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TL;DR This Westinghouse Project is to what we need, as Boeing's Starliner is to SpaceX's solution. To reduce carbon emissions and bridges us until fusion (or s

TL;DR This Westinghouse Project is to what we need, as Boeing's Starliner is to SpaceX's solution. To reduce carbon emissions and bridges us until fusion (or some other tech) is more viable, nuclear still seems to make sense; ignoring the political and scaremongering issues. This project suffered from corruption, mismanagement, and contractors who've gotten too good at "business" rather than engineering.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yodelshady 5y ago
That's an excellent analogy. There is a scattering of fission-based startups (I'll plug UBattery, FliBe energy also looks smart). Just like SpaceX, like it or not you're not going to avoid some government involvement. (You know what, I wouldn't call the unashamedly public-sector development in the '60s sluggish either.)
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Some other tech like solar, wind, batteries etc. perhaps? I've noticed a weird trend recently where the people still keen on nuclear power don't even mention the elephant in the room that is renewables. They used to love talking about how expensive and unreliable and unsafe it is. Gives me some small hope that a consensus is slowly being reached.
- pjc50 5y ago
  It's very noticeable that all of those have an actual market, whereas if you want a reactor you have very limited choices. Nuclear power is more like the F-35, where the job of the contractor is to establish it as a "national necessity" and then bill as much as they can get away with while prolonging the programme, because there's no realistic competitors. SpaceX made the product on private money and then sold it to the government once it could be seen to work.
  - onedognight 5y ago
    > SpaceX made the product on private money And public loans. This doesn’t fully detract from your point that SpaceX is different from traditional government space contractors, but it should be noted.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  >They used to love talking about how expensive and unreliable and unsafe it is. Because now you can just look outside. https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-records-after-wind-stops-blowing-11631528258 https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-rec... Renewables are great, but you can't 100% rely on them. Batteries are too expensive to do more than short-term load balancing. Either you massively overprovision everything - and MW for MW cost comparisons stop making sense - or you have brownouts.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Where by "look outside" you mean "read headlines in Murdoch-owned newspapers printed in the states and talking about Europe"? Yes, high gas prices partly caused by political shenanigans totally made me thankful that we hadn't moved faster to electrification and renewables and instead dragged our feet for so many years because of bogus fears that renewables would be ruinously costly and not even work and kill all the birds etc. Well done to everyone who contributed to that propaganda effort.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      If ignoring the facts is the reaction to demonstrable grid instability in most of Europe, India and China, the future looks bleak for renewables.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        That's a very vague and non specific accusation. Presumably because your facts aren't actually facts and if you stated what facts you thought they were ignoring, someone would point out that you're wrong. But yes, let's all hope together that governments around the world don't ignore basic facts when dealing with this or any other issue. We'll just quietly disagree on what the facts actually are, because hey they're only facts, nothing important.
- 542354234235 5y ago
  >Some other tech like solar, wind, batteries etc. perhaps? The sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and batteries often are astronomically expensive and impractical at large scales. Nuclear is important specifically because of the greater penetration of renewables, that are inherently intermittent or variable. Nuclear provides a stable baseload to complement that variability. A nuclear plant is producing its maximum capacity 93% of the time, as opposed to wind (34%) and solar (24%). To get 1 GW of reliable energy at any given time, you need 3-4 GW of wind and solar in the hope it will be enough, as opposed to 1.1 GW of nuclear. (Worth noting that coal is only 48% reliable). So I’m not sure where people are getting the “unreliable” part. [1][2] As for safety, nuclear power one of the safest forms of energy generation there is, which is in line with solar and wind. [3] Finally, if we are talking about expense, it is only expensive when you compare it to coal and natural gas, which are baseload generating power sources. Again, with intermittent renewables, it is cheaper to build nuclear than to massively overbuild solar, wind, and grid level batteries. [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... [2] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity [3] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    I think you misread my comment, I wasnt saying nuclear was unsafe or unreliable or expensive. I was saying people who wanted to distract from the high cost of nuclear would divert attention and say that solar/wind kills more people than nuclear per TWh (based on old, out of date stats) and that they were "unreliable" compared with nuclear. As you note, renewables and nuclear are in the same bracket for safety, with renewables slowly moving ahead. I was, perhaps naively, hoping this reflected greater knowledge of renewables continued roll out around the world, which would make such claims look silly. Also, nuclear is expensive compared with renewables, but it's only more expensive than coal if you don't take carbon and pollution into account, which we definitely should.
    - 542354234235 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yodelshady 5y ago

That's an excellent analogy. There is a scattering of fission-based startups (I'll plug UBattery, FliBe energy also looks smart). Just like SpaceX, like it or not you're not going to avoid some government involvement. (You know what, I wouldn't call the unashamedly public-sector development in the '60s sluggish either.)

