power cut off, while watching share holders reap benefits.

The AP1000 units were the first power reactors ordered in the USA since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Without an experienced workforce, especially on the management side, it was inevitable there would be problems in the construction of these units. This is the big challenge in resuming the construction of power reactors in Western countries -- the expertise and experience in constructing power reactors is largely gone because no one has been building new reactors. Even France which is the most heavily dependent on nuclear power nation in the world has not completed a new reactor since the year 2000. Their current project to build a new design, EPR, reactor is over budget and behind schedule. While the fact that it is a new design would be a factor, the fact that there was such a long gap where no reactors were under construction undoubtedly is contributing to the problems too!

In my country, Canada, the last power reactors to enter service were units 3 and 4 at Darlington in 1993. With no new construction likely in the near future, both Ontario Hydro and Atomic Energy of Canada moved quickly to terminate thousands of jobs that had been involved with reactor construction.

[GHung]

Considering the ongoing problems building the first new reactors, for decades, in the US, is this a precedent for future attempts? If utilities are being limited from having customers pay these projects forward, will the financing be possible?

Ga. Nuclear Bill, No Longer About Vogtle, Clears Committee

A proposed bill that would have limited how much Georgia Power customers have to pay to help build nuclear Plant Vogtle doesn’t do that anymore. Now the bill affects any future nuclear power plants but doesn’t change things for Vogtle.

The original version had been waiting for a committee hearing but hadn’t gotten one.

This version will still have an impact, said state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, the Rome Republican who introduced the bill.

“Make sure that anything that happens in the future has to come back to the Legislature, and let’s discuss the financing method,” he said.

Georgia Power’s customers have paid about $2 billion toward the nuclear project on their monthly utility bills.

Liz Coyle, director of the consumer group Georgia Watch, is a critic of Plant Vogtle, but she’s still happy with this version of the bill.

“It allows protections for Georgians in the future, and maybe by next year, we’ll be able to look for something that will relieve Georgians today who are paying those bills,” she said.

Plant Vogtle is years behind schedule, and its budget has nearly doubled to more than $22 billion.

The state Legislature passed a bill in 2009 allowing Georgia Power to collect money from its customers before the project is complete. Hufstetler said he thinks that bill – SB 31 – was a mistake.

“And I think people who voted for it, in hindsight, think it was a mistake. So this will stop that from being used in the future,” he said. “I think the safeguards weren’t put in there in the event of it having cost overruns and delays that allowed for additional profit and additional payments to be made.”

Hufstetler’s bill reversing SB 31 passed out of committee unanimously Thursday.
https://www.wabe.org/ga-nuclear-bill-no ... committee/

[Plantagenet]

Its official....Belgium is BANKRUPT. Its throwing in the towel unable to keep its reactors going....

Belgium pledges to ditch nuclear power by 2025.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy ... r-by-2025/

Belgium ranks fourth globally, with 51.7% of her power coming from fission. But she is woefully behind her 13% renewable energy commitment, and something had to give: “ExxonMobil’s Belgian office tweeted that it was in favour of the new energy pact.”

Unfortunately, this may result in even higher CO2 emissions from Belgium. When Germany turned off their nuclear power plants they shifted to coal fired electrical power plants, boosting their CO2 emissions.

IMHO its wrong-headed for countries to shift from nuclear to fossil fuels like coal for their energy production, because its a violation of their commitments to reduce CO2 emissions to fight global warming.

Cheers!

[KaiserJeep]

I'll add something to what Planty said. Germany replaced much of that Nuclear energy with what is euphemisticly termed "Biomass", when burned in what he called "coal plants". This is pellets of bark, compressed sawdust, twigs, etc from logging and from sawmills. Most of this stuff comes from clearcut logging in Canada. The bark, sawdust, etc. really needs to be composted and returned to the soil, if you don't do so, the forest soils get poorer and thinner with each generation of trees logged off.

So the actual situation, since "Biomass" burning is even nastier than coal, and the EU exempts such fuels from air quality standards on the grounds that they are "Green", is quite different today. Clean nuclear has been replaced by dirty coal, and even dirtier Biomass. People are actually dying in the EU in the tens of thousands from this change, versus the one time death of 39 people at Chernobyl.

This is happening because of hysteria over nuclear power, and enthusiam for dirty/deady "Green" power. Meanwhile, the cash-strapped government of Canada is turning the place barren by enabling the "Biomass" exports to the EU.

[Plantagenet]

Kaiserjeep is doomed....He thought Collapse was a process that would last until 2100. But the nightmare is happening at 2020's.

Jeepie is going to be fine. When the collapse comes the zombies will riot and rage across the cities of America, but the ticket agents will stop them from getting on the ferry to Nantucket, so he'll be OK out there.

Westinghouse's nuclear reactor business had become a "de facto Ponzi scheme" by the time it foundered — a money pit that could only be filled by signing up more and more customers .....

You could say the same thing about every business in the USA. Businesses all require more customers to keep going. Even the US social security system works that way.

Cheers!

