Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 Nuclear Reactors Are Now Providing Commercial Power to Georgia.
Last edited Tue Apr 30, 2024, 07:16 PM - Edit history (1)
All 4 Vogtle Reactors are as of this writing (4/30/24, 6:22 EST US) operating at 100% capacity utilization, providing reliable energy without interruption with the lowest carbon cost of any form of energy. Two of them came on line commercially in the last twelve months, Vogtle 3 and 4.
The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors (as is standard) are licensed for 40 years, but the expected lifetime is between 60 and 80 years. Both Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 are AP1000 reactors, with a thermal capacity of 3415 MW(th) and electrical capacity of 1110 MWe. Thus the thermodynamic efficiency will be typical of all Rankine type power plants, coal, single cycle gas, oil and nuclear, around 33%.
Over a sixty year lifetime, one can estimate that each of the two reactors will produce about 6 exajoules of primary energy, if as expected and common for US nuclear reactors, the capacity utilization exceeds 90% or more. For perspective, as one can see from the following table, each reactor will produce almost as much energy than all of the solar installations on Earth produced in 2022, solar cells installed over a period of more than 50 years of wild cheering about how "we don't need nuclear energy."
2023 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Table A.1a on Page 264.
I personally feel justified in qualifying that statement about what we "need" to read "We don't need nuclear energy if we don't give a flying fuck about climate change, which clearly we don't."
A New Record Concentration for CO2, 427.98 ppm Has Been Set for the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory's Weekly Average.
Antinukes won, humanity, and all the ecosystems on the planet, lost.
The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors each cost roughly 10 billion dollars (which is over the original budget) and longer to construct than originally advertised. Bourgeois antinukes here and elsewhere love this, because they don't give a flying fuck for future generations. They are only willing to pay for things that benefit themselves, and do not care that the benefits of the Vogtle reactors will accrue to future generations, as it is very possible that Vogtle 3 and 4 will be operating at or near the dawn of the 22nd century, about 60 years after every solar cell and every wind turbine will be garbage awaiting the miracle of "recycling" for roughly half a century.
I often use the metaphor to describe antinukes as "arsonists complaining about forest fires."
The average electrical bill for people served by the two new Vogtle reactors will be about $6 a month higher than before, although there is good reason to suspect that this extra six dollars will be recouped in health costs. It is estimated, by economists at UC Santa Barbara and Carnegie Mellon Universities that the closure of Germany's last three nuclear reactors is costing the German people about $12 billion dollars per year:
Estimating the cost of Germany’s nuclear phaseout
We estimate that the annual cost of the phase-out to German producers and consumers is $12 billion, 70% of which is from increased mortality risk from stronger air pollution from burning of fossil fuels. This is substantially greater than even the most generous estimates of the costs of nuclear accident risk and waste disposal. The phase-out resulted in more than 1,100 additional deaths per year from increased concentrations of SO2, NOx, and particulate matter, with the increase in production from hard coal plants making up roughly 80% of the increase in mortality impacts.
The full paper is available on line:
THE PRIVATE AND EXTERNAL COSTS OF GERMANY'S NUCLEAR PHASE-OUT
The German so called "Greens" are pushing for fossil fuels and climate change and are willing to lie and kill to do so. It is a disgrace. As the abstract quoted above shows, the authors estimate that about 1100 people die each year in Germany as a result of the decision to displace nuclear energy with coal. In addition, Germany subsidized higher energy costs resulting from the phase out to the tune of $200 billion Euros, an indirect subsidy to the fossil fuel industry. (German purchases of fossil fuels financed Putin's war on Ukraine, a far worse subsidy.)
I will ultimately get around to writing a post with some calculations about the expenditures on what the IEA calls "clean energy." (They have a different definition of "clean" than I do, they include so called "renewable energy".)
For the time being, however, I'll just give a graphic and a link that will appear in that post should I get around to writing it, or living long enough to do so:
IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."
The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.12 trillion dollars, compared to 377 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy. In "percent talk," often used by antinukes to obscure the uselessness (with respect to climate change), we spent about 9% as much money on nuclear as has been spent on so called "renewable energy" even though, again in "percent talk," nuclear energy produced 193% as much energy as solar and wind combined, the former in an atmosphere of vituperation whipped up by fear and ignorance, the latter in an atmosphere of chanted dogmatic worship.
In 2023 alone, 659 Billion dollars were spent on so called renewable energy. This means that if AP1000 reactors really continue to cost 10 billion each - most of the cost was driven by the fact that insane rhetoric in this country vandalized and destroyed US nuclear manufacturing infrastructure meaning that all activities accrued FOAKE (first of a kind engineering) costs - we could have built 65 new Vogtle type reactors, which would have had a lifetime energy production of 420 Exajoules.
