There is almost no way this doesn't end up wasting an enormous amount of money, while only having a slim chance of ever coming online, while only having a slim chance of actually lowering energy costs.
If you are gonna blow $10 Billion on a 10 year nightmare project, just buy a ton of solar, wind, and batteries to get 2GW in 5 years.
LightBug1 6 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
45 seconds ago [-]
fsckboy 6 minutes ago [-]
>actually lowering energy costs
isn't green energy worth higher energy costs?
PaulHoule 21 minutes ago [-]
It's easy to say but not so easy to do.
The two Western designs built in the last generation are the EPR and the AP1000. The EPR is so unconstructable that it could have been designed by Amory Lovins to put the nails in the coffin of nuclear power. The supply chain for the AP1000 is centered in China. If it wasn't for problems of war and peace the rational thing to do might be ask the Russians to come in and built a VVER.
GE is pushing the BWRX300 which might get some cost reductions because it doesn't need a steam generator, but the small size doesn't help the economics and the cost numbers they are talking about are amazingly low.
SoftTalker 13 minutes ago [-]
Smaller scale can make construction more practical though, even if the economics are worse than the theoretical best. Billions have been lost on unfinished large-scale nuke plants more than once, because they take too long, are too complex, and get more and more mired in politics as the years drag out. A small plant that could be online in months or at most a year or two from start of construction is way more pragmatic.
coldpie 26 minutes ago [-]
Great news! Nuclear is a critical component for the non-carbon energy infrastructure we're building. Yes, it's expensive, but the only way to make it cheaper is to invest in rebuilding the expertise we stupidly threw away over the past 5 decades. Paying for past mistakes always sucks, but it's better than not doing it and digging the hole even deeper.
bryanlarsen 13 minutes ago [-]
Nuclear is a very poor complement for solar & wind. To complement solar & wind, you need dispatchable power to supply power while the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
Most nuclear plants can't do that, they need to run 24/7. Some can, but they're horrendously inefficient and expensive to run that way.
sxg 1 minutes ago [-]
Can you clarify? I thought the idea was to run nuclear 24/7 to provide a steady, base rate of power while solar and wind provide complementary power that can be quickly ramped up or down.
coldpie 2 minutes ago [-]
> you need dispatchable power to supply power while the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing
Fair. What do you suggest instead?
thinkingtoilet 17 minutes ago [-]
Is it critical these days? I am by no means against nuclear energy, and if we had been building reactors these last 50 years the world would be a better place. With things like solar, wind, geo-thermal, etc... is it still smart to invest this much money into nuclear power? Wouldn't it be better to invest in solar at this point?
coldpie 12 minutes ago [-]
I have yet to see a convincing analysis that renewables+storage can cost-effectively power all the homes in Minnesota, where I live, through our 4+ month-long winters. The days get very short, the Earth tilts away from the sun, cloud-cover and snowfall is frequent, and going 24+ hours without power for heat can be fatal, not just inconvenient.
I'd welcome someone to try to run the numbers on this. I tried myself, but I just don't have the expertise. Don't forget to account for almost all of our current heating coming from natural gas burned on-premise. Then, expand your analysis to include all buildings in all northern climes. Is there even enough materials on the planet to build all those batteries? Do batteries even work at -40 degrees? And that's just one set of challenges, every area has similar but different problems for renewables to tackle.
The answer is both: put huge money into renewables and into nuclear. Nuclear is a proven tech. It works. We understand it. We stupidly threw away all of our skill to build it, and put up huge regulatory roadblocks. But those are solvable human problems, if we care to do it.
Storage for renewables is still a huge question mark, which we should also dump a ton of money into, but we need a solution today. Nuclear is here.
horsawlarway 11 minutes ago [-]
I think solar plus storage will likely be the better play.
I think nuclear is a thing we should have done fifty years ago in spades.
I'm not sure it's a thing we should do today when the economics behind solar are just so, so much stronger.
I'd really love to see this investment go to storage projects instead.
Battery tech finally seems to be moving, and I'd like to see the US be able to make plays on the LFP/Sodium battery fronts far more than I want overpriced power from nuclear.
zbrozek 5 minutes ago [-]
I'm not an expert, but I suspect there will be a few driving use cases. Electrifying places far from the equator means heat pumps and/or district heating and providing for their power demand in the dark. In some places wind can do that, but not everywhere.
There are also loads that want very large, high-availability power and/or process heat. Reactors would pair well with things like metal refining or electrolysis to get the hydrogen for ammonia production.
At the end of the day, there's never one source of energy which is a silver bullet for everything and the best approach is probably a diverse mix of supply.
SoftTalker 10 minutes ago [-]
The unsolved problem with solar and wind is storage. You still need electricity at night or when the wind isn't blowing.
