5 ms·
The only way I can understand it is incredible shortsightedness. In other words, it's not "close the nuclear plant and open a coal plant". They see it as "close
by ip26 7y ago
The only way I can understand it is incredible shortsightedness. In other words, it's not "close the nuclear plant and open a coal plant". They see it as "close the nuclear plant" and don't think about it any further than that.
- pfdietz 7y agoCoal is on the way out also. It won't be "close nuclear and replace with coal". It's "close nuclear and replace with things much cleaner than coal (gas or, increasingly, renewables.)
- godelski 7y agoI'm going to need a few citations because this is an ongoing and highly controversial debate within the climate community. Considering that, it isn't a smart decision to remove nuclear from the conversation all together. I'd go as far as saying removing it from the conversation is anti-scientific.
- pfdietz 7y agoI want you to look up how many new coal plants have been built in the US in the last five years. Answer: just one, a tiny oneat the University of Alaska. During that time, many nuclear plants were retired here. Shutting down nuclear did not lead to a resurgence of coal. Instead, coal is collapsing. Large steam thermal baseload plants are increasingly uncompetitive, coal or nuclear.
- simloo 7y agoNot the parent poster, but you should add what's actually being built: a lot of gas plants. They're cleaner than coal, but lets be honest, still not particularly good for the environment.
- pfdietz 7y agoYou mean, I could have written something like "gas or, increasingly, renewables"? Which is what I actually wrote.
- simloo 7y agoTo be fair, that statement was in the grandparent and not the post I replied to. However, I'd argue > Large steam thermal baseload plants are increasingly uncompetitive, coal or nuclear. is generally wrong, since gas power plants are "large steam thermal baseload plants" and they're very much competitive. Large baseload plants are just as necessary now as they used to be since we'll still need power when the wind doesn't blow. The problem is nuclear needs to run at max power all the time to be profitable.
- godelski 7y agoThere's ways that you can not run at max power with nuclear reactors. Especially if you include advances from modern reactors (i.e. reactors that weren't designed 50 years ago). You can also use that energy to charge batteries or pump water uphill the same way you would with excess solar and wind power. Doing so means you need a lower baseload. Also, another idea, why not use that excess energy to sequester carbon? We do need to be carbon negative.
- pfdietz 7y agoTechnically, there are ways to run nuclear reactors at below full power. But economically, it's ruinous to do so. Almost all the costs of a nuclear plant are fixed. The already poor levelized cost of the plant's output becomes even worse. You could charge batteries with nuclear output, but why do so, when other sources are cheaper? And the battery charging can be moved around in time, so the intermittency of those sources is less of a problem. Similarly, why use expensive energy to sequester carbon when cheap energy could be used instead?
- pfdietz 7y agoNo, you are mistaken. CC plants have a steam bottoming cycle, but 2/3rds of the power comes from the combustion turbine front end. This gives them a very large advantage over systems where all the power has to go through the steam. And simple cycle plants require no heat exchangers, steam cycle, or cooling water at all.
- qwerty456127 7y agoIs it so easy to get political power that people who actually are rather than pretend being this stupid use to manage that?