First new Nuclear Reactor in Canada since 1980's

[irv]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
No problem. I've been actively lobbying the new premiers office to come up with a long-term redevelopment plan for Pickering and I'm not on the only one. While a few of us may disagree on what should be fitted there (I think AFCR's for the "green" look and fuel flexibility others think good 'ol CANDU 6's) we all agree that the site needs a future beyond 2024.

Bruce and Pickering are very close in age, yet Bruce has a future until at least 2064. At that point I expect Bruce Power will already have SMR sites and lord knows what else. Shuttering the A side at Pickering is doable, and perhaps so is a single-unit replacement project. We could start with the two shuttered units, replace them with new ones, then shutter the two other units, replace them, that would result in an "A" side of 2,600MW if we were to do AFCR's, more if we were to use bigger units. Then we could evaluate doing B, depending on demand and finances. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to do it on an existing site when compared to building a new one.


Good luck with your quest. I hope you are successful.

 

[turtlevette]

We are in an environment now that is not going to determine generation methods by lowest cost. And I agree with that.

Nuclear is crazy expensive and risky. Don't tell me otherwise as I was part of it. Redesign upon redesign upon redesign as they were being constructed. I never though a BWR 5 would self destruct like that. They taught us in school it was impossible with negative coefficient of temp to reactivity.

 

[Shannow]

There's a difference between lowest cost per MW generated, and lowest cost per MW delivered.

Wind has a capacity factor of 25%, nukes 90%...means that you need 3.5 times as many nameplate MW to get the same energy in an average year out of wind as nukes.

Yes, it's really cheap when the wind is blowing...prices go negative (-$10/KWh, you get paid for using it) when the wind is really blowing in South Australia

And as wind is delivered in uncontrollable chunks, it needs to be stored until needed, unless we all evolve to cook eat, heat, cool, and bathe when it's windy, or during the day when we are all at work.

Storage has losses and costs ($0.25/KWh round trip costs per Lazard's levelized cost of storage)…

So cheap...is really expensive when everyone relies on it 24/7

 

[A_Harman]

Originally Posted By: edhackett
Originally Posted By: A_Harman
Originally Posted By: Yah-Tah-Hey

Three Mile Island scared the tin foil hat crowd so badly that even the mention of nuclear power causes their eyeballs to cage and spastic shaking like even the mention of the subject causes radiation poisoning. Only way to go. The taxpayers need to start seeing the utilization of Yucca Mountain which is as safe as mankind can make it.


It's nice to see that somebody else remembers the existence of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. It was all but forgotten by the national press during the Obama years.


There is no Yucca Mountain waste storage facility. Politicians picked the site, scientists determined it was unsuitable. When your needs to be dry for 1000+ years geologic repository starts dripping water after one slightly above average wet winter during the study phase, you've got a big problem. Funding was pulled. It's an empty tunnel with no NRC license to store radioactive material.

https://www.yuccamountain.org/faq.htm

Quote:
On The Ground Accomplishments: Today the Yucca Mountain site has been abandoned and nothing exists but a boarded up exploratory tunnel; there are no waste disposal tunnels, receiving and handling facilities, and the waste containers and transportation casks have yet to be developed. Moreover, there is no railroad to the site, and the cost to build a railroad through Nevada could exceed $3 billion. Today, the only thing that actually exists at Yucca Mountain is single 5 mile exploratory tunnel.

Quote:
Current Status of the Yucca Mountain Project

2017 Update — Here the most recent comprehensive press news about the status of Yucca Mountain

Background: As of 2016 the status of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain remains uncertain. As way of background, in 2002 Yucca Mountain was officially designated as the site to store the nation's spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste. At that time Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended the site to President George W. Bush, who approved it. As allowed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), then Governor Kenny Guinn of Nevada vetoed the decision, but the veto was subsequently overturned by Congress.