It was never cheap even with the expertise and such a kind of centralized energy generation is a bad idea.
ecshafer 15 minutes ago [-]
I am hoping they build this in Oswego on top of the other reactors being built in 9 mile. Lake Ontario has an inexhaustible amount of cold water, and there's plenty of space up there.
kevin_thibedeau 8 minutes ago [-]
This needs to be in Western New York. The existing plant for the region is operating on an an extension that expires the earliest of the bunch in 2029. When it goes, electricity rates are going to skyrocket without a replacement.
amanaplanacanal 30 minutes ago [-]
Why wouldn't the governor solicit bids for energy, and let the companies that actually build and run generation capacity decide the cheapest way to do that? Having the governor choose seems weird to me.
belorn 11 minutes ago [-]
Technology neutrality is fairly important. The role of the government should be in controlling the requirements which has a collective/social cost, like emissions, grid stability and price variability (as those are things that voters will demand from the government, as has been demonstrated in EU during the energy crisis). As long any company is willing to provide similar services under similar requirements, what technology they choose to use may be better determined by market forces rather than political choices.
What they should not do however is to simply look at potential generation capacity and have that be the only important criteria. Voters has clearly demonstrated that they will vote for politicians that can promise stable grid and stable pricing, rather than having those being controlled by the market.
coldpie 20 minutes ago [-]
The market is famously terrible at pricing in externalities and accounting for long-term needs. I think if you used the government to force bidders to account for those, you'd just end up in the same place.
zamadatix 10 minutes ago [-]
NYPA does build and run generation capacity, it's just the state owned utility. Besides, this is a policy and strategy push instead of a lowest-bidder ask.
cool_dude85 18 minutes ago [-]
Not an unreasonable choice if externalities such as carbon (and mining, etc. in the case of nuclear) are taken into account. And suppose you price carbon in, how do you actually produce a real carbon sink at the assumed cost and scale if nat gas wins the bid?
LeafItAlone 15 minutes ago [-]
Are you suggesting letting private companies whose entire purpose is to make the most amount of profit for their shareholders to be the ones that decide what is best for the people of the state?
Workaccount2 12 minutes ago [-]
Because it would be natural gas.
nxm 33 minutes ago [-]
“Bowing to anti-nuclear fears, New York chose to shut down a reliable and safe source of energy—and now burns more fossil fuels than before.”
perihelions 23 minutes ago [-]
The same far-sighted leaders who permanently shuttered 2 GW of nuclear power, in a time of low electricity prices, would like to take credit, please, for their aspirational concept of a plan for building 1 GW of nuclear. To alleviate high electricity prices.
idiotsecant 34 minutes ago [-]
We will see. It's unfortunate but there is a long list of attempted nuke construction that ends up billions of dollars in the hole before the first mwh is made.
cool_dude85 31 minutes ago [-]
And, funny enough, often the utility company can raise rates to cover these losses! Easy money and you don't have to build a thing.
Archelaos 12 minutes ago [-]
And if companies were obliged to insure their power plants properly, it would cost many, many billions more. It is the same old story: socialise risks and privatise profits.
ImHereToVote 28 minutes ago [-]
I love that nuclear is just far too dangerous when it comes to powering peoples homes. Obsoleting workers with AI however.....
Rendered at 14:12:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
If you are gonna blow $10 Billion on a 10 year nightmare project, just buy a ton of solar, wind, and batteries to get 2GW in 5 years.
isn't green energy worth higher energy costs?
The two Western designs built in the last generation are the EPR and the AP1000. The EPR is so unconstructable that it could have been designed by Amory Lovins to put the nails in the coffin of nuclear power. The supply chain for the AP1000 is centered in China. If it wasn't for problems of war and peace the rational thing to do might be ask the Russians to come in and built a VVER.
GE is pushing the BWRX300 which might get some cost reductions because it doesn't need a steam generator, but the small size doesn't help the economics and the cost numbers they are talking about are amazingly low.
Most nuclear plants can't do that, they need to run 24/7. Some can, but they're horrendously inefficient and expensive to run that way.
Fair. What do you suggest instead?
I'd welcome someone to try to run the numbers on this. I tried myself, but I just don't have the expertise. Don't forget to account for almost all of our current heating coming from natural gas burned on-premise. Then, expand your analysis to include all buildings in all northern climes. Is there even enough materials on the planet to build all those batteries? Do batteries even work at -40 degrees? And that's just one set of challenges, every area has similar but different problems for renewables to tackle.
The answer is both: put huge money into renewables and into nuclear. Nuclear is a proven tech. It works. We understand it. We stupidly threw away all of our skill to build it, and put up huge regulatory roadblocks. But those are solvable human problems, if we care to do it.
Storage for renewables is still a huge question mark, which we should also dump a ton of money into, but we need a solution today. Nuclear is here.
I think nuclear is a thing we should have done fifty years ago in spades.
I'm not sure it's a thing we should do today when the economics behind solar are just so, so much stronger.
I'd really love to see this investment go to storage projects instead.
Battery tech finally seems to be moving, and I'd like to see the US be able to make plays on the LFP/Sodium battery fronts far more than I want overpriced power from nuclear.
There are also loads that want very large, high-availability power and/or process heat. Reactors would pair well with things like metal refining or electrolysis to get the hydrogen for ammonia production.
At the end of the day, there's never one source of energy which is a silver bullet for everything and the best approach is probably a diverse mix of supply.
What they should not do however is to simply look at potential generation capacity and have that be the only important criteria. Voters has clearly demonstrated that they will vote for politicians that can promise stable grid and stable pricing, rather than having those being controlled by the market.