Posted on 07/31/2023 5:45:29 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Earlier today I wrote that we live in stupid times.
It’s true. In an era defined by apocalyptic warnings about how fossil fuels, agriculture, and breathing will cause the Earth to catch on fire, the one thing that has held the environmental movement together is an abiding faith that generating power with clean, renewable, and carbon-free nuclear energy is a terrible idea.
The result has been a ridiculous draught in the commissioning of nuclear reactors. The US has closed nukes but hasn’t commissioned a new reactor in decades.
We live in stupid times.
Still, somehow this new reactor in Georgia managed to slip through the cracks and get built.
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of The Southern Company, announced Monday that its Plant Vogtle 3 nuclear reactor has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new U.S. nuclear reactor to come online in more than 30 years.
https://t.co/h2GJLW609Q— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 31, 2023
The new reactor is the third of eventually 4 units at the Vogtle nuclear power plant and is years late and ridiculously over budget. Delays and budget overruns are inevitable when building nuclear plants, largely because they get tied up with legal issues that drag things out indefinitely.
The problem is political, not technical. While I have more than a few quibbles with how nuclear energy is deployed in the United States–the designs and technology we use is decades-old and getting a new and improved design approved has been a ridiculous, expensive, and time-consuming process–the barriers to deploying the technology efficiently have mostly been based in politics.
Nuclear has the potential to provide clean, cheap, and indefinitely available electric power. Breeder reactors could recycle nuclear fuel, reducing the nuclear waste disposal problem, but again politics has prevented its deployment.
New generations of technology are out there to reduce cost, increase reliability, and make nuclear much easier to deploy.
I’ll believe it when I see it deployed. I expect the government to screw that up too.
I am convinced that most environmentalists have stood in the way of deploying nuclear power not because they fear it–coal plants and coal production kills more people in a year than nuclear power ever has–but because they oppose energy abundance. Degrowth is the watchword–fewer people consuming less is the goal, not cleaner growth with abundance.
That’s why you see power plants getting closed and replaced with less generation produced by unreliable energy. The electric car future is more about eliminating most cars themselves–obviously so given that the environmentalists oppose expanding generation to meet electricity demands. And forget about putting in anything like enough transmission to “electrify everything.”
America should have gone nuclear decades ago, but alarmists have slowed both the construction of existing designs and slowed the development of better and cheaper designs. We will be paying a price for this for decades to come.
Two new reactors coming online this year is a good step forward, but the process needs to be streamlined to make it cheaper and more efficient. Good luck with that.
The new designs need to be pushed for.
And they’re getting an increase in their electric bill.
Who is?
Everything costs more.
I’m surprised that there was no greenie protests trying to stop the opening of the plant.
www.terrestrialenergy.com Gen IV IMSR finished DEA stage II design and engineering now in DOE licensing. https://www.ans.org/news/article-5012/terrestrial-energy-awarded-doe-grant-for-imsr-licensing/
Which ‘Georgia’?
Lou Rawls ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’
or the Russian one.
“Which ‘Georgia’”
Read the OP
Great article; thank you for posting it.
Lawfare is the main tool in the Commie arsenal.
In June, Georgia residents were hit with a $16/month increase to their electric bills to offset rising coal and gas prices. But now that a new nuclear reactor has come online and a second is right behind it, their bills will go up again.https://news.yahoo.com/first-american-nuclear-reactor-built-112242785.html?ICID=ref_fark
But, but, but - what about all of the waste?
Probably the only good thing that has happened in Georgia lately.
Plant Vogtle unit 3 is now in commercial operation, following significant testing and functional checkout. Unit 4 is not far behind. Great to see new generation, even though the price tag is somewhat high.
These units will operate regardless of the sunshine that day or the wind speed.
We’ll have power though.
Others won’t be so lucky.
The article is light on details.
Aside from inflation, and everything costing more money,
millions upon millions are being spent on upgrading the transmission and distribution systems.
Two new nuclear reactors cost around 43% of what we gave to Ukraine.
How many people has it killed so far? That’s what the left said would happen right?
Lite water reactors are expensive because of the safety measures involved... “Terrestrial’s” new IMSR eliminates almost all the issues associated with conventional nuclear as they work at or near atmospheric pressure and can’t explode. If they get too hot they become less reactive and cool down. The cost of the new reactors is close to that of a clean coal plant. www.terrestrialenergy.com
The funny thing is that many greens in Europe are now pro-nuclear!
Even the nutcase activist Great Thunberg... The world is a strange place...
Greta Thunberg Has Embraced Nuclear Power: Will The Greens Follow?
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