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Is it really safer than solar? "The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation." - this is an example of w
by fooblitzky 7y ago
Is it really safer than solar?
"The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation." - this is an example of wishful thinking. We don't know how we would solve the problems, we are just assuming someone will figure out a way. That assumption is probably influenced by survivorship bias. There's a bunch of technologies where the problems weren't solved, but we don't hear about them much.
The mean time to build a reactor is about 7.5 years[1], so if you wanted to transition all remaining fossil-fueled electricity generation in 12 years, currently with 120,000 TWh of fossil fuel consumption[2], assuming 1GW of generation per nuclear power plant, you would need to start building approximately 14 thousand (edit: originally read millions, corrected as pointed out in comments) nuclear power plants today.
[1] http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-plant/ http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucle...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
- aoeusnth1 7y agoEr, TWh isn't a measure of power. It's a measure of energy. Presumably that 120,000 TWh is consumption per year? Then we get 120000 TWH/year * (1 / 24 / 365) hours/year ~= 13.7 TW So you would need 13700 reactors, not 14 million. Edit: maybe you were just off by a factor of 1000 in your calculation?
- fooblitzky 7y agoYes, you are right, I was off by a factor of 1000, must have typed '000' one too many times. Sorry. Also, yes, the TWh was a per year amount.