> Imagine a Thorium reactor that can be put into the bowels of a Hospital or an office building basement and supply electrical power. Imagine the terrorism we'll see when highly radioactive material is within reach of any disgruntled office worker.
You cannot make regular nuclear weapons out of thorium
I think the larger concern is containment breach via sabotage and the resulting material release, definitely less than ideal if these things are put under random buildings where you have little perimeter control.
> It is absolutely ridiculous: of all countries, Italy has totally the means to rely only on solar and batteries Do you have any trustable source for this?
Latitude?
This is relevant for solar irradiance but tells nothing about storage capacity.
When sealed several hundred meters underground in nonporous rock they do have such long lifespans. It's like observing that corn doesn't have a 10 year lifespan when left out on the counter and then objecting to canning it on that basis.
It's non porous right up until an earthquake or some movement of the area makes it not
So just to be clear the concern here is that something buried 2+ miles underground, in a secure container, encased along with other secure containers in a concrete vault, all homed in nonporous rock, in a geologically stable area, is suddenly going to be subjected to an earthquake, against all odds a fault is going to open right through the waste storage area, again against all odds groundwater will appear, the reinforced vault will be weathered to the point of failure (over what timespan I wonder?), and the resulting leak of radioactive material that is multiple miles underground will then somehow affect humans living, what, somewhere within a few hundred miles? Does that really sound like a reasonable scenario to you? Because as far as I'm concerned it's pure concern trolling.
Two things to keep in mind when thinking about nuclear 1) Has the lowest deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... 2) Any country that is not US absolutely needs to invest in nuclear technology. This is for your own security. In addition to providing energy security, it also provides physical security (with a bit more work). Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to: 1)…
Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to:
4) renewable energy disruptions, e.g. supervolcano eruption, large meteor strike
Thermodynamics are the reason why SMR aren't, and will never, be economical. A bigger nuclear reactor will always undercut your price per watt.
The mindset that makes people stuck in time. Sorry but SMRs are potentially very cheap. Not at this point. ,but when operated on scale they will be. You need to start
Note that China has started building battery banks at massive scale recently.
Is china building new coal plants or not? Do you want to hazard a guess as to why? The answer is because we still do not know how to supply expanding electricity demand with wind, solar and batteries. The side of the story that people on this website love to bring up is the fact that China happens to be the largest builder of solar and wind, which is true, but the increased electricity demand is being met via coal, f…
The increased demand is absolutely and categorically not being met by coal. Look it up, chinas total coal emissions have declined the last few years, despite overall demand growth.
Per Ember Energy reports, a cost optimal new build grid is between 90% - 97% solar/wind/battery, and between 3% to 10% gas peaker depending on how much sun/wind your locale gets. But you can't replace the gas peaker with 3% or 10% nuclear because in essence that gas peaker is supplying 100% of the power 3% to 10% of the time. So you'd have to build nuclear plants that can supply 100% of the power. But once you have t…
every single one of Ember's analyses are based on historical situations. That is certainly useful, and serves to demonstrate an important point - that wind and solar make economic sense. There is not a single analysis out there that tackles the twin problems of meeting growing electricity demand with a power source that depends on an uncertain and changing climate. You say "occasional" dunkelflaute, but we have no id…
They mostly don’t seem to agree, as exhibited by the fact that virtually none of them are breaking ground on new nukes.
China and South Korea can build nuclear reactors cheaply.
China mostly builds nuclear reactors to retain the required industrial base to maintain a military nuclear program. Nuclear power is heavily subsidized in China, as it is everywhere in the world. It might be cheaper than in the US or Europe, but its not "cheap".
They don't need to build reactors just to retain a military nuclear program. They specifically maintain a nuclear deterrent by policy, they don't need an excuse. They build reactors because they need more power. They have 60+ reactors and will have more nuclear the US by the end of the decade. They're also heavily investing in next-gen reactors which they wouldn't need to do if they just wanted a weapons program.
Yes it's subsidized, everything in China is subsidized, that's the best part of a planned-capitalist economy. But it's actually becoming more market driven so they can reduce financial pressure and force efficiency from competition. In 10 years those subsidies are gonna be a lot smaller
It's non porous right up until an earthquake or some movement of the area makes it not
So just to be clear the concern here is that something buried 2+ miles underground, in a secure container, encased along with other secure containers in a concrete vault, all homed in nonporous rock, in a geologically stable area, is suddenly going to be subjected to an earthquake, against all odds a fault is going to open right through the waste storage area, again against all odds groundwater will appear, the reinf…
So, just to be clear, you're demanding that I re-answer every concern that I've already addressed otherwise you're going to label me a troll
Civil engineering, power equipment (ABB is a big firm in Switzerland), Energy companies (the market is Switzerland is a constellation of local monopolies, who have already announced they won't invest their own huge money reserves in nuclear, it will have to be all public money and garanties), etc.
Civil engineering and power equipment companies also profit from other plants. In fact, there are specialized power companies for wind and solar. If private energy companies won't invest, then either don't invest public funding, or invest but with focus on developing long-term technologies. After all, the primary reason for nuclear being uneconomic today is lack of investment. If solar and wind can be made profitable…
> If solar and wind can be made profitable, I don't see how nuclear is any different.
Nuclear is fundamentally way more complicated than wind and especially solar. Nuclear is 10s of kilometers of high pressure piping, 1000s of tons of concrete, exotic pressure welding. Solar on the other hand is brain dead simple and amenable to mass production in a way that nuclear can never be. As such, nuclear will never see the same scale of cost reductions.