111–120 of 397 posts
Although nuclear energy is profitable of the LONG term, it is financially infeasible over the short-to-medium term.
I agree, but why set up a false dichotomy? Nuclear energy should be part of a "Green New Deal", which shouldn't just be about energy, but pragmatic environmentalism in all fields.
I always say this whenever nuclear conversations come up: > It isn't nuclear vs renewables, it is nuclear + renewables vs renewables. You use the best technology for the local environment and situations. Why take something off the table? Seems like the author is buying into the common false dichotomy because it is more sensational.
Solar and wind are a good complement to natural gas. We can dial back the gas when the intermittent sources of energy are producing. This both saves carbon and money, since fuel is a substantial portion of a gas plant', operating cost.
By comparison, a nuclear plant costs just as much to run at maximum capacity all day long as it does at partial capacity. If you have enough nuclear plants to full peak demand, which coincides with the trough of renewables' generation, then just run the plants at full capacity all day and skip building renewables.
I agree, but why set up a false dichotomy? Nuclear energy should be part of a "Green New Deal", which shouldn't just be about energy, but pragmatic environmentalism in all fields.
I always say this whenever nuclear conversations come up: > It isn't nuclear vs renewables, it is nuclear + renewables vs renewables. You use the best technology for the local environment and situations. Why take something off the table? Seems like the author is buying into the common false dichotomy because it is more sensational.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Define short term; I think by the time a reactor you start today comes online, we are already pretty screwed
I don't know. The science and engineering has quietly moved quite a bit over the last 40 years. These [0] SMRs can, for example - there are several other approaches - can be assembled on a standard assembly line, shipped in a couple of C-Containers, and stood up on a concrete pad (well, not exactly, but close enough that I don't feel like complicating the point. [0]: https://www.nuscalepower.com/
However, when we tried to build again back in 2008, it turned to failure. In areas with highly supportive populations that want the nuclear jobs in their community, with an NRC that changed processes to try to make it easier to get approval, we are still 12 years in, way behind schedule, and 2-3x over budget, without a solid feel for when we will star pushing electrons with the new reactors.
Last I heard, NuScale is hoping to hit a cost of $55/MWh. That's about the current cost of wind/solar and the storage to make it dispatchable. Meaning that by the time they finally ship, it will be a more expensive option for firm low-carbon energy than the current options we have.
So not only is NuScale aiming at a not-so-desirable target, by the time it can deliver its first 10GW, it's quite likely that the renewables will be curtailed for much of the year, meaning that we have extra generation capacity that goes unused, which is likely to spur a huge round of economic innovation for that energy.
I would hate to get stuck with the path dependence of nuclear. Renewables are so cheap that they open up a ton more doors for society.
The Green New Deal is at worst nuclear-neutral in favor of stressing wind and solar. Biden's climate plan, which has a bunch of the same stakeholders and says the GND is a great idea, is on top of that more explicitly and vocally in favor of reactor development and a focus on efficiency improvements and waste processing and reclamation. Hell, even greenpeace has been pro-reactor for a while now. I don't see a short-t…
> Hell, even greenpeace has been pro-reactor for a while now. Hrm. Do you have a reference for where you read about Greenpeace's stance on reactor development? Their nuclear energy page[1] currently says: "Nuclear energy has no place in a safe, clean, sustainable future." [1] - https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/nuclear...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it removes ONE funding obstacle because as the OP I replied to says cost increased with the 4th power of the size, but that just means you move to the next limiting factor: the neutron blanket, designing to be able to swap out the shielding, etc. We are still VERY far away from practical fusion. The fact that we know what the current limiting factors are doesn't mean that once we overcome those hurdles that we'l…
I wonder if that General Fusion design has any benefit here? It’s basically a swirling sphere of molten lead that is injected with a bubble of hydrogen plasma and then a bunch of pistons pump the volume down to collapse the bubble to create fusion conditions. It seems that that the lead might provide neutron shielding and is also the carrier fluid for the excess heat. Who knows if it actually works but the simplicity…
Centralized grids are incredibly expensive, difficult to manage, and introduce single points of failure in the physical and information domains. We should be doing everything we can to decentralize our grids, promote distributed power generation and storage in urban and commercial installments, and focus on letting the municipal levels of government coordinate bulk storage appropriate to their needs.
Folks get so worked up about highly efficient new nuclear power plants that they forget about transit and storage, or argue that these aspects shouldn't be considered. Both ideas are deleterious to making a modern, resilient power infrastructure that's able to adapt to climate change, changes in the economic environment, and the increasing pace of modern technology in the space of power storage and delivery.
Until these goals can coexist with the call for a "nuclear new deal", we should view them for what they are: short-sighted and misguided attempts to make profit off a need without considering the actual long term goals that society has.
There was an article posted on HN a while back, “Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs”. Not sure if the information is now dated, but I always think about it when I see articles like these. https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm...
This article makes some good points but forgets this: our knowledge increases constantly. So today's reactors might not be able to scale well, but the more we build the better we are at it.
More generally, in engineering most technologies must fail. That's because there are multiple technologies that can solve any given problem, and only one can come out on top. The number of niches If you think just wait, we'll learn more and nuclear wins, why doesn't that same argument apply to the technologies nuclear is competing against?