3 ms·
Nuclear power is clean and safe. Why aren't we using more of it?
- PaulHoule 5y agoCan't afford the steam turbine. It's astonishing how much the engineering literature is like a stopped clock. All the time you hear that a new power source could be "competitive with coal" but coal is not competitive with natural gas used to fire an open-cycle gas turbine. The capital cost of the steam turbine (and associated heat exchangers) at a coal plant or nuclear plant is as humongous as the hardware itself. A supercritical CO2 closed-cycle gas turbine would fit in the employee break room of the turbine house at a nuclear plant. Without some transition to a higher-temperature reactor (liquid metal, gas cooled, or molten salt) nuclear power can't possibly compete economically against other power sources.