Construction of two new advanced nuclear reactors canceled in Carolina

Due to excess costs ($40 billion), these projects have now been cancelled, leading to only two reactors now being built in the entire USA.

www.nytimes.com...

Sort of sad:
www.nytimes.com - U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned...

“This was a first-of-a-kind project, so it was always going to be hard,” said Rich Powell, executive director of the ClearPath Foundation, a clean-energy group in Washington. “But you can also see this as a symptom of a broader problem. We’ve let our nuclear industry atrophy for 30 years, and we’ve lost the robust supply chains and expertise needed” in building reactors.

The issue is carbon emissions would have be taxed very high for nuclear to have its renaissance.

Combined cycle gas is not terrible though.
www.c2es.org - Natural Gas | Center for Climate and Energy Solutions...

...High efficiency combined cycle plants emit less than half the CO2 per megawatt-hour as coal power plants, and operate with a 50 – 60 percent thermal efficiency range...

Again, regarding nuclear:
www.forbes.com - Steven Chu Criticizes Clean Power Plan For Neglecting Nuclear...

"Even though the Clean Power Plan says we need nuclear and maintains the same ratio, they give no credit for it," Chu said during a debate at the Silicon Valley Energy Summit hosted by Stanford University. “We should make a Clean Power Plan that’s based on clean energy, not renewable energy.”

The Clean Power Plan allows states to count new nuclear plants and uprates at existing plants toward their clean energy mandates, but it does not give extra credit to existing plants, as the nuclear industry wanted, to help them compete with cheaper energy.

Steven? Who is that you ask? From a liberal leaning site:
www.opednews.com - Steven Chu, Supporter of Nuclear Power, Resigns as U.S. Energy Secretary...

But it's hard for Chu and many other scientists out of the national nuclear laboratory system to acknowledge the deadliness of the technology which is the basis for most of their work.

Below is a recent talk he did:

It was explained on slashdot. The nuclear industry wanted to build new cleaner safer reactors with more digital instrumentation and monitoring, and decommission the old reactors. The green lobby groups didn't want any new reactors built while still have the old reactors decommissioned. So the compromise position is to keep the old reactors running past their original lifetime and not build any new reactors.

Westinghouse Nuclear went bankrupt. I think it was after Toshiba bought them. Now both companies are struggling especially Toshiba. Westinghouse did not have this problem in China (behind schedule and over budget) so their reactors are still being built. Toshiba can't absorb that loss either. The South Carolina plants were almost guaranteed to not be built due to the financing.

As Toshiba asked for restructuring, they want to keep Toshiba Power as a separate entity.

Here's why. (I like this idea!)

It is called the Allam Cycle. Instead of steam being used to turn a turbine they are using carbon dioxide as the working fluid (it is in a supercritical state where it acts as something between a liquid and a gas). To get the Supercritical CO2 (SCO2), they burn natural gas in oxygen then add some more heat. It is kept in a closed loop until they feel it is too costly to heat back up then shuttled off to a holding area. SCO2 is returned back to regular CO2 for sale to anybody looking for some.

Despite the article title, Toshiba Power has developed and delivered a SCO2 turbine to a demo plant in Texas. They started construction last year and it should be operational this fall. Toshiba can sell these and still be viable. And keep tons of CO2 from being puked into the atmosphere.

Forbes.cm - Who Needs Nuclear? Toshiba Is Developing A New Zero-Carbon Power Source.

a reply to: stormcell

The Fukushima power plant was built back in the 1960's and was one of those older designs.
Chernobyl was an older RBMK graphite moderated design as well IIRC.
The newer nuclear plant designs should have evolved into safer and more reliable systems.
Fail safe engineering is expensive and a lot of the original nuclear experts have long since retired from the industry.

Global oil prices have not risen as quickly as predicted, so there is no immediate need for extra grid capacity to charge electric cars.

Could make a good infrastructure battle someday though.

originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: stormcell

The Fukushima power plant was built back in the 1960's and was one of those older designs.
Chernobyl was an older RBMK graphite moderated design as well IIRC.

Chernobyl was a weapons production reactor that also sold power.
articles.latimes.com...

It was unsafe because of the design needed to produce weapons grade materials.
the russian government knew it was unsafe and did not care.

originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: stormcell

The Fukushima power plant was built back in the 1960's and was one of those older designs.
Chernobyl was an older RBMK graphite moderated design as well IIRC.
The newer nuclear plant designs should have evolved into safer and more reliable systems.
Fail safe engineering is expensive and a lot of the original nuclear experts have long since retired from the industry.

Global oil prices have not risen as quickly as predicted, so there is no immediate need for extra grid capacity to charge electric cars.

Could make a good infrastructure battle someday though.

The insurance is the killer for nuclear power. After Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear plant owners have to pay premiums that would cover the cost of an insurance payout for everyone in a 60 mile radius. That really puts the cost overhead into the range of national governments and international consortiums.

a reply to: stormcell

Well if there was an international consortium controlling the nuclear power industry globally it would have to be a black project run outside public scrutiny. Otherwise the divide and conquer tactics the MSM uses to keep border tensions high would not be very effective. Maybe having little Kims nuclear experts attend seminars at places like Los Alamos makes sense for a breakaway civilization.

originally posted by: stormcell
The insurance is the killer for nuclear power. After Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear plant owners have to pay premiums that would cover the cost of an insurance payout for everyone in a 60 mile radius. That really puts the cost overhead into the range of national governments and international consortiums.

Insurance is one problem. Another is that the US still has no plans on how to safely dispose of nuclear waste. The first nuclear plant never should have been built until waste disposal plans were in place.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

With increased concerns about nuclear waste, breeding fuel cycles became interesting again because they can reduce actinide wastes, particularly plutonium and minor actinides.[12] Breeder reactors are designed to fission the actinide wastes as fuel, and thus convert them to more fission products.

They have mountain tunnels already dug for nuclear waste but it would be nice if they built cleaner cycling reactors that used the shorter lived actinides.