Nuke's biggest problem is always not technical but the political one, delays and lawsuits lead to over budgets and therefore scrap or bankruptcy.
California slashes residential solar feed-in rates
- Thread starter OVERKILL
- Start date
Australia's biggest renewables firming hydro, $2B, due to be delivered in 2021 now won't be ready to post 2030, and is $12B...
And we need another 8 by 2030 to do the firming job...It's supposed to take some of the rooftop GW, and store them for the afternoon peaks
https://michaelwest.com.au/former-snowy-hydro-boss-shocked-over-cost-blowout/
About why homes were build with electric resistive (like there were anything else back then, no heat pump no condensing furnace), if it is anything like my parents and other apartments from the 60s, I can say it has to do with construction cost vs utility cost.
There is no way in heck people would build a building full of apartments with just a common water meter, let alone landlord paid hot water. The only conclusion I can think of was gas was cheap and water was cheap, and people just can't use that much. What cost money back then would likely be appliances, running gas pipe (construction cost, risk of leak), and if you expand that to ranges and dryer, people just use electric except when electric won't work (water heater, furnace).
I think a couple more decades everyone would replace resistive cook top with induction, and resistive water heater with heat pump, and most resistive dryer with heat pump. Maybe someone would build an induction molten salt "tankless" water heater to store energy from solar to get duck curve credit? Who knows? It may happen when interest rate dip to near 0 and everyone is coming up with startup ideas. For now we will still use natural gas and nuke, and let the duck curve "solve itself" eventually.
There is no way in heck people would build a building full of apartments with just a common water meter, let alone landlord paid hot water. The only conclusion I can think of was gas was cheap and water was cheap, and people just can't use that much. What cost money back then would likely be appliances, running gas pipe (construction cost, risk of leak), and if you expand that to ranges and dryer, people just use electric except when electric won't work (water heater, furnace).
I think a couple more decades everyone would replace resistive cook top with induction, and resistive water heater with heat pump, and most resistive dryer with heat pump. Maybe someone would build an induction molten salt "tankless" water heater to store energy from solar to get duck curve credit? Who knows? It may happen when interest rate dip to near 0 and everyone is coming up with startup ideas. For now we will still use natural gas and nuke, and let the duck curve "solve itself" eventually.
Here is the traded price of natural gas in $ US per thousand cu ft. There was a peak last summer but it’s back down again. Unfortunately the utility adds another $8 to the price and we end up with a $10 cost. Still, it’s competitive with electricity and I see HVAC companies move the set point of a customer’s heat pump to switch to natural gas backup at 20 F to get it to heat with natural gas instead of using the heat pump. The modern low temp heat pumps around here ( western Canada) can run as low as -5 F, but the efficiency drops and natural gas is currently the cheaper option at low temps. Enjoy.
Last edited:
Here is a modern low temp heat pump installation manufactured by Bryant. It has an integral natural gas condensing furnace enclosed with the heat pump heat exchanger. There is another popular unit which uses an electrical resistance strip heater for backup. For customers who are greenies the HVAC sales person will give them the one with the electrical backup because all the electricity here is from hydro and is carbon free, however when natural gas is cheap, it’s the way to go.
In the US sometimes this arrangement does happen on an retrofit in a home which has a relatively young gas furnace and the blower motor is in good condition. Thankfully being that the majority of the US population lives in a temperate climate Heat Pumps don't need gas backup.
Yes I am familiar with that family of reactorst. Those are very likely boiling water reactors and we don't want to build boiling water reactors because they have a tendency to blow up.
Yes all the technical problems were solved in the 1970s at the latest. Now it's all political.
France uses PWR’s. BWR’s don’t have a “tendency” to blow up regardless. BWR’s operate on about half the pressure and slightly cooler than PWR’s.
It depends on how you want to define political. To me its not political, its decades of bad management. There has always been opposition to nuclear power - its just grown a lot.
In the 50's and 60's the public was told the atom was magic and safe and we needed lots of power to beat the commies and the plants were built by Patriotic American iconic companies like GE and Westinghouse run by honorable men. So the public was on board.
However then you had Chernobyl and 3 mile island - and all of the sudden the magic atom wasn't so safe. Irrelevant of how you feel about those accidents, there in the public lexicon and won't change.
And those patriotic companies were found dumping PCB's in rivers and other public water supplies, amongst other things, and they were not so honorable after all.
Then after a few decades of cheap power the reactor is shut down followed by a site that has to be maintained for 10,000 years and nothing else can be done there.
Maybe opinions will change when were all sitting in the dark, but until then its a pretty big push.
Then explain why all 4 BWR tractors at Fukushima blew up, Chernobyl blew up and three mile island did not blow up?
So it looks like 5 points BWR and 0 points pwr, where points are bad like a golf score.
France must be using higher enriched uranium if they are only using BWR and can ramp the power up and down that much.
So it looks like 5 points BWR and 0 points pwr, where points are bad like a golf score.
France must be using higher enriched uranium if they are only using BWR and can ramp the power up and down that much.
The China Syndrome movie of 1979 sealed the fate of nuclear energy in California.
