The AP 1000 is supposed to be built partly in factories as components and then delivered to the site. It seems that one or more of the suppliers hasn’t met their deadline.

The rebar, I suspect, was concreted in and it was a bit more complicated than shipping in another load.

Whatever, it looks like these reactors are going in the same direction of previous builds. And the people calling the shots are performing as previous organizations. Apparently the decision has been made to quite checking costs until the project is finished. I suspect the people of Georgia are going to get some expensive electricity shoved down their throats. It’s a regulated market.

Bid low. Deliver high and late.

Here’s an interesting read on how nuclear played out in Washington State…

http://www.context.org/iclib/ic07/myers/

China started building them in 2008. Five years later China has not completed any.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

I don’t know what has caused the delays. One problem, IIRC,
is that curved/straight rebar was installed when the plans called for
straight/curved. Other problems seem to have arisen with the component
manufacturers who are delivering late.

This is typical nuclear build performance. When we were building rectors back in the 1970, well, I’ll give you a picture…

http://www.l-a-k-e.org/blog/2013/03/from-15-to-19-months-late-plant-vogtle-nukes.html

That’s $0.74 billion, $740 million. And that’s only Georgia Power’s share. Georgia Power is a 45.7% owner. So I’d make it $1,619 million for the total. $1.6 billion over budget.

And that’s a number from March. Since then the time schedule has slipped another three months which will boost the number higher.

http://southeast.construction.com/yb/se/article.aspx?story_id=188835858

http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr08.pdf

No, it is potentially possible to reuse spent fuel but breeder reactors have not solved the problem to date. And spent fuel is only a small percentage of our radioactive waste problem.

We have an immense problem with nuclear waste. If it were possible to build a reactor, let’s say for $10 billion, why wouldn’t we be doing that right now? Remember Yucca Mountain would have been a $100+ billion expense.

Have you considered China’s very significant corruption problem?

Are you aware that South Korea has had to shut several of its reactors because safety certificates were faked?

I
f “yes” to those questions, have you considered what would happen to the world nuclear industry if one of their reactors melted down?

How about if one of the European or North American reactors tanked?

Did you pay attention when the Joplin tornado struck not all that far from a US reactor whose backup generator would have been destroyed in a tornado hit? No grid power + no backup generator = what would have been, at best, a very public close call.

We are so very close to an up-swell of “Close the Damn Things!!!”

W
e can do the job without nuclear. IMO we should close any reactors which are questionable and that should be carefully determined by an agency other than the nuclear industry. We should build no more. We can do the job just fine, and for less money, without nuclear.

From a financial angle.

Built-some-time-ago-and-paid-off coal and nuclear plants produce relatively inexpensive electricity. But their cost is dependent on being able to sell 24/7 (minus normal offline time). As I pointed out, having a lower priced producer come on line means periods of selling at a loss which means that prices must be higher at other times in order to avoid bankruptcy.

Wind and solar have no fuel costs. Natural gas is cheap and dispatchable. The combination steals market from thermal plants. We have seen five nuclear plants fail for financial reasons in 2013. Germany and Australia are seeing coal plants close due to competition from renewables.

Utilities are going to use whatever is cheapest. As long as there is no price on carbon in the US NG, along with renewables, is going to kill existing thermal plants. And certainly make new builds unreasonable.

People can invent all sorts of molten salts/thorium/Gen III+/Gen IV/superdooper reactors but the problem persists. New builds are expensive. No one has invented a cheap reactor.

When you build something new you must pay the “mortgage”. Just because the market doesn’t need your product for several hours each night does not mean that your creditors will forgive you a similar amount of your debt. The bill has to be paid.

A new build that has to make 10c/kWh 90% of 365*24 cannot avoid bankruptcy.
You can try to tap dance around the math. But the math abides.

“On March 16, a report was released by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) stating that Canada’s Ontario Power Generation has released radioactive water into Lake Ontario via a leak in the Pickering A nuclear generating station.

As a result of what appears to be a *pump seal failure*, tens of thousands of litres of radioactive water escaped the generating station on Monday and ended up in Lake Ontario.

This is concerning for a number of reasons, but it is especially concerning considering the fact that Lake Ontario is the main source of drinking water for millions of people.”
http://planetsave.com/2011/03/18/canadian-nuclear-plant-leaks-radioactive-water-into-lake-ontario/
“Before Sunday’s shutdown of Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, about 79 gallons of diluted radioactive water were released into Lake Michigan, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday, May 6.”
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/05/water_leak_at_palisades_nuclea.html

As for the problem of economics, do take note the there have not been a nuclear powerplant built in the States for more than 30 years, obviously the valuable skills and expertise will take time to recover, and the economic price is a lesson to learn. Furthermore, we are entering a new phase in nuclear technology with the advent of Generatian 3+ pressurised water reactor, these are state-of-the-art and the safest reactors ever design. Eventually, all the expenses will result in a power plant that consumes LITTLE material yet release HUGE amount of energy, THIS is the opportunity we shouldn’t be missing.

