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The issue right now is every plant is a unique one-off. Meaning the inspectors need to pour over the plans, construction crews need to learn how to build each d
by j9461701 7y ago
The issue right now is every plant is a unique one-off. Meaning the inspectors need to pour over the plans, construction crews need to learn how to build each design specifically, fabricators providing parts need to make each plant's run of stuff special. If we could have just one standard nuclear plant design, even if it was silly curved roofs or whatever, it would massively decrease plant construction costs by taking advantage of standardization.
France did this in the 1970s. They hired engineers to design them 1 single kind of plant that was cheap, safe and would last a long time and then they pumped them out by the dozens. Every plant was the same as every other plant, so construction crews got good at it, part manufacturers could tool up for big production runs and lower per-part cost, and government inspection was drastically simplified because everything on the project was as stock as possible and the original design had already been approved. Now France's problem is it has too much electricity, as it over-estimated how much energy demands would ramp up going into the 21st century, and so now sells excess wattage to Germany.
- magduf 7y ago>Now France's problem is it has too much electricity, as it over-estimated how much energy demands would ramp up going into the 21st century, and so now sells excess wattage to Germany. Um, that doesn't exactly sound like a "problem", especially since Germany gave up on nuclear due to nuclear fears, and still has a lot of coal plants.
- akiselev 7y agoIt's a good problem to have but it is still a "problem." Nuclear plants have huge fixed costs in security (due to international treaties and so on), even if the reactor never runs, let alone the cost of operations and maintenance, so if you overbuild, it drastically increases your energy prices due to the ratio of fixed costs to production - unless you can sell enough electricity to other countries to make it economical for your own population.
- Zigurd 7y agoPore not pour
- Retric 7y agoTo much energy is the central problem with nuclear. It’s capital intensive so if they don’t operate 24/7 their cost per watt increases. This puts Nuclear in a bind as wind and solar are both significantly cheaper and Nuclear is terrible as a peaking power plant. In the end it needs to either beat Wind or Natural Gas. Meanwhile grid storage prices keep dropping which may soon start undercutting Natural Gas.
- AstralStorm 7y agoNo, it is meant to beat base load plants, that is oil, coal, natural gas, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric. Wind is somewhat bad as base load plant as there are serious lulls when wind is relatively globally low.
- Retric 7y agoBase load power is inherently less useful than peaking power plants as the demand curve while predictable is extremely variable. Power companies build as many of them as they can get away with because they are cheap, not because there is some inherent advantage to steady state power. Wind competes in exactly the same niche as the price is low though with some additional downsides. As you build more of them there is less utility in base load power as you end up producing wasted electricity production ever more frequently. PS: Hydroelectric is generally the ideal peaking power plant as it’s cheap, the downside is you can’t build many if them.
- kbenson 7y ago> Hydroelectric is generally the ideal peaking power plant as it’s cheap, the downside is you can’t build many if them. What ever happened to the offshore hydroelectric turbines we were supposed to get? I think is was 15-20 years ago they were being touted as one of the next big power systems.
- Retric 7y agoThe ocean is a really difficult place to leave equipment. Short term small scale tests looked promising, but scaling up never really worked out.