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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I was curious, so I checked to see the current longest ultra-high voltage dc transmission line:

    The Changji-Guquan ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission line in China is the world’s first transmission line operating at 1,100kV voltage.

    Owned and operated by state-owned State Grid Corporation of China, the 1,100kV DC transmission line also covers the world’s longest transmission distance and has the biggest transmission capacity globally.

    The transmission line traverses for a total distance of 3,324km (2065 miles) and is capable of transmitting up to 12GW of electricity.

    As a general rule of thumb, HVAC lines will be somewhere around 5-6% line loss per 1000kms, and HVDC somewhere around 3%/1000kms



  • People keep saying this, but it’s not accurate.

    An EPR is an EPR, the same with the AP1000. There are only very minor differences between installs, usually things that will help ease of construction or reliability on future builds. Both are GEN III+ designs, greatly simplified compared to previous generations, with fewer pump, valves and pipe-runs. They also shortened pipe runs where possible. They also have large, factory-built assemblies that are shipped to site, ready to “bolt” in, which should have reduced site construction time.

    Where major changes do happen, it’s with the balance of plant infrastructure, which is site dependent. Location of access roads, where the switchyard is installed, where cooling water is accessed , etc will never be the same between sites. Nor will the geotech information. So a lot of mainly civil and structural design and fabrication will always be site specific.

    The KLT-40S reactor is a variant of the KLT-40 reactors developed for and installed in the Taymyr icebreakers back in the late 1980s. It should have been cheap, as it’s a known quantity with a long track record.



  • That’s just not true. The Westinghouse AP1000 was given type approval in 2011. It’s what is referred to as a GEN3+ reactor. A lot of R&D was put into simplifying the design, reducing the number of pipe runs, valves, pumps etc compared to GEN2 reactors. It also used large sub assemblies that were factory built off-site then moved for final assembly.

    In theory they should have been cheaper to build, but they weren’t. Large assemblies that don’t fit together properly need a lot of very expensive site time for rework. There were other issues on top of that, which just compounded the assembly problems. It’s how Vogtle ended up going from $12B to $30B+, and V.C Summer went from $9B to an estimated $23B when the project was cancelled while under construction.

    The EPR units from Areva were similar GEN3+and received type approval in the early 2000s. They had similar cost overruns, for similar reasons.

    I have strong reservations about SMRs. So far the cost/MW is about on par with traditional reactors while the amount of waste increases by 2 to 30x traditional reactors depending on technology used.

    There are reasons why reactors moved from 300-600MW units to 1000MW+ in the first place. The increased output would cover what was thought to be marginal increase in costs. That turned out to be at least somewhat true.



  • Just like assuming a perfectly spherical cow, or a frictionless surface, you can completely ignore the economics, the massive cost and schedule overages to make nuclear work.

    Flamanville-3 in France started construction in 2007, was supposed to be operational in 2012 with a project budget of €3.3B. Construction is still ongoing, the in-service date is now sometime in 2024, and the budget has ballooned to €20B.

    Olkiluoto-3 is a similar EPR. Construction started in 2005, was supposed to be in-service in 2010, but finally came online late last year. Costs bloated from €3 to €11B.

    Hinkley Point C project is two EPRs. Construction started in 2017, it’s already running behind schedule, and the project costs have increased from £16B to somewhere approaching £30B. Start up has been pushed back to 2028 the last I’ve heard.

    It’s no different in the US, where the V.C. Summer (2 x AP1000) reactor project was cancelled while under construction after projections put the completed project at somewhere around $23B, up from an estimate of $9B.

    A similar set of AP1000s was built at Vogtle in Georgia. Unit 3 only recently came online, with unit 4 expected at the end of the year. Costs went from an initial estimate of $12B to somewhere over $30B.

    Note that design, site selection, regulatory approvals, and tendering aren’t included in the above. Those add between 5-10 years to the above schedules.








  • Sir_Osis_of_Liver@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml3 browsers
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    1 year ago

    There were a number of sites that FF choked on, so I just ended up using Edge. uBlock works with it, and that’s about all I need for extensions.

    Not sure how people decided that Google is more altruistic with data handling than Microsoft, but here we are, I guess.




  • At one point we had a remote office in a bank. One of my coworkers, W, had a pretty severe intestinal condition.

    Anyway, I’m using the facilities, and one of the bankers comes in and heads to a stall. His phone rings while he’s in there, which he answers. It’s obviously a work call.

    By this time, I’m heading over to wash my hands, just as W slams open the door with an panicked look. He violently shoulders open a stall, drops trousers, and unleashes just an absolutely unholy flume of waste, accompanied by a couple of mercy flushes.

    “Uh, I’ll call you back”.

    I’m assuming lessons were learned that day.