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US net power generation is 400GW. You're talking about increasing it six-fold (or 20-fold) with the most expensive option. Yes, it's absurd. > Take a city like

US net power generation is 400GW. You're talking about increasing it six-fold (or 20-fold) with the most expensive option. Yes, it's absurd. > Take a city like Los Angeles. It is, quite literally, impossible to replace individually-driven vehicles with mass transport. You just can't do it. You would have to tear-up half the city to be able to provide enough granularity for people to actually want to ride mass transport. You already did it once to force people into cars. And luckily you don't need redlining to get rid of highways. It's far more feasible than committing 10s or 100s of trillions to reactors that can't physically exist. > Self driving mini-buses could do a great job of enhancing a hub-and-spoke system that would pick-up people from suburban neighborhoods and facilitate transport through larger long distance buses or rail. It's called a trolley bus (or automated light rail). And most of california's population already had access to it once without "full self driving next year" for decades. Also I love your conception of possibility as "I think it would be convenient for me personally to do this thing" rather than the physical existence of enough U235

robomartin 4y ago
> US net power generation is 400GW Not sure where this number comes from. It's 1200 GW. https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-electricity-generating-capacity https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-electricity-ge... > You already did it once to force people into cars. And luckily you don't need redlining to get rid of highways. Impossible. You are starting to sound like you don't live in the US. Perhaps you don't understand just how hard it is to get anything done here? > It's called a trolley bus (or automated light rail). And most of california's population already had access to it once without "full self driving next year" for decades. Also impossible. It's a reality. Sorry. > Also I love your conception of possibility as "I think it would be convenient for me personally to do this thing" rather than the physical existence of enough U235 How about you don't resort to insults and discuss facts instead? TWO DECADES AGO a research report from MIT concluded that, at that time, we had more than enough uranium ore to power a thousand reactors for 50 years. Since then we have gotten very good at extracting uranium from other sources as well as recycling. I don't think we have a problem. The question is: How much power do we need? Once that is answered, we need to decide on what assortment of nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, tidal and, likely, fossil generation approaches we need to use over time to provide what's needed. No single technology can cover all of it. Nuclear is likely to have to play a more significant role than most people think. How much? I have no clue. There's politics involved too, so, feel free to guess.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Not sure where this number comes from. It's 1200 GW. You keep saying that nameplate capacity isn't capacity. Net generation is 4000TWh/yr. There are 8760 hours in a year. Much of that 1200GW is not able to be active simultaneously (the whole capacity factor concept you keep complaining about). > TWO DECADES AGO a research report from MIT concluded that, at that time, we had more than enough uranium ore to power a thousand reactors for 50 years. How big were the reactors? An AP-1000 takes 100t of enriched uranium, and gets about 1000-1300GJ/kg of enriched fuel. Also that uranium has been powering 400 reactors for 20 years. 10% of it is gone now. > Since then we have gotten very good at extracting uranium from other sources as well as recycling. I don't think we have a problem. U238 isn't U235, and U238 doesn't fission without neutrons. Reprocessing only gets you an extra 25% from the Pu and closed fuel cycle generation has never even been demonstrated as a prototype. Claiming more than 1TW of nuclear generation is scifi. Current known and inferred reserves are 8 billion kg of natural uranium at 0.7% U235. Each kg of 4% uranium gets you 500-1300GJ (much less if not used at constant power) and tails are about 0.2%. You do the math.

robomartin 4y ago

> US net power generation is 400GW Not sure where this number comes from. It's 1200 GW. https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-electricity-generating-capacity https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-electricity-ge... > You already did it once to force people into cars. And luckily you don't need redlining to get rid of highways. Impossible. You are starting to sound like you don't live in the US. Perhaps you don't understand just how hard it is to get anything done here? > It's called a trolley bus (or automated light rail). And most of california's population already had access to it once without "full self driving next year" for decades. Also impossible. It's a reality. Sorry. > Also I love your conception of possibility as "I think it would be convenient for me personally to do this thing" rather than the physical existence of enough U235 How about you don't resort to insults and discuss facts instead? TWO DECADES AGO a research report from MIT concluded that, at that time, we had more than enough uranium ore to power a thousand reactors for 50 years. Since then we have gotten very good at extracting uranium from other sources as well as recycling. I don't think we have a problem. The question is: How much power do we need? Once that is answered, we need to decide on what assortment of nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, tidal and, likely, fossil generation approaches we need to use over time to provide what's needed. No single technology can cover all of it. Nuclear is likely to have to play a more significant role than most people think. How much? I have no clue. There's politics involved too, so, feel free to guess.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Not sure where this number comes from. It's 1200 GW. You keep saying that nameplate capacity isn't capacity. Net generation is 4000TWh/yr. There are 8760 hours in a year. Much of that 1200GW is not able to be active simultaneously (the whole capacity factor concept you keep complaining about). > TWO DECADES AGO a research report from MIT concluded that, at that time, we had more than enough uranium ore to power a thousand reactors for 50 years. How big were the reactors? An AP-1000 takes 100t of enriched uranium, and gets about 1000-1300GJ/kg of enriched fuel. Also that uranium has been powering 400 reactors for 20 years. 10% of it is gone now. > Since then we have gotten very good at extracting uranium from other sources as well as recycling. I don't think we have a problem. U238 isn't U235, and U238 doesn't fission without neutrons. Reprocessing only gets you an extra 25% from the Pu and closed fuel cycle generation has never even been demonstrated as a prototype. Claiming more than 1TW of nuclear generation is scifi. Current known and inferred reserves are 8 billion kg of natural uranium at 0.7% U235. Each kg of 4% uranium gets you 500-1300GJ (much less if not used at constant power) and tails are about 0.2%. You do the math.