Can We Convert Old Coal Plants to Nuclear Energy?

[@SinisterMD]

Maybe you mentioned it and I missed it but one of the largest burdens for taking over a coal power plant with a nuclear one is the fact that there is radioactive waste around coal plants. When coal plants burn coal they release radioactive particles (from minute amounts of radioactive elements in the coal) as waste in the smoke. This settles in and around the coal plant. If the plant were to be turned into a nuclear plant the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would hold it to the current standards for nuclear power plants in regards to radioactive waste. Coal plants do not have this constraint but a nuclear plant does. Some coal plants therefore would need to have massive clean up operations to make them regulation ready and that might prove to be cost prohibitive for the project.

[@Furudal]

I came here to ask the same!

[@atomicblender]

Good question! I don't believe coal radioactive emissions are regulated by NRC since coal plants aren't in NRC's jurisdiction. However, coal plant emissions would be regulated by the EPA, which has its own limits on radioactivity. They have a short discussion on their website, but it's not totally clear to me. www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants

[@SinisterMD]

@@atomicblender I should have been more accurate with my statement about radioactive waste. What I should have said is that there would be an unacceptable amount of radioactive *contamination* in and around the coal plant. With a nuclear plant it's highly regulated how much radiation is allowed for workers and on site. This sort of monitoring is not required for coal...but again if a coal plant were to be converted it would therefore fall under the NRC and all of its guidelines/requirements. If I recall correctly this is touched on by Michael Shellenberger in his book "Apocalypse Never."

[@aaroncosier735]

The regulator probably isn't concerned about trace amounts of natural uranium. Unreacted natural uranium in coal ash is a very mild neutron emitter in no way comparable to the conceivable leakages of reacted material. They could just measure the now naturally occurring background of the site, for all major types of radiation, in a comprehensive survey, and regard that as a baseline. A nuclear plant has virtually no leakage of radioactive material in normal operation, barring disasters. Putting the nuclear plant at the epicenter of coal-fired contamination may well reduce the (incredibly minor) potential for human exposure in the buffer zone around the plant and give time for coal-derived uranium to settle deeper into local soil and become less available to be blown as dust. Once the nuclear plant is wound up, there might be measurably (though minutely) less radiation in the general area than before, just from decay. Radiation from reacted material is many orders more severe and penetrating, including Gamma, and a wide range of Beta, Alpha and Neutrons with distinctive energy windows. Should a leak actually occur, it will be well and truly distinct from any natural uranium residues in fugitive fly ash.

[@clarkkent9080]

​@@aaroncosier735 While it is possible for uranium to spontaneously fission, it is highly unlikely and that is the only way you would get a neutron emission. EVERY nuclear plant releases radioactive gases and liquids and their operating permit established the release limits.

[@oatlegOnYt]

The real situation over SMR is that there are just almost all "paper reactors" (only exists on designs) and there is no real data about the final costs, beyond a few pilot plants in Asia and Russia that means nothing. It's all promises. You can advocate as much as you want, but big real investors put their money based on real data. Without real plants that demonstrate that these ideas and models could become real (for the promised cost), it's just promises, like long before nuclear industry promised "electricity too cheap to be metered". And here we are.

[@Splodgey99]

The real problem is that many of the small modular reactors actually do exist in a form in submarines and warships. These have worked successfully for years but unfortunately are secret and therefore can be shown as proof they work

[@CARambolagen]

Old power plants are just as useful for installing large flow batteries there - instead of nuclear...

[@perryallan3524]

Great concept video; but you completely missed on a 2 key points (ignoring that all SMR's are currently ideas only and have not been proven to work; and there is not a single sodium cooled nuclear power plant that has not had critical sodium leak problems). I'm now retired and have spent much of my life working in fossil (gas/coal) plants and nuclear power plants - so I have a real understanding of the challenges, issues, and possibilities. 1) All coal fired power plants use highly super-heated steam - and at temperatures and pressures that no proposed nuclear plant will even approach with currently known metals used in nuclear power cycles. Direct reuse of the turbines, FW Heaters, etc and major pumps will not occur. Reuse of the foundations that the current turbines and major pumps sit on can occur. Reuse (likely with rewinding) of the electrical generators can occur. Transformers, substations, and major transmission lines can likely be reused with modest changes. The major cooling water source (pump-house, pumps, cooling towers, etc) can be reused likely with some upgrades or rebuilding. The existing condenser is a toss up; and this is the biggest limitation on the output of the new generation as it will be size constrained by the existing structure: Nuclear saturated steam condensers need to be noticeably larger for the same power output than fossil supper-heated steam condensers. My off the top of the head estimate is that you can expect at least a 20% power output reduction moving from high pressure very high temperature super-heated steam to saturated steam for the same condenser size. Reuse of the old pipelines is very questionable as their poor condition is usually one of the key factors in retiring these plants (have you ever seen 50 - 80 year old power plant piping and components and dealt with their problems: I have: trust me its better to just replace everything with the new reactor so it can have a long and reliable run life). 2) You completely misunderstand and misstated the capacity factor situation. Nuclear power plants have very high capacity factors as its been determined that the most economical way to operate them is to burn up all the fuel in the fuel rods over their planned life. Thus they typically run @ 100% of power when operating (that is the goal); which gives at typical 90%+ capacity factor for the year. Fossil power plants are "load following" as the electrical demand for power goes up and down during the day. It's not uncommon for a coal/gas/oil fired plant to be at 15-25% in the middle of the night and 100% 12 hours later. The best maintained fossil power plants are just as reliable as nuclear plants (they can regularly run nonstop for a year or more between maintenance shutdowns: although a number of coal fired boilers have a scheduled shutdown for maintenance every 6 months). It's the load following characteristics of the up and down nature of the daily power demand that gives fossil plants an average capacity factor of 50%. If you replace all the fossil plants with nuclear plants then the nuclear plants will have to load follow as well and their capacity factors will drop correspondence. Please note that two of the nuclear power plants I worked in were built as "load following" units (and they still had the controls installed to switch to "load following" mode); and their capacity factors during their initial years of operation in the 1970's was no better than the fossil plants in the area. There's a lot of other lessor issues. But the key question is can an existing fossil power plant site be repurposed with replacement nuclear units. Certainly some of them can be - and I think that would be a good use of them. For a variety geologic and security reasons others cannot be. It's just not going to be as simple as you propose. Basically strip out virtually all the old equipment, pipelines, and wiring... and reuse the foundations and the cooling system pumps and cooling water source.

[@fredericrike5974]

Thank you, Mr. Allan. It is always mind numbing when a plethora of stats and charts are presented without a good and thorough breakdown on meanings, origins, etc on where your numbers come from and what they actually mean. Your "re appraisal" of "load following" was a totally new concept to me, and I suspect to others following this site. Again, than you.

[@atomicblender]

Thanks a lot for your feedback and insight. Unfortunately these kinds of details can be easily be lost or they can be presented as "non-problems." This study did look at a few different scenarios of re-use, from basically just the site and the office buildings, all the way to re-using the turbines. For the re-used turbine case, it did point out some of the difficulties you mentioned, particularly the different steam conditions (superheated vs not). The X-Energy high temperature gas reactor could (theoretically) produce the required temperatures, but would need another loop between the reactor and the steam side to make it work properly. But as you correctly pointed out, none of that has been built yet. Load follow has become more and more of an interesting topic, especially as more renewables come online. Only a few places are using nuclear consistently for load follow. The US isn't one. France is the best example that comes to mind, but other has done it to lesser extents. So there is international experience even with the current designs to do it. Anyway my honest opinion is that if such replacements at coal sites were made, most of the steam side would be replaced. It's the site that becomes more valuable with the existing grid and water connections. Cheers!

[@perryallan3524]

@@markaspen I never said SMR's were unrealistic. But, my decades of power plant experience tells me that a lot of things did not work out the way that designers thought they would; and every country that built early nuclear power plants ended up closing some of them very early due to those problems. Long term operation and maintenance also led to many other design retrofits (and I was personally involved in some of those). It will take several decades of run time on any SMR concept to show that the concept actually works long term - or can be easily modified to one that does. We can only now build really reliable long life LWR large reactors because of the many decades of lessons learned. Those lessons learned don't exist for novel reactor designs. I mainly pointed out that sodium cooled nuclear reactors have a horrendous history. Multiple sodium cooled commercial nuclear power plants were built in multiple countries - and with the exception of the one in Russia were all very prematurely shut down due to sodium leaks (and the French one was supposed to fix all the issues of the earlier failures). Russia currently claims that it's liquid sodium cooled nuclear plant is essentially sodium leak problem free. Unfortunately, the history of the Russian Nuclear Program is that there are multiple cases where the real truth of the problems did not come out for 30+ years. I don't trust the Russian statements based on that. As such I consider the natruim reactor concept dead and will never likely be built.

