4 ms·

From the Conclusion at the end of the paper addressing all types of nuclear technologies, fast breed reactors, Generation IV reactors and "fusion or fission, ur

From the Conclusion at the end of the paper addressing all types of nuclear technologies, fast breed reactors, Generation IV reactors and "fusion or fission, uranium or thorium": "Even a lesser goal of several terawatts of nuclear power would run into many of the outlined limitations. Therefore, the notion of a nuclear utopia is a false one. But there are two types of nuclear advocates: the nuclear utopian and the nuclear realist. A nuclear realist would only suggest that we need about 1 TW of nuclear power as part of our world energy mix. However, one only has to divide the results, in this paper, by 15 to see that 1 TW still stretches resources and risks considerably. One then has to count the cost, consider the safety, the complexity, and the issues surrounding governance of nuclear power. Also if the technology cannot be fundamentally scaled further than 1 TW, one has to ask if the same investment would have been better spent on a truly scalable technology. It has been suggested that for the same investment, solar thermal farms (with storage) would exceed the power output of nuclear stations and eliminate many of the problems [5]. Solar thermal is also scalable as it has the capacity to deliver hundreds of terawatts should mankind require it in the future. The weakness of a scalable renewable solution, however, is intermittency. In the short term, this problem can be addressed via dual use of solar thermal with natural gas. Then, the natural gas can be phased out, as storage and grid balancing techniques come online to solve the intermittency problem."

acidburnNSA 7y ago
That's a big gamble. We know fracked natural gas emits vastly too many CO2 molecules per kWh generated for decarbonization, and it also leaks methane through the pipelines. Nuclear has been a boogeyman to fossil fuels for a long time. Intermittent renewables with storage are awesome, but when backed by gas they're antiproductive to decarbonizing. France deeply decarbonized their entire grid with nuclear in 15 years by standardizing plants and building in serial. This is a good success story. Building gas now and hoping it goes away in 50 years is a terrible solution.
- karanbhangui 7y ago
  Curious on your thoughts about feasibility of manufacturing compact reactors on floating barges in ship yards and floating to where needed to plug into grid (most populations are coastal). Idea would be to solve for political risk/perception in that it can be unplugged and floated away in case of meltdown.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    Is this a plant question? I am in the middle of writing a page explaining that is the best and greatest idea in the history of nuclear reactor development. It was seriously considered and big money was spent on it in the 1970s for the Atlantic Generating Station. A production facility was made. Thousands of studies of wildlife were done. An environmental impact statement was approved by the NRC. The coast guard signed off on it. It is amazing. But demand leveled off after the oil shocks and they were never built. To rapidly decarbonize this is simply one of the most enticing ideas out there.
    - karanbhangui 7y ago
      Please keep me posted on the page you're writing, email in profile. It's a fascination I've had since highschool after visiting an aircraft carrier in San Diego. Almost went to school for nuclear engineering but studied ECE instead.
      - acidburnNSA 7y ago
        Sent it to you last night
- natmaka 7y ago
  In France this 'success story' led to a state law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") states that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it. In France nuke-power is backed by gas (which produced 10,3% of gridpower in 2017). The sole reactor currently planned (Flamanville-3) is a complete disaster, more than 10 years behind schedule and 4x overbudget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
  - belorn 7y ago
    The amount of gas usage will be interesting to follow if they do reduce nuclear down from 72% to 50%. My prediction is that it will rise.
  - Reedx 7y ago
    Which is probably a mistake. We need every tool in the toolbox and nuclear is one of the best we have. It's also worth noting that France has been producing much cleaner and cheaper energy than Germany, which eschewed nuclear. And that Flamanville is behind schedule and over budget is not a problem specific to nuclear. The same thing happens with building bridges or any big construction project, in many countries. That's a different systemic issue that needs to be resolved.
    - natmaka 7y ago
      Mistake or not, the net fact remains: as experts and themselves users of nuke power the French are winding it down. We (I'm French) recently closed a plant (Fessenheim). Many big construction projects are indeed over budget and behind schedule, however I'm not sure that 4x budget and 3x time (at least, because it is not yet completed) for a project which design is only a minor enhancement of an ubiquitous design is the norm in France.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >Building gas now and hoping it goes away in 50 years is a terrible solution To me, that's your money statement. People get complacent. That's just the nature of animal life here on earth. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if gas was still with us in 50 years. At the same time, as the article points out, nuclear really does have some real scaling issues. Even if we "just want a little", so to speak. It's a solution that's really only going to work if the government takes the lion's share of the risk. (ie - pays for it.) Even then, will it do everything for us? The mathematician in me looking at the physics says probably not, but you can't dismiss the possibility of revolutionary advances. I mean maybe fusion comes along? Who knows? Of course that puts us right back where we were with gas. Gambling on tech advances. But at least you're not pumping out CO2. I don't know? My gut tells me the developing world will innovate and hodge podge together something that will make us rethink the problem. Like doing something unexpected with under or above ground pumped hydro storage maybe? Or something a bit easier like molten salt since they'd likely be using solar thermal anyway? They're also more willing to play fast and loose with safety, so cracking water for hydrogen fuel cells becomes really attractive in that environment. I don't know? Just think it might be interesting to keep an eye on what projects pop up in, say, island nations in Asia? Or, perhaps, coastal nations in Africa? If you have a lot of relatively simple local generation and storage, your grid level stuff doesn't even need as much load shedding or "gap filling"? I guess we'll see how it all works out.
  - Accujack 7y ago
    >nuclear really does have some real scaling issues Like what? Almost everything from the linked article is false, I'm surprised it's in IEEE at all. As far as I am aware, nuclear has only the same scaling issues as any other power source.
    - magduf 7y ago
      It's stuff like this that makes me glad I canceled my IEEE membership many, many years ago.
rmtech 7y ago
Why can't nuclear be scaled beyond 1TW?
- Accujack 7y ago
  It can, the author of the article is cherry picking facts to make it seem like it can't.
guscost 7y ago
"We won't ever figure out how to work safely with a substance that stores huge amounts of usable energy in its atomic structure." ... "We just need to figure out how to store and transport many terawatts of harvested solar power, and then we can finally phase out natural gas." Insanity. This sounds like it was written by Gazprom.

