4 ms·

I'll believe those guys when I see a commercial scale version. Lots of things have been done in the lab with a large budge for small results. I would say less t

I'll believe those guys when I see a commercial scale version. Lots of things have been done in the lab with a large budge for small results. I would say less than 0.5% of them become a success. I hope they do, I would love for this to be true. However, the planet is dying right now and nuclear is one of those things that could help us save ourselves from ourselves so I will keep rooting for it.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
As I said, it's only one of many technologies which are vying to lower costs. If 0.5% of the ones already undergoing commercialisation succeed we'll be seeing capital costs halve or better and efficiencies improve. The SMRs required to convert coal to nuclear or microwave drilling technologies are much much further from reality than "take a well understood design and put a capilliary in the middle". Here's a simple model using very pessimistic costs of last generation technology with 100% uptime for lower LCOE than new nuclear https://model.energy/?results=ee966ba4279eec9f32fcdadb8dd4dcf0#solve https://model.energy/?results=ee966ba4279eec9f32fcdadb8dd4dc... Much more importantly you're buying capacity that can come on as soon as each part is done with that money rather than capacity that comes online between 2032 and 2045 and won't see full return until 2100. As you said the planet is dying now and I'd much rather have 3W for the capital in 3 years (with a vast surplus for variable loads) than 1W in 10-20. All we have to do is stop helping the fossil fuel industry block new wind and solar projects, delay them and drive costs up. The variability will fund storage and drive fossil fuels out of business on its own. Pouring those billions of public funds into gigawatts of nationally owned electrolysers to kickstart the industry would be a vastly better use of money than spending it on nuclear projects that will never open or be a drain on public coffers for decades via tarriff guarantees 10x the projected cost of electricity.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

As I said, it's only one of many technologies which are vying to lower costs. If 0.5% of the ones already undergoing commercialisation succeed we'll be seeing capital costs halve or better and efficiencies improve. The SMRs required to convert coal to nuclear or microwave drilling technologies are much much further from reality than "take a well understood design and put a capilliary in the middle". Here's a simple model using very pessimistic costs of last generation technology with 100% uptime for lower LCOE than new nuclear https://model.energy/?results=ee966ba4279eec9f32fcdadb8dd4dcf0#solve https://model.energy/?results=ee966ba4279eec9f32fcdadb8dd4dc... Much more importantly you're buying capacity that can come on as soon as each part is done with that money rather than capacity that comes online between 2032 and 2045 and won't see full return until 2100. As you said the planet is dying now and I'd much rather have 3W for the capital in 3 years (with a vast surplus for variable loads) than 1W in 10-20. All we have to do is stop helping the fossil fuel industry block new wind and solar projects, delay them and drive costs up. The variability will fund storage and drive fossil fuels out of business on its own. Pouring those billions of public funds into gigawatts of nationally owned electrolysers to kickstart the industry would be a vastly better use of money than spending it on nuclear projects that will never open or be a drain on public coffers for decades via tarriff guarantees 10x the projected cost of electricity.