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There are several ways to fix the materials issue, pursued by active projects. One is simply to replace the reactor core every few years; Terrestrial Energy and
by DennisP 7y ago
There are several ways to fix the materials issue, pursued by active projects. One is simply to replace the reactor core every few years; Terrestrial Energy and Thorcon are using that approach.
So I'll ask again: how do the numbers look if you compare today's wind/solar/storage costs without fossil backup to today's nuclear costs? We can argue until our fingers wear out about what the costs will be in eleven years, but there are hard numbers for today.
- pfdietz 7y agoIf they replace the entire core every few years the economics will suck. If they replace every, say, 7 years, then this will take long enough to demonstrate that commercial operation will be at 2030 or beyond. Insisting on looking at today's solar and wind numbers ? Ok, then I also insist we stick with the numbers for currently available nuclear reactors. You wouldn't want to hypocritically allow only projections of future nuclear, right?
- DennisP 7y agoYes, I mean today's nuclear. But for solar/wind I mean what I said above: enough storage for a windless night and enough overcapacity for cloudy winter weeks, so it's the cost to actually run a grid on wind/solar/storage alone.