[@perryallan3524]

@jimfrazier8611 I'm not mistaking what can realistically be done at all. 1st: No one has solved the corrosion problem of the molten salt reactors to the best of my knowledge (and up to 4 years ago I had access to all kinds of nuclear plant information and concepts as I worked in the industry) and cannot yet be considered a serious long term power plant option. 2nd: there is nothing new about sodium cooled reactors. Many countries built research reactors and at least 3 countries built commercial power plants (including the USA and France). To the best of my knowledge (and I researched every sodium cooled research and power reactor ever built several years ago); every one of these have had significant problems with sodium leaks (sodium reacts violently with water - so a tube leak in a steam generator creates and effective ongoing explosion); and both the USA and French power plants were shut down way early in their planned life (nuclear power plants must run for many decades to be economical). Russia claims that their liquid sodium plant has not had any real problems. But I don't trust them as there are many stories from the Russian/Soviet plants on what really happened 20-30+ years ago that was covered up for decades. The high temperature gas reactor (AGR & HTRG) is a more workable option - and there is a lot more commercial success with them (Peach Bottom Unit 1 and Fort St. Vrain in the USA and in the UK the now retired Magnox and now the AGR's which are currently operating); However, both the US units were shut down very early as they needed major modifications to be economical (design ideas worked well enough for proof of concept; but not for economical operation - this is why new concept plants need a lot of run time to prove they will actually work). In the UK the Magnox plants were never economical as they were designed for both plutonium and power production and the more modern AGR replacements have done well but are about at the end of their life and the UK is building PWR's as replacements as they are more economical. The other problem is that the current proposals for say the X-Energy helium cooled pebble bed reactor missed a key concept of power plant design. They are designed to produce 1050F steam at 2400 PSI which is a modern value and on 1st look on paper would match many of the existing coal fired power plant infrastructure (although they may have to downgrade to 1000 F, 1005 F, etc for many of the older coal fired power plants as that is their design temperatures based on the alloys available at that time). What those designers and many people just looking at steam conditions miss is that all of those fossil power plants use a dual heated steam cycle - which has to be matched if you are going to use the same turbines and to get the same efficiency and not destroy the LP turbine sections. The typical fossil power plant of 1980 vintage will send 2400 PSI steam @ 1005 F to the turbine throttle block. Run it through the high pressure turbine. Then return the steam to the boiler to go through a "reheater" section, which again supplies 1005 F super-heated steam to the LP turbines. Without this reheat steam section you will loose a lot of efficiency and power output, and will have major water problems in the LP turbine. Even PWR nuclear power plants reheat the steam between the HP and LP turbines (I'm not sure about BWR's - I didn't spend that much time at one decades ago and don't remember) I get the impression looking at the X-Energy and other sites that these people really don't know anything about key steam cycle efficiency equipment and processes (which has been standard power plant practice for I think about 75 years on large units; and was covered well in my college thermodynamics class on steam cycle power plants when I got my engineering degree many decades ago). I'm now retired and spent much of my life in marine steam propulsion and power plants (both fossil and nuclear). I look at most of the new design concepts as nice ideas; but I believe that only Holtec with their SMR stands a chance of working as designed. Holtec has the working knowledge of LWR lessons learned; and the vast majority of initial design plant ideas failed economically after being built. Mistakes in the nuclear power plant industy are very very expensive to fix - if they can be fixed at all. The pebble bed hot gas reactor is the 2nd most promising technology that I have seen. There's a lot of research on pebble beds; but I don't understand the concept of not planning for a reheat cycle (which tells me that they are missing the obvious - which leads to the question of what else are they missing).

[@perryallan3524]

@@atomicblender I agree that the steam side of the plant would be replaced. Please see my answer to "@jimfrazier8611" below on what is wrong with the concept of using the C-Energy reactor to supply steam to the old fossil turbine generators. I'm dumbfounded on why they didn't include a steam reheater as part of their reactor design for a steam power plant. I wonder if anyone working for most of the SMR concept companies have ever toured a power plant and learned about steam cycle efficiency.

[@FoamyDave]

The single most valuable piece of an old power plant is its grid connection. The biggest barrier to the backlog of new energy generation is studying and integrating them into the grid. Reusing the existing grid connection can save many years in brining new energy online. Where old power generation is being retired we should look how to best make use of the existing grid connection and potentially sharing it across different generation technologies (nuke, solar, wind, battery, etc.)

[@aaroncosier735]

I would suggest that any such site start building storage straight up, to absorb excess generation during low demand and deliver it during peak demand. This lets existing plant run most efficiently and most effectively. It also gives a few minutes grace in the case of unexpected shutdown or failure, giving other plant elsewhere a chance to come online. This sort of storage stays handy no matter what you do later: build a reactor? still handy for site power backup and for storing excess, as for coal. Build some renewables anyway to save backup diesel for the reactor ancillaries and spent fuel cooling, why not? I expect to see the first stage storage built first, then renewable generation as the coal plant is decommissioned, then expansion of both while nuclear is considered. Then further expansion as funding dithers, to the point where no one is bothered anymore.

[@deipalladium8362]

What about power peaks and offpeaks? Power maneuvering of nuclear reactors is not easy.

[@davidjernigan8161]

Make the nuclear units the base load units and require the other units to manuver.

[@atomicblender]

The proposed set of SMRs are designed with greater power maneuvering in mind. In some places, particularly France, the existing nuclear reactors already do daily load-follow. It's not impossible, just not popular for nuclear because usually there are easier options.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@davidjernigan8161 There are limits to what other generators can do. Coal, like nuclear, does not do well in load-following. Furnaces effectively have to turn off, and take many hours to restart. Just like a reactor. One option is LOTS of storage. Pumped hydro for instance. Of course, if we had enough storage to allow coal and nuclear to operate optimally and still follow demand, then we would have enough storage to make renewables feasible.

[@neuralwarp]

Molten salt reactors are excellent at load following.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@neuralwarp Please list some grid scale molten salt reactors that demonstrate this. How do they manage the escaping xenon at that scale?

[@mikefochtman7164]

Good analysis, and informative. I might just point out that the poor capacity factor of coal plants isn't all due to the technology and equipment. Isn't some of that because of the need to load follow? Whereas nuclear is traditionally base loaded, this may be an issue that will need to be addressed at some point.

[@josdesouza]

Even mostly nuclear-powered France still keeps a few old coal-fired powerplants on standby just in case.

[@pascalelzinga]

I would love to see you comment on Copenhagen Atomic's thorium SMR. It seems like an amazing concept (to my uneducated nuclear mind).

[@derrekvanee4567]

and small modular and evry thing done in the 70s. fossil fuels are amazing but that and war killa a ton of people for or without reason.

[@HSPOVgames]

We will see gas replacing coal far more than nuclear replacing coal.

[@clarkkent9080]

I believe you to be 100% correct

[@SocialDownclimber]

I don't like it but I can't argue against it.

[@aaroncosier735]

Renewables will replace what they can, and gas will replace the gap. Overall, this means less fossils burned, until more renewables and storage fill in the rest. Nuclear (with ten year delay, cost overruns, lack of storage for flrxibility, financial overruns, interest rate hikes etc) has to guarantee to compete with a guaranteed price for renewables delivered next week, including genset backup, and it's not looking good for nuclear in a lot of places. People are starting to value energy independence, and you can't have that with nuclear.

[@clarkkent9080]

@@aaroncosier735 Having worked in the industry for 40+ years, I am pro-nuclear but that does not mean that I have to ignore the massive cost and schedule over runs and as a ratepayer I have to agree with you completely. I am in the Georgia power grid and the Vogtle projects will raise my electric rates substantially.

[@johnhorner5711]

Another great use for old power plant sites is battery storage. The grid infrastructure is already there. The Moss Landing natural gas power plant in California was built in the 1950s and is now being transitioned from power generation (at least two of the original units are shut down) into a battery storage facility. I think we will see more such conversions of coal and natural gas plants over time. Having the infrastructure in place is a big deal as is already having permits to do "dirty things". It is easy to argue that a battery storage facility has less environmental impact than a coal or natural gas fired power plant.

[@neuralwarp]

The total world battery capacity is about 30 seconds. It would be prohibitively expensive, would lose 10%+ of the energy, and we'd still need to generate the electricity in the first place.

[@aaroncosier735]

It makes sense to do so. The switchyard and transmission trunk is right there. The surrounding area is probably worth using for renewables to help charge that battery.

[@tonylam9548]

The whole world are waiting for a tech break through in energy storage, for many applications. Assuming we get the break through by next Tuesday, it will still be at least 2 decades to build the infrastructures. Engineering explained in this site have a video that explained the battery situation well. The engineer have a US gallon of gas in a jug, the rest of his office desk were piled 2 high in pop cans. Both the pop cans and the jug hold the same amount of energy.

[@murdelabop]

There's another option which needs to be on the table: Energy storage. Converting closed coal plants to some form of energy storage would leverage the output of renewable energy systems, such as solar and wind.

[@JK360noscope]

LoL this makes too much sense

[@MaydaTiger]

correct me if i am wrong but arent nuclear just as harmful as coal if not worse?

[@SocialDownclimber]

Nuclear is less harmful than coal overall. Even in the worst nuclear power plant accidents you will be mostly fine if you stay inside, take iodine supplements and evacuate if necessary (assuming you don't work in the plant). If a coal-ash dam collapses you could be in a lot more trouble.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@SocialDownclimber Is that really the case? European death stats these last thirty-five years have included excess deaths from radiation-related causes. Iodine supplements do not protect from caesium or strontium contamination of the food chain, nor from xenon exposures downwind a theoretical molten fuel design. Coal ash is usually buried, and chronic exposure is low. If a fuel dam breakage is relevant, how about a spent fuel fire? Downplaying genuine nuclear risks doesn't alter the real picture.

[@SocialDownclimber]

@@aaroncosier735 Iodine supplements don't protect from exposure to those isotopes. That is why you stay inside. caesium and strontium are more likely to fall out in rain, and xenon has a low biological half life - that's why you evacuate if necessary. The risks are quite high for a nuclear accident, but the controls to prevent harm are very easy. You just move away from the radiation. It is very easy to identify radiation because the natural abundance of these isotopes is zero, and they emit unique, penetrating radiation that can be detected with very high sensitivity and selectivity. If a coal ash dam leaks heavy metals into groundwater because of poor design, it might not be noticed for years. That said, if there is a nuclear accident the primary cost isn't deaths, it is economic. That's why nuclear supporters always bring out the "deaths per kwh" graph but never talk about the cost of cleanup.

[@neuralwarp]

No mention of thorium, then?

[@clarkkent9080]

why mention Thorium as it is only a dream in YT videos and no one other than fan boys think it is a good idea. Why don't you invest in Kirk Sorenson's Thorium startup he has been yapping about it for decades and has produce nice power points. Put your money where your mouth is.

