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> Even coal which has long been the cheapest but dirty option is having trouble competing. *with $2 Natural Gas The solar/wind $23/MWh production tax credit i

> Even coal which has long been the cheapest but dirty option is having trouble competing. *with $2 Natural Gas The solar/wind $23/MWh production tax credit is not really something that's easy for anyone to compete with, except natural gas. [1] You're right that nuclear needs to get its costs down, especially to play in the west. We know it can be done because the French electrified nearly their entire grid with nukes in 10 years for reasonable costs, and the Koreans, bless their hearts, have been building Gen III plants at very reasonable prices. (Alas! their new president is riding an anti-nuclear platform.) With the recent Toshiba/Westinghouse issues regarding the US AP1000 plants, it's pretty unlikely to see any big new nukes anytime soon. But the world moves on and China is building lots of nukes. Fukushima will be really expensive. Building tornado-hardened designs in tsunami zones does not pay off, so we should not do that. But building appropriately hardened designs is a pretty solid non-emitting solution. Nukes produce 65% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA right now; they're already our climate champions. [1] https://energy.gov/savings/renewable-electricity-production-tax-credit-ptc https://energy.gov/savings/renewable-electricity-production-...

bonesss 9y ago
> Building tornado-hardened designs in tsunami zones does not pay off The big issues are keeping our construction, engineering, and regulatory agencies active with the subject material and with industry, and allowing saner reactor technologies into commercial use. Fukishima was not far off from surviving that catastrophe as was. More robust training for emergency response would have avoided them pumping the water the wrong way, and something as simple as raising their backup generator a few meters off the ground would have done the trick. More vitally, pushing techs into commercial production like thorium-salt reactors (among many others!), would provide failure modes that are INSANELY better than what we get from light water reactors. It's just about the most insane thing to do with radioactive power sources... surround them with something under pressure that violently expands and tries to go right to the atmosphere... I think the tsunami zones should be fine for reactors, we just need to start with reactor designs that will thrive in failure. Your molten salts turning into rock and keeping themselves contained during a breach or flood, for example, is something that's highly amenable to disaster planning.
- Recurecur 9y ago
  All that needed to be done was house the emergency generators in a tsunami-proof building. Even then, there was time to bring in backup generators, and they were brought - but idiotically the connectors were wrong and they couldn't be connected in time.
godelski 9y ago
I think it is important to understand why Westinghouse went bankrupt though. And that's because they didn't (couldn't) use of the biggest breakthroughs of the 20th century: mass production. > Nukes produce 65% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA right now; they're already our climate champions. And this is the reason I fight tooth and nail for it. If we're to meet our emission goals for 2050, we have to build more nuclear. A diversified portfolio of energy sources is key.

bonesss 9y ago

> Building tornado-hardened designs in tsunami zones does not pay off The big issues are keeping our construction, engineering, and regulatory agencies active with the subject material and with industry, and allowing saner reactor technologies into commercial use. Fukishima was not far off from surviving that catastrophe as was. More robust training for emergency response would have avoided them pumping the water the wrong way, and something as simple as raising their backup generator a few meters off the ground would have done the trick. More vitally, pushing techs into commercial production like thorium-salt reactors (among many others!), would provide failure modes that are INSANELY better than what we get from light water reactors. It's just about the most insane thing to do with radioactive power sources... surround them with something under pressure that violently expands and tries to go right to the atmosphere... I think the tsunami zones should be fine for reactors, we just need to start with reactor designs that will thrive in failure. Your molten salts turning into rock and keeping themselves contained during a breach or flood, for example, is something that's highly amenable to disaster planning.

Recurecur 9y ago
All that needed to be done was house the emergency generators in a tsunami-proof building. Even then, there was time to bring in backup generators, and they were brought - but idiotically the connectors were wrong and they couldn't be connected in time.

godelski 9y ago

I think it is important to understand why Westinghouse went bankrupt though. And that's because they didn't (couldn't) use of the biggest breakthroughs of the 20th century: mass production. > Nukes produce 65% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA right now; they're already our climate champions. And this is the reason I fight tooth and nail for it. If we're to meet our emission goals for 2050, we have to build more nuclear. A diversified portfolio of energy sources is key.