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Ultra Safe Nuclear

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Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#291

Post by samatman »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #60

I find it a little odd that a site called Hacker News is so bullish on nuclear power. Could there be anything less hacker than a centralized, exclusively government owned and operated source of power? No thanks. I’d rather put more resources into solar, wind, and other sources of power that don’t depend on the government to not explode and irradiate the immediate area for hundreds of years.

This is a weird take in a thread about a "micro modular reactor", which generates 5MW, and is designed to run for twenty years with minimal maintenance, on the order of a few day's work per year.

Odd that it's the exact opposite of what you're fulminating about.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#292

Post by [deleted] »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: 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 f…

[deleted]

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#293

Post by motorcycleman9 »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: 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 f…

People prefer to not need to do that.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#294

Post by selectodude »

evgen wrote: post #144
rektide wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except... we don't know what the deaths are. It will take tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years to know what the death toll is from nuclear power. Because humanity is stuck with the waste for hundreds of thousands of years. We use only tiny amount of the energy available, then have waste to deal with through the ages. I'm in favor of nuclear, but wow are we ever terrible at innovating & trying to make a r…

Out of curiosity, is there a single death that is directly attributable to nuclear waste from a reactor? (want to add that last clause because I do not think nukes should get blamed for someone improperly dumping medical equipment with cobalt or cesium isotope generators) For some reason I want to assume this happened at some point, maybe back in the 50s or 60s when we were really sloppy with nuclear waste but I can'…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

That's the one you're thinking of. Brazil, 1987.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#295

Post by philips »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: 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 f…

Many energy providers do this and they can provide back pressure to devices like smart thermostats.

https://nest.com/energy-partners/

The industry for residential distributed energy resource systems and smart pricing is fairly nascent as far as I can tell though.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#296

Post by sparkie »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: 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 f…

> What if prices for power go way up during the night

Individual energy providers do not control prices. The market does.

If there is market demand for energy at night, then people will fill in the gap to provide it. Anyone pushing up prices at night will have competition from someone else who will undercut them. They'll be forced to drop prices or lose customers.

Batteries are inefficient, expensive, and do not provide an adequate amount of electricity for most purposes. Consider a UPS, they're about 90% efficient at most, and for all that 10% of wasted energy, you get to power your computer for about 15-60 minutes if the power is lost. The batteries only last a few years.

Also, a bigger argument against solar (at least, photovoltaics) is that they use up rare earth metals, have limited lifetimes (Concentrating solar energy is more promising as a sustainable solution, but requires large infrastructure and the right climate to be cost effective.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#297

Post by losteric »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: 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 f…

I think that's one of the ideas behind the Tesla power packs - acting as a power reserve over time.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#298

Post by hairytrog »

ajross wrote: post #237
hairytrog wrote: post #156

Two interesting things to see here, of many. They are really planning the sites to be temporary compared to the solar/wind/ and other industrial power plants that have little or no plan for returning their sites to the original virgin soil. And two, they seem to use a molten salt loop like in concentrated solar to meet variable demand without changing the power level of the reactor, which you can't really do because…

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

I don't think they're necessarily chasing grid power at first anyway. They seem positioned to tackle mass market electricity last, after addressing smaller higher price markets.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#299

Post by unchocked »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: 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 f…

Consumers would be better served to direct that investment toward utility scale storage, with advantages including economy of scale.

This assumes quality utility management, which may be doubtful. But if we as a society cannot get our collective act together to run modern electrical utilities, distributed storage is a poor band-aid.

It's worth noting that a feature of life on unreliable third world utility grids is that people with money spend a lot on redundant generation and storage.

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