And just as we’re speaking, our scientist from MIT to Oak Ridge and Sandia are developing newer, cleaner and safer nuclear technologies that will only means our future is getting better, that is if we do not pull out the plug.

About those quote from Jeff Immelt and other corporate big wits, hey, Donald Trump HATES wind turbine, and he is very vocal about it, you can find different opinion from different people.

Make no mistake, I am BIG on wind and solar, in fact I work in the solar industry, but believing that wind and solar alone can satisfy our demand is naive, even the Ivanpah Solar Thermal plant has to battle with environmentalist, so whats with nuclear being the bad guy? And I’m not a fan of hydro power as it means sinking an entire town.

I see nuclear as part of the puzzle to go completely carbon free, along with solar, wind, geothermal, wave and other innovations to come, and the more we keep an open mind we can save ourselves the trouble of looking at China and thinking “well why didn’t we did that….”

They stated that they couldn’t make money with nuclear in the US.

Kind of goes along with what these guys had to say…

Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired 17 days ago as chairman and CEO of Exelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.

“Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.”

“I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results (than) with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/

—

“On July 30th, the Financial Times published an interview with GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt on the future of various energy alternatives. For decades, GE has played a significant role in many sectors of the energy business. It makes huge electric generators for electric utilities. It sells wind turbines. It sells solar installations and it recently added oil patch activities to its roster of companies. It has also been a leading supplier of nuclear power generation equipment. So for one of the leaders in that last space to suggest that nuclear isn’t a competitive solution now or going forward is a significant statement.

Mr. Immelt expressed his view that it is almost impossible on a cost basis to justify investing in nuclear power plants for the future. ”So I think some combination of gas, and either wind or solar … that’s where we see most countries around the world going.””

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joanlappin/2012/07/31/ges-immelt-natural-gas-now-much-cheaper-than-nuclear/

1) Every once in a while one of these things makes it past the “Whew! That was a close call.” point and melts. Causes nasties.

2) Because of that most people don’t want one near them. Irrational fear, I know, after all they might get hit by a meteor.

3) With a heating planet it’s getting harder to find sites with reliable supplies of cooling water. Heat waves and droughts make a lot of inland places unsuitable. Take the interior of China, for example. Or the interior of the US. That means that new sites are largely coastal.

4) And that doubles back on #2. Seeing how populations tend to congregate along seacoasts people aren’t really willing to pick up and move somewhere else so that a reactor can be built. And they don’t want to live next to one.

Would we call out the military to clear a space?

5) Then there’s the ‘trained and experienced’ problem. Right now existing reactors are looking at a problem of the boomers aging out. That’s leaving them a bit tight in terms of staff, although the closing reactors may help them out and free up some spares.

Anyway, the industry isn’t exactly attracting a lot of talented young folks who want to spend their lives working with nuclear energy and we don’t have construction companies that know how to build reactors. (That Vogtle time line overrun thing….)

6) There’s bit of a financing problem. Private money wants nothing to do with loaning their money to new reactors unless taxpayers take on all the risks. I’m not sure taxpayers are all that interested in risking several billion dollars just so reactor builders can enjoy some sweet paychecks. And if Vogtle continues the way it’s going risk tolerance is likely to slip some.

7) There’s the “What the hell do we do with even more deadly radioactive waste?” problem. And, no, it isn’t solved. Even if Yucca Mountain gets shoved down the throats of Nevadans there’s not enough space to deal with a bunch more reactors.

8) Did I mention how long it takes to build a new reactor? Yes, we know that China can build them in 5-6 years, but we are not China. We’re kind of like Europe. China x 2+.

New wind farms and new solar arrays come on line so danged fast. They start reducing fossil fuel use and start producing revenue in weeks to months. Not a decade.

That makes wind and solar so tantalizing.

9) There’s the very nasty problem of new reactors being too expensive. Now, there’s a lot of dispute about what the cost might be. If we look at real world data, the turnkey bids for Ontario, San Antonio and Turkey, then we see something like $0.20/kWh. If we take the optimistic estimates of the true believer then we get $0.10/kWh.

Just for fun let’s put a very heavy thumb on nuclear’s side of the scale and assume 10c/kWh. Can’t avoid bankruptcy if you have to earn 10c/kWh.

Wind is now producing for 6c/kWh. Solar is breaking below 10c/kWh. By the time one could bring a new reactor on line both wind and solar will be less. Pretty much guaranteed.

Here’s what 10c/kWh for a new reactor means. It means that you have to earn that much, on average, 7,884 hours a year.

Now assume that wind is going to be available 50% of the time. Reactor is going to have to drop its price to less than 6c/kWh in order to cause wind to curtail. That means having to sell the other 50% of the time for at least 15c/kWh.

And solar is going to be available 20% of the time. Nuclear has to undercut solar 8c/kWh during those hours. Take even more losses, crank up its asking price to something close to 20c/kWh.

Well, we can store 6c/kWh for 6-8 cents (pump-up hydro / flow batteries) giving us a 12c to 14c option and that kills nuclear’s opportunity to make a penny.

(And I didn’t even bring natural gas into the conversation. I stuck with carbon-free.)