Prior to 1987, and as required under the NWPA, the Department of Energy had selected ten locations in six states for consideration as potential repository sites. After detailed studies of these sites, President Ronald Reagan approved three sites for detailed site characterization. The three sites were Hanford, Washington; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In 1987 Congress amended the NWPA and directed DOE to study only Yucca Mountain. The Act did provide that if Yucca Mountain was found unsuitable, "site characterization studies" would be stopped. The amended law was subsequently labeled the "Screw Nevada Bill." (More details about how/why Yucca Mountain was chosen)

Site Investigation & Regulatory Oversight: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are primarily responsible for the regulation and disposal of the nation's spent nuclear fuel. NRC regulates the construction and operation of commercial nuclear power plants and spent fuel repositories (e.g., Yucca Mountain). The NRC also regulates the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel. Under the NWPA as amended, DOE is charged with site investigation and constructions and operation of a federal geologic repository (e.g., Yucca Mountain). By law, the DOE must also apply to the NRC for a license to build the repository and the license must be granted before any construction begins. In 2008 the DOE submitted a license application to the NRC for Yucca Mountain. The 8,600-page license application was submitted by the Bush administration's Energy Department and was accepted for consideration and license review by NRC.

Existing Regulatory Status: In 2011 funding for the Yucca Mountain repository was terminated by the Obama Administration; effective via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act. This action left the United States without any long term storage site for the disposal of civilian spent reactor fuel and defense generated High Level Waste.

Given funding limitations and other constraints, the DOE and the NRC subsequently and separately suspended their efforts to license the repository at Yucca Mountain; this action lead to law suits filed by several parties aimed at forcing the NRC to resume the licensing proceeding. Specifically, in 2011, the States of South Carolina and Washington, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and others, filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asking for a writ of mandamus requiring the NRC to restart licensing proceeding for Yucca Mountain.

The court subsequently upheld the desires of the petitioners (granting the writ of mandamus) and on November 18, 2013, the NRC ordered the licensing proceeding restarted and directed its staff to complete work on the Yucca Mountain Safety Evaluation Report (SER). The SER contains NRC's review of the DOE license application, i.e., to insure compliance with NRC licensing regulations for Yucca Mountain. As of January, 2015 the NRC completed all five volumes of the SER. While the NRC staff has concluded that DOE's license applications is "acceptable" it is recommending the NRC deny construction of the repository because DOE doesn't own or have jurisdiction over the land or water where the repository would be built. Recently a supplement to DOE's environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain was completed which documented that DOE doesn't hold the necessary water rights to support the project. The land encompassing the repository site is also under the control of several different federal agencies, including DOE, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Defense; and an act of Congress is needed to transfer the lands in question to DOE.

Regarding water rights, DOE would need to obtain those rights from the state of Nevada. Nevada has refused to appropriate the water and litigation challenging that refusal is stayed.

In any event, the NRC has not made a final decision on the repository license application, but the agency could easily vote on DOE'S application to build the repository once environmental reviews are complete, land and water issues are resolved, and after a series of lengthy and complex hearings on challenges from third parties are entertained.

Funding: Federal funding for DOE's repository program is currently nonexistent; as of January 2016, no federal appropriations have been authorized to support NRC licensing and/or DOE site investigations at Yucca Mountain. It's worth noting, however, to date the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has spent at estimated $8 billion studying the site and constructing the exploratory tunnel beneath Yucca Mountain. Moreover, to actually construct and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain, DOE's own estimate suggests the cost could reach $97 billion.

On The Ground Accomplishments: Today the Yucca Mountain site has been abandoned and nothing exists but a boarded up exploratory tunnel; there are no waste disposal tunnels, receiving and handling facilities, and the waste containers and transportation casks have yet to be developed. Moreover, there is no railroad to the site, and the cost to build a railroad through Nevada could exceed $3 billion. Today, the only thing that actually exists at Yucca Mountain is single 5 mile exploratory tunnel.



Ed


Much confusing and contradictory information on this website. It reads like the citizens of Nevada are saying NIMBY.

Look at the timeline:
https://www.yuccamountain.org/time.htm

The Federal government has had the responsibility for disposing of nuclear wastes since 1954, yet all the later entries on the timeline provide a step-by-step illustration of why they can't be trusted to accomplish that task. So 64 years later there is still no "safe" place to put nuclear waste. Where is it being stored now, and why is Yucca Mountain no better than the existing "temporary" sites?

 

[A_Harman]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
There's a difference between lowest cost per MW generated, and lowest cost per MW delivered.

Wind has a capacity factor of 25%, nukes 90%...means that you need 3.5 times as many nameplate MW to get the same energy in an average year out of wind as nukes.

