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Hey, I work at a nuclear fission company. We think we can get our electricity prices to around $0.0025 / kWh by around 2045. This represents a ~20x reduction fr

Hey, I work at a nuclear fission company. We think we can get our electricity prices to around $0.0025 / kWh by around 2045. This represents a ~20x reduction from off-peak cost in Ontario where I live, and ~150x reduction from average electricity prices in Germany. Also, w.r.t. population, the way I see it our population is growing very quickly whether we like it or not (look at Africa). I think there's a good opportunity for us to support a population much larger than we have right now with improved sustainable energy tech. (Solar panels are also getting cheaper, and will probably run around $0.02/kWh in the near future if iteration continues, and are probably capable of supporting us up to 20 billion people as well)

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Hmm, Hinkley C is signed up at a strike price of £92.50/MWh, in 2012 Pounds. A 400x reduction when so much of the cost of nuclear is safety, waste management and decommissioning? That's surprising to say the least. Can you give any clue on how? The trend of solar and wind continuing the inexorable march downward seems much more certain.
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  · Liquid fueled MSR, safety is best of any other source. So, we think regulators will lower barriers over time as we prove this. · Waste management is easier since our waste will be ~5x less mass per kg fuel (~500x less mass per kWh energy), and also returns to natural radioactivity much faster (one or two centuries). We actually plan to sell most of the fission products as useful materials. · As of now, our reactors are planned to be mostly stainless steel. Most of the lifetime mass-throughput of current GI-GIII fission plants is concrete and steel, of which we have basically none of the concrete and much less steel because no pressure vessel. So, decommissioning is much easier and probably will be internally profitable. You're right about the last part, because solar will almost definitely get at least 2x cheaper than it is today, and within not more than a few decades. My perception is biased (ofc), but in my view it's actually very likely that we will reach or surpass our goal, though, so I personally wouldn't bet on renewables.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Thanks. There's been quite the resurgence of interest in salt since it just about disappeared in the 70s or 80s. I hope you manage it - though I tend to think we'll have a mix of sources rather than making renewables irrelevant. That may be reserve from having heard the "too cheap to meter" slogan a time or two too often. :) Even properly competitive nuclear will make decarbonising far easier, as I'm not at all convinced by grid scale battery, so I hope someone manages...
    - johnmorrison 7y ago
      Yeah, I agree with you completely. I think we will probably get fission to like 4/5 of the world energy supply and 95% of electricity within our lifetimes. Solar panels are a great thing to have on your house if you can afford them and want the security in the case of some kind of grid problem. They're also good if you need energy in the middle of nowhere. We want to put fission reactors in most remote communities, even small ones, but if small enough groups of people are going out into uninhabited places it doesn't make sense, so solar panels are better. I don't really see any utility in wind energy at all, other than in areas where solar doesn't make sense. Batteries are a really environmentally bad idea for non-transport/device energy supply, because of density. So I think it's best we avoid intermittent sources for most of the grid power.
jeffreyrogers 7y ago
I'm excited about nuclear, but it seems like we will eventually run out of uranium fuel unless we switch to breeder reactors. Am I off on this? This is assuming that nuclear usage grows to become a larger portion of our total energy use. I see nuclear as potentially solving a lot of our problems, but it seems to have some difficulties as well. I'm more skeptical that we can support such a large population. Right now we make heavy use of fertilizer, which is produced from natural gas and by mining phosphates. Probably we could avoid using natural gas, but this would require using more energy, so I'm not sure how sustainable this is long-term.
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  You're absolutely right, U235 reserves are only enough to last a couple hundred years at current consumption and exploration. We could probably sustain a long time with burner LWRs but it will require massive investment. Breeders however (whether you go with Th-U or U-Pu fuel) both should be able to take us to at least another 10,000 present-equivalent years on a wholly nuclear powered economy. You're also right to suspect fertilizer, I feel the same way. I've seen some of the phosphate mines around the world and it's kind of horrifying, so I'm hoping asteroid mining can fix our metal extraction problem. I heard C-Type asteroids have plenty of phosphorus, but I'm definitely not an expert on asteroid mining. If they do, though, it will likely be enough to sustain us for quadrillions of human-years (humans * years) because the asteroid belt is just so damn massive compared to the Earth's crust.
tito 7y ago
Wow that's really exciting, I need to pay more attention to nuclear.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Hmm, Hinkley C is signed up at a strike price of £92.50/MWh, in 2012 Pounds. A 400x reduction when so much of the cost of nuclear is safety, waste management and decommissioning? That's surprising to say the least. Can you give any clue on how? The trend of solar and wind continuing the inexorable march downward seems much more certain.