[@aaroncosier735]

Thorium requires an entire extra industry. I believe the video sticks to SMRs on the basis that they are stand-alone replacements at the approximate scale of the original coal plant. Thorium is a whole industry. It requires a huge investment in breeders to convert thorium to useful fuel, and then a commitment to a new generation of reactors to burn the products of those breeders. Certainly some nations are giving it a go, mainly to have local alternatives to importing uranium. Proposing a whole new type of nuclear industry is probably beyond the scope of the video.

[@davidjernigan8161]

A potential issue for using the existing turbines and some other components is that a lot of coal fired plants operate a significantly higher steam pressures up to supercritical temperatures and pressures, while nuclear plants operate in the 800 psig range with saturated steam rather than superheated steam meaning the design of the nozzles, etc. would be wrong.

[@atomicblender]

The DoE study looked at various ways to either reuse or replace the steam components. In the case of keeping it, sometimes it required an additional loop or using the gas reactor to get to superheated steam. It's unlikely to be a one-size-fits all, but each site would need to be looked at on its own. Your point is right though and some adaptation would be needed. Cheers!

[@perryallan3524]

@@atomicblender davidjernigan8161 is right. You just cannot run saturated steam though a supercritical steam turbine. They just are not desiged for it. Saturated steam throws off a lot of water droplets at each pressure drop through the turbine, and saturated steam turbines are designed to handle that water. Supercritical turbines are not and massive damage would quickly occur at any meaningful turbine power levels. I'll address the 2nd loop steam generator with super-heated steam in a separate post under my initial post. I need to research what the design pressure and temperature of the helium pebble bed reactor MSR is. Hint: The steam pressure and temperature will need to be below that for some very real practical reasons.

[@aaroncosier735]

Steam plant has a lifespan anyway. Sooner or later they get major overhaul or complete replacement, perhaps several times in the life of the power station. There is no real scope for re-use, just build the specific plant that is optimal for the reactor.

[@perryallan3524]

@@aaroncosier735 Wrong: The boiler, main steam, condensate, and feed-water piping typically last the entire life of the plant (with minor repairs over the decades). the Turbine casing and Turbine rotor typically last the life of the plant. It is common for the turbine rotor to have certain rows of blades replaced over the life of the plant (typically the back end of the LP turbines due to water damage). Feedwater heaters are typically replaced at least once in a 40+ year life of a steam cycle power plant; although if built with better materials up front they can last the life of the plant as well now.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@perryallan3524 However the expensive bits like the actual turbines experience erosion during normal use. You know, the delicate, high speed, finely balanced bits. The life of all the high temperature and pressure components is determined by the stresses and fatigue imposed by thermal cycles. These define the "lifetime of the plant". Even if they lasted the life of the coal power station, they are useless for any future application. Clapped out.

[@jamessellards7157]

I am a Mopar fan, but I happen to know of Ford 300 inline 6 cylender engines that have been running for over 50 years. They are used in natural gas compressors that run off of the gas they pump

[@corujariousa]

The nuclear reactors critical dependency on water for cooling usually drives the choices for their locations (close to shore or other large bodies of water). Even new generation nuclear reactors (i.e.: SMRs) have that dependency. Considering coal plants do not have the same dependency, they are not necessarily located close to large bodies of water. How do you reconcile that with your idea? Am I missing anything? Cheers.

[@factnotfiction5915]

You're missing something. Driving the location by water resource is not quite accurate - or perhaps you care to explain the 2nd biggest NPP in the US is located in Arizona. In the desert. Without ready access to a major river, lake, or the ocean.

[@corujariousa]

@@factnotfiction5915 That is an interesting point. The Palo Verde NPP uses millions of gallons of treated wastewater from Phoenix. That is the only one I am aware of that uses this model. I do not know about the finances and other challenges behind having to construct and maintain a waste management facility to serve the NPP though. Interesting case nonetheless. So far I believe my point/doubt still stands. I welcome the exchange. Cheers.

[@factnotfiction5915]

@@corujariousa > So far I believe my point/doubt still stands Given an example of how a design can side-step the need for riverine/lake/ocean cooling you still believe the point still stands? I believe Palo Verde shows siting is about the local conditions and cleverness of the engineers, vs a blanket "NPPs need a certain type of cooling solution and thus have siting problems". Now, wind and solar really do have siting problems (as do hydro and geothermal). It is ALL about the local conditions, and very very little about how clever the engineers are. Either you have a windy/sunny place, or you don't. There is no point in even looking further. For a NPP serving an arid region, there is a point in investigating alternatives. In addition, for a poor country with poor freshwater resources, the waste heat leftover from electricity generation can be used (as in AZ) to treat and improve the water/sewage supply, even potentially desalination.

[@corujariousa]

@@factnotfiction5915 That is OK. I guess we'll not be able to agree on this. The way I see it, Palo Alto NPP being the only case (that I could find) that took the extra complexity of creating a water treatment facility to ensure cooling in an area where no large bodies of water are available, make me question how economically viable that model is. In terms of technology, this certainly is a proven case. For our energy generation challenges I strongly support a diverse approach. A simple and common model is not viable to all countries. Cheers.

[@factnotfiction5915]

@@corujariousa if you don't like hot and dry, let's try cold and wet Finland likes nuclear power for 3 big reasons (aside from low-carbon, reliable generation for decades): #1 geopolitical - it is nice to have an ability to store decades-worth of fuel in a few hundred tons of uranium; rather than rely on an unstable neighbor to (maybe) supply you with high-carbon natural gas. #2 wind - eh, not so much in winter, when peak demand is #3 solar - eh, not so much in winter, when peak demand is The point is, nuclear is _flexible_ and can be installed in a lot of locations; wind and solar are not so flexible; coal and natural gas are high-carbon and supply is highly dependent upon geopolitics. > Palo Alto NPP being the only case (that I could find) ... make me question how economically viable that model is. Again, your original statement was a bit of an absolute, but which place on earth exactly ARE NPPs an absolutely horrible (versus secondary or non-preferred) idea? * not near cooling water - Palo Alto shows NPPs can be done there * earthquake-prone - Japan shows NPPs can be done there * tornado-prone - Illinois shows NPPs can be done there * hurricane-prone - Florida/India shows NPPs can be done there * 3rd-world - Bangladesh shows NPPs can be done there * small-countries - Nederlands, Slovakia, etc shoes NPPs can be done there * hot countries - UAE shoes NPPs can be done there * cold countries - UAE shoes NPPs can be done there * etc, etc, etc > I strongly support a diverse approach. A simple and common model is not viable to all countries. Agreed, but nuclear is no worse than the other choices, and _in general_ (vs in specific) is among the better choices. What about the economics? (per your point about sustainable economic models) All I can say is look at the facts. (acknowledging that NPPs cost a lot of money) Nuclear ELECTRICITY (vs nuclear PLANTS) is cheap! Nuclear France has electricity half the cost of RE+coal Germany. RE California has electricity double the cost of Nuclear Illinois. RE South Australia has super-high electricity costs, lots of blackouts and terrible emissions. Nuclear Ontario has low-cost electricity, no blackouts, and super-super low emissions.

[@phobosmoon4643]

cool vid thanks! I grew up near Red Wing nuclear plant in MN and the highlight of my pre-highschool education was the trip to the plant and the nuclear unit.

[@trivialinsignific]

because we might need to turn on a light or something, huh ?

[@zhubajie6940]

Matching a coal plant with superheated steam or in some cases, supercritical steam, to the much lower temperatures and typically saturated steam or in slightly superheated steam as in the case of Combustion Engineering's steam generator (e.g. Three Mile Island) would require basically replacing all the steam turbine generator island. There are drawing board designs for High-temperature gas reactors but they operate at even higher temperatures and pressure than current plants making them more expensive and less safe. Atmospheric pressure thorium LFTR type reactors with a more efficient gas cycle instead of a steam cycle or possibly using the coal plant for a "bottoming cycle" as with combined cycle technology would be more advisable.

[@murdelabop]

Matching the output characteristics of the reactor to the input requirements of existing infrastructure could be done with a heat exchanger. It would add cost and complexity, but it's doable.

[@mikefochtman7164]

@@murdelabop Heat exchangers can't raise the steam temperature though.

[@mikefochtman7164]

This is an important point. I'd just add that converting a coal plant to use a reactor for the heat source, you still end up having 50+ year old piping, pumps, feedwater heaters, condensers, etc... Putting in an expensive reactor tied to aging secondary plant seems pretty risky (financially speaking). You might end up with a lot more down time just to save capital up front.

[@arxaaron]

The death toll of coal and it's pollution deserve substantial mention here. Compared to nuclear, coal energy production is 1000 time more deadly.

[@aaroncosier735]

Hang on. Just playing devil's advocate here, but nuclear has killed a few too. The Soviet accident killed plenty, and many more over the years that are hard to allocate individually, nonetheless the European cancer death rate went up in ways directly associated with radiation exposure. Similarly, it is hard to allocate individual deaths to coal emissions. If we want to compare these two, then we need to be very suspicious of coal bad/nuclear good arguments. Having twenty times more nuclear than we do now changes the risk profile a lot.

[@Ikbeneengeit]

Surely the capacity factor of coal plants is low because the electricity isn't needed at that time, rather than because the plant is broken. It negates your argument about required nuclear installed capacity around 7:00

[@clarkkent9080]

Coal plants follow load which is low at night and high during the day. Capacity is measured in MW generated vs MW capacity, so you are correct in that it does not mean the plant is off line.

[@Ikbeneengeit]

​@@clarkkent9080Exactly, so a load following nuclear plant would also have a low capacity factor like the coal plant. Load following is a good thing, but it's being presented here as a downside.

