Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 Nuclear Reactors Are Now Providing Commercial Power to Georgia.

[NNadir]

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

Key Findings:

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.