acidburnNSA 7y ago

That's a big gamble. We know fracked natural gas emits vastly too many CO2 molecules per kWh generated for decarbonization, and it also leaks methane through the pipelines. Nuclear has been a boogeyman to fossil fuels for a long time. Intermittent renewables with storage are awesome, but when backed by gas they're antiproductive to decarbonizing. France deeply decarbonized their entire grid with nuclear in 15 years by standardizing plants and building in serial. This is a good success story. Building gas now and hoping it goes away in 50 years is a terrible solution.

karanbhangui 7y ago
Curious on your thoughts about feasibility of manufacturing compact reactors on floating barges in ship yards and floating to where needed to plug into grid (most populations are coastal). Idea would be to solve for political risk/perception in that it can be unplugged and floated away in case of meltdown.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Is this a plant question? I am in the middle of writing a page explaining that is the best and greatest idea in the history of nuclear reactor development. It was seriously considered and big money was spent on it in the 1970s for the Atlantic Generating Station. A production facility was made. Thousands of studies of wildlife were done. An environmental impact statement was approved by the NRC. The coast guard signed off on it. It is amazing. But demand leveled off after the oil shocks and they were never built. To rapidly decarbonize this is simply one of the most enticing ideas out there.
  - karanbhangui 7y ago
    Please keep me posted on the page you're writing, email in profile. It's a fascination I've had since highschool after visiting an aircraft carrier in San Diego. Almost went to school for nuclear engineering but studied ECE instead.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      Sent it to you last night
natmaka 7y ago
In France this 'success story' led to a state law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") states that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it. In France nuke-power is backed by gas (which produced 10,3% of gridpower in 2017). The sole reactor currently planned (Flamanville-3) is a complete disaster, more than 10 years behind schedule and 4x overbudget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
- belorn 7y ago
  The amount of gas usage will be interesting to follow if they do reduce nuclear down from 72% to 50%. My prediction is that it will rise.
- Reedx 7y ago
  Which is probably a mistake. We need every tool in the toolbox and nuclear is one of the best we have. It's also worth noting that France has been producing much cleaner and cheaper energy than Germany, which eschewed nuclear. And that Flamanville is behind schedule and over budget is not a problem specific to nuclear. The same thing happens with building bridges or any big construction project, in many countries. That's a different systemic issue that needs to be resolved.
  - natmaka 7y ago
    Mistake or not, the net fact remains: as experts and themselves users of nuke power the French are winding it down. We (I'm French) recently closed a plant (Fessenheim). Many big construction projects are indeed over budget and behind schedule, however I'm not sure that 4x budget and 3x time (at least, because it is not yet completed) for a project which design is only a minor enhancement of an ubiquitous design is the norm in France.
bilbo0s 7y ago
>Building gas now and hoping it goes away in 50 years is a terrible solution To me, that's your money statement. People get complacent. That's just the nature of animal life here on earth. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if gas was still with us in 50 years. At the same time, as the article points out, nuclear really does have some real scaling issues. Even if we "just want a little", so to speak. It's a solution that's really only going to work if the government takes the lion's share of the risk. (ie - pays for it.) Even then, will it do everything for us? The mathematician in me looking at the physics says probably not, but you can't dismiss the possibility of revolutionary advances. I mean maybe fusion comes along? Who knows? Of course that puts us right back where we were with gas. Gambling on tech advances. But at least you're not pumping out CO2. I don't know? My gut tells me the developing world will innovate and hodge podge together something that will make us rethink the problem. Like doing something unexpected with under or above ground pumped hydro storage maybe? Or something a bit easier like molten salt since they'd likely be using solar thermal anyway? They're also more willing to play fast and loose with safety, so cracking water for hydrogen fuel cells becomes really attractive in that environment. I don't know? Just think it might be interesting to keep an eye on what projects pop up in, say, island nations in Asia? Or, perhaps, coastal nations in Africa? If you have a lot of relatively simple local generation and storage, your grid level stuff doesn't even need as much load shedding or "gap filling"? I guess we'll see how it all works out.
- Accujack 7y ago
  >nuclear really does have some real scaling issues Like what? Almost everything from the linked article is false, I'm surprised it's in IEEE at all. As far as I am aware, nuclear has only the same scaling issues as any other power source.
  - magduf 7y ago
    It's stuff like this that makes me glad I canceled my IEEE membership many, many years ago.

rmtech 7y ago

Why can't nuclear be scaled beyond 1TW?

Accujack 7y ago
It can, the author of the article is cherry picking facts to make it seem like it can't.

guscost 7y ago

"We won't ever figure out how to work safely with a substance that stores huge amounts of usable energy in its atomic structure." ... "We just need to figure out how to store and transport many terawatts of harvested solar power, and then we can finally phase out natural gas." Insanity. This sounds like it was written by Gazprom.