4 ms·

Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Shutting down reactors doesn't save muc

Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Shutting down reactors doesn't save much money; they've already been built. They also weren't built when renewable energy was developed into the very cost-effective solution it is today. The worst thing about building new reactors using existing technology (which would really no better than the existing ones) is the waste of money compared to alternatives, AND you get all the risk on top of that. Delicious government-subsidized risk.

kortilla 8y ago
>Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Those costs are entirely political. Fear mongers have made it extremely difficult to get a nuclear project to completion (see the whole NRC approval process). Solar panels would be super expensive as well if each one had to go through a giant 30 year planning process that NIMBYs could easily disrupt. >They also weren't built when renewable energy was developed into the very cost-effective solution it is today. Renewable isn’t cost effective. That’s a lie told to placate people. In reality, renewable currently has no feasible way to replace enough fossil fuels to matter for global warming. Energy storage solutions to bring it into candidacy for base load are so far off the mark that they aren’t even deployed. Until we have a storage solution that doesn’t 10x+ the cost of renewables, which there is no promise of, we are signing up wholeheartedly for fossil fuels as our electricity backbone (and that doesn’t even address transportation energy where the picture is even more bleak). Reminder for anyone thinking renewables are so cost effective, here is the energy source breakdown in the US: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/images/charts/consumption-by-source-and-sector.png https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/images/charts/consumptio...
- chillydawg 8y ago
  Well it's certainly not feasible in the US with the current government in power.
- pfdietz 8y ago
  > Those costs are entirely political. This is simply not true. There has been tremendous ongoing incompetence and mismanagement in the reactor construction process in recent years. You may blame regulation -- that's the goto excuse for pronuclear people to avoid coming to unpleasant conclusions -- but the problem is that reactors are complicated things, and reactors with safety systems are even more complicated things (and reactors without regulation are complicated things that will almost certainly fail in unpleasant ways.) Building complicated things is hard, especially if all the institutional knowledge of how to do it, and the supply chains for the parts, have decayed away. The huge advantage solar/wind have is they are simple and scalable. Installations consist of thousands, or even millions, of replicated parts. Experience builds up rapidly as the same damned thing is built and installed over and over. Nuclear doesn't have that.
  - javagram 8y ago
    > Experience builds up rapidly as the same damned thing is built and installed over and over. Nuclear doesn't have that. Do you think this is the reason the US Navy doesn’t seem to have major problems getting nuclear power plants built and installed in submarines and aircraft carriers? It’s interesting how civilian power companies have had a bunch of high profile failures in this area but as far as I can tell new warships still seem to be able to get reactors fine.
    - afterburner 8y ago
      What's the power output of those I imagine much smaller reactors, compared to ones meant to power entire regions and millions of consumers? What did they cost to build? What risks are there, compared to regular reactors?
      - javagram 8y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Naval_reactors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Naval_... The A1B being installed on the newest carriers is a 700 MW unit being installed in a pair, so 1.4 GW total. That number seems comparable to a lot of commercial power generation, e.g. Vermont Yankee is a 620 MW plant.
- afterburner 8y ago
  That energy breakdown pic doesn't say anything about the cost effectiveness of any of the sources, it's just a breakdown of current use. Nice try, pro-nuclear activist.

kortilla 8y ago

>Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Those costs are entirely political. Fear mongers have made it extremely difficult to get a nuclear project to completion (see the whole NRC approval process). Solar panels would be super expensive as well if each one had to go through a giant 30 year planning process that NIMBYs could easily disrupt. >They also weren't built when renewable energy was developed into the very cost-effective solution it is today. Renewable isn’t cost effective. That’s a lie told to placate people. In reality, renewable currently has no feasible way to replace enough fossil fuels to matter for global warming. Energy storage solutions to bring it into candidacy for base load are so far off the mark that they aren’t even deployed. Until we have a storage solution that doesn’t 10x+ the cost of renewables, which there is no promise of, we are signing up wholeheartedly for fossil fuels as our electricity backbone (and that doesn’t even address transportation energy where the picture is even more bleak). Reminder for anyone thinking renewables are so cost effective, here is the energy source breakdown in the US: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/images/charts/consumption-by-source-and-sector.png https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/images/charts/consumptio...

chillydawg 8y ago
Well it's certainly not feasible in the US with the current government in power.
pfdietz 8y ago
> Those costs are entirely political. This is simply not true. There has been tremendous ongoing incompetence and mismanagement in the reactor construction process in recent years. You may blame regulation -- that's the goto excuse for pronuclear people to avoid coming to unpleasant conclusions -- but the problem is that reactors are complicated things, and reactors with safety systems are even more complicated things (and reactors without regulation are complicated things that will almost certainly fail in unpleasant ways.) Building complicated things is hard, especially if all the institutional knowledge of how to do it, and the supply chains for the parts, have decayed away. The huge advantage solar/wind have is they are simple and scalable. Installations consist of thousands, or even millions, of replicated parts. Experience builds up rapidly as the same damned thing is built and installed over and over. Nuclear doesn't have that.
- javagram 8y ago
  > Experience builds up rapidly as the same damned thing is built and installed over and over. Nuclear doesn't have that. Do you think this is the reason the US Navy doesn’t seem to have major problems getting nuclear power plants built and installed in submarines and aircraft carriers? It’s interesting how civilian power companies have had a bunch of high profile failures in this area but as far as I can tell new warships still seem to be able to get reactors fine.
  - afterburner 8y ago
    What's the power output of those I imagine much smaller reactors, compared to ones meant to power entire regions and millions of consumers? What did they cost to build? What risks are there, compared to regular reactors?
    - javagram 8y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Naval_reactors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Naval_... The A1B being installed on the newest carriers is a 700 MW unit being installed in a pair, so 1.4 GW total. That number seems comparable to a lot of commercial power generation, e.g. Vermont Yankee is a 620 MW plant.
afterburner 8y ago
That energy breakdown pic doesn't say anything about the cost effectiveness of any of the sources, it's just a breakdown of current use. Nice try, pro-nuclear activist.