Rod Adams

Serious question: Why would leaders of a potential host community for a large nuclear project oppose the project due to the possibility of high cost and long construction time?

Fermi America submitted the initial parts of its Construction Permit Application for Project Matador - a 4 unit AP1000 power station - under 10 CFR Part 50 in September 2025. DOW’s application for a 4-unit XE-100 power station for its Long Mott facility has been under review for more than a year. It takes time, but momentum is building.

Question.. The Inflation Reduction Act added a major investment tax credit for new nuclear of 30%, which survived the OBBB, along with the various production tax credits that are out there. Why are there no new major nuclear power plants under development in ERCOT? Or are there?

@JigarShahDC How well do storage economics work with long cycle turn around? Does the charging time approximate the discharge time, or can LDES systems recharge rapidly? Are there differing capabilities among various chemistries? Honest questions. Personal learning quest.

@lyndalovon Fission is clean enough to run inside sealed submarines full of people. It’s been doing that since 1955. Meets a reasonable person’s definition of “clean.”

@Atomicrod Zero emissions, clean energy, free of pollution all those slogans are lies. They are intentionally misleading, unscientific, and propaganda. The sad fact is nuclear proponents can’t make their case without lying.

Companies that act like they own a market are setting themselves up for a humbling experience. A little research would have told Circle W that there are at least 2 more large, proven LWRs that have been certified by the U.S. NRC.

@lyndalovon That’s a list selected by opponents. Some are older than I am and haven’t been used by advocates in half a century.

@Atomicrod You don’t have a list of talking points? That’s hilarious. You literally have slogans!

@RenaldyApreza @Dr_Keefer True enough. But every bcm burned for electricity is another bcm that can’t be used for industrial customers

@Dr_Keefer You need gas for industry and chemicals not just for electricity production

Taiwan’s nuclear phaseout created a vulnerability that now sits directly on top of the Qatar Ras Laffan force majeure. The uncomfortable arithmetic is that the nuclear capacity Taiwan chose to retire is almost exactly equal to the LNG volume it imports from Qatar. Taiwan imports roughly 35 percent of its LNG from Qatar. LNG now fuels nearly half of Taiwan’s electricity after the political phaseout of nuclear power. The island maintains only about eleven days of LNG storage. Had Taiwan kept its full nuclear fleet operating and commissioned Lungmen, its completed but never fuelled fourth nuclear plant, the country would today have roughly 7,750 MW of nuclear capacity producing about 61 TWh per year, covering around 21 percent of the grid. Replacing that output with gas requires far more primary energy because Taiwan’s combined cycle gas turbines operate at roughly 55 percent thermal efficiency. Producing 61 TWh of electricity from gas therefore requires roughly 110 TWh of fuel input, equivalent to about 10 to 11 billion cubic metres of natural gas or roughly 7 to 8 million tonnes of LNG per year. That volume is almost exactly the amount of LNG Taiwan currently imports from Qatar. In other words, the nuclear fleet Taiwan shut down would have displaced essentially the entire Qatari supply stream. Every cargo that does not need to cross the Strait of Hormuz is a cargo that cannot be held hostage. Instead that capacity was retired and mothballed on political grounds and the gap was filled with gas. On 23 August Taiwan held a referendum on whether to restart the Ma’anshan nuclear plant, the island’s last operating reactor station, which had shut down in May after its forty year operating licence expired. A clear majority of participating voters supported restarting the plant subject to regulatory approval and safety confirmation. Taiwan’s referendum law, however, requires affirmative votes from at least one quarter of all eligible voters, roughly five million people. The referendum received about 4.3 million yes votes, leaving it below the legal threshold and keeping the plant offline, effectively confirming the continuation of Taiwan’s nuclear phaseout. Oil markets built resilience after decades of shocks. Strategic petroleum reserves, spare tanker capacity, and a deep spot market exist precisely because embargoes and supply crises forced the system to develop buffers. LNG developed very differently. For most of its history it operated as a point to point business, the same ships on the same routes under long term contracts, functioning in conditions stable enough that nobody was forced to build equivalent shock absorption into the system. Storage compounds this vulnerability and it divides sharply along geographic lines. Europe benefits from geology. Depleted gas fields and salt caverns can hold months of supply, which is why European utilities spend the summer refilling underground storage ahead of winter demand. Asia has no equivalent. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan depend almost entirely on above ground insulated LNG tanks at their import terminals, essentially the same thermos principle used on LNG ships. South Korea had roughly nine days of LNG supply when Ras Laffan went offline. Taiwan had about eleven days. Japan operates in a similar range. These are operational buffers designed for a world of uninterrupted deliveries rather than strategic reserves designed to ride out supply shocks. When a major node in the LNG system fails, there is no large fleet of idle ships ready to reroute, no spare liquefaction capacity waiting to fill the gap, and in Asia no underground storage that can stabilize supply while the market adjusts. Taiwan’s nuclear shutdown therefore produced a structural vulnerability that is now impossible to ignore. The reactors that were closed would today be offsetting almost the entire volume of LNG Taiwan buys from Qatar. There's never been a better time to restart Taiwan's nuclear fleet.