Yes, it's really cheap when the wind is blowing...prices go negative (-$10/KWh, you get paid for using it) when the wind is really blowing in South Australia

And as wind is delivered in uncontrollable chunks, it needs to be stored until needed, unless we all evolve to cook eat, heat, cool, and bathe when it's windy, or during the day when we are all at work.

Storage has losses and costs ($0.25/KWh round trip costs per Lazard's levelized cost of storage)…

So cheap...is really expensive when everyone relies on it 24/7


So it costs 25 cents per kWh to store electricity from renewable sources, but only 7 cents per kWh to generate it at a nuclear plant? People say they're all for "green energy", until they get their monthly bills.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: A_Harman
Originally Posted By: Shannow
There's a difference between lowest cost per MW generated, and lowest cost per MW delivered.

Wind has a capacity factor of 25%, nukes 90%...means that you need 3.5 times as many nameplate MW to get the same energy in an average year out of wind as nukes.

Yes, it's really cheap when the wind is blowing...prices go negative (-$10/KWh, you get paid for using it) when the wind is really blowing in South Australia

And as wind is delivered in uncontrollable chunks, it needs to be stored until needed, unless we all evolve to cook eat, heat, cool, and bathe when it's windy, or during the day when we are all at work.

Storage has losses and costs ($0.25/KWh round trip costs per Lazard's levelized cost of storage)…

So cheap...is really expensive when everyone relies on it 24/7


So it costs 25 cents per kWh to store electricity from renewable sources, but only 7 cents per kWh to generate it at a nuclear plant? People say they're all for "green energy", until they get their monthly bills.


Yup, basically.

BTW, as per your inquiry about US waste: It could be easily used as fuel for a fleet of AFCR CANDU's, which is what China is presently doing. That waste can then be integrated into a MOX for use in a fast neutron reactor giving you almost a closed fuel cycle. There are quite a few options for dealing with enriched waste that involve using it for further generation, however it seems any sort of investment in moving forward with that in the US has been semi-permanently stalled

This is not the case in Japan where it is being actively worked on and in France, who recycles/reprocesses the waste from plants in Europe.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: A_Harman
So it costs 25 cents per kWh to store electricity from renewable sources, but only 7 cents per kWh to generate it at a nuclear plant? People say they're all for "green energy", until they get their monthly bills.


Here's Lazard's Levelised cost of storage analysis...

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-storage-2017/

It's all $/MWh, just divide by 1,000...i.e. $250/MWh is 25c/KWh.

It encapsulates the lifetime return required to pay the up front costs and lifecycle costs of different storage mediums.

For say a Tesla Power Wall, 13.5KWh storage and (up to) 10 year battery guarantee, 10k price...full daily use.

$10,000/(3650 (days) x 13.5(KWh/day) = 20.3c/KWh...so charge it free from the sun with your $5,000 panels (there's another 10c using the same math for those KWh), utilise it fully, and you need your grid costs to be $30c to break even.


Yes the battery will last longer (hopefully) than the 10 years, but the battery warranty is variable based on the installation (*)...and the solar will run the washing machine during the day without the battery, so the solar costs are lower too.

(*) Same for the grid scale batteries, their life is determined by use...are they used as storage to replace a peaker ? or are they used for arbitrage on the spot market like the big battery in South Australia is (that's likely to kill it in 6 years).

Can do similar sums on how much an EV owner would need to be recompensed should he be silly enough to allow it to be used for grid stability.

Can do similar sums on the electric Semi Trailer that Tesla proposes (or an electric John Deere).

 

[edhackett]

Originally Posted By: A_Harman

Much confusing and contradictory information on this website. It reads like the citizens of Nevada are saying NIMBY.

Look at the timeline:
https://www.yuccamountain.org/time.htm

The Federal government has had the responsibility for disposing of nuclear wastes since 1954, yet all the later entries on the timeline provide a step-by-step illustration of why they can't be trusted to accomplish that task. So 64 years later there is still no "safe" place to put nuclear waste. Where is it being stored now, and why is Yucca Mountain no better than the existing "temporary" sites?

