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from the just-preparing-for-thorium-and-molten-salt-reactors? dept.
from the economic-realities dept.
Utility Dive reports
Entergy Corp. plans to shutter its 680 MW Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass. no later than June 1, 2019, the company said this week.
AP reports that financial factors drove Entergy to make the decision, including tough market conditions, reduced revenues, and increased operational costs. Entergy said it did not anticipate the economics of the plant to change in the near future, either through a rebound in power prices or a different market structure.
The exact timing of the closure will be decided next year, but the company has already informed the ISO New England that it intends to stop participating as a capacity resource.
CounterPunch continues
Entergy is also poised to shut the FitzPatrick reactor in New York. It promises an announcement by the end of this month.
Entergy also owns Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 some 40 miles north of Manhattan. Unit 2's operating license has long since lapsed. Unit 3's will expire in December.
[...] Meanwhile, like nearly all old American nukes, both Pilgrim and FitzPatrick are losing tons of money. Entergy admits to loss projections of $40 million/year or more at Pilgrim, with parallel numbers expected at FitzPatrick. The company blames falling gas and oil prices for the shortfalls.
[...] the boom in wind [and] solar, increased efficiency, and other Solartopian advances are at the real core of nuke power's escalating economic melt-down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @09:05AM
hip hip! hooray!
hip hip! repay!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @09:42AM
Nuke company: Cheap natural gas and spiralling costs means this is no longer advantageous to out shareholders.
Submitter: Greenpeace hippies are destroying America with solar power.
WTF?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by turgid on Monday October 19 2015, @10:01AM
Nuclear power stations are incompatible with a purely market-driven energy industry. I'm as pro-nuclear as they come. I studied Physics and began my engineering career at a nuclear power station. Nuclear power is ideal for providing long-term, reliable, predictable base load capacity for energy security. The best way to go about that is via public (state) ownership. That's antithetical to the fashionable religion of the rigged-for-short-term-private-gain market that we must obey.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday October 19 2015, @10:28AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 19 2015, @01:42PM
Exactly, look at Obama and Soylndra, no different than Cheney and big oil. In fact if you look at who was on the boards of the companies that got in excess of 100 million? You find these "green companies" are filled with the top 20 donors to Obama's campaign. Just another case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" and in both cases the american people are the ones left out in the cold.
If we had a government that actually gave 2 shits about clean energy we would be building breeder reactors to clean up the nuclear waste while investing in both thorium reactors (which have been shown to be much cleaner, fail safe, and can be built inside a shipping container for placement closer to population centers to minimize transmission loss) and bio diesel production. If we were to do this along with building a "people's car/truck" for under $20k that got 40 MPG+ and ran on diesel we could slash our emissions, create jobs, and get rid of any dependence on foreign sources of energy, but how would the 1% make crazy money on anything sensible like that?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday October 19 2015, @05:15PM
Solynra, Solyndra, Solyndra....
You mean the "failure" that netted the US Federal Government the highest rate of return of any federal program? [grist.org]
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday October 19 2015, @06:39PM
That's the one. It should never have happened that way.
The whole point of government is to enforce the rules.
Private profits.
Socialize losses.
Didn't you get the indoctrination...I mean, memo, in school?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 19 2015, @08:07PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @02:07AM
Solyndra was one of many companies funded by the same program. That program in its entirety had the highest return on investment of any program of government handouts to business. The entire reason for the program in the first place was that the 'free market' was not getting the job done because the venture capitalists were too chickenshit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Monday October 19 2015, @11:56AM
nuclear fission is the technology we should develop until we get fusion working. The general public simply does not understand the enormous energy density comparisons of chemical energy vs nuclear forces.
Roughly 10000:1 for uranium (https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/f/fuelcomparison.htm) vs barrel of oil/coal
For fusion is is 10,000,000,000 :1 (100kg of D2 vs 1.5 million tons coal)
The problem is that history tied nuclear to military weapons, and the better designs were not investigated. Furthermore, the first reactors were developed without the aid of modern design and modelling.
