3 ms·

Guessing they have lots of submarine patents they have been keeping in abeyance until they spot somebody they can use them against. "Cost effective" and nukes

by ncmncm 4y ago

Guessing they have lots of submarine patents they have been keeping in abeyance until they spot somebody they can use them against. "Cost effective" and nukes don't seem to exist in the same universe.

PaulHoule 4y ago
With nukes there are two problems. When people say "nuclear power is not economical", they are really saying "in North America and Europe, gas turbines powered by natural gas are cheaper". That, of course, is ignoring the cost of carbon. People aren't comparing coal to the LWR anymore the way they did in the 1970s because conventional coal burning plants are uneconomical for the same reason: the steam turbine is huge and expensive. In the case of the LWR the low temperature of operation requires absolutely huge steam generators, which are much larger than the pressure vessel and are in the primary coolant loop and safety critical. People used to think fast reactors would be necessarily more expensive than the LWR but people envisioning a future for nuclear believe a system that runs at high temperatures and has a powerset based on https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team could be competitive in North America. (e.g. the LWR is more competitive in China because they don't have a huge natural gas pipeline network) The other one is the difficulty of building an LWR on time and on budget It would be one thing if they said it cost $7 billion and it really cost $8 billion, but if it ends up costing more like $15 billion that's a big problem. Some of it might be the stop-start nature of the thing (the US planned to build 4 AP1000s, had them terribly delayed because of challenges building the first one in China, and canceled 2.) If we'd decided to build these at a reasonable cadence we might have applied the learnings from the first ones to learn how to make them reliably, we might be able to build them on budget and on schedule.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Nukes are expensive compared to, particularly, renewables. Gas turbines will be outcompeted, too, as renewables cost continues on down. With recent advances in power extraction via what amount to thermocouples, no-moving-parts nukes might have a future. They just need to sit glowing red-hot surrounded by thermocouples, with the backsides of the latter cooled.

by ncmncm 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

With nukes there are two problems. When people say "nuclear power is not economical", they are really saying "in North America and Europe, gas turbines powered by natural gas are cheaper". That, of course, is ignoring the cost of carbon. People aren't comparing coal to the LWR anymore the way they did in the 1970s because conventional coal burning plants are uneconomical for the same reason: the steam turbine is huge and expensive. In the case of the LWR the low temperature of operation requires absolutely huge steam generators, which are much larger than the pressure vessel and are in the primary coolant loop and safety critical. People used to think fast reactors would be necessarily more expensive than the LWR but people envisioning a future for nuclear believe a system that runs at high temperatures and has a powerset based on https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team could be competitive in North America. (e.g. the LWR is more competitive in China because they don't have a huge natural gas pipeline network) The other one is the difficulty of building an LWR on time and on budget It would be one thing if they said it cost $7 billion and it really cost $8 billion, but if it ends up costing more like $15 billion that's a big problem. Some of it might be the stop-start nature of the thing (the US planned to build 4 AP1000s, had them terribly delayed because of challenges building the first one in China, and canceled 2.) If we'd decided to build these at a reasonable cadence we might have applied the learnings from the first ones to learn how to make them reliably, we might be able to build them on budget and on schedule.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ncmncm 4y ago
Nukes are expensive compared to, particularly, renewables. Gas turbines will be outcompeted, too, as renewables cost continues on down. With recent advances in power extraction via what amount to thermocouples, no-moving-parts nukes might have a future. They just need to sit glowing red-hot surrounded by thermocouples, with the backsides of the latter cooled.