This would rival China, which has built and commissioned 53 new nuclear reactors in this century, and has 26 currently under construction. Note that the cost of constructing 25 of these reactors should be at least partially included included in the 377 billion dollar figure spent on nuclear since 2015, since 25 reactors came on line in China since the end of 2015.
Poland is soon to break ground on the first of what is to be six Vogtle 1000 reactors. They probably won't cost 10 billion a pop, but if they did, they'd still be a bargain for Poland and for humanity.
Anyway, the Vogtle reactors are up and running; they will be saving human lives for many years, and contribute to whatever little effective effort is directed against climate change. (Whatever we think we're doing isn't working.)
For me at least, given my focus on climate change, this is a good thing.
= new reply since forum marked as read
They simply make stuff up in my opinion. They're strong on wild eyed claims, but weak on supporting any of the bull they hand out.
(My favorite is one last week from an antinuke airhead who confidently announced that the temperature of nuclear fuels is 5000 "degrees." Since, like most antinukes, this person, now happily on my ignore list, apparently holds science in contempt, the temperature units were not supplied, Kelvin, centigrade or Fahrenheit.)
Now it's, "I have seen." Where? In the circle jerk of antinuke websites or in reputable literature?
The United States built more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors in about 25 years in the 20th century, before anything close to modern computational engineering systems existed while providing some of the lowest cost electricity in the industrialized world.
Many of those reactors proved to be gifts to future generations, my generation included, and still operate, albeit not without catcalls from people whose rhetoric is pointedly myopic.
Now what has already happened is declared impossible?
Now nuclear reactors cost 61 Billion? Really?
My numbers are supported by references. My reference above in the OP. for the money squandered on so called "renewable energy" for no result with respect to climate change, other than its acceleration. If one clicks on the link, one can see graphics that even a poorly educated antinuke could interpret are from the International Energy Agency. Now editorially they claim that this expenditure represents "clean energy" - which is not how I would categorize solar and wind energy - but the numbers are for the class which is popularly called "renewable energy" even though it isn't sustainable because of land and material requirements.
Here is a reference for the number of nuclear reactors built by China in the last 24 years, including the 13 years since the big, big, big big boogeyman at Fukushima:
World Nuclear, China
What's the claim, that China spent 54 X $61B more than three trillion dollars on this effort to fight climate change?
The Chinese GDP didn't reach three trillion dollars until 2007. Everybody in China ate mud to build nuclear reactors?
It's always amusing when bourgeois types writing on computers powered by electricity that is overwhelmingly generated in this country from dangerous fossil fuels say that energy is bad, and we should not be energy pigs, Such people in my view are completely cold hearted since, among other things, there are 2 billion people on this planet who lack improved sanitation systems of any kind.
The ethical myopia is appalling.
Included in the references I often cite, those I often produce here in response to antinuke drivel repeatedly, is the death toll associated with fossil fuel enabling antinukism, is one delineating the death toll associated with air pollution, about which antinukes couldn't care less, anymore than they care about climate change.
It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.
Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:
There may be rubes out there who want to be believed when they throw around made up numbers - my favorite is when they throw around arbitrary numbers about how long so called "nuclear waste" will be "deadly" - they vary by orders magnitude, sometimes thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years. I'm sorry to report that I'm not a rube though. If you press these people to show that so called "nuclear waste" is "deadly" by asking them to produce a legitimate reference to the number of people actually killed by the storage of used nuclear fuel over the last 70 years that is greater than the number of people killed in the next 12 hours from air pollution - that would be between 8000 and 9000 people - they either fail to respond, work to change the subject, or make stuff up.
As for how long used nuclear fuel remains more radioactive than the uranium ores from which it is obtained, it is covered by the Bateman Equation, which in differential form is written:
It can be shown, using this equation and modern computers, that in the case of the recovery of all of the actinide components of used nuclear fuel, chiefly uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and ultimately curium, that all radioactive materials reach secular equilibrium asymptotically, at which they are being destroyed (by nuclear decay) as fast as they are formed. Under these conditions, nuclear power will make the planet as a whole less radioactive than it is now.
It is not true for the fossil fuel industry which has been supported and maintained by credulous antinukes that waste reaches secular equilibrium. It can accumulate indefinitely.
