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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   31005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Possible Nuclear Power Push in Texas

Today, the state government's commission on nuclear power expansion released a report(https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/TANRWG_Advanced_Nuclear_Report_v11.17.24c_.pdf) pushing for Texas to invest in nuclear energy. Not normally a huge deal, but the report was specifically requested by Greg Abbott and is released at the traditional time for Texas to set policy goals. There are seven policy recommendations:

  1. Create a state agency for coordinating, enacting, and funding the nuclear industry.

  2. Create a unified point of contact for permitting nuclear projects, to simplify bureaucratic requirements.

  3. Expand related programs in state run trade schools(and Texas public technical education is generally acknowledged as a thing the state does well at in general), with substantial industry input.

  4. Foster necessary manufacturing capabilities locally.

  5. Public outreach about the benefits of nuclear power.

  6. State fund to mitigate the risk of project cancellation.

  7. State fund to mitigate the capital costs of nuclear plant construction.

Now I legitimately find this all interesting, and I'm curious for motteizean feedback on the helpfulness/practicability of those seven items and the further considerations listed afterwards in the document. I'm particularly interested in if fancy economic structures are helpful.

As to why this is an even bigger deal 1) the document explicitly calls for requesting a delegation of federal authority by an act of congress and 2) the GOP is going to need something to run on after Trump. The 'red state model' is already the most likely and Abbott has presidential ambitions. Plus, the timeline is about right for it to become a national level issue in 2028. Particularly if the Trump administration doesn't have a particularly good four years, the GOP is just going to need to start running on copying what successful red states do on the national level, and Texas is the biggest wealthiest and most successful red state. Even partial success can have major implications.

Between cheap gas, cheap solar, and limited grid interconnects, Texas is a weird place to be boosting nuclear because it can't possibly compete.
It's the north that needs it desperately, with $.60/kwh prices, banned pipelines, solar not working in winter, and the Jones act literally prohibiting coastal shipment of (relatively) cheap LNG.

The point is to go the french route and run your own economy off nuclear while exporting more portable goods at a profit.

There's also the strategic consideration behind ensuring that the blue tribe is dependent on the reds' continued good will if they don't want to spend the coming winter freezing in the dark.

Texas has limited ability to export power, but exporting reactors and critical equipment/parts, that it can do- as well as ensuring maintenance and operation personnel(who will be 90+% red) are trained in Texas.

On the contrary, coal, oil, gas, etc... are quite easy to export.

Ironically it's not easy to export energy to the northeast because they banned everything from pipelines to ships to high voltage wires.

The Canadians basically have a monopoly on selling them energy because they can tap into the existing local grid without building anything new on the American side, take advantage of grandfathered pipelines, and legally deliver LNG due to the shipping being international rather than interstate.

But that’s exporting fuel, not power.

Its exporting energy which in the end is not that different.

It’s an odd place, but it’s also the case that the nuclear push seems oddly export oriented.

It's the north that needs it desperately.

Texas would therefore be wise to ensure the North continues to depend on Texas industry for its energy production, even in a potential post-hydrocarbon future.

It's not like the North is going to bother developing it, given their current strategy of "ban all development with environmentalism as the excuse, then freeze to death in the dark" means they can't advance nuclear technology even if they wanted to (and their best and brightest have already left for Texas).

Fracking is putting the US in a screwed position in terms of power generation. Fracking produces a lot of cheap gas which outcompetes most other electricity production. However, it is finite. Fracking will essentially deliver 30 years of super cheap power and then another decade or two of cheaper power. It is going to leave a large void behind it. Texas needs to start planning for a post fracking future and considering the sorry state of western nuclear manufacturing this is going to take time.

Ten years is more than enough warning to develop alternatives and just the crazy fast ramp-up of nat-gas plants shows that power generators are more flexible than people give them credit for.

Gas can be build that fast. However, that requires cheap gas. Scaling nuclear is going to take more than a decade.

It does help that for natural gas generating stations the turbine technology they use is quite mature and has a relatively wide pool of engineers that know how to build them. Nuclear is a... bit more complicated by comparison, since the heating of the water for the turbines is the complicated part, whereas with natural gas even when we're doing fucking retarded shit like this that blows up the entire plant cleaning that mess up is quite a bit easier and cheaper.

That's the thing... It's really not! You take a giant vat of nuclear "stuff" and just let it do its thing! I oversimplify but only a little. Here is an example where Devanney compares coal and nuclear plants: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/what-is-nuclears-should-cost. The radiation levels from a typical plant release (including TMI and Fukushima) are so small that sheltering indoors for a few days and throwing away contaminated milk are enough to negate the vast majority of the radiation risk. The reason nuclear looks complicated is because we make it complicated by worrying about non-risks like Tritium leaks.

I think that’s probably true for low temperature reactors. If higher temperature gas or metal reactors become available in the future I think it could be a real bonanza for a place like Texas for direct heating applications in the petrochemical industry (imagine how mad green peace would be over a nuclear heated oil refinery).

Be still my beating heart. Nuclear process heat would be a game changer if we can buy it from the Chinese.

The Gen IV designs that don't rely on water as the heat carrier/moderator (I think molten salt or liquid sodium based ones) operate at ~700C so are quite suitable for process heat. Of course, good luck getting the NRC to approve any of them.

Texas recently had a bad power outage during a cold snap which I don't think more solar would solve. And Texas is growing quickly. Abbott is probably trying to get ahead of the curve; power outages make us and him look bad and do actual material damage. In terms of predictable scandals that could seriously harm Abbott and/or his party, more grid problems is probably up there.

The fastest and cheapest way to solve that is making sure gas peaking plants weatherize their turbines and have a supply of alt-fuel on hand in case the natgas supply goes down, which is standard everywhere but Texas. Cap the surge prices paid to electricity suppliers who don't guarantee uptime in a disaster (and use the same system to cut prices paid to wind owners too, so they only get the base rate even if they're coincidentally selling power during a shortage)

Nuclear won't fix intermittent supply problems without changing most of the grid to it. Huge fixed cost, low running cost, not good for "filling in the gaps".

In which case being on record as "I voted to build more powerplants while my rivals voted against" is a lay-up of a campaign ad.

And being seen to address the power grid issue(whether or not it’s an actual issue) is important for legitimacy.

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