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It's 100% sustainable not 100% green. It should be the solution humanity picks, if we want to be serious about emission reduction but I wouldn't put my money on

It's 100% sustainable not 100% green. It should be the solution humanity picks, if we want to be serious about emission reduction but I wouldn't put my money on it.

NikolaeVarius 7y ago
Define 100% clean.
bilbo0s 7y ago
>but I wouldn't put my money on it... That's a large part of the reason that it likely won't be a part of the future mix. Because no investor groups want to "put their money on it". Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment. The problem is that everyone sees the shit show that Vogtie has become. Also, energy investors can see what's happened to nuclear in places like Iowa where it almost seems as though every guy able to even get a USD100,000 loan has gotten a group of his buddies together and slapped up some windmills. (Seriously, have you ever driven through Iowa lately?) Anyway, what investor group wants to put up the USD4 Billion to compete against all that? Harsh reality is that, assuming all they care about is generating more money, there are better places for their money to go. That's why we need government investment. I've been saying for a while, we've reached the point where if we want nuclear to be a part of the future mix, government is going to have to step up in a big way. You could argue that the problem with Vogtie was that the government was unrealistic in expecting private industry to be able to pull that off with the provided level of assistance. (And yes, that also implies that private industry was just as unrealistic in believing they could pull that off without additional assistance.)
- chr1 7y ago
  I've recently stumbled upon some videos where Kirk Sorensen describes LFTR reactors (Liquid fluoride thorium reactor) that his startup is working on, and he is claiming that their reactor can cover its costs simply by selling fission products like xenon, helium, and rare radioactive elements used in medicine.
- heimatau 7y ago
  > Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment. It's not expensive, financially, compared to Solar and Wind. But it is expensive politically. For whatever reason, Nuclear is toxic in the public's eye. To shift public opinion is not going to be cheap. Some Nuclear plants were stopped before starting their energy generation due to the public opinion shifting against them. > government is going to have to step up in a big way. We have agreement on that but how that's done is difficult.
  - fencepost 7y ago
    It's not expensive to build or operate as long as everything goes right. If and when things go wrong it may be so expensive that dealing with it requires major resources. IIRC, nuclear plants are all basically government insured because there's no insurance company or set of companies that could underwrite the potential losses from a catastrophic failure. Living only expecting things to go right means that cities don't need to worry about backups and hardened networks. It's when things go wrong that you end up with an HBO series a few decades later.
    - heimatau 7y ago
      > It's not expensive to build or operate as long as everything goes right. If and when things go wrong it may be so expensive that dealing with it requires major resources. Say that to France. Stop buying the propaganda. HBO series has warning signs. Chernobyl and Fukushima were grossly mismanagement and ignored the glaring issues. France has never had the problem.
      - fencepost 7y ago
        "Gross mismanagement" is an easy diagnosis after the fact. During the time in which the decisions were being made they probably made perfect sense, at least given the knowledge and constraints the decision makers were working with. With some notable high profile exceptions people don't go into things with the intention of completely screwing them up.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  Nuclear is expensive in large parts because of the crazy rules and regulations around it. With nuclear you get the true cost + cost of bureaucracy If we started actually calculating wind and solars true cost (ex. backup power by coal, oil, nuclear) then it too would be extremely expensive. If we added the cost of decommissioning which isn't added to solar and wind but to nuclear then that would increase the price even more.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Wind, in particular, has a great deal of bureaucracy around it. Environmental issues. Construction codes. Land use issues. Land ownership issues. Air rights. And more. Today, investors have to work through all these in order to put up a wind farm. The reason they still do it is because as an entry into the energy markets it is an incredibly cheap vehicle. (Comparatively speaking.) The technology is just not that complicated. Even compared to fossil fuels, wind is just a dead simple tech. The costs when you don't count regulation reflect that.
  - lumberjack 7y ago
    Cost of bureaucracy is just abating the risks, so it is 100% a real cost.
    - ThomPete 7y ago
      Compared to wind and solar it certainly is.