Like @nuclear94 I’m a @timechols fan. He selflessly devoted himself to making great decisions for his state. He paid a political price. With clear, prompt hindsight, that price could be temporary. Georgians should reward proven performance.

@MarcInRenew Payback periods for distributed solar are obviously tied to retail electricity prices. Much shorter in CA than in FL.

2-5 year payback without the permitting gauntlet. Soft costs have always been distributed solar's true enemy.

@lyndalovon If you haven’t seen nuclear energy advocates disagreeing - often vociferously - you haven’t been paying attention. We don’t have a list of talking points. There are many different opinions about the best ways to use the most energy-dense, non polluting fuel source on the planet.

@Atomicrod Oh, I’m here for you guys taking each other down!

@HannoKlausmeier @Erst_Officer The later the better. The income from operating a few more decades will create ever-growing decommissioning funds.

@Erst_Officer Here a table about dismantling costs and EDF's overoptimism in that regard. It is very likely that sooner or later the French taxpayer will need to pay for that. Those additional costs are so far not reflected in any electricity bill.

Spain is analyzing to reduce the VAT on electricity. This is exactly the right movement. Electricity needs to be cheap ideally very cheap. This will drive electrification and decarbonazition. No nuclear is not part of that. Nuclear is making electricity very expensive especially in a long term. elperiodicodelaenergia.com/el-gobierno-es…

@fredstaffordcs Circle W has been making numerous statements indicating that they assume they have a monopoly position as a supplier of fully certified and operating large LWRs.

@Atomicrod I didn't really mean anything by citing AP1000 (and I posted that before the news broke of their abusing their monopoly on known LLWR tech). Just meant to say something that exists in the real world but allowed for possibility they might not like "old" nuclear tech.

Do any on the antimonopoly left support nuclear power? Not idealized SMRs, but existing deployed, commercial technology like AP1000 in Georgia.

Australia is far more vulnerable to global oil supply pressures than I imagined. Fuel prices there are already around $2.20 and might soon approach $3.00. Americans who might see those as rather modest numbers need to recognize that Australians purchase fuel by the liter, not by the gallon. But they also use AUD (Australian dollars), not USD. Here’s the conversion $2.20 (AUD)/liter x 0.7 USD/AUD x 1 liter/0.26 gallons. = $5.92 USD/gallon If they rise to $3.00 AUD/liter Australian gas prices would be roughly $8.00 USD/gallon.

@JekyllCapital Are you really surprised? Part of the art of a deal is making sure the other party knows you have options. It’s always harder to reach a beneficial agreement if there are no viable choices.

Wow this would be a huge surprise... US Gov looking at alternatives to the AP-1000 now.

@Ab_1_1_1_1 @AlexCKaufman One has a supply chain. One doesn’t. One has currently operating units. One doesn’t. Choice seems self evident.

Big scoop this morning: The Trump administration has held talks with Westinghouse's rivals to discuss potentially funding construction of large reactors *other than the AP1000*. The move comes as the Energy Department grows frustrated that it hasn't reached a deal yet to fund another large reactor with a settled design. So officials from the agency met with executives from GE Hitachi to talk about bringing back the ABWR, the nearly 1.4-gigawatt beast of a design with a great record of running for decades Japan. Likewise, the administration met with the South Korean government to discuss the possibility of building that country's lead third-generation large reactor, the APR-1400. There are big questions around both designs, but one thing is sure: Like the AP1000, both are already certified to be built in the U.S.

Another nuclear phase-out plan has been replaced by legislation encouraging new nuclear. The Swiss are returning to their historical energy pragmatism.

@JigarShahDC @ShanuMathew93 If you need workers to routinely work 80 hrs/week to keep on schedule, you have labor constraints. Not many people can maintain that level of effort for more than a few weeks before something gives.

Before widespread liquefaction of methane (AKA natural gas) enabled global supply chains, nuclear energy competed against pipeline gas, suppressing price volatility and reducing interruption vulnerability. France decided to build its nuclear fleet after Oil Embargo of 1973 to reduce its abject dependence on petroleum for electricity production. At the time, France was importing a significant amount of oil from its former colony in Algeria, but they didn’t like each other very much. Parts of the US, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea also turned to nuclear to reduce or eliminate oil in electricity production. In the US, the Northeast successfully pushed oil out with half a dozen nuclear reactors. With help from antinuclear activists and LNG interests, four of those reactors have closed. Now there are winter days where 40% of NE electricity is from oil.

@Atomicrod Batteries enable you to carry electricity in a vehicle and replace oil use. Nuclear + batteries is a threat to oil use. 20 years ago nuclear wouldn’t have helped insulate against oil shocks. Transportation of LNG also means nuclear can now protect against LNG shocks. This is new.

For decades, some people have asserted that #nuclear energy couldn’t reduce vulnerability to oil supply interruptions. Supposedly, “oil isn’t used to produce electricity and that’s the “only” thing nuclear can do.” If true, how do wind, solar and batteries reduce importance of oil?