A modular nuclear reactor has been approved, but an actual functioning example will probably be 10 years away at minimum, and may not find customers anyway -- ever -- because of the rapid pace of renewables hitting the grid.
~ ~ ~
I've spent a few hours going through the comments on this, and it's one of the best cost/benefit time ratios in the last few months I can remember. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07 ... or-design/
Examples:
johnsonwax wrote:Finance.randomname19937 wrote:What's happened to the world, seriously? We have a small reactor that was undergoing certification for six years and it will be another 8 until there's a power plant that uses it. That's 14 years.
Meanwhile, fifteen years is how long it took France to realize the Messmer plan - going no (or insignificant) nuclear in 1973 to 60% nuclear in 1988. They built 56 large reactors during that time. Why can't other countries do the same? The technology only got better and the reactors got safer since then.
China is structured to speed/time-to-market. Preservation of capital isn't a big worry. Just build the factory and figure out what to use it for later. In the process you might burn some capital.
The US is the reverse - you want money for a factory - send us certified documents from all of your suppliers, a market demand study, and so on. The US is fucking drowning in capital and it's the hardest goddamn thing to get your hands on because finance is an industry unto itself - unless you're in California and can get it from VC. VC is the only bright spot in the US because it works like China - throw money at Instagram, Rivian, and Juicero and get them on the market ASAP - odds are one of them bill hit it big, and who cares if the others burn the cash, the big winner will cover the losses of the others. This is why I said above that this is DOA in the US. The only real source of capital in the US that can make this work isn't interested in the economics that surround it. They're much more interested in destroying the economics that surround it for a system that allows them to bring higher value-add products/services to market faster.
Ironically, for all of China's focus on time to market (which is why every tech company manufactures there) they failed to recreate Silicon Valley's VC industry, and as a result Shenzhen has largely failed China's goals. It's so massively underfunded that it only works as a western intermediary where the profits accrue further up the value chain leaving Shenzhen as a place where capital still needs to ride in from western companies. Local startups can't get anything. The real question is whether the US or any other western nation can replicate Shenzens supply chain and time to market benefits. In the US it can only happen if a state makes it happen - nationally, everything has to get geographically diluted so massively due to Congress that no economies of scale can be achieved. Maybe NY or CA can pull it off. Texas has sworn off tech for culture war rather than let the state turn blue. They're actively trying to drive tech out of the state right now.
and
johnsonwax wrote:So, this is 100% wrong. In 49 states, the economics of the power grid are centered on activities that increase rates and increase consumer bills. You don't make more money by selling less of something, or selling it cheaper, and there's no viable way in a cartel environment short of massive government regulation to change that. Nuclear might lead to higher utility revenue and profits, or to lower operating costs, but it won't lead to lower rates or lower bills. There is nothing, anywhere, in the US to compel lower rates. And the only way to lower bills is conservation.
The exception is California where the power market is regulated in a manner that rates are tied to the inverse of consumption. The way to get higher rates in CA is to get per capita consumption to go *down*. For every $2 in reduced consumption per capita, the utility gets to raise rates to recover $1. The consumer keeps the other $1. That's why CA has very high *rates* but relatively low *bills*. We've spent 40 years investing in efficiency and household generation.
This is why CA leads the nation in meeting climate targets regarding the grid (CA struggles on transportation where sufficiently clever solutions haven't yet materialized) because quite simply we use about half as much power per capita as the average American (¼ of the average Texan) and there are positive feedback loops both for consumers (you get to keep half of your savings) and producers (they get to keep the other half) which allows for good economy of scale solutions. If my utility can buy LEDs in volume for less than half of what I can buy them for, then they just buy them and hand them to me because they'll get a return faster than waiting for me to buy them due to that 'profit' split.
But the other advantage of this is that the delta between generation cost and residential rate is extremely high, which permits a HUGE number of new ideas to be tried. If you are selling power close to cost, you can't afford any climate mitigating solutions that raise costs because you don't have the margins for it. The wholesale/retail delta in CA is large enough that writing off stranded assets is pretty easy, putting in power generation that no other utility in the US could afford is possible.
The opportunity being looked at in California is the other growing delta between production and consumption. The idea being to keep residential demand low through efficiency, build zero marginal cost generation (wind, solar, geothermal) far ahead of demand, and then on the industrial side you create a market where that intermittent excess generation is free and rather than try and turn your profits on the wholesale/retail gap, you turn your profits on industry that can turn that free power into a higher margin good - water through desalination, hydrogen through electrolysis, etc - goods and services where the existing marginal costs are electricity, and provided you can find the capital to build (trivial in a place like CA) by owning both sides of the market you get a combined good return.
Essentially, the economics of the internet, moving from metered music consumption through sales or rentals to streaming where once you pay the capital costs to build the capacity in data centers, etc. the marginal cost to stream a song is basically zero and can turn it into a flat unlimited rental business. CA wants to do that to power with zero marginal cost renewables on one side and (comparatively) high margin goods like water on the other. You only make enough on the power side to pay for the investment, but the profits on the water side are better than anything you could get in the power market. Nuclear just doesn't fit into this at all. And it doesn't fit into any of the antiquated power markets in the rest of the US.
Again, nuclear works if you aren't in a market. If the US military doesn't want to risk grid connectivity for their bases, build one of these in each base. They don't give a shit what it costs to build, and they don't give a shit about turning a profit on it. France's nuclear grid works because it's not in a market - it was justified to make the TGV work. It's a public good. Public goods are owned by the government. Show me the US nationalizing utilities and then there will be a market for nuclear.
Yes, these are both from the same user. Don't worry, there's a hundred or so other different users on the thread. I found this guy to make a lot of sense.
As usual, I come for the Ars story, but stay for the comments. This particular comment thread covers pretty much every nuclear question you might have: terrorist-stealing-uranium scenarios, economics, meltdowns, regulatory red tape, politics, power distribution, greenie public freakouts, etc.
.
