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DOE to OK $6.5B for Georgia Nuclear Plant

posted by Dopefish on Saturday February 22 2014, @10:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-hail-the-almighty-atom dept.

CyberB0B39 writes: "The Department of Energy is set to approve $6.5B for a Georgia nuclear power plant, the first such plant in more than 3 decades. While other nuclear plants are shutting down due to competition from natural gas, Atlanta-based Southern Company is forging ahead with its planned construction of the plant."

[ED Note: "For those that are wondering, the new nuclear plant will be based on the AP1000 design by Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, a company based in Pittsburgh, PA and a subsidiary of Toshiba."]

 
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  • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Sunday February 23 2014, @08:14PM

    by evilviper (1760) on Sunday February 23 2014, @08:14PM (#5392) Journal

    I don't know about the US but a $13,000 loan is not small thing for most people where I live.

    It's a pretty modest expense in the US. For some context:

    2010, USA new home prices - Median: $221,800 Average: $272,900

    "The 2011 Median Income of US households was $50,054 per annum"

    So $13k is just 6% of the median home value, and just 26% of the annual household income (though a loan would typically allow 15-30 years to repay).

    It is always cheaper to reduce demand by installing solar and improving homes than it is to build new capacity.

    It's already clear that just installing solar panels won't do it. What were your other ideas for "improving homes"? If you're talking about extra insulation or similar, that probably won't help much with ELECTRICAL demand, because home heating dominates domestic energy usage in the US, and that's generally via natural gas, NOT electricity. I can see how it would help in tropical climates.

    Plus, it reduces emissions far more, and you get rid of the network losses by having power generated close to where it is used.

    I would agree if we were talking about coal power plants, but these nuclear power plants will have almost zero emissions. Also, grid losses in the US only average 7%... Not a substantial amount, and certainly not enough to change the math in favor of 1/5 as much solar capacity.

    The Japanese have developed low temperature sodium sulphur batteries

    Thanks for the tip, I'll look those up some time.

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