If the site can't be used for 10,000 years just keep building nuclear plants on top of old nuclear plants as long as the plant isn't on or close to a fault line, in a known tsunami zone or in the middle of a big city.
True if you do not have access to natural gas but gas heat and hot water is an advantage over an electric heat pump. Natural gas heating is less expensive and doesn't require the AC unit to function. (wear and tear)
Our home in SC had standard AC with gas heat on the first floor and a heat pump on the second floor. Since heat rises the second floor heat pump ran rarely.
The sierra club took money from the coal lobby and dedicated them selves to spreading lies about nuclear power and stopping nuclear power at all costs in California.
Opinions are changing more so oversea's now.
The failure of the South Carolina Nuclear plant construction was upsetting to me. I thought it was cool, that SC was building two of only three nuclear plants in the country at the time. This was taking place in Jenkinsville, less than 20 miles from our home. There is already an existing nuclear plant there and the two new ones to be added were being built by Westinghouse/Toshiba.
Many of the engineers lived in my community, many future engineers also bought homes there training in the new training center for what was going to be the new plants. I already knew when things were going south, they lost their jobs, young families, had to sell their homes and go to a place they could find employment.
As we know Westinghouse had major problems in construction, delays, swapping out parts from another construction program, teetering on bankruptcy which I believe it did. Scandals by SC people in public works covered it up, not that it was their fault but felt the pressure and they were hoping for the best that it would come together, it never did.
So we have two partially built Nuclear plants that will never be built. Billions lost, actually more than that. Call me crazy but with all the green earth people why didnt our government try to help out? (dont answer that, no politics)
Interestingly (I'm getting to the point of my post) Toshiba sold off a broken Westinghouse for 4.6 billion dollars, wow, it was a great deal as they found a buyer and the one who bought it is selling a stake in Westinghouse valuing the company at 7.9 billion dollars (link below) because of the rapid interest in Nuclear Power again. It's a big deal in the EU, they need energy and guess what America? Some day Americans will realize the sun dont shine at night and the wind doesnt blow all the time. Sooner or later you will have to pay attention to the most earth friendly power source of modern times = Nuclear.
SO that is the point of my reply to you, the world as you predict is already waking up and one day the rest of the ignorant population will wake up and stop living in some fantasy land/need to understand Nuclear is the only earth friendly answer for 24 hour electric backbone.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/dea...ners-buy-westinghouse-79-bln-deal-2022-10-11/
Last edited:
The Russians are some of the people behind the ending fossil fuel use as they want us to stop producing it so they have a bigger market.
Fukushima - was hit by a Tsunami and lost all power including back up generation. Only 1 of the 4 had any self cooling mechanisms and they melted down, not blew up. They may have blown up if not for the heroic efforts of the staff - who will likely all die of leukemia at some point.
Chernobyl blew up because they had a very unstable design - positive void coefficient - which was especially bad running at low percentages. Bad Design + bad training + operator error = boom.
3 mile island was not the reactor - it was a pump / bypass failure and the idiot operators kept silencing the alarm. When they finally figured out "hey, maybe this alarm we have been ignoring for hours actually means something" the issue was solved, but not before a partial melt down.
Highly simplified.
I have 7 nukes within 150 miles of me here in Illinois But no new ones for decades. The governor just vetoed a restart on construction as there is now a moratorium. And we are suppose to be all electric by 2050 or something like that.
They want you to use all electricity then ration it to control you. It's pretty simple. And there are many dollars to be skimmed off government programs like Rivian loans. https://stories.rivian.com/vehicle-plant-tour-normal-illinois
But I believe when this all gets shaken out electricity will be produced on site on demand wirelessly aka Nikola Tesla.
But for the current state of things here is my COOPs renewable policy.
https://www.eiec.org/net-billing
Yes, our new home in NC, our electric co-op offers net metering. They pay you full retail price for excess energy that you produce.
Thing is energy is so cheap here that few bother with panels. the 24 hour residential rate here is 10 cents kWr.
You have the option to go to peak demand metering but not worth it, unless maybe you have an EV as the ultra low nighttime rate is around 4cents.
Our co-op also offers rental solar panels on their solar fields. I submitted an application (for a fun thing) but they are all rented out, I am on a waiting list that most likely will never see the light of day as there are roughly 30 homes on the list ahead of me.
WIth that said, they are considering building a 3rd field, so maybe before I die I will get some. I put in for 30 panels to rent. Like I say, this is for fun, to watch my electric bill. Electric is so cheap here it's not worth an investment to buy and install at our house. I figure with the 30 panels I will save maybe $15 a month. Im just curious for a fun project. Furthermore there is no commitment at all, you can rent month to month or you can buy a 20 year lease.
AS you know, Co-Op electric is fantastic, run by the rate payers, owned by the rate payers. My last Co-Op in SC (I now live in NC) which I was a member of the electric co-op there, will continue to send me checks every year for unused capital credits.
I have roughly $900 left that they will send, little by little to me each year, to my new home, in a different state with a different electric utility which lucky enough is another Co-Op.
Last edited:
Similar threads
- Locked