It's 100% sustainable not 100% green. It should be the solution humanity picks, if we want to be serious about emission reduction but I wouldn't put my money on it.

NikolaeVarius 7y ago

Define 100% clean.

bilbo0s 7y ago

>but I wouldn't put my money on it... That's a large part of the reason that it likely won't be a part of the future mix. Because no investor groups want to "put their money on it". Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment. The problem is that everyone sees the shit show that Vogtie has become. Also, energy investors can see what's happened to nuclear in places like Iowa where it almost seems as though every guy able to even get a USD100,000 loan has gotten a group of his buddies together and slapped up some windmills. (Seriously, have you ever driven through Iowa lately?) Anyway, what investor group wants to put up the USD4 Billion to compete against all that? Harsh reality is that, assuming all they care about is generating more money, there are better places for their money to go. That's why we need government investment. I've been saying for a while, we've reached the point where if we want nuclear to be a part of the future mix, government is going to have to step up in a big way. You could argue that the problem with Vogtie was that the government was unrealistic in expecting private industry to be able to pull that off with the provided level of assistance. (And yes, that also implies that private industry was just as unrealistic in believing they could pull that off without additional assistance.)

chr1 7y ago
I've recently stumbled upon some videos where Kirk Sorensen describes LFTR reactors (Liquid fluoride thorium reactor) that his startup is working on, and he is claiming that their reactor can cover its costs simply by selling fission products like xenon, helium, and rare radioactive elements used in medicine.
heimatau 7y ago
> Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment. It's not expensive, financially, compared to Solar and Wind. But it is expensive politically. For whatever reason, Nuclear is toxic in the public's eye. To shift public opinion is not going to be cheap. Some Nuclear plants were stopped before starting their energy generation due to the public opinion shifting against them. > government is going to have to step up in a big way. We have agreement on that but how that's done is difficult.
- fencepost 7y ago
  It's not expensive to build or operate as long as everything goes right. If and when things go wrong it may be so expensive that dealing with it requires major resources. IIRC, nuclear plants are all basically government insured because there's no insurance company or set of companies that could underwrite the potential losses from a catastrophic failure. Living only expecting things to go right means that cities don't need to worry about backups and hardened networks. It's when things go wrong that you end up with an HBO series a few decades later.
  - heimatau 7y ago
    > It's not expensive to build or operate as long as everything goes right. If and when things go wrong it may be so expensive that dealing with it requires major resources. Say that to France. Stop buying the propaganda. HBO series has warning signs. Chernobyl and Fukushima were grossly mismanagement and ignored the glaring issues. France has never had the problem.
    - fencepost 7y ago
      "Gross mismanagement" is an easy diagnosis after the fact. During the time in which the decisions were being made they probably made perfect sense, at least given the knowledge and constraints the decision makers were working with. With some notable high profile exceptions people don't go into things with the intention of completely screwing them up.
ThomPete 7y ago
Nuclear is expensive in large parts because of the crazy rules and regulations around it. With nuclear you get the true cost + cost of bureaucracy If we started actually calculating wind and solars true cost (ex. backup power by coal, oil, nuclear) then it too would be extremely expensive. If we added the cost of decommissioning which isn't added to solar and wind but to nuclear then that would increase the price even more.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Wind, in particular, has a great deal of bureaucracy around it. Environmental issues. Construction codes. Land use issues. Land ownership issues. Air rights. And more. Today, investors have to work through all these in order to put up a wind farm. The reason they still do it is because as an entry into the energy markets it is an incredibly cheap vehicle. (Comparatively speaking.) The technology is just not that complicated. Even compared to fossil fuels, wind is just a dead simple tech. The costs when you don't count regulation reflect that.
- lumberjack 7y ago
  Cost of bureaucracy is just abating the risks, so it is 100% a real cost.
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    Compared to wind and solar it certainly is.