[@clarkkent9080]

@@Ikbeneengeit The issue is that nuclear plants like to stay at one power level and the utility likes that to be 100% where they make the most profit. There is a fission product called Xenon which acts as a neutron poison just like inserting control rods. It is created through a delay process when U235 fissions and it is "removed" immediately from the core when it absorbs a neutron, based upon power level. As long as you are at a steady power level, the creation and removal of xenon stabilizes. Lets say you are at 100% power all day and then at night decrease reactor power to 75%. The lower power level removes less Xenon from neutron absorption but since the creation of xenon is delayed, it is still being produced from the previous 100% power level. More xenon is building in and to maintain 75% power you need to remove control rods. Now if you later return to 100% power just as Xenon is peaking, the higher power is removing more xenon and the creation of xenon is delayed based on the 75% power level so you have to insert control rods to maintain 100% power. counter intuitive. This sets up a xenon swing, and it can be rapid, where you are constantly moving control rods in and out to maintain power and it can get out of hand and result in a reactor trip. It can take a day or more to stabilize a xenon swing. That was the simple explanation based upon control rod use. However PWRs control power with neutron absorbing chemicals added to the reactor coolant and operate with control rods almost fully withdrawn. Trying to control a xenon swing by changing chemical concentrations in the coolant is much more difficult and moving control rods in and out just make it worst. The Chernobyl accident in the simplest terms was cause by a xenon transit. The reactor was shutdown and just as xenon peaked in the core they started up the reactor and took it to a high power where xenon burned out so fast, power spiked beyond the control of the operators. That is way nuclear plants are considered base load 100% power plants. It is the coal fired units that have to increase and decrease output. The job of a load dispatcher is to inform plants on the amount of power needed.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@clarkkent9080 My understanding is that coal plant has limited load following. There is certainly some flex, but overnight low demand still requires that furnaces be shut off or be wasted into load banks. Based on our local station at Tarong in the 1990s, a shut down furnace takes most of a day to be prepared for restart. So, load following is either partial, or "lumpy". Nuclear winds up with a similar problem. From xenon as you describe. I would say that both work best at constant output. Coal has a little more leeway, but not much, especially for older plant.

[@clarkkent9080]

@@aaroncosier735 I understand that one load following method is "spinning reserve" where a generating plant (usually gas turbines) spins up their generators but does not connect them to the grid. When needed they just close the output breakers. It seems like this could also be used with solar (day only) and wind turbines (feather the blades). The job of the load dispatcher must be very interesting. My only interface was informing them where we expected to start generating power and when we expected to reach 100%. Even with whatever load following capabilities they have, we could watch grid voltage changes and some were substantial. We could certainly see when people wake up and turn on the coffee pots, when they return home and turn on the AC and when they go to bed an turn out the lights. There are 3 grids in the lower 48, east cost, west cost, and the don't mess with Texas grid. It must be a nightmare for a dispatcher controlling that small Texas grid and their recent problems are only projected to get worst. I believe it was 2 winters ago that they came within 4 mins of a total grid blackout based on low grid voltage. That would be a very bad day as I have read that it can take a week to restore a black grid and I don't think people understand what that means. Gas stations, domestic water supplies, and natural gas supplies need electricity for pumps to work but more importantly cell towers only have 2 hours of backup battery power. It is only a matter of time before it happens.

[@canadiannuclearman]

This convertion could have been done at the Nanicoke plant in Ontario Canada. But was decommissioned the province of Ontario is one of the only jurisdictions that has no coal plants. Many people that have worked at the coal plant now have jobs in the nuclear industry. Bravo.

[@briandonovan9091]

nuclear cost 5-10 time renewable. It takes 10 years average to build a nuclear plant. Nuclear needs a much large setback than coal. This is nonsense. Install batteries, solar, wind, at the former coal plants. They can be installed in 1 to 2 years.

[@clarkkent9080]

The latest new nuclear build (Vogtle) took 16 years and cost 17 billion per 1,100 Mw unit

[@factnotfiction5915]

> Install batteries, solar, wind, at the former coal plants. They can be installed in 1 to 2 years. They cannot be installed in the same footprint. For example, the Roscoe Wind Farm, at about 780 MW generates (at peak!) the same as a medium-large coal power plant. And very compact, at a mere "100,000 acres (40,000 ha), several times the size of Manhattan" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Wind_Farm

[@darkedemobeast666]

Have you seen the new proposal to turn old coal plants into geo thermal plants with the new drilling technology we have we have new laser drills which apparently can drill deeper than traditional drills that get stopped by pressure and temperature to the point where we could reach a geothermal temperatures down in the crust I've seen some videos and stuff on this essentially each drill down until we reach the Earth's heat and then produce power and it can be done anywhere I find that interesting and I would love to see a video on that and more research about that

[@codaalive5076]

I recall several articles where they mentioned most places would require new advances in deep drilling. Idea is great, it has been done before but i'm afraid situation is too urgent to wait for advances in drilling when we have perfectly working nuclear technologies.

[@perryallan3524]

The key problem with geothermal super-hot water or steam is that it is highly corrosive and tends to plug up the pipes and equipment with corroive and toxic deposits. The few plant build in the USA require you to be in chemical protective gear to just walk around. The puddles on the ground can damage your shoe and foot (I know someone who worked at one of them). No one has proposed building any more even where there is relatively shallow heat sources because of that.

[@codaalive5076]

@@perryallan3524 What substances this water contains that makes it so toxic and corrosive? Some of them are obvious but having to walk in chemical protective gear to avoid puddles is something i never heard about.

[@perryallan3524]

@@codaalive5076 relatively hot water near the surface is typically associated with volcanic magma fairly shallow in the earth. If its in subduction zones (think Rocky mountain area) then it tends to have a high sulfur and other content. Various acids and other corrosives and all kinds of clogging minerals are common. I suggest a several day trip to Yellowstone to took at all the different kinds of thermal pools and geysers. A number of them have signs warning you of the chemical dangers if you fall in. Now where there is an abduction zone (Iceland) where the tectonic plates are pulling apart you get a completely different type of magma and over a magnitude less of all kinds of corrosives and clogging minerals. But, Iceland is about the only location on an abduction zone in the world.

[@neuralwarp]

Nuclear is basically just Thermo, but sealed in a box, with waste management, and without ground fracking.

[@neuralwarp]

You lose a big chunk of credibility for showing a stock photo of the fictitious yellow waste bins.

[@stevesmith-sb2df]

I like the idea of storing the excess energy in molten salt.

[@aaroncosier735]

Works for solar concentrators too. One mob did something similar just by heating up big insulated tanks of sand.

[@drmosfet]

@@aaroncosier735 ? Please check temperature difference.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@drmosfet Yup. Solar concentrators provide incredible temperatures. Ideal for molten salt. The sand-based one doesn't have to match the same temperatures, it's the same principle.

[@clarkkent9080]

Terrapower selected a retiring coal plant for the site of their Natrium reactor 2 years ago. Your a little late to the brilliant idea party. The brilliant idea is really that a company that owns a old dirty coal plant can give it to a nuclear plant operator and walk away from the environmental disaster they created. I would be very interested in seeing how many of the 60 year old coal plant components, Terrapower uses. You are talking about a plant designed in 1960 and operated with little oversight, band aided to keep it running, with piles of hazardous coal dust on every component. Plants operated by old timers with little to NO procedural controls, something that is totally unacceptable in the nuclear world. Every valve, pump, motor, pipe, breaker has a service life and I am fairly sure the reason the coal plant is being shutdown is due to high maintenance costs. Try finding a replacement for any 60 year old component. Then there is the stacks that must be removed, ash piles that remain hazardous, and systems that must be evaluated to ensure worker safety for the next 40 years . The only advantage I see is the radioactivity from the coal piles would mask and radioactive leaks from a nuclear plant. The secondary side of a nuclear plant is just as important as the primary. When the turbine trips, the reactor trips and the potential for accidents increases during startups and shutdowns when there are large fluctuations in equipment operation. Yes the idea seems brilliant if you don't think about it too much. But again, if Terrapower ever does start and complete their Natrium project, we will have real and factual experience.

[@syntaxusdogmata3333]

It's time we realize that "going nuclear" is only a problem when it comes to Karens. 👍

[@clarkkent9080]

Must have been a lot of Karens in the southeast U.S. If you live in the U.S. here is the reality for the last 4 “state of the art” Generation III Westinghouse AP1000 ADVANCED new nuclear power projects and spent fuel reprocessing in the U.S. over the last 20 years. The AP1000 is fully approved by the NRC for construction and operation. The only NRC requirement is that the plant be built per design documents…..seems simple.. The Southeastern U.S. is super pro-nuclear MAGA, has zero anti-nukes, and 100% media, local, and political support. The MOX facility (South Carolina) was a U.S. government nuclear reprocessing facility that was supposed to mix pure weapon grade Pu239 with U238 to make reactor fuel assemblies. It was canceled (2017) in the U.S. After spending $10 billion for a plant that was originally estimated to cost $1 billion and an independent report that estimated it would cost $100 billion to complete the plant and process all the Pu239, Trump canceled the project in 2017. VC Summer (South Carolina) new nuclear units 2&3 were canceled in 2017 after spending $17 billion on the project (original estimate of $14 billion and 2016 completion date) with no clear end in sight for costs or schedule. Four managers on the project were charged with 16 felony counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly traded company to keep a false record. The CEO of the project is serving 2 years in prison, another manager just got 15 months in prison, and the others are awaiting trial. Vogtle (Georgia) new nuclear units 3 &4 at 110% over budget and schedule (currently over $34 billion with an original estimated cost of $16 billion). Mid way into the build, the utility stated that had they known about the many costly delays they would never have chosen nuclear. They last year long delay, according to the project management, was because thousands of build documents were missing. The first unit started in 2023 with Vogtle being, for its output, the world’s most expensive nuclear power plant. Please google any of this to confirm. If you can’t build new nuclear in the super pro-nuclear southeast U.S. then where can you build it?