Yes, we should build all the wind mills and solar panels we need. But it would be unwise not to develop this most supremely efficient technology. As a species we just need to find the balance...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by snick on Monday October 19 2015, @01:10PM
I'd be as pro-nuclear as they come if someone could just describe how a plant could be sited, built, operated, decommissioned and the site cleaned up ... all paid for by market rate power generated. (without having "and then a miracle happens*" be one of the steps)
* Assuming that the political will to build a long term disposal facility will suddenly appear, when it has been clearly demonstrated not to exist qualifies as miracle-based-planning.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Monday October 19 2015, @04:18PM
"... all paid for by market rate power generated. "
Why must it be market rate? Is there some reason we as a species should continue to use polluting energy sources simply because it is a little cheaper? You are setting up the entire concept to be impossible. "Make a miracle happen WITHOUT making a miracle happen and I'll be happy."
Perhaps you should stick to addressing the issues instead of vaguely referring to them and setting up a trap for failure.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Informative) by snick on Monday October 19 2015, @04:48PM
I got no problem factoring carbon credits/costs into the market. It is a good idea.
But we aren't talking about an incremental delta here. There is a dead nuke plant near here. The decommissioning plan seems to have been: Assume that all hard problems would be solved by the time the plant died, build a pathetically underfuned trust fund, extract profit for the shareholders ... and screw over the ratepayers (forever) to keep it mothballs.
There is literally no plan to actually clean it up. If such a plan is ever made, there will be no money left from its operations to do this.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Monday October 19 2015, @05:20PM
Yeah that is terrible planning, which is why I think the plan to run them as public utilities is better. It is more of an investment in sustainability, not profit.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by snick on Monday October 19 2015, @07:54PM
It is more of an investment in sustainability
Well, we are going to have to sustain the dead plant near me forever, because there is no place to put the waste, and no way to move the waste. Money is a big problem for the perpetual care that will be needed to keep the plant safely in mothballs, but even if we had all the money in the world, we _still_ couldn't clean it up.
So yeah. I guess you could call that sustainability.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday October 20 2015, @12:07AM
Real sustainability is in feeding the waste into breeder reactors for further fuel. Also, if Chernobyl is any indication it is far from forever that we have to wait so don't worry toooo much about radioactive problems. One big issue with solving the problems is that they are not usually financially sound investments... if you take the profit motive out and switch to a "what's best for humanity and the planet" then we actually could do a lot better.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by snick on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:12PM
Did you just use Chernobyl as an example of how safe nuke plants can be?
That is a stunning argument. My hat's off to you.
If we are willing to take the profit motive out of energy and assume infinite resources are available to to do "what's best for humanity and the planet" then we could use fossil fuels + mitigation and carbon sequestration. It would cost a buttload of money, but it would be clean and wouldn't dot the landscape with happy friendly Chernobyls.
We could switch en-mass to biofuels. Again, not economically feasible at this time, but as long as we are throwing economics out the window ... it would be great.
We could cover all horizontal surfaces with solar cells. The initial investment would be huge, but after the initial investment, the energy would be Freeeee! Couple this with bio fuels for base load generation or lots-o-batteries, and you have a complete solution.
If you cut _any_ energy production mechanism the slack that you are willing to cut nuclear power, then we would live in a better cleaner happier world. But you seem to want to put your thumb on the scale specifically for nuke plants.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:18AM
You're the absolutist type I see, guess I wasted my effort. Since I'm this far in I'll try and correct the misconception... Chernobyl being one of the worst nuclear events in human history IS a reason for hope since the surrounding area has bounced back considerably. It appears that we won't have to wait thousands of years before the land is habitable again. THAT was the point, a big whoosh over your head.
I much prefer solar/wind/hydro to nuclear, but there are issues with energy storage. Also, having a stable source of power is a good thing, whether coal, oil, gas, or nuclear. If we can solve the energy storage issues, then I'm am 100% for using all renewable sources of power.