[vox_mundi]

South Florida Nuclear Site to Expand Despite Sea Level Rise Projections

Video - On Thursday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a pair of new reactors at the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, which is owned by Florida Power & Light, the Palm Beach Post reported. If the reactors are built, they could cost as much as $21.8 billion and wouldn't be ready until at least 2031, the report added.

In a 2014 investigation, weather.com and the Huffington Post identified the Turkey Point plant as one of the eight U.S. power plants most vulnerable to flooding from sea level rise by the end of the century. It showed that in worst-case projections, nearly all of the plant could be flooded by a tropical system in 2033, if current sea level rise projections materialize.

In 2010, when the plant first applied for the license to build these two new reactors, the NRC wanted to know how the plant would stave off sea level rise in future decades. FPL did not mention climate change and used a 1-foot-per-century sea level rise projection in its calculation – far less than NOAA's 5.6-foot worst-case scenario for 2100.

The power plant is located along Biscayne Bay, about 30 miles south of downtown Miami.

[onlooker]

Bankrupt Japan found out that Nuclear fission reactors are not an ATM machine.

Japan prepares to shut troubled 'dream' nuclear reactor

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan- ... ar-reactor

Quote:
In July, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency will begin decommissioning what was hailed as a "dream" reactor that was expected to produce more nuclear fuel than it consumed. The government has so far spent more than 1 trillion yen ($9.44 billion) on the plant, which has barely ever operated.

What do you expect from a county that builds nuclear reactors near the shore of a seismically active area - dumb and dumber

[KaiserJeep]

SL, perhaps you should try Decaf.

[dissident]

Bankrupt Japan found out that Nuclear fission reactors are not an ATM machine.

Japan prepares to shut troubled 'dream' nuclear reactor

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan- ... ar-reactor

Quote:
In July, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency will begin decommissioning what was hailed as a "dream" reactor that was expected to produce more nuclear fuel than it consumed. The government has so far spent more than 1 trillion yen ($9.44 billion) on the plant, which has barely ever operated.

What do you expect from a county that builds nuclear reactors near the shore of a seismically active area - dumb and dumber

Your point is invalid. Fukushima survived both the magnitude 9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami flood fully intact. The only reason it went into meltdown was because some idiot(s) decided to just copy and paste the US layout and keep the backup generators in the basement. They had a hill which they could have used to keep the generators high and dry right behind the plant. Without backup power, the cooling systems cannot function and they are needed since the heat production keeps going even if control rods are fully inserted into the reactor cores. This weakness of water cooled/moderated designs is their primary flaw. Molten salt reactors are based on passive cooling and do not require any backup power generation to keep them from experiencing meltdowns.
So it is ironic that Japan is shutting down its fast breeder program.

The Monju is a pathetic conversion of a pressurized water type reactor. I do not know what the Japanese were doing with all that money. They were certainly not using it for innovation. The French Superphenix was a vastly superior design. While France shot itself in the head and shut the program down thanks to the Green party zealots, similar designs are alive and well in Russia and progressing to commercialization during the 2020s. The BN-800 is fully operational and follows from the BN-600 that was operated from 1980 with a capacity factor averaging over 70%. It was an experimental pilot plant so having a 95% capacity factor was not the main priority. By contrast the Superphenix had a capacity factor of under 30% and was subjected to continuous political and even terrorist attacks from the self-described "greens" (more like fossil fuel industry proxies).

Unlike the US where Carter killed "waste" reprocessing development, Russia has world leading fuel reprocessing capability (*) and is working towards fully closed cycle nuclear generation. Fast neutron breeders remove the basically all long-lived nuclear waste and leave only the most active products (actinides) which are safe after 300 years. Storing long-lived "waste" for tens of thousands of years is delusional nonsense. Storing a much smaller volume of active waste for 300 years is vastly more practical. All the discussion about Yucca mountain would be pointless for 300 year storage.

(*) The US sent its nuclear warhead material to Russia for reprocessing into reactor fuel.

[Yonnipun]

The biggest problem with nuclear for me is the nuclear waste problem. There are no safe ways to eliminate it. Eventually our next generations have to adapt living in an environment that is much more radioactive and in some places it means imminent death. Germany finally admitted it and gave up. The positive eroei fusion is a dream that I am afraid we are never going to see.

[Yonnipun]

Answer: Nobody.

When somebody hacks bitcoin we can say that somewhere there is a working quantum computer.
When there will be news about highly positive eroei fusion then we can assume that we have a true artificial intelligence. But I am afraid we are not going to see either. The only hope after the fossil fuel era is that aliens will save us.

[EdwinSm]

Bankrupt America can no longer keep the lights on...they are admitting TOTAL COLLAPSE IS IMMINENT.

I was just wondering if your (non-screen) name is Richard C Duncan?

Anyway the news of economic problems in the nuclear industry is interesting.



ps. Maybe I am old fashioned, but I am still concerned about nuclear waste. I just haven't seen the breakthrough in handling this in the years since I demonstrated against nuclear power back in the 1970s. Maybe I am getting too old to worry about this for myself, but it still does not looked solved for my children and any children they may have (and any children they may have...........).