You better believe Nevada was saying NIMBY. We'd already been boned without lube concerning the Nevada Test Site. This was very much a "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." situation. I'm a fourth generation Nevada expat living in Washington. I lost my favorite aunt to cancer known to be caused by fallout from the test site. I worked on a number of Yucca Mountain projects, so had a front row seat as the science evolved on the suitability. As you can see from the timeline, Nevada's fears were justified. Falsified documents, 293 technical issues to be resolved, science proving unsuitability, refusal of the DOE to compete the EIS, etc., etc, etc., and yet the push was on to open the facility in Nevada with no other site to be considered.

The waste is currently being stored at the facilities that produce it. A small amount has been moved to the Nevada Test Site and is being stored above ground in dry casks as it is at the generating facilities. Transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain is a major issue preventing its use as a temporary facility. It must be transported from all over the country via existing railroad and public roads. It's safer and more secure to leave it in place.

The answer was never a politician's promise that the radiation from long term storage would not enter the environment for at least 1 million years(yes, that was the original premise for Yucca Mountain). It lies in reprocessing and reuse.

BTW, despite having first hand experience when radiation is done poorly, I'm not anti nuclear power. A am jaded concerning the involvement of politicians and beancounters and the ability to do it exactly right.

Ed

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: mk378
That's not fair to talk about a gas turbine designed for peak use, which since it will be run only at seldom times, is optimized for first cost over fuel efficiency. It's like how it makes sense to buy an incandescent bulb instead of a LED for the attic stairs that are used only 10 minutes per month. The fracking boom has also resulted in gas prices considerably less than $3.50.

I don't understand the concept of an array of small reactors. If any one of the reactors were to melt down, the whole site would end up shut down and abandoned. More reactors running increases the chance of one malfunctioning. So go big or go home.


The concept of "array" in today's engineering, whether it is electrical, software, power plant, etc, is to reduce engineering cost.

If you make a tiny change in a design to scale it big, you have to redo all the testing and certification. If you have one design and just build 5x as many, you don't. It may be less efficient, but it is cheaper in labor cost and time to market. It is also a lot cheaper to build 5x the same design than 1x of 5 designs.

The world is going modular because fuel and materials are cheap, but human labors are not.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: edhackett
You better believe Nevada was saying NIMBY. We'd already been boned without lube concerning the Nevada Test Site. This was very much a "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." situation. I'm a fourth generation Nevada expat living in Washington. I lost my favorite aunt to cancer known to be caused by fallout from the test site. I worked on a number of Yucca Mountain projects, so had a front row seat as the science evolved on the suitability. As you can see from the timeline, Nevada's fears were justified. Falsified documents, 293 technical issues to be resolved, science proving unsuitability, refusal of the DOE to compete the EIS, etc., etc, etc., and yet the push was on to open the facility in Nevada with no other site to be considered.

The waste is currently being stored at the facilities that produce it. A small amount has been moved to the Nevada Test Site and is being stored above ground in dry casks as it is at the generating facilities. Transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain is a major issue preventing its use as a temporary facility. It must be transported from all over the country via existing railroad and public roads. It's safer and more secure to leave it in place.

The answer was never a politician's promise that the radiation from long term storage would not enter the environment for at least 1 million years(yes, that was the original premise for Yucca Mountain). It lies in reprocessing and reuse.

BTW, despite having first hand experience when radiation is done poorly, I'm not anti nuclear power. A am jaded concerning the involvement of politicians and beancounters and the ability to do it exactly right.

Ed





Sorry to hear about that Ed.

This is exactly why, despite I completely agree with Overkill's points above, I do not believe the economy and political will be easy to work with for nuke in the future. Nobody wants a nuke in their backyard, nobody trust a nuke expert saying it is 100% safe (even though technically it is). People will assume mistakes, accidents, cover ups, lying, etc. If this can happen in Japan it can happen in the US and more so China.

The only reason you will want a nuke (and justify it), is national energy security, because it is reliable and you don't need to have massive military power to secure the supply chain, also the potential of making warhead from the waste (speculation of why Japan didn't want to flood the reactor with seawater sooner).

You need to add all these NIMBY cost like waste site (3B for Yucca mountain's railroad?), bankruptcy of the project (state sponsoring?), decommissioning (hidden in my PG&E transmission cost?), bankruptcy of the contractor (Toshiba and Westinghouse?), political fallout, reduction in property values near by, the aftermath of any accident (insurance won't cover them all).

