4 ms·

>driven by articles that are, perhaps, driven by lobbying Or because people are waking up and realizing that climate change is gonna screw us faster than we ca

>driven by articles that are, perhaps, driven by lobbying Or because people are waking up and realizing that climate change is gonna screw us faster than we can build the tech to prevent that and people are defecting toward nuclear which is relatively shovel ready compared to grid scale solar/wind and the storage they necessitate.

Krasnol 6y ago
That doesn't make sense. If you feel pressure by time, nuclear is and never was your solution. It takes too long to construct. By the time a single reactor is build, renewables will jump several development steps.
- Hammershaft 6y ago
  That's fantastic but unfortunately there is no viable grid storage close to being capable of actually utilizing renewables for the majority of power all over the world. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/batteries-need-to-get-biglike-enormousfor-solar-power-to-shine https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/batteries-need-t... Are we really going to risk human civilization on the immediate invention and mass fabrication of new storage technologies orders of magnitude more efficient then what we have?
  - addicted 6y ago
    Well, let’s get to 30-40% solar/wind before we start worrrying about grids that cannot accept majority renewable. And guess what, at that point maybe some of the newer, safer, and cheaper nuclear designs would have been proven so the nuclear plays we build then for the next few decades are better than the ones we would build right now.
  - drran 6y ago
    Massive energy storage can^W will be built in fraction of time needed to build and then demolish a nuclear power plant.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  > By the time a single reactor is build, renewables will jump several development steps. We can build more than one nuclear reactor at a time, you know.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    How does that change something the amount of time it takes to build each of them? If you start now, it'll still take you almost a decade (or maybe it even will be a decade. You never know with NPPs because they always take longer and cost more than projected) and in that decade renewables will jump generations of development. In the end you just wasted money which could have been invested into true clean energy which is still improving fast.
Octoth0rpe 6y ago
> faster than we can build the tech You're arguing for nuclear on the basis of its build speed? That doesn't seem to be born out in reality. Maybe another X* years when we've got cheap, factory built small modular reactors, but that certainly doesn't describe nuclear today. In which case we're back to waiting for new tech. * X being some number of years that increments by 1 year, every year.
- Aachen 6y ago
  We can hope that all countries will find the space for all the solar panels, wind turbines, have some convenient height differences for hydro power and pumped energy storage, money for li-ion storage for the night or windless days, grid upgrades to get it from where it's produced to where it's needed... or we could apt remove coal_plant && apt install fission_plant on the same surface area and be certain that we'll be done in the 15 years that this takes to build. I'm very much afraid the former isn't going to cut it. I also know solar is cheaper if you compare kWh produced by panels on roofs to kWh produced by nuclear plants, but we need to increase our energy production nearly tenfold and renewables only won't make it easy to get there. We need to continue on both fronts, we can't rule out nuclear if we want to avoid this disaster. Best case the money is wasted. Currently, the best case is that we'll succeed and the average case a disaster.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Large parts of build speed issue with nuclear is regulation. If we could just get a permit to build done in a reasonable amount of time and then not stop progress again and again it would make a big difference.
  - Octoth0rpe 6y ago
    Given the price tag for Fukushima is at $187 billion and rising, arguing for deregulation _should_ be a hard sell. The axiom 'safe, cheap, fast; choose any 2' doesn't even apply to nuclear. It's more like choose 0. You might be able to argue for some version of 'safe' by talking about actual fatalities from nuclear energy being low, but I think the 5000ish square kilometers of exclusion zones from Chrenobyl/Fukushima should be part of the conversation about 'safety'. Safe for people perhaps, safe for property, apparently not. So maybe choose 0.5?
jolux 6y ago
Nuclear, shovel ready? How many economically viable nuclear designs are shovel ready with a reasonable time to generation?
- Alupis 6y ago
  We regulated the industry so much that we made nuclear plants almost entirely economically unviable. Some of the regulations are good, some are bad - and a lot were born out of irrational fears about an immature industry that we didn't fully understand at the time. There is no reason a nuclear plant cannot be economically viable. They're all over Europe, Japan, Russia, China and I'm sure other countries as well.
- gitgreen 6y ago
  NuScale/Fluor claim they can bring the UAMPS project in Idaho online by 2027 at an amortized average energy cost of about $55/MWh. https://www.powermag.com/nuscale-uamps-kick-off-idaho-smr-nuclear-plant-licensing/ https://www.powermag.com/nuscale-uamps-kick-off-idaho-smr-nu... That would make it more expensive than onshore wind($45/MWh) and solar yet($48/MWh) cheaper than all other sources of energy including natural gas($59/MWh). Double the final cost of energy to $110/MWh and it would still be in theory cheaper than the average for coal($115/MWh). Granted I'm pulling these numbers from Wikipedia so it's not that simple but the numbers aren't unrealistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
- fallingknife 6y ago
  South Korea builds nuclear plants in < 5 years. Japan < 4 years. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/10/123_215869.html https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/10/123_215869...
garmaine 6y ago
You do realize this is a 75 year old industry with dozens of approved reactor designs?

