3 ms·

> build you some nationalized nuclear plants on federal land in the middle of nowhere, where there aren't any NIMBYs to get in the way? I'm not in the US, but

by SXX 4y ago

> build you some nationalized nuclear plants on federal land in the middle of nowhere, where there aren't any NIMBYs to get in the way? I'm not in the US, but I guess for the same reason why Sahara desert is not yet became world largest solar power plant. You can't just build power plants in the middle of nowhere since energy transportation infrastructure isn't free and there some laws of physics involved. Also I pretty certain that US government and especially military are well aware that centralization of power production is not good for resilience of the grid and national security. One huge centralised nuclear facility would be much easier target than hundreds and thousands of smaller power plants.

derefr 4y ago
Who said anything about (geographic) centralization / "one huge facility"? Federal land is everywhere in the US (see the diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands). There's lots and lots of "middle of nowheres" owned by the federal government, in pretty much every state, dispersed enough that each one is not too far from easy grid connection. If you've ever seen what is done to wire up a hydroelectric dam in a "middle of nowhere" river valley to the grid, this wouldn't be all too different: clearcut a narrow straight-line path through a few hundred miles of wilderness, up and over and mountains/rivers/etc, and run some ultra-high-voltage transmission lines over them. Here's what that looks like in the abstract (https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/suppliers/transmission-system/maps/transplt-Default-001.pdf https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/...), and in practice (https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/powerlines-across-mountains-british-columbia-canada-electric-power-lines-strung-74019852.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/powerlines-across-mountains-...) (It especially wouldn't be all too different, because most Federal land is in the Rockies, so these nuclear plants would likely be mostly built in almost exactly the same terrain as hydroelectric dams are built in, and so dealing with basically the same grid-routing challenges.) And while all those middle-of-nowheres would provide room enough for hundreds/thousands of those https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm..., if you like, you really don't need to go against efficiencies of scale; 20% of power in the US is already covered by just 54 plants, and those only in 28 states. Presuming some real "this land has no land value" places where you could build as big as you like, you wouldn't need to more than double that number to cover 80% (because you could do quite a few reactors per site.) Why would this be okay? Well, remember, nuclear is base load generation; meaning that it doesn't compete with (most) renewables, only with other base-load generation — mainly oil/coal and hydro-power. All that distributed solar/wind/etc infrastructure that's good for grid fault-tolerance would still be there if China lobbed some missiles at the big plants.

by SXX 4y ago

derefr 4y ago

Who said anything about (geographic) centralization / "one huge facility"? Federal land is everywhere in the US (see the diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands). There's lots and lots of "middle of nowheres" owned by the federal government, in pretty much every state, dispersed enough that each one is not too far from easy grid connection. If you've ever seen what is done to wire up a hydroelectric dam in a "middle of nowhere" river valley to the grid, this wouldn't be all too different: clearcut a narrow straight-line path through a few hundred miles of wilderness, up and over and mountains/rivers/etc, and run some ultra-high-voltage transmission lines over them. Here's what that looks like in the abstract (https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/suppliers/transmission-system/maps/transplt-Default-001.pdf https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/...), and in practice (https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/powerlines-across-mountains-british-columbia-canada-electric-power-lines-strung-74019852.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/powerlines-across-mountains-...) (It especially wouldn't be all too different, because most Federal land is in the Rockies, so these nuclear plants would likely be mostly built in almost exactly the same terrain as hydroelectric dams are built in, and so dealing with basically the same grid-routing challenges.) And while all those middle-of-nowheres would provide room enough for hundreds/thousands of those https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm..., if you like, you really don't need to go against efficiencies of scale; 20% of power in the US is already covered by just 54 plants, and those only in 28 states. Presuming some real "this land has no land value" places where you could build as big as you like, you wouldn't need to more than double that number to cover 80% (because you could do quite a few reactors per site.) Why would this be okay? Well, remember, nuclear is base load generation; meaning that it doesn't compete with (most) renewables, only with other base-load generation — mainly oil/coal and hydro-power. All that distributed solar/wind/etc infrastructure that's good for grid fault-tolerance would still be there if China lobbed some missiles at the big plants.