It will likely not be only the 6c/kwh you see above.

 

[Snagglefoot]

Originally Posted By: userfriendly
Snagglefoot; How many million tons of coal per year from SE British Columbia do you export?


Thanks for asking. Almost 100% of the coal exported from BC is high grade steel making coal exported to Asia. This is not thermal coal burned to make electricity. Almost all of it crosses a bridge near my town. Two or three 100 car trains per day.

 

[alarmguy]

Originally Posted By: bubbatime
This is good news. Hopefully the have a lot less red tape and regulation getting this done than the Americans.

Can you imagine a new Nuclear plant being built in America today and the nashing of teeth that would go along with it?


Yes, its AMAZING isnt it!?!?

My state of SC was the ONLY state in the USA to be building TWO Nuclear Plants at the same location and only ONE other state in the USA had one under construction, that = 3 in the USA and 2 here right near me.

Guess what???
The construction was shut down after spending NINE BILLION DOLLARS constructing them! They already ran the powerlines all across the state!

However its not really the states fault, the companies building them went bankrupt, then add in GE owned by Toshiba also going bankrupt, this ONE news story gives you a location, you can google for more news.

The end result as this is a 1 year old story link, the plants will NEVER produce electricity, its been shut down, shuttered forever.

Its does amaze me, all these WACKO global warming morons, want zero emission power and the Nuclear Plants are zero emission, but if everyone had nuclear plants, they would have nothing to protest about, so they protest about nuclear.

SO where I disagree, there was no government red tape, it was a COMPLETE failure of GE and its suppliers and bankrupt suppliers etc. More or less, the private sector building the plants could not finish the job unless there was ANOTHER 7 BILLION dollars added to the project and doubtful if even then.
BUT THERE WAS NO GOVERNMENT RED TAPE.

This is one year old, project has been shut down forever - Click


NY Times, explains the shut down - Click here

 

[OVERKILL]

NB Power is going nutty with the nukes!

Yet another announcement for a new reactor at the Point Lepreau site, this time for a UK-based company Moltex, who have developed a "waste burner" reactor that is fuelled with the waste from traditional units. They plan to be deploying on the site prior to 2030.

Details can be found here:
Moltex partners with NB Power

And an excerpt:
Originally Posted By: Moltex

London, 13th July 2018

Just weeks after its success in being selected as a winner in the UK government’s Advanced Modular Reactors competition, Moltex is delighted to announce that it has also been selected by New Brunswick Energy Solutions Corporation and New Brunswick Power to progress development of its SSR-W (Stable Salt Reactor - Wasteburner) technology in New Brunswick, with the aim of deploying its first SSR-W at the Point Lepreau nuclear reactor site before 2030.

The agreement provides $5m of financial support to Moltex for its immediate development activities and Moltex will open its North America headquarters in Saint John and build its development team there.

“The Moltex stable salt reactor technology is a perfect fit for New Brunswick’s power needs,” said Moltex CEO Stephen Haighton. “It uses spent nuclear fuel, which could help solve the province’s future spent-fuel disposal challenge. It is a physically small modular reactor but is able to store energy, so can double or triple its output at peak demand times during the day. Most importantly, the stable salt reactor technology produces very low-cost, clean energy and can reduce the cost of electricity to consumers while achieving low-carbon targets. We are very excited to join our new partners and establish our North American headquarters in New Brunswick.”

The Moltex SSR technology has now been competitively selected, and is being financially supported, by two expert, experienced government organisations as a particularly promising advanced nuclear technology deployable at grid scale (300 to 3000MW). Both governments looked beyond domestic nuclear champions to the global network of entrepreneurial nuclear vendors.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: alarmguy
Its does amaze me, all these WACKO global warming morons, want zero emission power and the Nuclear Plants are zero emission, but if everyone had nuclear plants, they would have nothing to protest about, so they protest about nuclear.


I don't think this is how most people form their public opinion. Also don't forget the energy sectors (oil, coal, and gas industry) tends to hide behind anti-nuclear when they try to prevent nuclear from taking more energy need from the market demand.

The reality is not black and white. I love nuclear power in South Carolina to help the overall market and drive down the price of everything from aluminum to data center hosting cost, but I don't want it in Silicon Valley where I work and live. Does that make sense to you? (sarcasm)