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Bill Gates Just Published a Letter Urging US Leaders to Embrace Nuclear Energy

64 points by ThomPete 8y ago

a-fried-egg 8y ago
Why bother when nuclear fusion will be the next greatest thing?
- klohto 8y ago
  Which is exactly what is Gates pushing, investments into nuclear.
Gravityloss 8y ago
Since the in situ construction seems to take ages and has made everyone extremely skeptical of the economics side of nuclear power (compared to 20 years ago), small modular reactors could be a better avenue. There the whole reactor vessel can be built in a factory and transported to the plant site as a whole. Improvements to the design and operational procedures etc could also be made faster if a lot more were made and operated. At least over here, the problem is that the extremely long winded permit process (the parliament has to vote) has to be passed for each reactor core. This drives up the core size. But laws can be changed, one could instead have a thermal megawatt limit per permit etc.
melling 8y ago
Can the US, China, and India agree on a design then create an economy of scale to build a few hundred reactors? The AP1000 was supposed to be such a next generation plant? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
- stcredzero 8y ago
  One would think that France already has economies of scale for nuclear power.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    France, like the US, has ample experience with operating power reactors but retains little institutional knowledge of how to build them. It also appears that early cost-and-schedule claims about building the French EPR and American AP1000 designs were extremely optimistic. These reactors are finished years late even when built in China, which currently has the world's most active nuclear construction program.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >Can the US, China, and India agree on a design then create an economy of scale to build a few hundred reactors? Depends on the reactor. If you did something like naval reactors you could probably manufacture at scale up to probably 700MW. If we get something like Oklo Inc is trying to do, 1 MW-decade reactors could be churned out at scale and used to augment large cities, provide for smaller cities, provide for individual customers that use large amounts (think factories), distributed around a section of a grid with large distances between power plant and customers to reduce transmission loss, etc. I also imagine if they, or a similar company, gets something like they are trying to build operational then it would be relatively easy to scale it for a larger output (the point though here is to make something that is easily portable for remote locations, disaster relief, dedicated power for a specific subscriber etc). Even if you couldn't scale these to larger outputs, you could place as many of them as you want on a piece of property and move them if ever needed as well as move them offsite at their end of life for refill/refurb/recycle and swap them out with a new unit if needed.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    I think you meant Oklo[1]? There are quite a few organizations working in this space[2]. 1: http://oklo.com/ http://oklo.com/ 2: https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-industry-2016-update https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-in...
PaulHoule 8y ago
He is not talking specifics in his letter. It is not just a political problem but a technical one. Back in the 1970s coal was the "least cost" power source and it had the advantage over nuclear that the steam turbine operated at higher temperatures and was much more cost effective. Nuclear tried to deal with that by "making it up in volume" which led to giantism, unconstructability, and failure. Today the "least cost" competitor is a Brayton cycle turbine fired with natural gas. A gas turbine is at least an order of magnitude smaller than a nuclear steam turbine; a gas turbine could be about the same size as the crane, employee break rooms, bathrooms and such of a nuclear steam turbine. Nuclear can only be competitive if we can raise the outlet temperature and couple it to a gas turbine. Otherwise you're looking at something that would be uneconomical if everything went right -- and things don't go right, particularly when you try to cover up bad economics with false promises.
- arrosenberg 8y ago
  If you can't change the physics, you can change the economics by passing a carbon tax (although I don't know if the carbon cost of building a nuclear plant would make it cost-savings positive).
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    Yeah. It really is complicated. That's the thing with nuclear, if we really want it, at some point, the government is going to have to kick in some money to do it. With all of the competing generation technologies looking so good as investments right now, it really would almost be financial malfeasance for an investment group to put money into nuclear instead. You have to give those guys something if you want to make it happen. Right now, even with no subsidies, it's just hard to compete with a lot of these other investment opportunities in power generation. And even government subsidies are going to be complicated, because I'm sure the tax payers would get up in arms about having to finance private reactors. Especially when more and more of them could be getting their energy from wind, natural gas, and hydro or pumped hydro. At that point you'd have people in, say, Iowa, where wind is abundant, paying for reactors for people in New York, or Florida. I suspect that would likely go over about as well as a fart in church.

