Ultra Safe Nuclear

So unless the carrying capacity of earth suddenly collapses to the point that it's impossible to maintain organised society for several hundred years, then I think we'll be alright. If that does happen, then a few nomads stumbling upon a nuclear waste dump will likely be the least of humanity's problems!

I think, when you buy a new solar panel, you should also pay the full cost to pull it apart and dispose of it as well.

There's two main benefits to nuclear:

1) The big case is the lack of good power storage. While areas like the South West US have plenty of sunshine to go around, most other places don't have this luxury. Therefore you need substantially more storage. I'll give you an example, I've been sitting in Oregon for the past week and sun levels have been pretty abysmal, the past week. Dust and ash are covering panels, making things worse, and this is the sunniest time of the year. There's plenty of times I don't see the sun for a few days straight. Same with wind. Because of this we need to mix up our power sources a bit. I mean you also don't want to depend on only two power sources. I think most of us in the nuclear community agree on: wind + solar + hydro + nuclear as the model. Without good enough batteries nuclear is a great option for baseloads. Remember that you need enough battery storage for rare events where there isn't much sun and wind. Current solutions aren't quite there yet without massive footprints, CO2eq costs, and a high price tag. The unfortunate fact is that wind and solar can't stand up by themselves. They need support. People talk about how you can do it with batteries, water storage, whatever, but until it is implemented I'm not holding my breath.

2) Nuclear has a small physical footprint. This means less disruption of local wildlife, homes, etc. This is a big environmental factor to me.

As to what these people are doing, there's a few factors they are banking on (bets). It'll be interesting to see how that pans out and if their bets can pay off.

- With small modular designs they can get the benefits from economies of scale. This hasn't ever really been a thing for nuclear in the past. This has been a big driver for the huge costs.

- Small reactors should be cheaper to insure (this still needs to be resolved from what I'm aware of and has historically made small reactors unattractive).

- Small and modular enables the ability to better fit the local environment and meet the specific needs. Southern California? Probably don't need any. Alaska? Few would be nice. The idea behind these is that you don't have to transmit energy far (lower loss due to transmission), can add independence from the grid (to corporations or universities), and you don't need to put them in areas that can better rely on wind and solar, i.e. better scaling than conventional nuclear plants.

Of course, this is still a bet and has been one people have been talking about for well over a decade, but why dismiss it before they place their chips? If the bets pay off we should welcome them with open arms. If they don't pay off, well we're on a forum hosted by a startup company where we all know most startups fail. Glad someone at least tried. We're not talking about enough investment money that it would sway the scales and it is good to spread out your bets.

> Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that.

Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who could do the kinds of welds they needed, build structures in the right way, inspect, inspect, inspect, and litigate dozens of lawsuits asserting on form of harm or another. It was pretty amazing.

This particular company can build the reactor in their factory. All their specialists are in one place, you can have permanent inspection equipment with costs amortized over all the reactors you build, and the safety systems this reactor design purports to have means no additional site prep (no backup generators, no double containment vessels, no borosilicon sandpits under the reactor to slag into glass while "catching" a meltdown.

If I were to guess, while the pitch is all about safety, this design screams that it is all about cost. When you factor in that the design in modular, so making a 100MW power station with 20 of these gets advantages of scale that multiplies the cost advantage.

When I read this I see those cost savings and recognize this could be both cheaper than renewables and way more reliable. A solid base load solution to kill the last of the coal plants.

Specifically wrt solar, a big argument against is that it can't provide power during the night and we don't have a good way to store energy. What I'm wondering is why it's so imperative that residential/commercial properties are able to get full power from the grid 24/7? What if prices for power go way up during the night (because it can't come from solar), and people could just learn to get most of their power from the grid during the day? And have a relatively small per-house battery that charges during the day and can be used at night.