The Nuclear Power Thread

gmax137

I suggest you do some looking into Price Anderson. Try to limit your research to the facts of the law rather than reading the opinions of either anti-nuke or pro-nuke bloggers. Both 'sides' tend to describe the issue in a light that supports their opinions on nuclear power. So, focus on the facts and draw your own conclusions.

zapperzero

Lo and behold, I do NOT live in the US. The situation in my country is as I present it... but feel free to cite law at me or show me a private insurer.

gmax137

sorry. I thought you had mentioned living in California. I must have had you mixed up with someone else. I don't know anything about the laws outside the US.

zapperzero

So tell me about the laws and customs inside the US. Can I build a NPP there and buy insurance for it on the open market? Can I get, say, a house or a car insured against radioactive contamination?

mheslep

Price Anderson indemnifies all US operators, where the operators collectively pay for the first $13B, govt. covers anything above. So there should be no market for any private insurance for the operators. France has something similar.

wizwom

You did your math wrong. The operating cost for the nuclear plants in France is $11.9 billion, for 407.9 Billion kWh. That works out to operations cost of 2.8 cents per kWh. The YEARLY AMORTIZED cost for the development, deployment and decomissioning will work out to the same order of magnitude, $11.6 Billion, or another 2.6 cents; that's why they have the 6.4 cents pet kWh figure.
Of course, here in the U.S. we are running plants safely to 60 years. No reason the French can't.

zapperzero

That's just wishful thinking coached in numbers and salesman speak. "It's not 15k EUR for this 7.5k EUR car, sir! It's just 5 EUR/day for the next 15 years!".

Where is the cost of final storage? Indeed, where will final storage be?

By the way, you all should be very very scared by this, from the intro to the fine article:
The EROEI of France has dipped below 1, while no-one was looking.

wizwom

"disposing of radioactive wastes are estimated to be €79.4 billion ($103.8 billion)" - t doesn't mention where. This is mainly effluent from the reprocessing, the very long half-life fissile material is being actively reprocessed and reused.
As to where - just off the top of my head from a discussion with a French Nuclear engineer last year (which may be VERY off) I believe they were planning a bedrock mine site for sequestering.

wizwom

No - its like saying the car is 7.5K euros, and its paid for with a loan, and costs another 7.5k Euros to run. You are being disingenuous.

You seem to have missed it:
These costs do not include the decommissioning costs already paid, for 8 power plants and the prototype. For the purposes of the article, the construction and decommissioning costs were lumped together for all of these, which worked out to €18 billion ($24 billion).

zapperzero

Yes, I missed the part where there is a permanent storage facility in France. Is there? I am only aware of the research facility in Meuse/Haute-Marne, which is due to transition to actual operation as a storage facility, if all goes well, in 2025

zapperzero

It seems those funds that are set aside to pay for decommissioning US NPPs, really aren't.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/sc...ewanted=1&_r=1

wizwom

The hurdle is not financial so much as regulatory. For example, Zion, which now has been closed 14 years, is still only defueled.
http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decom...units-1-2.html

zapperzero

Did you at least read the article?

Astronuc

It looks like Gen-IV is quietly disappearing, or actually is being subsumed by the SMR program.
https://smr.inl.gov/ (at the moment, the image on the opening page is that of an SMR (sodium-cooled fast reactor) taken from Gen-IV).

The next big thing is accident tolerant fuel (ATF) in LWRs and other systems.


Meanwhile - "Is Thorium A Magic Bullet For Our Energy Problems?"
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201205044

wizwom

We've had quite a few guest lecturers on Gen-IV reactor concepts come to MS&T. And at least one professor has modified his classes to try to prepare us for working with HTGR or molten metal cooling and power systems.

pm35

With nuclear there is always a low probability of a major disaster of which we have now had 2 in the last 30 years.

Imagine a worse disaster than the tsunami: How about a massive solar event knocking out off-site power to hundreds of reactors - all cooking off and relying on those diesel generators which may or may not be available. Very low probability, but very high consequences.

.....but the fatal blow to nuclear is really the price tag of new plants - which increases every time a new flaw is exposed. A couple of new plants will be built in the US using massive government subsidies form the 2005 energy act, after that it's dead in the US.

mheslep

Such a solar event would have no effect on the reactors itself.