Why is any slack needed for other energy production? They are all doing fine. Nuclear is the one that scares people and brings about irrational behavior. I have no idea where each would land, but comparing the full cost per kilowatt would be a good study. How much power and pollution goes into manufacturing solar / wind farms for how much return? How much for nuclear? Most battery tech is highly polluting and requires a huge amount of power to create in the first place. Bio fuel trades food for fuel, and has the possibility of swiftly ruining our topsoil... With energy use only on the increase, and set to seriously spike as we transition to electric vehicles, the power density of nuclear may become a more important factor. The only other solutions I can imagine are huge wind/solar farms across the Earth and connected by a network of huge power carrying cables (hopefully room temp superconducting cables by that point) so that global demand can be stably supported.
It seems like you have made up your mind and chosen any "green" tech to simply be superior, but I hope I have brought up a few points that help you see that every option is just that, another option. There are pros and cons for everything and it is best to keep an open mind or you will get sold down the river by someone somewhere.
There are so many factors, setting one option up for failure ahead of time is a terrible method of discussion.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @01:55PM
The economics of nuclear power can be described as "except for those issues, it looks real good".
Where "those issues" includes radioactive waste disposal, plant decommissioning, and the possibility of core meltdown (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukishima). The industry has no answers for the first two, and only PR ("we've just concluded a top to bottom safety review and have left no stone unturned") for the last. The average nuke plant is not going to be run by top-notch personnel. And we haven't even seen a serious terrorist attack yet.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday October 19 2015, @07:39PM
FWIW, we've also never seen a serious core meltdown. Decent designs would keep that from ever happening, no matter what, but IFAICT none of the existing plants were built with such a design. (They would make reprocessing spent fuel even more of a pain.)
The main reason I'm anti-nuclear is that I don't trust the groups running them to do a good job. I trust the US Navy more than any other operator of nuclear piles, but their goals aren't primarily safety either. (What happens when that aircraft carrier sinks in a harbor? [As the battleship Arizona did at Pearl Harbor...so it can happen.]) Perhaps the Navy has given consideration to such problems. (They wouldn't admit it, so you can't tell.) I'm rather certain that no commercial plant has adequate emergency provisions for extreme events that will "probably never happen". And, as mentioned about, provisions for decommissioning plants have thus far proven to be lamentably sub-par. The best one I've heard of is the British plant that got filled with cement. (If the plan hasn't already been executed, then I don't trust them to have an adequate one, as I haven't heard of an adequate decommissioning so far.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @05:38PM
And consequently the [i]only[/i] new reactor to come online in the last 20 years is Watts Bar Unit 2 [timesfreepress.com] which is due to start in the next few months. It is owned by the TVA, a government utility which is associated with EPB, the electric utility and 10Gbps ISP in Chattanooga.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Monday October 19 2015, @10:24AM
Vaguely related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W-0D6mPPlc
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Monday October 19 2015, @01:30PM
Uhhh you DO realize they are being pushed out by coal and gas, yes? So you are actually supporting MORE crap being shoved into our environment because the so called "green" energy like wind and solar simply cannot give you 24/7 performance and ramp up with demand so they are just gonna keep right on burning because thanks to fracking and coal subsidies its cheaper to burn than to run a nuclear plant.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 19 2015, @08:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wonkey_monkey on Monday October 19 2015, @10:44AM
US Nuke Plant to be Closed; Another Poised to Follow
If you go around calling them "nuke plants," what do you expect? Most people aren't going to think too long and hard about whether something with "nuke" in it is good or bad.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday October 19 2015, @10:48AM
US Nuke Plant to be Closed; Another Poised to Follow
If you go around calling them "nuke plants," what do you expect? Most people aren't going to think too long and hard about whether something with "nuke" in it is good or bad.
It's pronounced Nucular [youtube.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @04:41PM
What politically-correct euphemism do you propose we use to identify nuke power plants?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday October 19 2015, @06:44PM
I refer you to the subject line of my comment.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @02:30PM
Nuclear really does need to be a publicly owned and operated thing. and that is untenable in the current societal reality.
All this public-private partnership nonsense was be a complete and literal disaster in the context of a Nuclear power plant.