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Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

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Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#151

Post by agarwaen163 »

bell-cot wrote: post #28

Nuclear power's biggest problem is that it attracted, even back in the 1940's, a figurative army of techno-utopians - whose pie-in-the-sky promises of electric power too cheap meter, flying cars, and better-than-Santa's-sleigh safety were not quickly and loudly contradicted by people who knew better. Probably didn't help that many of those keeping quiet had obvious short-term interests in promoting "nuclear everythin…

Sounds like you're the one who's been lied to if you still believe the anti nuclear rhetoric. Study it more, it behooves you.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#152

Post by coryrc »

bb88 wrote: post #66
hn_submit wrote: post #5

Although generally safe these reactors aren't totally safe. I'm concerned lax physical security will allow miscreants to blow them up and spread nuclear materials over a wide area. The ensuing panic would totally destroy any goodwill nuclear power has gained over the last 20 years or so. I'm also concerned these things will mostly be used by Big Tech for their A.I. data-centers playing the Good Samaritan with their c…

Terrorists are only one piece of the issue. Corporations and "Responsible Adults" have done more to harm nuclear power in this country than any terrorist act has. ConEd and Three Mile Island meltdown brought out a mass of normal people to chant "Hell No! We won't Glow!" Hanford in Washington State. San Onofre in So Cal. Santa Susana Meltdown. The reality is that everyone wants nuclear, but no one wants to live near a…

Hanford was nuclear weapons, not nuclear power.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#153

Post by coryrc »

dalyons wrote: post #83
inglor_cz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scaling is a problem. How many batteries do you need to power, say, entire Scandinavia during winter? That would be a lot of lithium, btw. "Dunkelflaute" periods when it is dark and no wind to run the wind turbines are common in northern winters, IIRC the longest one a few years ago was 12 days long. Which means that in order to have a reasonable buffer against it, you would need enough batteries to supply the entire…

boy am i tired of hearing that Dunkelflaute word as if its some kind of gotcha. Even ignoring the fact that you can continue to source power from other geographies during a localized phenomenon..... Just burn gas in peaker plants for the few days a year that this happens. That small amount of emissions wont matter for the next 50 years of decarbonization, after which we'll likely have plenty of other options. The abs…

That's fine, but you need to include the cost of having barely-used gas peaker plants when calculating the cost of "renewables+storage". Laymen keep using arbitrary "marginal cost of solar with sun shining" to say "solar is cheaper than everything!". If it's true that capex of 80% gas peaker (and LNG storage and employees on standby and so on) + solar + wind + batteries is cheaper, then people should make that argument and provide the data.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#154

Post by bethekidyouwant »

robocat wrote: post #141
bryanlarsen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most cost efficient new-build grid is 90-98% solar/wind/battery depending on your locales insolation & wind coverage. (Source Ember Energy) The remaining 2-10% is nat gas, if you have a piped source, or coal if you don't. But 98% renewable doesn't mean you can hit 100% by adding 2% more of something else, it means your something else has to supply ~100% of the power 2% of the time. If China is aiming for that cos…

> supply ~100% of the power 2% of the time Or you design the majority of loads so they can be turned off for 2% of the time. Load shedding is a better solution than running peakers for [heated] towel rails.

It would also be better if you ate only vegetables and drove an ultralight (ebike) good luck. I personally like being able to turn on my lights 100% of the time

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#155

Post by testing22321 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #139
testing22321 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 36-38 reactors under construction today [1]. I think that’s a bit more than just keeping the wheels turning [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67746

Which works out to about 4 per year. And most of them are under 1GW.

And almost exactly half of all reactors under construction in the entire world.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#156

Post by unclad5968 »

arjie wrote: post #107

It's really a pity that we missed the boat on large nuclear reactors. So much more power would enable so many use-cases and cheap electricity would have enabled us to have much less gas heating. Massive damage to the climate caused by misguided regulation. I tried to write to deregulation.gov on reducing the fund allocation required for fission reactor cleanup but c'est la vie. Death by a thousand cuts and then a few…

What does burning man have to do with geothermal?

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#157

Post by UltraSane »

dalyons wrote: post #103
UltraSane wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very wrong. US base load demand is around 400GW that must be provided 24/7

Solar produces incredibly cheap power for the daytime hours, pushing any nuclear off the grid (why would a data center buy expensive nuke power in the hours when cheap renewables are available?). Nuclear needs to be running and selling power at its high price 24/7 for it to be even close to economically viable. Only supplying power that people want(due to its high price) during the night is fatal to nuclear. base loa…

This is fundamentally a pricing problem that hourly-matched carbon-free energy accounting tries to solve. https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/247-2/

Natrium has an interesting design for a 345MW reactor that has thermal storage that can boost output to 500MW for 5.5 hours. This lets it increase output during peak prices.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#158

Post by robocat »

bb88 wrote: post #67
testing22321 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And nuclear still is the safest energy sort available. Surely solar is orders of magnitude safer.

The potential for widespread radiation leakage from nuclear doesn't exist with wind or solar. I would think a terrorist would hit a nuclear power plant over any wind or solar farms. The Chernobyl exclusion zone will remain uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years.

> uninhabitable

Inhabitable: there are people living there off their own gardens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samosely

However Undesirable to you or I.

If refugees were allowed to live there, I wonder how many people would choose radiation over their current worse situations?

The article mentions people moving from Donbas (perhaps less inhabitable): "Following the outbreak of the war in Donbas in 2014, refugees from that conflict settled in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone or nearby".

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#159

Post by arjie »

unclad5968 wrote: post #156
arjie wrote: post #107

It's really a pity that we missed the boat on large nuclear reactors. So much more power would enable so many use-cases and cheap electricity would have enabled us to have much less gas heating. Massive damage to the climate caused by misguided regulation. I tried to write to deregulation.gov on reducing the fund allocation required for fission reactor cleanup but c'est la vie. Death by a thousand cuts and then a few…

What does burning man have to do with geothermal?

They blocked geothermal drilling in the desert. After multiple years of blocking it with use of environmental law they finally managed to preserve it as a conservation area for sustainable tourism:

> Organizers of the Burning Man festival in northwest Nevada have reached a settlement with a geothermal energy developer that cancels an exploratory drilling project that some feared would ruin the ambiance of the counter-culture event.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/burning-man-to-buy-back-geot...

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