[@WvlfDarkfire]

​@Clark Kent well, I've always considered the cost, cleanups, and "Karens" a major issue Nuclear Energy. I think historically, we should look at soviet RTGs being used throughout the Soviet Union and how they may still be impacting areas to this day.

[@clarkkent9080]

@@WvlfDarkfire I live in the U.S. and we are different enough from Europe to be unique and we should certainly not use any Russian or Chinese nuclear technology as a comparison to this country's capabilities. Case in point; China was the first to build 4 Westinghouse advanced passive safety feature AP1000 reactors which are now operating and were built on schedule and within budget. You know the story with VC Summer and Vogtle and they had the experience of the Chinese to draw from. The only reason I included the MAGA comment it that response was to prevent having to respond to those claiming those failures were due to Karens, greenies, tree huggers, dems, or whatever typical hate fills on heart. Those projects had 100% support of everyone and I know, I live here. Most of these start-ups with "advanced" reactor designs are simply looking for taxpayer welfare. Utilities decide what to build not Joe-Smoe. Except for some strongly anti nuclear states, most are accepting to new nuclear. The problem is in construction and project management and is pervasive enough to apply to any nuclear project anywhere in the U.S. today. Unless the real problem is addressed, nothing will change.

[@codaalive5076]

Very interesting idea, many thanks for bringing another interesting topic. I don't think deaths from burning coal were mentioned here, some sources say 800.000 people die from coal each year, probably more. How many people die from nuclear waste? This might be good point for convincing people nuclear is safe, waste can be either stored or burned with various technologies we can use already, or will be using them soon enough. Country where i live have almost new coal plant with some major problems like very high cost since we are paying co2 releases. Doing a study if it could be reused as a nuclear site would be great because locals will be losing jobs soon if nothing is done, we will also lose almost new plant. Nuclear is much better, the only way to do it in time.

[@privacylock855]

Does this guy work for the nuclear Industry?

[@clarkkent9080]

Not at all. But I hope you understand that any YTer that is also hawking overpriced coffee mugs or T-shirts is making YT videos purely for money. This guy saw the same article that I did a week ago on this subject and realized that he can make a video about it and cash in on it. ANYONE can make a YT video and say ANYTHING they want.

[@Hamstray]

Coal plants have that low capacity factor because they are often used for backup when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing or there are some other energy shortages. Powering them down saves fuel and operating costs. Nuclear plants are used for base load and don't use up a lot of fuel. Powering them down doesn't save on operating costs.

[@Verrisin]

5:00 - reuse internal parts? Oh no .... look at SLS and how much it made things "cheaper" ... Yes to reusing the Grid connection, transformers, etc ... things that do not tightly couple to the reactor ... but I feel like reusing turbines etc will .... just make the project a hell to work on, and it will instead take forever and get much more expensive... People tend to make new things over updating old projects for a reason...

[@clarkkent9080]

You mean that it is not a good idea to reuse coal power plant equipment from a 60+ year old coal plant that is being shutdown because the maintenance on the equipment is becoming so expensive due to the plants age? Realize that even the equipment in a switchyard of a 60 + year old coal plant was designed shortly after WWII. And they say the reactor will operate for another 80 years, depending on this equipment???? Nuclear power plants need external power or emergency generators to stay cool even when shutdown.

[@turkeytrac1]

Yea, sorry, having worked in the extraction end of oilsands, coal and uranium, all three need heavy haul trucks, you have to move even more over burden to get uranium than either of the others.

[@atomicblender]

The study pointed out that those kinds of external supply jobs weren't directly considered. Only on-site jobs, which for nuclear doesn't have any heavy fuel movement like that. But I get your point.

[@factnotfiction5915]

actually, most (about 55%) uranium mining is via in-situ leaching, which doesn't create a log of overburden

[@tristan7216]

I like the idea of reusing not just the site and its grid ties, but also the turbines and generators. But I have questions: 1. How much savings is this, taking maintenance into account? Is this a good idea on paper that isn't worth doing IRL? 2. Are coal plants typically built on waterways and relying on river/lake water for cooling? Given increased draught should we be designing to eliminate this need, given how French nuclear plants for example have been hobbled by low water levels over the last few years?

[@chapter4travels]

Even if the only thing that can be reused is the transmission lines out to the grid, it's worth doing. What is more likely is a major refurbishment of the power conversion equipment would be needed. Then you add a high-temperature nuke and away you go and no water source is needed, they are air-cooled.

[@clarkkent9080]

They don't even build new nuclear power plants at the site of closed down nuclear plants so why would it make sense to use a coal plant? The steam pressures are different and the reason they are shutting down old coal plants is because everything is old. Terrapower is building their Natrium reactor at a old coal plant for purely political reasons.....convincing coal plant workers they can transition to nuclear LOL.

[@tristan7216]

@@chapter4travels that's perfect. I didn't know the advanced designs are air cooled. Water cooling has problems with draught and effects on wildlife (or regulations thereabout), as well as siting constraints. When batteries get cheap, put a big one in front of the nuke to get 30-40% more effective power out of it, by banking nighttime power and delivering it to peak demand (assuming the demand is there, otherwise just turn it down at night, if the design allows for that, or do carbon capture or something).

[@chapter4travels]

@@tristan7216 "Advanced Reactors" is a bit of a misnomer, they were invented in the 1960s but not commercialized because they were not right for military submarines. They work at much higher temperatures than the domestic reactors everyone is using today and you need that higher temperature to work with the equipment in coal power plants. They also load follow just as well as a natural gas plant so no batteries are needed.

[@clarkkent9080]

Switching our office to a paperless one looked really good......on paper !

[@ericmccolough2482]

Brilliant! Please tell Albo, he's covering thousands of acres of farmland and forests in Australia with solar and wind, BUT HE CANT CONNECT IT TO THE GRID FOR 15 FREAKING YEARS!!

[@piotrberman6363]

There can be shared components and infrastructure, as coal burners or reactors produce super-heated steam, steam is converted to electricity with turbines and cooling towers, a common component. Nuclear reactor requires a location with very sturdy foundation, big and thick plate of reinforced concrete, perhaps foundation of a coal plant can be upgraded, minimizing new digging and new steel+concrete. Another component is power distribution, transformers, power lines. So inheriting old grid can save a lot. Another remark: the power output of "medium" nuclear reactors, 440 MW, is similar to coal plants. Mini-reactors would be less efficient.

[@clarkkent9080]

Very few U.S. nuclear reactors secondary's produce super heated steam and the few that do are no where near as super heated as a coal plant. Everything is a power plant is matched and if it is not there will be inefficiencies. All currently approved new nuclear plants are in the Gw capacity range not 440 Mw range and none produce super heated steam. Then there is the idea of reusing 60 year old coal plant secondary components for a new nuclear plant. The reason most coal plants are shut down is because excess maintenance of old components is too costly. The transmission lines can be reused but it may not be a good idea to reuse switchyard disconnects and transformers built in the 1950s.

[@Etheoma]

I think it's more feasible to turn them into energy storage via thermal batteries, not that I'm against nuclear, it just seems like it's more trouble than it's worth to upgrade them to nuclear power plants.

[@corvidflight19]

I don't want a nuclear power plant near me! No, No, No! Why? We all seen what happened in Japan! I don't care how big or small it is! Just a bad idea.

[@Verrisin]

I'm starting to realize what the major issue with Nuclear is ... everyone is worried about radiation and upfront cost etc.... but the main issue is that the fuel is not available everywhere. We might have enough in total, but geopolitical issues can really throw you off and you give away power to those you now depend on ... which is now happening in France ... - Indeed, solar has much less of this issue...

[@brainown3149]

MIT has already put out a report that if the US would start looking at fast reacters (powered off used nuclear fuel) there's enough in the US just sitting in storage fields to power the entire country for 120 years. Europe already uses this technology but the US outlawed it 40 years ago due to new fuel was more profitable.

[@clarkkent9080]

I believe you are talking about reprocessing spent fuel to extract the Pu239 present and make MOX fuel, like France does. There are many issues to this subject but simply put, it would cost more to reprocess spent fuel to make MOX than it would to just make virgin uranium fuel. Yes, it would reduce the safe storage time for the remaining spent fuel fission products from 160,000 years to ~ 1,000 years. But when you are talking about 1 or 160 thousand, who alive really cares.

[@aaroncosier735]

That 120 year estimate for the "whole country" is based on complete utilisation of the U238, which in turn depends on either endlessly reprocessing spent and used fuel, or on running a whole fleet of fast reactors just to convert uranium to plutonium. The French attempt with Fast Phoenix was a flop. Repeated recycling of used MOX fuel has distinct challenges. There is an inevitable accumulation of awkward isotopes like U232, so reprocessing will require additional steps, as well as isotopic separation. The US abandoned reprocessing because there wasn't a way to make it profitable, and the wastes of used MOX require longer disposal periods than ordinary spent uranium fuel. If there had been a dollar in it, they'd be doing it.

[@clarkkent9080]

@@aaroncosier735 According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered-a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total. Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time. Using more enrichment work could reduce the uranium needs of LWRs by as much as 30 percent per metric ton of LEU. And separating plutonium and uranium from spent LEU and using them to make fresh fuel could reduce requirements by another 30 percent. Taking both steps would cut the uranium requirements of an LWR in half. At least that is what the experts say.\. It seems like that 120 year number is based on known supplies and does not include the requirement to transmute U238 in to Pu239 beyond that which currently occurs in PWR/BWRs. I would assume that fusion will be viable long before 120 years. I recall in 1972 when the experts said the known and yet to be discovered oil reserves had peaked and we would run out of oil in a decade.

[@pittyman]

And how many high clarified persons for work in an atomic central you will find in small towns?😎

[@atomicblender]

At the moment probably zero since there is no nuclear plant (it would be strange to find them there). But, a lot of nuclear plants in the US are in small towns and they work fine. Cheers!