The following text comes from a post I wrote to respond to a claim by another antinuke who wanders this space - one the dishonest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes as it happens - of the type who makes stuff up and provide hyperbole. Note that it includes references:
The caption:
(Hartwig Freiesleben, The European Physical Journal Conferences · June 2013)
Source 17, in German, is this one: Reduzierung der Radiotoxizität abgebrannter Kernbrennstoffe durch Abtrennung und Transmutation von Actiniden: Partitioning. Reducing spent nuclear fuel radiotoxicity by actinide separation and transmutation: partitioning.
828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels
It is important to note that simply because a material is radioactive does not imply that it is not useful, perhaps even capable of accomplishing tasks that nothing else can do as well or as sustainably. Given the level of chemical pollution of the air, water and land, in fact, the use of radiation, in particular high energy radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and ultra UV radiation may prove to be more important than ever, but that's a topic for another time.
I don't buy innuendo. I report from the scientific literature and from respected sources and I produce numbers. People lie, to themselves and each other, but legitimate numbers don't lie.
Here are some numbers brought to us, in my view, but the rote acceptance of the nonsense handed out by the antinuke cults.
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 423.96 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 401.62 ppm
Last updated: April 30, 2024
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 5/1/2024)
A cult is a collection of people who hold a series of unsupportable beliefs that cannot be changed by any amount of information. In response to information, their normal response is to chant and repeat dogma. When all else fails they either make stuff up or engage in innuendo.
The antinuke cults are not only killing people; they're killing the planet.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
..."too cheap to meter" remark to obviate their contempt - similar to his, so well portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in the movie Oppenheimer - for science, engineering, and, in fact, human decency.
It also reflects how bourgeois antinukes are, how they hold future generations in contempt, unwilling to spend any money to build infrastructure for them, content with mindless posturing and ersatz "concern."
To antinukes, the costs of 7 million air pollution deaths per year, the collapse of the Himalayan glaciers on which billions depend for their water supply is "cheap," but nuclear energy is "too expensive."
In fact, sixty years from now, when every useless wind turbine blade now in use will have been plastic rotting in landfills for 40 years, the people whose lights are powered by Vogtle will not care about the penny pinching whiny bourgeois brats who worked so hard to deprive them of clean energy. They will be glad to have power.
Here's how much money been squandered in 2023 on so called "renewable energy" - which has done nothing other than to make it accelerate - climate change, not that there is one antinuke on this planet who actually gives a shit about climate change:
IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."
I personally don't call wind and solar "clean energy," since they depend on access to dangerous fossil fuels.
It would be interesting if antinukes had something to say about the cost of 4.12 trillion dollars spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 to accelerate climate change and entrench the use fossil fuels, but antinukes, in their moral hollows, are famous for their selective attention. They think that if someone eventually dies from radiation exposure at Fukushima, the nearly 100 million who will have died from air pollution since the earthquake will be totally justified.
Antinukes, with their fear and ignorance, their love of quoting Lewis Strauss in his advocacy for fusion energy - this because he was looking for a way to justify expenditures on hydrogen bombs - have worked tirelessly to destroy the US nuclear manufacturing infrastructure with sordid and immoral advertising reflecting their ignorance, and their irrational fear. They've succeeded in this, destroying US manufacturing infrastructure, this at the expense of all humanity. It's like cigarette advertising in a sense, since they've successfully made the world safe for the coal and gas industries, which kill people when they operate normally. However the metaphor I most often use to describe these awful people is to describe them as "Arsonists complaining about forest fires."
The Chinese nuclear manufacturing infrastructure has built more than 50 reactors in less than 25 years, not quite matching the historic achievement of US engineers in the late 20th century of building more than 100 nuclear reactors in roughly the same amount of time, many of which still operate, gifts from a previous generation to ours. They did this while providing some of the cheapest electricity in the industrial world.
Now of course, we have penny pinching antinukes whining about the costs of Vogtle, costs they worked hard to drive up, demonstrating their contempt not only for science and engineering, but history as well.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
Congrats to all the penny pinching bourgeois antinukes here and elsewhere:
Week beginning on April 28, 2024: 427.00 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 423.88 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 402.00 ppm
Last updated: May 08, 2024
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa
In my view, an antinuke pretending to care about climate change is rather like Donald Trump pretending to care about racism.
Since we are quoting people from the 1950's, in addressing antinukes, that brand of consumerist malcontents, I like to quote Joseph Welch, albeit from another context, addressing a red baiter of the Lewis Strauss ilk:
"At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
I don't really, of course, need an answer, since it's obvious that with the planet in flames, that decency with respect to climate change clearly lacks among the arsonists complaining about forest fires.
Have a wonderful afternoon.
