4 ms·

I wish i could be a fusion (and new nuclear) believer. But it is just so complicated. The free market is happy to produce 1M trucks a year. And 10M air conditi

• philipkglass 8y ago
  The minimum commercially viable size of a power reactor is much larger than the size of a commercially viable wind turbine or PV module. A typical wind turbine today is rated for 2-4 megawatts peak output. A solar module is 0.2-0.4 kilowatts-peak. Commercial light water reactors under construction today are rated for more than 1000 megawatts. Even "small" reactors like NuScale is designing would generate 60 megawatts each. The large capacity and high capacity factor of nuclear reactors has some significant benefits: once they start operating, they can rapidly displace use of fossil fuels. But it also means that there are many fewer opportunities to iterate on designs. A single large solar project can use a million panels and be constructed over a few years. The millionth panel installed on the site can be significantly improved vs. the first. Most solar manufacturers are tuning module production lines near-continuously and formally introducing new models frequently. To generate the same amount of power with a nuclear reactor, it would take just a portion of a current Generation III reactor or maybe 2 small modular reactors. To the nearest whole number, there are 0-1 opportunities to upgrade equipment on the fly with a nuclear project vs. the dozens of opportunities with comparable-output utility scale renewable projects.