[@september1683]

In Germany we found the solution to the CO2 problem. We shut down all of our nuclear power plants. :-)(

[@codaalive5076]

Haha, it is not funny but it is :) We have the same problem; very good experiences with nuclear but politicians aren't interested in it anymore one year after elections, despite promises of building another plant right away. They are already doing damage by not commenting on some very strange articles dealing with nuclear waste. I know you know...

[@september1683]

@@codaalive5076 - I sometimes wonder if politicians are an inferior form of life. I am not sure. Only 99.9999999999999999 percent.

[@perryallan3524]

@@september1683 Politician is a composite word: Poly for many. Tics are a blood sucking insect which may carry serious diseases. Politicians by their normal nature do not improve the world as a result; although a few rise above their base nature and do.

[@codaalive5076]

@@september1683 I prefer a little more humble approach despite having enough pretendiing; it seems they don't live on the same planet.

[@FromPovertyToProgress]

A much more cost-effective solution would be replacing old coal plants with new Combined Cycle Gas Turbines. Natural gas is far cheaper than nuclear and reduces carbon emissions by about two-thirds compared to existing coal plants.

[@timcertain5121]

What needs to be explained is that solar panels produce no energy at night ,so you have what's called the duck curve. This why coal fired power plants are inefficient because they can't compete with solar in the daytime, you can't run a coal plants only at night because the cost of running the plant at idle. And when you talk about nuclear it won't happen people in my area don't want carbon capture, combined with other devices would make coal real clean . One question I have had is with windmills blades wearing out where does the fine fiberglass strands go ?

[@factnotfiction5915]

> with windmills blades wearing out where does the fine fiberglass strands go ? the blades go to landfills the fiberglass off the windmills - straight into the biosphere (note - some wind advocates claim we 'could' recycle the blades; they seem fine with this not being the current state by as a future eventuality; and also they get quite heated that 'could' for nuclear SMRs, GenIV, etc is quite quite beyond the realms of reason and possibility and economics)

[@clarkkent9080]

The fiberglass probably goes to the same place that fiberglass insulation goes when old homes are torn down

[@aaroncosier735]

Fibreglass, embedded in epoxy. Like in a boat hull. You couldn't get the fine strands out if you tried. These are basically inert and occupy a fraction of the space taken by coal ash for the same amount of generation.

[@timcertain5121]

Your right just like boats fiberglass car hoods they do shed fibers thats why when you go past windmill farmes you can see piles of old blades . Because as they deteriorate they get out of balance so where does the fiberglass that wore off to make the blades out of balance go ?

[@clarkkent9080]

@@timcertain5121 What is your point? The fiberglass in the blades delaminate over time and need replaced. You see piles of used blades because they are no more hazardous than the fiberglass insulation in your home. They are much less hazardous since fiberglass insulation is 100% free fibers of GLASS without the resin bonding agent. Every hurricane season, millions of tons of fiberglass insulation fibers are dispersed to the environment. Why don't you complain about that. There is no law or regulation to dispose of them so why would the owners spend money when they can be left at the site. Now some firms are recycling them and if the owners can give them away to a recycler, they will. Your argument is just another BS argument against wind turbines, always looking for anything bad about free energy from the wind.

[@vijayanchomatil8413]

YES, and it's a brilliant idea! Replacing the boiler and condenser with a nuclear reactor connected to the generator will reuse the old existing grid lines and infrastructure.

[@clarkkent9080]

connecting a multi billion dollar new reactor to 60 year old coal plant components. What could go wrong?

[@vijayanchomatil8413]

@@clarkkent9080 Well, if you pay for it, maybe they can replace everything!

[@clarkkent9080]

@@vijayanchomatil8413 You could but you still need an expensive evaluation of the site for acceptability, cleanup of the coal ash, and cost to remove all the old equipment. Would it not be a better idea to site a new reactor at an old abandoned nuclear site where all the evaluations have already been done?

[@vijayanchomatil8413]

@@clarkkent9080 The cleanup is cheaper than the engineering and construction of a new infrastructure including the certification and delays.

[@clarkkent9080]

@@vijayanchomatil8413 Then why is Terrapower who is building their Natrium reactor at the site of a 60+ year old coal plant not using any of the plant systems or buildings? They only plan on using the power lines in the switchyard

[@SJ-xg1uf]

I was thinking, couldn't we put a MSR inside the plant?

[@atomicblender]

Basically yes. The idea is to reuse as much as possible

[@travismoore7849]

It would be possible to convert coal plants into waste to energy incinerators to get rid of garbage. Though I guess it is cleaner to convert them to natural gas.

[@markdavid7013]

If we intend to keep the "lights on" we're going to have to use Nuclear energy?

[@aaroncosier735]

A few points to raise: Capacity factor. Nuclear has a high capacity factor because it is inflexible. It is generating anyway, so the distribution network takes it. It gets paid for anyway through guaranteed purchase contracts, so the network takes it. Coal plant in fossil-only networks face a similar issue, the plant runs best at constant output, but demand varies widely throughout the day/night cycle. Coal can easily and most efficiently run at near 100% capacity factor, but is marginally easier to reduce output. If nuclear were required to load follow, the efficiency would drop substantially. Claiming coal has lower capacity factor because it partially achieves load-following seems hypocritical, since nuclear can barely do this necessary function it all, and the grid *needs* this function. I don't see how you can state that "SMR operating costs are usually lower than coal plants" really? In the advertising brochures maybe, but how many demonstrated grid scale examples are you basing this on? Waste disposal remains completely unaddressed. Eighty years plus so far. The upbeat position here seems to be based on some very optimistic assumptions that are unlikely to be realised.

[@factnotfiction5915]

> Capacity factor. Nuclear has a high capacity factor because it is inflexible. ... If nuclear were required to load follow, the efficiency would drop substantially. Yeeeeess, but! With the _amazing_ storage being developed for intermittent RE, we can deploy storage to load follow - and do so more efficiently with intermittent RE, because although RE is unpredictably intermittent, the demand load is _extremely_ predictable. I also want to point out, that intermittent RE is _completely_ unable to load follow; nuclear _can_ (although with the loss of efficiency that you mention). > Waste disposal remains completely unaddressed. Eighty years plus so far. eh, no big deal. There is so little of it, and there is no big rush to deal with it. Let's make a simple comparison - high level nuclear waste - 10% of GLOBAL electricity for the last 65 years: is about 370,000 tons (captured, stored, monitored - not in the biosphere - does not hurt anyone) This sounds like a lot, but compare to coal: 370,000 tons of pollutants pumped into the world's biosphere every 16 days to generate 2.5% of German electricity - not captured, not stored, not monitored - leads to direct negative health impacts. Alternatively, every 80 days, McDonald’s serves about 370,000 tons of fries globally. Again, leading to negative health impacts. :) www.factretriever.com/mcdonalds-food-facts

[@aaroncosier735]

@@factnotfiction5915 Yet another way to think about it: Storage is also a solved problem, pumped hydro has been operating at acceptable efficiency for over eighty years. If enough storage had been installed to permit nuclear and coal to operate at optimal efficiency, there would be enough storage to make renewables a doddle. "unreliably intermittent". Intermittent, yes. Unreliably, no. We have a pretty good idea of when the sun will rise, and wind sites are usually chosen for their consistency. Seems like one energy type need s storage to operate efficiently, the other needs storage to cover the lowest-demand period. But if you are concerned about facts, you need to remind yourself that the important thing about Spent Fuel is not the weight or volume. The critical factor is the radioactivity. By weight, 99% of all radioactive waste is already disposed. as Low Level Waste. By radioactivity, only 1% of all radioactive waste has been disposed. Not because it's too heavy, or too large. We have forklifts. A big hint comes from the disputes between DOD and DOE about who has responsibility for a small fraction of vintage wastes. They have been in court for decades. It is harder and more expensive than advertised. I'm totally happy for "poor little me" organisations like DOD to demonstrate how easy it is by doing it.

[@factnotfiction5915]

@@aaroncosier735 > I'm totally happy for "poor little me" organisations like DOD to demonstrate how easy it is by doing it. First, radioactive waste from military weapons programs are not a slam against civilian nuclear power. Secondly, the French, English, and Russian all reprocess fuel, have been doing so for decades, and these are proven, known technologies. Humanity does not have to 'prove' this can be done. It has been proven. Why isn't the US? Well, I'm not a politician, but it certainly isn't a technical issue.

[@factnotfiction5915]

@@aaroncosier735 > Yet another way to think about it: Storage is also a solved problem, pumped hydro has been operating at acceptable efficiency for over eighty years. If enough storage had been installed to permit nuclear and coal to operate at optimal efficiency, there would be enough storage to make renewables a doddle. Ok, but then why do we need the RE when we have Nuclear? Why is the goal 'to make renewables a doddle'? Why is the goal not 'to make a stable grid to support a strong economy'? > "unreliably intermittent". Intermittent, yes. Unreliably, no. We have a pretty good idea of when the sun will rise, and wind sites are usually chosen for their consistency. Sure, you can predict when the the wind blows and the sun shines, but so what? Example A: I have empty storage and I predict the wind will blow soon, and my storage will be full for peak demand - GREAT. Example B: I have empty storage and I predict the wind will NOT blow soon, and my storage will be EMPTY for peak demand - NOT SO GREAT. Vs in nuclear: Example C: I have empty storage and I know I can fill my storage for peak demand - GREAT. Now, you might say that in example B, we can mitigate that by calling around and asking big companies to lower their energy consumption, with the side effect of a negative impact on the economy - but why do that when with example C we don't need to even keep a list of phone numbers?