johnmorrison 7y ago
· Liquid fueled MSR, safety is best of any other source. So, we think regulators will lower barriers over time as we prove this. · Waste management is easier since our waste will be ~5x less mass per kg fuel (~500x less mass per kWh energy), and also returns to natural radioactivity much faster (one or two centuries). We actually plan to sell most of the fission products as useful materials. · As of now, our reactors are planned to be mostly stainless steel. Most of the lifetime mass-throughput of current GI-GIII fission plants is concrete and steel, of which we have basically none of the concrete and much less steel because no pressure vessel. So, decommissioning is much easier and probably will be internally profitable. You're right about the last part, because solar will almost definitely get at least 2x cheaper than it is today, and within not more than a few decades. My perception is biased (ofc), but in my view it's actually very likely that we will reach or surpass our goal, though, so I personally wouldn't bet on renewables.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Thanks. There's been quite the resurgence of interest in salt since it just about disappeared in the 70s or 80s. I hope you manage it - though I tend to think we'll have a mix of sources rather than making renewables irrelevant. That may be reserve from having heard the "too cheap to meter" slogan a time or two too often. :) Even properly competitive nuclear will make decarbonising far easier, as I'm not at all convinced by grid scale battery, so I hope someone manages...
  - johnmorrison 7y ago
    Yeah, I agree with you completely. I think we will probably get fission to like 4/5 of the world energy supply and 95% of electricity within our lifetimes. Solar panels are a great thing to have on your house if you can afford them and want the security in the case of some kind of grid problem. They're also good if you need energy in the middle of nowhere. We want to put fission reactors in most remote communities, even small ones, but if small enough groups of people are going out into uninhabited places it doesn't make sense, so solar panels are better. I don't really see any utility in wind energy at all, other than in areas where solar doesn't make sense. Batteries are a really environmentally bad idea for non-transport/device energy supply, because of density. So I think it's best we avoid intermittent sources for most of the grid power.

jeffreyrogers 7y ago

I'm excited about nuclear, but it seems like we will eventually run out of uranium fuel unless we switch to breeder reactors. Am I off on this? This is assuming that nuclear usage grows to become a larger portion of our total energy use. I see nuclear as potentially solving a lot of our problems, but it seems to have some difficulties as well. I'm more skeptical that we can support such a large population. Right now we make heavy use of fertilizer, which is produced from natural gas and by mining phosphates. Probably we could avoid using natural gas, but this would require using more energy, so I'm not sure how sustainable this is long-term.

johnmorrison 7y ago
You're absolutely right, U235 reserves are only enough to last a couple hundred years at current consumption and exploration. We could probably sustain a long time with burner LWRs but it will require massive investment. Breeders however (whether you go with Th-U or U-Pu fuel) both should be able to take us to at least another 10,000 present-equivalent years on a wholly nuclear powered economy. You're also right to suspect fertilizer, I feel the same way. I've seen some of the phosphate mines around the world and it's kind of horrifying, so I'm hoping asteroid mining can fix our metal extraction problem. I heard C-Type asteroids have plenty of phosphorus, but I'm definitely not an expert on asteroid mining. If they do, though, it will likely be enough to sustain us for quadrillions of human-years (humans * years) because the asteroid belt is just so damn massive compared to the Earth's crust.

tito 7y ago

Wow that's really exciting, I need to pay more attention to nuclear.