I wrote a similar take here on the topic: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html
To give context to who acidburn is, he's been a long time HN user, has a PhD in nuclear engineering, has worked in fission and fusion for over a decade, and has blogged about it for years. The take here is the take of an expert and not just a nuclear bro.
I don't know acidburn but I'd argue that having a PhD in nuclear engineering and having worked in the field is likely to increase your bias towards nuclear (being a "nuclear bro") rather than equalize it. PLT PhDs will tell you Haskell is the best programming language and environmental science PhDs will tell you solar is the best energy source.
Nuclear is not fundamentally expensive[0], and most nuclear power plants currently in operation were cheap when they were built. The high costs of building new powerplants is a result of going decades without building any, leading to a loss of experience. Even still, nuclear remains competitive with other traditional power generation technologies like coal. Only with recent advancements in fracking did natural gas su…
But the fact is that we did go years without building any, leading to nuclear power plants being more expensive. It is the path we chose (rightly or wrongly) and today solar and wind is cheaper in the western world. Even if continuing to invest in nuclear in the 1970s was the right choice, it may no longer be the case today that we have those. (see Path Dependence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence ) In m…
How is wind and solar in any way close to achieve what nuclear has already has? Solar and wind is not a mature technology at all, you would know if you lived in a country that has invested heavily in it. Where i live people has to use an app to see when they can afford to wash their clothes, run the dishwasher, charge the car at any given time of the week and and hour. The government is praying to the weather gods for a warm and windy winter so that we might avoid rolling blackouts and insane energy prices. We as humans can simply not afford to rely on the current state of mother Nature. Who knows what might happen? Wind patterns could change over time or because of climate change, heck a super vulcano an asteroid or nuclear fallout could block out the sun for years. As long as we can't control the weather, plate tectonics or deflect asteroids let's invest in a technology that is very well understood and has stood the test of time, works in space, the most energy dense, the most efficient and there's enough of it on earth to keep us going for thousands of years.
I wrote a similar take here on the topic: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html
Thoughts on LFTR? The presentation that made the rounds many years ago made it seem like it was a solved problem (1965!). That made me rethink the value of nuclear and I'm curious if it's legit.
He has written a few pages about thorium and molten salt reactors:
(“Acid Burn” was also Angelina Jolie’s handle in Hackers - if it was ringing anyone else’s bell).
Yeah I made my HN username on a whim years ago after watching that movie and didn't realize it was a dumb choice. I wanted it to be 'hackery' and anon. Oops.
The bio makes me think that it is, in fact, written by a machine:
> Perhaps you'll think my comments are unthinkable. My only response to that is that they were legibly written, not by a machine, but by a writer with a soul.
But the fact is that we did go years without building any, leading to nuclear power plants being more expensive. It is the path we chose (rightly or wrongly) and today solar and wind is cheaper in the western world. Even if continuing to invest in nuclear in the 1970s was the right choice, it may no longer be the case today that we have those. (see Path Dependence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence ) In m…
Nuclear runs constantly. Solar and wind don't. This is a significant problem. Storage is hard and inefficient. We don't currently have a viable complete renewable solution. Nuclear is much better for the planet than fossil fuels and is the only option to bridge the gap required to operate the current renewables.
> Nuclear is much better for the planet than fossil fuels and is the only option to bridge the gap required to operate the current renewables.
That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable . Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered…
>I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered in hot sauce if someday nuclear fission is financially viable enough to produce power for civilians at a decent scale. So all the world’s nuclear power plants operate at a loss? That’s a pretty strong proposition…
> at a decent scale
More than a few old reactors here and there that are about to be decommissioned would be my idea of "at decent scale" here, so let's say that 10% of the new build power was nuclear (which would be equal to how much old, rotten nuclear fission infrastructure we have today, in the world).
I would almost bet less than 2% of the current planned and contracted energy capacity was in nuclear and that probably a good part of that will never materialize.
Some questions jump out there: What does that amount of solar and storage look like in terms of material used for its construction as well as area occupied once it’s deployed? What current examples do we have of projects at this scale? What is the lifespan of the solar arrays and batteries? What are the operating costs? How many personnel are required for maintenance and day to day operation? What other infrastructur…
I don't have exact numbers for any of these questions. However, we know that regardless of the inputs in materials or land, the ultimate dollar cost, all in, is cheaper than nuclear. Take the levelized cost of solar for the MWh coinciding with daylight hours, and the levelized cost of storage during the other hours, and nuclear is blown out of the water: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...…
Additionally, part of the bonus of solar+storage vs. large nuclear is that when you spread out your generation into smaller grid sections, then you can reduce the need for large transmission infrastructure that requires maintenance[1].
Distributed software is good, so why not distributed energy generation? Answer: distributed energy generation is great!
So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.
Is our ultimate goal to get nuclear at any cost? Then sure. But nuclear at any cost is not a reasonable goal. The only reason we want nuclear is for its carbon-free energy. At which point it must be evaluated on its merits, not as an end goal of its own
And how can we just ignore the waste problem? [1]
In many cases, containment pools are full to the brim with spent rods [2], which is both environmentally hazardous, & a target for terrorists (dirty bombs)