Nuclear fuel (and waste byproducts) must be secured and safely transported.NIMBY* - community opposition to siting nuclear power plants and waste repositories.Decommissioning of nuclear power plants can take 50+ years and is expensive.US nuclear power plants are old and require upgrades and new licensing.Nuclear power plants take a long time to plan, permit, and build, particularly in the United States.Extremely expensive to build and insure relative to other sources of electricity.Rigid baseload on the grid and not flexible for integration of renewables or load following.Risk of nuclear proliferation and the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities to more countries, with geopolitical consequences.Produces radioactive waste that must be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years.High-risk (extreme consequence x low probability) accidents.In the US, the nuclear industry is the only energy industry which has its own governmental agency (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - NRC), and nuclear-related activities account for ~70% of the US Department of Energy’s budget. The commercial nuclear industry in the US was born in response to the horror of the destruction from the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII. The roots of nuclear fission power come from defense. New technologies known as small modular reactors (SMRs) are being developed in the hopes of offering cheaper and safer alternatives to traditional fission reactors. Due to the complexity of containing the nuclear reaction and the need for redundant safety systems, capital and operating costs tend to be high and there are long lead times for planning and construction. The risk of accidents is low, but the consequences of a nuclear power plant accident have the potential to be extremely severe. Nuclear power plants have been operating commercially since the 1950s and tend to be large-scale (1-2 GW). There are currently no proven long-term solutions for storage of this radioactive waste. The byproducts of nuclear fission are highly radioactive and must be secured away from people for hundreds of thousands of years. Most nuclear power plants today are fueled by enriched uranium 235 to produce non-renewable, carbon-free, 24/7 electricity. That heat is used to boil water, make steam, turn a turbine and generator, and produce electricity. Nuclear fission is the process of splitting a large atom into two smaller atoms and releasing a LOT of heat. Tools to Manage and Sustain Energy Systems.The Grid: Electricity Transmission, Industry, and Markets.Drilling, Completing, and Producing from Oil and Natural Gas Wells.
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