that’s the problem with nuclear, you are always paying for a bespoke Bugatti when you need Camry. As a consequence new reactors make no sense in the marketplace as its always more expensive than other sources like LNG or even coal. Vogtle 3 and 4 are billions over-budget and Georgia power customers are paying a surcharge on electricity for them when they came online in '23 and '24.
1 Like
Obstruction by regulation always equals excessive costs, usually by design.
1 Like
Cleanest, and the safest out of any energy source ever harvested. Mathematical fact.
1 Like
That would have come down overtimes, once nuclear power becomes acceptable again companies would be competing for new designs etc.
But why should they? specially when we know the radical left will cut their legs out from underneath em.
I have no problem using caution…but come on man, what the left has done basically destroyed nuclear power industry.
That is down.
Vogtle is 15B/GW and all the imaginary SMRs creep up there as they get less imaginary.
I just say 10B–with the hypothetical savings already baked in–because it doesn’t matter. It’s still not competitive.
Cut Vogtle fully in half, to 7.5B/GW and it’s still the most expensive thing on the showroom floor.
I love that car analogy.
Definitely feels like we’re customers in the Bugatti dealership wasting everyone’s time with that Camry budget.
Georgia Power customers got their month of fun highway pulls. Now they’ll have to deal with the generational debt they were talked into financing.
Analogy holds for Westinghouse and Southern Nuclear too, as scumbag salesmen.
And they’ve done it in favor of systems that absolutely cannot keep up with the needs for power.
Look at all the Cali blackouts.
1 Like
Also assumes that the existing bureaucrats are less biased than the other. This is not self evident from our history with bureaucracies.
Your main concern should be introducing a bias in favor of submitted designs. Every bolt, bend, and alloy needs to be doubted. New ideas should face the most rigorous gauntlet possible.
The way you’re all assuming we can speed up the process by inserting a political nominee is dangerous.
NuScale sought approval for the 77 MW design to improve economics and performance of its planned small modular reactors (SMRs), after having originally received NRC approval in 2020 for a 50 MW reactor design.
“We now have an American technology that is near-term deployable,” Hopkins said. As many as 12 of the 77 MW reactors can be put together in a plant, he said, which would be about the size of a typical conventional reactor.
Nuscale upsized reactor approved.
Now customers only have to duplicate containment costs 12 times over for the same output as a typical reactor.
If the government really thinks SMR is the future they need to go into a public/private partnership with Nuscale and/or other companies and roll out dozens at a time. The government can get warrants and in turn provide low interest financing and equally important insurance. This isn’t even to save money but to insure faster rollout. Nuscale deployment cost estimates per KW were never on par with LNG even the 77MW version won’t be cheaper, but it will allow it to be viable in the marketplace for select use cases like supplying electricity to smaller towns, rural areas or massive corporate entities like AI data centers.
1 Like
A good look into the environmental assessment process that gets scapegoated for all the nuclear industry’s struggles.
Palisades’ EA is already done way before Holtec planned to start sleeving the generators on their most aggressive timeline at the end of this year.
People who pay attention will find, as always, the hardest part of building a nuclear reactor is the actual engineering megaproject and its financing. Nothing got held up by a handful of ecologists writing their nerdy reports.
I think the biggest roadblock to those ideas will be other energy lobbys that won’t appreciate the government insulating SMRs from that much financial risk. And they’ll have really good arguments because alternatives are way cheaper.
If the money is going to be spent anyway, why not send it on the gas company this congressman likes, or the solar company that congressman likes, instead of nuclear that hardly anybody likes when it’s their own backyard.
I don’t think Terrapower out in Wyoming would’ve survived if Bill Gates was a politician beholden to the locals for his job. Politicians who support SMRs as much as you suggest will face those same headwinds with less money and a weaker stomach for resistance.
trump in pittsburgh at energy summit. backing the construction of 10 new westinghouse AP1000 nukes!
plus 92 bil in energy investments in PA
It involves the construction of six new nuclear plants across TVA’s seven-state service region. Each of these new facilities will be powered by 12 individual NuScale Power Modules (NPM).
Why 72 SMRs instead of 6 AP1000s?
If TVA money starts exchanging hands, this is naked fraud.
Been waiting a couple months now for this to be anything but an announcement with no customers. The nuclear industry should spend less time throwing parties for itself.
Under the terms of the October deal, Westinghouse could spin out as a separate, publicly-traded company with the U.S. government as a shareholder.
The agreement provides for the US Government to arrange financing and facilitate the permitting and approvals for new Westinghouse nuclear reactors to be built in the US, with an aggregate investment value of at least US$80 billion, including near-term financing of long lead time items. Once constructed, the reactors are expected to generate reliable and secure power for the American grid, including powering significant data center and compute capacity to drive growth in artificial intelligence in the United States.
They’re dressing it up as some weirdo capitalist investment scheme, but it’s just the federal government taking control of Westinghouse and paying 80 billion dollars for AP1000s.
A big centralized directive like this was the only way another one would get built on this continent.
a France type partnership with nuclear has to happen for wide deployment and cut down costs but have no interest in deploying gen3 AP1000. If the US is deploying 10+ gen3 then go for the larger Chinese designs based on Westinghouses tech like the CAP1400.
Appears that Japan is also investing this and other US based nuclear projects. They will probably be providing parts for some of it. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Drives Forward Billions in Investments from Japan – The White House
1 Like
