Unit 2 of the Shin Hanul nuclear power plant in South Korea has entered commercial operation, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) announced. The unit is the second of two APR-1400 reactors at the site, with a further two planned.
Georgia Power has announced the start of commercial operations at the second of the two AP1000 units built as an expansion of the existing two-unit Vogtle plant. The plant is now the largest generator of clean energy in the USA. Vogtle 4 reached first criticality in February and was connected to the grid in March, following Vogtle 3 which entered commercial operation in July 2023. They are the first new nuclear units to be constructed in the USA in more than 30 years.
The US Vogtle plant 3 and 4 and the Shin Hanul all started construction in 2013.
France’s nuclear regulator has launched a three-week public consultation on its draft decision to authorise the commissioning of the Flamanville EPR reactor, which has a summer 2024 target for connection to the grid. Construction work began in December 2007 on the 1650 MWe unit at the Flamanville site in Normandy – where two reactors have been operating since 1986 and 1987. The dome of the reactor building was put in place in July 2013 and the reactor vessel was installed in January 2014. The reactor was originally expected to start commercial operation in 2013.
Eight nuclear reactors are completing in 2024, ten in 2025 and ten in 2026.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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i like that countries such as France, China and Korea are serious about
nukes and build 1500+ GW plants.
However what i dont like that the Red Tape, the projected Cost and COST OVERRUNS plague the muclear industry in the western hemisphere.
The Flamanville 3 is 10 years behind the original schedule and the cost is projected to swell to 20 wopping billion !! I bet chinese get their big plant up and running in a third of the time and quarter of the cost (if you include the cost overruns).
Weirdest of Ironies if the Social media such as Meta/ AI developers such as OPenAI/ Search as with Google-Alphabet/ Enterprise comps such as IBM, etc., were actually to become a:
Lobbying/ Collaborating Entity (as the Dark Axis of Human Shallowness)
further to their massive industries of distraction, predatory-socialization, near-plagiarism, procrastination, cloud/data user-exploitation services, brain-melting short-form ‘entertainment’, etc.,
to underwrite/ support massive localized energy sources such as modular nuclear and its necessary grid upgrade to actually move energy scale and distribution in this country; faster than any utility, government or institution. In pursuit of data center energy source upgrades could they increase overall state and regional power; single-handedly pushing EV and fundamental electrification throughout. Slashed regulatory, rapid and reliable funding, likely reduced cost due to economies of scale… imagine…
Ukraine is building more nuclear plants too, but is that really the best way forward for them?
“Energoatom’s costly plans for more centralized power equipment have sparked alarm among independent energy experts in Ukraine. What Ukraine needs and can afford during wartime, they argue, is a large number of smaller power plants—generators that are relatively cheap, quick to build, less reliant on the national transmission grid, and harder for Russian missiles and drones to destroy.”
See:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-renewable-energy
But a massive, complex central power plant has far more potential for kickbacks to Ukrainian, European and US politicians/corps.
.so of course they’ll build the big central plant.
i bet they hope nuclear power plants will not be bombed by putin as that would make him look bad in the eyes of many people that are now leaning towards russia instead of nato.
Geothermal energy is also making progress:
“The advances have garnered hopes that with enough time and money, geothermal power—which currently generates less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, and 0.4 percent of electricity in the United States—could become a mainstream energy source. Some posit that geothermal could be a valuable tool in transitioning the energy system off of fossil fuels, because it can provide a continuous backup to intermittent energy sources like solar and wind. “It’s been, to me, the most promising energy source for a long time,” says energy engineer Roland Horne of Stanford University. “But now that we’re moving toward a carbon-free grid, geothermal is very important.””
See:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/is-geothermal-power-heating-up-as-an-energy-source-180984202/
Nuclear is great for base load, solar & wind are pretty good, but at the moment, nothing beats nuclear.
New designs are miles safer then the old plants, and the risk of a meltdown is extremely low.
They still of course have some issues, like nuclear waste, although far less, and the price tag. But that’s because of way too much bureaucracy, which causes massive delays, which then causes massive cost overruns. Obviously because of its nature, regulations are important, but we have too many layers in this country.
SMR (Small Modular Reactors) could help fix the cost issue, by building them in a factory, assembly line style, and shipping them out to wherever power is needed. But doing so will take a very large piggy bank to fund it all. It may be hard to find investors when were getting very close to real fusion. But I think that is still 15+ years away from being a attractive commercial product.
but why now? New cleaner and safer energy sources are realized every day.
https://news.google.com/foryou?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
It’s quite spectacular that we’ve gone from demonisation of nuclear to full steam ahead in space of a couple years. Pun very much intended. Too much of the green movement has been Mathlusian, viewing the world in grim, finite terms, where energy should be viewed as scarce and to be rationed. In order to build a bright future, that which people have been dreaming of, we need to dramatically increase the amount of energy we use globally. As a thought experiment, if we had 10x the installed capacity of present available right now, we’d be doing things a lot differently from powering gigawatt class datacentres to doing industrial chemisty using clean high temperature process heat and much more.