64 points by ThomPete 8y ago

a-fried-egg 8y ago

Why bother when nuclear fusion will be the next greatest thing?

klohto 8y ago
Which is exactly what is Gates pushing, investments into nuclear.

Gravityloss 8y ago

Since the in situ construction seems to take ages and has made everyone extremely skeptical of the economics side of nuclear power (compared to 20 years ago), small modular reactors could be a better avenue. There the whole reactor vessel can be built in a factory and transported to the plant site as a whole. Improvements to the design and operational procedures etc could also be made faster if a lot more were made and operated. At least over here, the problem is that the extremely long winded permit process (the parliament has to vote) has to be passed for each reactor core. This drives up the core size. But laws can be changed, one could instead have a thermal megawatt limit per permit etc.

melling 8y ago

Can the US, China, and India agree on a design then create an economy of scale to build a few hundred reactors? The AP1000 was supposed to be such a next generation plant? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

stcredzero 8y ago
One would think that France already has economies of scale for nuclear power.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  France, like the US, has ample experience with operating power reactors but retains little institutional knowledge of how to build them. It also appears that early cost-and-schedule claims about building the French EPR and American AP1000 designs were extremely optimistic. These reactors are finished years late even when built in China, which currently has the world's most active nuclear construction program.
ryanmercer 8y ago
>Can the US, China, and India agree on a design then create an economy of scale to build a few hundred reactors? Depends on the reactor. If you did something like naval reactors you could probably manufacture at scale up to probably 700MW. If we get something like Oklo Inc is trying to do, 1 MW-decade reactors could be churned out at scale and used to augment large cities, provide for smaller cities, provide for individual customers that use large amounts (think factories), distributed around a section of a grid with large distances between power plant and customers to reduce transmission loss, etc. I also imagine if they, or a similar company, gets something like they are trying to build operational then it would be relatively easy to scale it for a larger output (the point though here is to make something that is easily portable for remote locations, disaster relief, dedicated power for a specific subscriber etc). Even if you couldn't scale these to larger outputs, you could place as many of them as you want on a piece of property and move them if ever needed as well as move them offsite at their end of life for refill/refurb/recycle and swap them out with a new unit if needed.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  I think you meant Oklo[1]? There are quite a few organizations working in this space[2]. 1: http://oklo.com/ http://oklo.com/ 2: https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-industry-2016-update https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-in...

PaulHoule 8y ago

He is not talking specifics in his letter. It is not just a political problem but a technical one. Back in the 1970s coal was the "least cost" power source and it had the advantage over nuclear that the steam turbine operated at higher temperatures and was much more cost effective. Nuclear tried to deal with that by "making it up in volume" which led to giantism, unconstructability, and failure. Today the "least cost" competitor is a Brayton cycle turbine fired with natural gas. A gas turbine is at least an order of magnitude smaller than a nuclear steam turbine; a gas turbine could be about the same size as the crane, employee break rooms, bathrooms and such of a nuclear steam turbine. Nuclear can only be competitive if we can raise the outlet temperature and couple it to a gas turbine. Otherwise you're looking at something that would be uneconomical if everything went right -- and things don't go right, particularly when you try to cover up bad economics with false promises.

arrosenberg 8y ago
If you can't change the physics, you can change the economics by passing a carbon tax (although I don't know if the carbon cost of building a nuclear plant would make it cost-savings positive).
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Yeah. It really is complicated. That's the thing with nuclear, if we really want it, at some point, the government is going to have to kick in some money to do it. With all of the competing generation technologies looking so good as investments right now, it really would almost be financial malfeasance for an investment group to put money into nuclear instead. You have to give those guys something if you want to make it happen. Right now, even with no subsidies, it's just hard to compete with a lot of these other investment opportunities in power generation. And even government subsidies are going to be complicated, because I'm sure the tax payers would get up in arms about having to finance private reactors. Especially when more and more of them could be getting their energy from wind, natural gas, and hydro or pumped hydro. At that point you'd have people in, say, Iowa, where wind is abundant, paying for reactors for people in New York, or Florida. I suspect that would likely go over about as well as a fart in church.