[@aaroncosier735]

@@factnotfiction5915 But we don't have nuclear, not much anyway. If you want *efficient* nuclear, then build the storage. Build the storage first, since existing nuclear and coal benefit anyway. As these get decommissioned, the already expanding renewables use the same storage. It's still there. Proposed nuclear can always claim that storage will make it more efficient in the proposals. Yes, we can predict when the sun will shine, and similar for winds in good locations. That lets us calculate just how much storage is needed till it shines again. As you say, we can also modulate demand, and consider importing from places where the sun *is* shining and the wind *is* blowing. Just like when your reactor is being refuelled, or gets derated for a defect, someone has to "ring around" to reduce demand or get coverage by someone else. Your option C is turning out very expensive, has never fulfilled the promise along the way, and claims it cannot afford to pay for it's wastes. By all means, build more, at double to triple the quoted price. Don't forget to include the price of storage so the inflexible hulk can genuinely do a bit of load following. Don't forget to include genuine permanent waste disposal plans and costs. At the moment investment is going into diverse renewables and storages. By all means put yours into nuclear if you like.

[@UQRXD]

Atomic Power but still have no idea what tpo do with all the waste that has to be stored for a thousand years. Right now it is all sitting at the plants in cooling pools or dry storage.

[@aaroncosier735]

They have less idea every year they put it off. Digging the repository will need fossil fuels, and those are getting more expensive. Reprocessing spent uranium fuel divides the storage into 1000 year and 100,000 year problems, which might be cheaper to address individually. Using the recovered plutonium and uranium produces MOX fuel (with a top-up from excess weapons plutonium), but spent MOX fuel is a whole new problem: It stays hotter for longer, and needs a bigger repository to space it out, or more expensive reprocessing, or both. So the majority of both sit in cooling pools, over 80,000 tonnes in pools in the US, plus a bit over 50,000 tonnes in dry casks. The longer it sits, the more the assemblies corrode and the harder it is to handle later.

[@canadiannuclearman]

This could have been done with Nanicoke Ont. Its great that there is no more coal burning in Ontario Canada. There is cleaner air in Ontario as a result.

[@TheSwissGabber]

The capacity factor is not only reflecting downtime! Nuclear plants cannot be ramped up and down as fast as coal, they HAVE to keep running. Coal plants can be throttled or shut down easily. Which is what they are mostly used for. --> The (fixed!) high capacity factor is a downside of the nuclear plant. You can't just look average energy output.

[@aaroncosier735]

Both coal and nuclear work best at constant output. Neither can load follow very well. Coal furnaces have a substantial wait time before restart as they have to cool and the systems for introducing powdered coal have to be cleaned and reset to the start condition. This turnaround time is comparable to the wait time for Xenon poisons to decay in a recently shut down reactor. Both have had improvements in load following, but fall far short of ordinary daily demand cycle.

[@chapter4travels]

All advanced (high-temperature) nuclear power plants can load follow better than coal or natural gas, and far more efficiently.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@chapter4travels Got a list of those? What proportion of generation do these represent?

[@chapter4travels]

@@aaroncosier735 Terra Power, Terrestrial Energy, ThorCon Power, Seaborg Industries, Copenhagen Atomics, Moltex Power, Exodys Energy, X-Energy, Toshiba, Flibe, GE Hitachi, Southern Company to name a few. What portion of generation do these represent today, right this second because that's all that counts? ZIP, ZERO NADA, NONE, BIG FAT GOOSE EGG. What portion of generation do these represent by 2100, and not just electricity but industrial heat and transportation fuel including diesel and jet fuel? 90-98% Wind and solar will be an embarrassing part of the past.

[@glennwest267]

Thorcon is pretty cool as well. And is replacing coal plants in its initial project. (Indonesia is looking at it for large scale deployment with coal plant cost.

[@fredhearty1762]

Nuclear plants are not even replacing retiring nuclear plants. Don't hold your breath for that to change. Until nuclear reactors are small enough to be factory-built and rail-transported (about 100 MWe), 'modular' tech isn't happening. For a GWe, a dozen reactors need to be installed -- 10 would be sufficient for 100% electric output, while 2 reactors are being refueled or in standby. Site crews would then be levelized year round.

[@clarkkent9080]

NuScale is proposing what you suggest and they have $2 billion in matching taxpayer funding. Here is how that is going. This is from the Des Moines Register an concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. It should be noted that NuScale said (Jan/2023) the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MW hour In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive. SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher. The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors per site but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.

[@aaroncosier735]

The smaller individual reactors get, the less efficient they can be, intrinsically. They lose more neutrons through the surface, and that has to made up by wasting more fissile fuel to make more. Waste production is proportional to fissile fuel used, not energy generated, so that's another cost that isn't factored in. It's not all sunshine and lollipops. Nuclear can do it, but investors have to understand that they will not make a single cent more than coal does today, and probably less.

[@chapter4travels]

What challenges??? The EPA and NRC, we can forget nukes replacing coal in America. But yes this strategy will be very successful in all other countries. Both the EPA and NRC would rather extend the life of these coal plants.

[@danekappler2422]

Your assessment that a coal plant has reduced production is only a factor of the "renewables" grid. When the sun is shining and/or the wind is blowing, the coal-fired power plant shuts itself off because the government gives extra money to the renewable producer for their power, but not to the coal. The electric company gets paid two paychecks for giving you solar or wind, but only one to give you coal power. A nuclear power plant takes several days to fire up after shutdown, so we can't power up and down as the weather wanes. The nuclear power plant where I work puts power on the grid all the time, but is paid nothing for it on a sunny or windy day. The coal plant is only shutting down for economics, not a shortage of capability.

[@clarkkent9080]

I never heard of the government paying renewables for their power. Utilities buy power from outside generators if needed not the government. You may be talking about tax credits and that is short term to help the industry just like the help the nuclear industry got for the last 70 years and is still getting.

[@factnotfiction5915]

actually, coal plants do have a c.f. of 60-75% even in a non-RE grid. I believe they need a lot of maintenance per the coal inputs and the ash removal bits, rather than the boiler+turbine bits

[@reason3581]

TerraPraxis together with Microsoft and others have developed the Repowering Coal platform to make this work in a way that is smoother and more standardized.

[@rogerdc7279]

Excelent idea, that of constructing new power generating power plants in replacement of coal ones. Some units of the coal plant can be used in a power generatiion, that can save costs. Don't forget that coal energy are used to generate steam to power the turbines/genetators. In a nuclear power is the same except the process of heat genetation. Also ground space and trained workers are readilly available. And there are very safe processes, like the Th reactors being developed which can improve the safety factor. The only thing left to consider, is what to do with the nuclear waste - Regenerate it in breeder reactors, or store it ? In any case, it is necessary extreme caution, on what can be used, recycled revamped and demolished. Time is running out...

[@clarkkent9080]

Terrapower is planning (and has been since 2016) to replace a 60 year old coal plant with a MSR reactor. Before you uncork the champagne, lets see how much of a 60 year old coal plant they decide to use with a nuclear plant that may last 40 more years. If that works out we can recycle junked cars from the 1950s but replacing the ICE with electric motors and batteries.

[@UQRXD]

Coal plants were only designed to last 50 years. Most industry has left the USA so large plants are no longer needed.

[@stanmitchell3375]

Power equipment is replaced, like pumps, turbines, boilers,pipes,burners,crushers

[@TheLiamster]

I think this is a great idea and I hope it happens one day. Natural gas plants should also be converted to use green hydrogen

[@canadiannuclearman]

The electrification of transportation is a key point. Gas to EV's

[@4QWzbaxSzUAq9]

Copenhagen Atomics... have you reviewed them?... enjoy your channel

[@brandonnn9543]

How about we don’t shut down cool fired plants

[@spacetimemalleable7718]

Govt should be subsidizing some of the transition. If the global goal is to reduce green house gases, it needs to take an active role. Of course the subsidies should be constantly monitored by outside reliable auditors to ensure waste is minimized and the goal can be attained in a timely fashion.

[@atomicblender]

@markaspen Amazing, that's hilarious!

[@trevorstepoo8838]

They can use clean coal

[@jeanlabrek8454]

Thorium/sodium nuke plants are the answer Not the actual plants accumulating dangerous plutonium wastes __ Coal plants can be powered with the new very efficient biomass boilers/burners.

[@perryallan3524]

What about the U234/U233/U234 waste from a thorium reactor?

[@jwestney2859]

If the electric demand is too low at night, then use the power at night to make green hydrogen.

[@benardmarx]

No, batteries.. 100 Hour backup is now possible

[@jwestney2859]

Batteries, of course, batteries. As quickly as we can make batteries. And make green hydrogen. And build more power lines to export electricity to Germany and all the other places where Putin is withholding gas in order to commit extortion. The old guy in the middle saying that carbon-free fission energy is bad? He is seriously out-of-touch. I am glad this old dude is on the panel because it demonstrates the dumb things that people say while they say they are being green.

[@aaroncosier735]

Expect a broad mixture of storage options: Pumped hydro, batteries, pneumo, kinetic, flywheels, hydrogen, synthetic fuels, Thermal storage, all sorts really. Of course, these all work for renewables and coal generation too.

[@skelafeti]

nuclear power is not green. Can I store the waste in your backyard? You think lithium mining/processing is clean?

[@canadiannuclearman]

Nuclear higher capital cost but lower running cost.

[@hikerJohn]

These plants are a national security issue, keep them running

[@madtscientist8853]

industry made the problem. Thay could fix it. As a customer We are forced to buy what is out there or attempt to make are own Thay

[@davidoldham1946]

Better just to keep them, I prefer my electricity reliable and plentiful, cultists need not apply.

[@yakovkosharovsky8487]

good luck finding a team of nuclear engineers in those small towns. There is no way that those SMR's will be built as separate units. It will have to be a huge cluster. but it wont. its just not economical. wind and solar are much, much cheaper. There are not enough morrons in the industry, to fund something with a return rate of 20 years.

[@aitorinarra]

The only problem of this great plan is that at this point only 116 people liked this video. We need to change people's perception if we're going to save the environment

[@terenceiutzi4003]

If they are clean coal plant run them flat out and drop the atmospheric CO2 and prove it is all lies!