Krasnol 6y ago

That doesn't make sense. If you feel pressure by time, nuclear is and never was your solution. It takes too long to construct. By the time a single reactor is build, renewables will jump several development steps.

Hammershaft 6y ago
That's fantastic but unfortunately there is no viable grid storage close to being capable of actually utilizing renewables for the majority of power all over the world. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/batteries-need-to-get-biglike-enormousfor-solar-power-to-shine https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/batteries-need-t... Are we really going to risk human civilization on the immediate invention and mass fabrication of new storage technologies orders of magnitude more efficient then what we have?
- addicted 6y ago
  Well, let’s get to 30-40% solar/wind before we start worrrying about grids that cannot accept majority renewable. And guess what, at that point maybe some of the newer, safer, and cheaper nuclear designs would have been proven so the nuclear plays we build then for the next few decades are better than the ones we would build right now.
- drran 6y ago
  Massive energy storage can^W will be built in fraction of time needed to build and then demolish a nuclear power plant.
saalweachter 6y ago
> By the time a single reactor is build, renewables will jump several development steps. We can build more than one nuclear reactor at a time, you know.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  How does that change something the amount of time it takes to build each of them? If you start now, it'll still take you almost a decade (or maybe it even will be a decade. You never know with NPPs because they always take longer and cost more than projected) and in that decade renewables will jump generations of development. In the end you just wasted money which could have been invested into true clean energy which is still improving fast.

Octoth0rpe 6y ago

> faster than we can build the tech You're arguing for nuclear on the basis of its build speed? That doesn't seem to be born out in reality. Maybe another X* years when we've got cheap, factory built small modular reactors, but that certainly doesn't describe nuclear today. In which case we're back to waiting for new tech. * X being some number of years that increments by 1 year, every year.

Aachen 6y ago
We can hope that all countries will find the space for all the solar panels, wind turbines, have some convenient height differences for hydro power and pumped energy storage, money for li-ion storage for the night or windless days, grid upgrades to get it from where it's produced to where it's needed... or we could apt remove coal_plant && apt install fission_plant on the same surface area and be certain that we'll be done in the 15 years that this takes to build. I'm very much afraid the former isn't going to cut it. I also know solar is cheaper if you compare kWh produced by panels on roofs to kWh produced by nuclear plants, but we need to increase our energy production nearly tenfold and renewables only won't make it easy to get there. We need to continue on both fronts, we can't rule out nuclear if we want to avoid this disaster. Best case the money is wasted. Currently, the best case is that we'll succeed and the average case a disaster.
bluGill 6y ago
Large parts of build speed issue with nuclear is regulation. If we could just get a permit to build done in a reasonable amount of time and then not stop progress again and again it would make a big difference.
- Octoth0rpe 6y ago
  Given the price tag for Fukushima is at $187 billion and rising, arguing for deregulation _should_ be a hard sell. The axiom 'safe, cheap, fast; choose any 2' doesn't even apply to nuclear. It's more like choose 0. You might be able to argue for some version of 'safe' by talking about actual fatalities from nuclear energy being low, but I think the 5000ish square kilometers of exclusion zones from Chrenobyl/Fukushima should be part of the conversation about 'safety'. Safe for people perhaps, safe for property, apparently not. So maybe choose 0.5?

jolux 6y ago

Nuclear, shovel ready? How many economically viable nuclear designs are shovel ready with a reasonable time to generation?

Alupis 6y ago
We regulated the industry so much that we made nuclear plants almost entirely economically unviable. Some of the regulations are good, some are bad - and a lot were born out of irrational fears about an immature industry that we didn't fully understand at the time. There is no reason a nuclear plant cannot be economically viable. They're all over Europe, Japan, Russia, China and I'm sure other countries as well.
gitgreen 6y ago
NuScale/Fluor claim they can bring the UAMPS project in Idaho online by 2027 at an amortized average energy cost of about $55/MWh. https://www.powermag.com/nuscale-uamps-kick-off-idaho-smr-nuclear-plant-licensing/ https://www.powermag.com/nuscale-uamps-kick-off-idaho-smr-nu... That would make it more expensive than onshore wind($45/MWh) and solar yet($48/MWh) cheaper than all other sources of energy including natural gas($59/MWh). Double the final cost of energy to $110/MWh and it would still be in theory cheaper than the average for coal($115/MWh). Granted I'm pulling these numbers from Wikipedia so it's not that simple but the numbers aren't unrealistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
fallingknife 6y ago
South Korea builds nuclear plants in < 5 years. Japan < 4 years. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/10/123_215869.html https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/10/123_215869...

garmaine 6y ago

You do realize this is a 75 year old industry with dozens of approved reactor designs?