[Cog]

Dry cask storage of nuclear waste at Yucca mountain was the solution to storage of waste generated from nuclear power plants. But here again anti-nuclear protests and the usual NIMBY folks shut that project down. IMO if you are anti-nuclear you are anti-environment.

[Yonnipun]

ps. Maybe I am old fashioned, but I am still concerned about nuclear waste. I just haven't seen the breakthrough in handling this in the years since I demonstrated against nuclear power back in the 1970s. Maybe I am getting too old to worry about this for myself, but it still does not looked solved for my children and any children they may have (and any children they may have...........).

There are no solutions to handle the nuclear waste. Reinforced concrete only last 50-100 years. Concrete without reinforcement could theoretically last pretty long but compared to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of years which is the time for the nuclear waste to lose its toxicity it is clear that there are no solutions to handle the waste. Just remember - the first sarcophagus for the chernobyl lasted only 30 years. They build the new one but the question is- who is going to build the next one? Without fossil fuels the answer is - nobody.

[Cog]

Romans used a form of concrete using volcanic ash. Those structures still stand today exposed to weather. Dry cask storage of used fuel rods in a dry place of either a salt mine or Yucca mountain in volcanic glass(ash) extends the useful life of those storage places into thousands of years.

If you do not expose concrete to freeze/thaw cycles, it lasts far longer than the 50 years you suggest. Hoover Dam was built in 1933. Has it fallen apart yet?

https://www.history.com/news/the-secret ... n-concrete

[Cog]

We are all doomed. Run for your lives. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


LOL

[Yonnipun]

Romans used a form of concrete using volcanic ash. Those structures still stand today exposed to weather. Dry cask storage of used fuel rods in a dry place of either a salt mine or Yucca mountain in volcanic glass(ash) extends the useful life of those storage places into thousands of years.

If you do not expose concrete to freeze/thaw cycles, it lasts far longer than the 50 years you suggest. Hoover Dam was built in 1933. Has it fallen apart yet?

https://www.history.com/news/the-secret ... n-concrete

It does not matter, compared to millions of years a few thousand years is nothing. Also nobody knows what happens to climate or what kind of seismic acticity will take place in the future. All those uncertainities together make it impossible to storage nuclear waste safely.

[Plantagenet]

nobody knows .... what kind of seismic acticity will take place in the future. All those uncertainities together make it impossible to storage nuclear waste safely.

Actually, we have a very good idea of what kind of seismic activity will happen in the future, thanks to scientific studies of the geology and geophysics of the tectonics of the earth.

We know very well what areas of the earth are seismically active---and which areas aren't.


tectonics and seismic activity of the earth

Cheers!

[GHung]

Georgia Power May Have To Supply More Information On Financial Risks Of Nuclear Expansion
https://www.wabe.org/georgia-power-may- ... expansion/

Georgia Power may have to start providing regulators more information on financial risks with its nuclear power expansion. It’s in response to the revelation the project will cost billions of dollars more.

The two nuclear units being built at Plant Vogtle, near Augusta, are already years behind schedule and billions over budget. On its earnings call last week, Southern Company, the parent of Georgia Power, said costs have gone up by another $2.3 billion. That makes the total cost of the new reactors at least $25 billion.

At a Thursday hearing, staff from the state Public Service Commission said they want Georgia Power to supply more information in its Vogtle construction progress reports, an idea supported by some critics of the project, too.

“We’d like to have more information sooner,” said Jill Kysor, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “We’re really pushing for more transparency at the commission, so that the public has more information earlier.” ......

How high can it go? The mess involving the first two new reactors in the US in decades doesn't bode well for new fission energy for Americans. Perhaps a series of smaller cookie-cutter modular reactors would have been a smarter move.

[Tanada]

The ridiculous thing is eastern nations don't have problems building units within contract time or at least fairly close to it. Korea, China, even Japan when they actually commit to building a project treat it like any other heavily engineered structure. they k now what has to be done and the order it needs to be done and they just do it. Western Europe and North America seems to have somehow lost the capacity to 'Just Build It Already'!

Even France where the nation built themselves 70 reactors in 20+ locations from 1975-1985 is now struggling and years behind building their first EPR, which was designed in France to be easy to build!

At the same time China is finished building its first EPR unit, they loaded fuel two months ago and are going through the fine tuning process right now with it scheduled to enter commercial level baseload power production in another month to six weeks.

The French reactor build is well over a billion Euro's over budget and years behind schedule.

French utility EDF announced today that fuel loading at the Flamanville EPR will now take place in the fourth quarter of 2019, instead of the previously scheduled fourth quarter of this year. Meanwhile, the cost of the 1650 MWe pressurised water reactor (PWR) has increased from EUR10.5 billion (USD12.3 billion) to EUR10.9 billion.

How pathetic is it that China which was firmly anti-technology until the Communist victory in the 1940's is able to run rings around the country that designed what they are building?

At this rate perhaps the Chinese will start getting construction contracts for future units. They will end up shipping in parts and management and hiring skilled trades locally to assemble projects on time and on budget rather than playing these games modern western companies seem to love to play.