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One of the largest problems with nuclear, even bigger than the scientific illiteracy about it which facilitates the spread of anti-nuclear hysteria, is the red
by mikece 6y ago
One of the largest problems with nuclear, even bigger than the scientific illiteracy about it which facilitates the spread of anti-nuclear hysteria, is the red tape the industry faces. Another problem is the lack of standardization among nuclear facilities. Both could be solved by adopting SMR (small modular reactor) base nuclear. The cores are small enough that in a power-down scenario they can passively cool themselves so there's zero chance of a Fukushima-type primary loop rupture due to the cooling loop power being lost. Also, if facilities are standardized, the cost to install a cluster of ten 150MWe SMRs would cost HALF of what it would cost to install a single 1.5GWe large reactor. Also with standardization we can achieve economies of scale driving the prices down further. For folks who live off the grid or have a fondness for solar cells and wind turbines they can still use those but nuclear fission for the base load can provide more than enough cheap electricity for today and tomorrow -- even a tomorrow where everyone drives an electric car.
- FuckButtons 6y agoBut by having multiple small reactors you loose thermal efficiency and generate more waste/killowathour. Whatever the technical issues involved nuclear waste is such a political hot potato that all reasonable attempts to deal with it have been dead in the water for the past half century. Increasing that problem substantially is going to make a politically toxic problem worse.
- 08-15 6y agoCan you please not make up bullshit arguments? The size of a reactor has virtually no impact on thermal efficiency, especially not if we're comparing large (100MW) to very large (1GW). Even if there was a direct connection, a few percent difference (something like 33% vs. 36%) is not increasing the waste problem (which is not a problem to begin with) "substantially".
- dpoochieni 6y agoI think he meant waste as in Radioactive waste.
- 08-15 6y agoOf course he did. 10% more or less of it for the same amount of electricity doesn't make the difference between a manageable problem and an insurmountable one. (It's a manageable problem, obviously.)
- dpoochieni 6y agoDon't know the details but consider even if it were 10% more of it, what if it currently (directly and indirectly) is 80% of nuclear energy's cost. You would be talking about an almost 50% hit to the profitability of such a proposal.
- 08-15 6y agoYeah, what if thing were totally unlike what they are. The cost of current nuclear power is almost entirely capital cost and operations. Handling the tiny amount of radwaste is cheap (something like 0.1ct/kWh). It's much more expensive than it needs to be, because the governments declared that they would take care of the waste and then acted the way governments always do. And then there are people like you, who talk about mysterious unquantifiable "indirect" costs that are tacitly assumed to be approximately infinite. But that's just FUD, a glass log on the sea floor doesn't cause any cost. (If it's so easy, why aren't we doing it? See above.)
- dpoochieni 6y ago>The cost of current nuclear power is almost entirely capital cost and operations. Missing the point: how do the capital and operational costs scale with plant size in MW? It is ridiculous to assume they scale linearly throughout a big range so certain plant sizes will be more economical. It's all good, few people develop this kind of thought or are in a position requiring them to do so
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- econcon 6y agoI think we can check it by comparing large reactors with nuclear powered submarine or warship
- econcon 6y agoIt can be solved if we've interconnected grid all over the world and then we can setup very large reactors at some safe Island away from people. Today, we've Ultra High Voltage DC transmission technology which can cover whole planet.