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Some other tech like solar, wind, batteries etc. perhaps? I've noticed a weird trend recently where the people still keen on nuclear power don't even mention the elephant in the room that is renewables. They used to love talking about how expensive and unreliable and unsafe it is. Gives me some small hope that a consensus is slowly being reached.

pjc50 5y ago
It's very noticeable that all of those have an actual market, whereas if you want a reactor you have very limited choices. Nuclear power is more like the F-35, where the job of the contractor is to establish it as a "national necessity" and then bill as much as they can get away with while prolonging the programme, because there's no realistic competitors. SpaceX made the product on private money and then sold it to the government once it could be seen to work.
- onedognight 5y ago
  > SpaceX made the product on private money And public loans. This doesn’t fully detract from your point that SpaceX is different from traditional government space contractors, but it should be noted.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
>They used to love talking about how expensive and unreliable and unsafe it is. Because now you can just look outside. https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-records-after-wind-stops-blowing-11631528258 https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-rec... Renewables are great, but you can't 100% rely on them. Batteries are too expensive to do more than short-term load balancing. Either you massively overprovision everything - and MW for MW cost comparisons stop making sense - or you have brownouts.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Where by "look outside" you mean "read headlines in Murdoch-owned newspapers printed in the states and talking about Europe"? Yes, high gas prices partly caused by political shenanigans totally made me thankful that we hadn't moved faster to electrification and renewables and instead dragged our feet for so many years because of bogus fears that renewables would be ruinously costly and not even work and kill all the birds etc. Well done to everyone who contributed to that propaganda effort.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    If ignoring the facts is the reaction to demonstrable grid instability in most of Europe, India and China, the future looks bleak for renewables.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      That's a very vague and non specific accusation. Presumably because your facts aren't actually facts and if you stated what facts you thought they were ignoring, someone would point out that you're wrong. But yes, let's all hope together that governments around the world don't ignore basic facts when dealing with this or any other issue. We'll just quietly disagree on what the facts actually are, because hey they're only facts, nothing important.
542354234235 5y ago
>Some other tech like solar, wind, batteries etc. perhaps? The sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and batteries often are astronomically expensive and impractical at large scales. Nuclear is important specifically because of the greater penetration of renewables, that are inherently intermittent or variable. Nuclear provides a stable baseload to complement that variability. A nuclear plant is producing its maximum capacity 93% of the time, as opposed to wind (34%) and solar (24%). To get 1 GW of reliable energy at any given time, you need 3-4 GW of wind and solar in the hope it will be enough, as opposed to 1.1 GW of nuclear. (Worth noting that coal is only 48% reliable). So I’m not sure where people are getting the “unreliable” part. [1][2] As for safety, nuclear power one of the safest forms of energy generation there is, which is in line with solar and wind. [3] Finally, if we are talking about expense, it is only expensive when you compare it to coal and natural gas, which are baseload generating power sources. Again, with intermittent renewables, it is cheaper to build nuclear than to massively overbuild solar, wind, and grid level batteries. [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... [2] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity [3] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  I think you misread my comment, I wasnt saying nuclear was unsafe or unreliable or expensive. I was saying people who wanted to distract from the high cost of nuclear would divert attention and say that solar/wind kills more people than nuclear per TWh (based on old, out of date stats) and that they were "unreliable" compared with nuclear. As you note, renewables and nuclear are in the same bracket for safety, with renewables slowly moving ahead. I was, perhaps naively, hoping this reflected greater knowledge of renewables continued roll out around the world, which would make such claims look silly. Also, nuclear is expensive compared with renewables, but it's only more expensive than coal if you don't take carbon and pollution into account, which we definitely should.
  - 542354234235 5y ago