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When you spend $1T on building nuclear plants, you will be manufacturing in bulk and improving every year. Let's assume that a single fission plant costs $5B (
by xyzzyz 7y ago
When you spend $1T on building nuclear plants, you will be manufacturing in bulk and improving every year.
Let's assume that a single fission plant costs $5B (if you're building hundreds of them, you can take advantage of some economies of scale). For $1T, you can build 200 of them. New fission plants have something like 2 GW capacity on average. 2 GW times 200 is 400 GW.
Now, US uses 13 quads of BTU worth of electricity annually.[1]. 13 quads a year is 434 GW of power on average. So, we could basically cover our energy needs with $1T worth of nuclear plants, if you average things out and ignore peaking needs. Most certainly, however, if you add $1T worth of nuclear to our current system, as opposed to adding $1T worth of wind energy, we'll pretty much be able to go off fossil fuels in electricity generation altogether, with already existing water and renewable generation. The resulting system will be much better for environment (less land used for nuclear plants than for equivalent $1T worth of wind turbines), safer (wind turbines are more dangerous per kWh produced than nuclear, people die installing those every year), and more stable (the supply will be extremely steady, and will not depend on weather fluctuations).
[1] - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/
- m0zg 7y agoPretty much my thinking as well. It's not a question of not investing in clean energy, it's a question which is a better bang for the buck and which gets us to fully carbon free energy faster and more reliably. Economies of scale would drive the costs of power plants down like you wouldn't believe. And then there's the secondary effect of more investment into nuclear physics research, which, after we figure out fusion will make carbon based energy completely obsolete everywhere, forever.
- petre 7y agoOne doesn't even need to build utility scale nuclear power plants. There is a better option now - SMRs which can be mass produced, quailty checked and incrementally improved in a factory. Install 10…12 x 60 MWe modules in a single setting and one can replace a 700 MWe utility size reactor. Refueling downtime also has less impact because one only has to refuel one module at a time.
- adamsea 7y ago> if you're building hundreds of them Where is the waste being stored and how safe is that location against the drastic climate change which is now beginning to occur?
- m0zg 7y ago>> drastic climate change which is now beginning to occur Where is it "beginning to occur"? And if you do really believe this, wouldn't you want to shut down the second largest emitter of carbon worldwide as soon as possible by the most efficient means available to us?