[@CHAstaroth]

Germany goes out of nuclear energy back to coal… 😮 to protect mother nature…

[@samratdas386]

#RajKumarSingh #coalandrenewableenergy #NarendraModi

[@SkypowerwithKarl]

Nope, you can’t convert, but you may be able to use some of the transmission equipment in the area.

[@Nill757]

Steam turbine and generator in place? Why not?

[@SkypowerwithKarl]

@@Nill757 Like hooking up a V8 to a Honda civic transmission

[@Nill757]

@@SkypowerwithKarl How’s that? The US has 6 coal plants over 3000 MW, larger than any U.S. nuclear plant except Palo Verde in AZ. Steam is … steam. Nuclear uses lower temperature steam. Easier to switch to low temperature for the materials involved.

[@SkypowerwithKarl]

@@Nill757 It’s a volume(mass) and pressure. Turbines have to be matched to the stream generator. If you have ever had any experience working with the NRC you’d know if it’s not in the manual and not doctrine it doesn’t exist. They are a non adaptive, non thinking entity. This is why we will never see commercial LFTR reactors in the USA. It’s not in their documentation.

[@Nill757]

@@SkypowerwithKarl Yes, and new nuclear can be matched to mass and pressure. I’m aware of NRC rigidity and I agree they’ll never approve anything anywhere ever, the No Reactors Commission, unless they’re destroyed and rebuilt like an FAA or FDA (as some pres candidates call for). For instance, the NRC insists on control of steam turbine/generator as well when they should stop at the nuclear island. But that’s a different issue from V8 vs Honda Civic.

[@nibiruresearch]

Thank you for this clear and very realistic presentation of the facts around energy production. Lets go for the small modular reactors. In a few years we will know which version is the best. .

[@clarkkent9080]

A little detailed but some info on SMR in the U.S.. This is from the Des Moines Register an concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. It should be noted that NuScale said (Jan/2023) the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MW hour In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive. SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher. The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.

[@perryallan3524]

@@clarkkent9080 There are two key things missing from your analysis is that all 1st time construction project are far more expensive than building the 2nd example, which is more expensive than building the 3rd example - as the crews gain experience. There are real world projection on the price decline; and it occurs on nuclear plants as well. The key problem in the USA (and Europe) is that we forgot how to build nuclear plants (the QA and detail to design is totally unlike non-nuclear construction). If the same contractors that build Vogtle 3 & 4 were to tackle another pair of AP1000's the construction cost and timeline would decrease substantially. By the 3rd set prices would come down more. China and Korea have very experienced nuclear construction people and are building nuclear power plants on time and on budget. China built 4 AP1000's with only a slight delay on the 1st 2 as such. They are performaning so much better than the Chinese own developed reactor designs that China recently ordered 6 more AP1000's. The other truly major flaw in the data is that in the US we have separated the cost of building power generation units from the cost of building the transmission of that power to other locations. On that basis Solar and Wind is cheaper to build than a nuclear power plant. However, when you look at the cost to get the power from the solar panels, the wind-tower, or the nuclear power plant to say a major city... the numbers completely invert. It cost a fortune to build numerous small power transmission cables to connect to the grid from individual solar and wind units. Here in the USA the local electrical utility is responsible for the transmission and distribution cost (so you don't see it in the cost to build the unit). When you combine the cost Nuclear Power plants are the cheapest way to deliver a lot of power to the end customers. There have been multiple studies on this (by intentional energy groups); and it's why there are dozens of nuclear power plants under construction worldwide at any given time. Nuclear - even given its cost to build new units - delivers electricity to the end customers the cheapest in a large majority of cases in the world.

[@aaroncosier735]

@@perryallan3524 Are those costings complete? What is the maximum price for interment of fission products and transuranics, and demonstrated costs of the interment facility over at least a decade? How will increased MOX use impact reprocessing and disposal costs? See, I call bullshit on that. Nuclear is not cheapest, and is ONLY cheapest in your scenario if you get to build ten for practice and not count those costs in building an eleventh on budget (ah ha, a joke right?) Can you get an insurer to cover the overruns? Go on, you are certain. Get an engineer to provide a guarantee and pin his reputation on it and an in surer to pin their profits on it. Huge amounts of renewables can generate close to the user, reducing transmission costs. So can small scale storage. Lots of users can tolerate minor interuptions (they face them already) for lower costs or independence. For some, having the lights on when yours are out counts for a lot. The really big flaw is that nuclear is centralised, and some other bastard can cut you off. Meanwhile, renewables can be private, local or regional, or all three. In that worst case of totally off-grid: Many are opting for off-grid right now, just to give the bird to central generators. Others do so because a couple hundred meters of poles and wires cost more than a very complete off-grid. That revolution is creeping ever closer to the city. On grid it works better with access to locality or regional batteries to minimise dependence on expensive (but optionally deployed) genset backup. How many times *extra* will people pay for the privilege of subsidising inflexible nuclear that is at minimum ten to fifteen years away? Every year spent waiting is another year that individuals and municipalities and states buy and install more renewables and storage. If nuclear is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat, including waste disposal and genuinely lower costs, it better do so fast, with very minimal subsidy. I'm not saying it *can't* be done, I'm saying it CAN be done, but no one is demonstrating this. The claims have to be backed up by functioning plant and fully provisioned back-end financed at the same time as the front end.

[@DavidJohnson-yg8qm]

As an expower station worker I have to say, there is no climate catastrophe but yes it will be easy to change over the BOILERS which BOIL WATER to run turbines. Of course ordinary workers like me, without a DEGREE are far too UNEDUCATED to state the OBVIOUS.

[@clarkkent9080]

You are uneducated enough to not realize that coal and nuclear plants operate at different steam pressures and that secondary sides are customized to match the steam generator pressure and volume. Do you also realize that the coal plant is being shutdown because it is old and too costly to run and now you want to connect a nuclear plant with an additional 40-60 life? You absolutely would not be educated enough to work in a nuclear plant

[@BritishAnts]

Stock footage and no evidential material! Pontification at its finest! 😂 at least its not an AI led!

[@ryanwc67]

Fill them with batteries

[@intorsusvolo7834]

Turn it into an airsoft arena.

[@UQRXD]

Did you do any real research or just make this stuff up?

[@clarkkent9080]

This YTuber saw the same news article on this subject that I did more than a week ago. Any YTuber that sells merchandise is just in it for the money. They search the internet for subjects that hopefully someone else has done the research. Then they just plagiarize it and make a YT video and wait for the ad checks to roll in.

[@UQRXD]

@@clarkkent9080 You are so right.😇

[@clarkkent9080]

@@UQRXD There is good and bad information on the internet but it should never be taken at face value. And YTubers know what the cable news networks know and that is to gain viewers (subscribers) you have to tell the viewers what they want to hear. Concerning this topic, Terrapower (Bill Gates) is planning on building their Natrium reactor to replace a 60 year old coal plant in Wy. . The project has $2 billion in matching taxpayer money and I believe that the main purpose is political in trying to show that coal plant workers can transition to nuclear. If the projects ever starts it will be interesting how much of a worn out plant built in the 1960s that they will use.

[@billlyell8322]

I disagree this is NOT about environment or economics. It is ALL about politics. It about tyrants taking more power.

[@bobweiram6321]

It's all fine and dandy until the spent rods can no longer be cooled, or when the control rods fail die to a power outage. Nuclear power requires active safety mechanisms which makes its risks unacceptable considering the magnitude of the disaster.

[@clarkkent9080]

Atomic Blender....if you want more subscribers and views simply tell the truth about nuclear and the many recent failures. If you make a nuclear is great video, you have to ignore reality and facts. It is much easier to make realty videos about the many failures

[@fredericrike5974]

The loss of coal hauler jobs sill affect the railroads more that the site drivers. Additionally, tens of thousands of drivers will be sidelined by self driving vehicles within the next two decades.

[@hextechmagikarp4610]

Self-Driving is AI which contains flaws and riddled with programming errors. There is a reason why Teslas can't market that technology. It can only lock the wheel and pedal and manipulate it when needed. We still don't have accurate GPS map. All this technology requires linked network like ferris wheel.

[@gerhino7892]

who cares? there is a huge need for working people in other sectors, like the social sector.. they are just to lazy to adapt to new things and get their asses off of their "it's always been like this"-couch

[@gerhino7892]

@@markaspen yeah.. i obviously said "tiktoker" and definitely not "social sector"

[@fredericrike5974]

@@hextechmagikarp4610 At present, I agree. But ten years from now, I think you are not really seeing where this "unfinished" technology is taking us. And Tesla is only one of dozens of companies currently working on this.

[@fredericrike5974]

@@gerhino7892 There is some of that. no doubt. But a lot of it is industries that profit for years aren't willing to help pay for retraining, new employers want employees who "know their jobs" on day one and are very cheap about training- all leading to this point in time- low wages, huge corporate profits and dismal outlooks to the future. Your "huge need" doesn't seem to have programs to teach it either.

[@Paulftate]

Drill baby drill

[@samratdas386]

#PMO

[@danatool]

No time to wait for maybe teknologi. China have shown the way

[@clarkkent9080]

In China its not called the China syndrome its called the American syndrome.

[@ConanDuke]

No

[@offroadsnake]

coal plants. the next TSMC plants because. grafene. problem solved america you're welcome

[@Oliveir51]

Immature again. Fusion.might be the solution

[@drmosfet]

It's been a 80 year wait for fusion and a lot of promises in that time, and the only fusion that might have a chance of making a difference is Focus fusion. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z2GnpWekp5qalcU

[@rayw3294]

Nuclear fuel is a no brained. New coal plants do have soot and SO2 scrubbers. So no rush, so time to get it right around the world.

[@stevenbliss989]

Great, ULTR EVIL B.G. is in this! :(