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>All car companies will shift away from the EV and towards hydrogen at some point. Sure and all coal plants will be replaced by fusion, but a utility executive

by RC_ITR 4y ago

>All car companies will shift away from the EV and towards hydrogen at some point. Sure and all coal plants will be replaced by fusion, but a utility executive single-mindedly pursuing fusion is not a good corporate leader.

_hypx 4y ago
FYI, coal is nowhere near dead. In fact it had it's biggest year just last year. It's most likely replacement is... natural gas. And if you replace "fusion" with "fission" it is a very sensible argument.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  > FYI, coal is nowhere near dead. In fact it had it's biggest year just last year. Maybe globally because India/China, but the US has shed Gigawatts of coal capacity over the last two decades. > It's most likely replacement is... natural gas. Yeah. > And if you replace "fusion" with "fission" it is a very sensible argument. Like it or not, we are losing our ability to build fission plants (Google Vogtle if you’re not familiar) and the only way an Electricity CEO in 2023 should be single-mindedly thinking about fission is if they have some inside information that the government is going to subsidized the heck out of it. Otherwise, they'll just be the CEO with unconstrained capex and higher prices (and an angry utilities commission that has a singular mission to cut the rate base to reduce said prices as much as possible)
  - _hypx 4y ago
    And replaced it with natural gas... Coal is nowhere near dead. Europe is increasing production right now. People have greatly exaggerated the death of fossil fuels. We are decades away from moving away from fossil fuels. A lot of the opposition to nuclear fission is just bad environmentalism. Take that away and we'd be building hundreds of reactors right now. We can easily reduce construction cost if it wasn't for excessive regulation designed to make it expensive.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      >And replaced it with natural gas... Yeah. >Coal is nowhere near dead. Europe is increasing production right now. People have greatly exaggerated the death of fossil fuels. We are decades away from moving away from fossil fuels. Again, Yeah. >A lot of the opposition to nuclear fission is just bad environmentalism. This is categorically wrong. A lot of the opposition to fission is that it is not cost competitive with natural gas. Again, please google Vogtle. It took $30bn and 15 years to add two gigawatts of generation capacity to our grid. Meanwhile, Indeck Niles in Michigan took $1bn and 2 years to add one gigawatt. >We can easily reduce construction cost if it wasn't for excessive regulation designed to make it expensive. I'm going to need a citation on all of this. What regulation exactly caused Vogtle to cost $30bn? Was it the regulations that the site should be built to spec and not leak[0]? >In August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found two sets of electrical cables meant to provide redundancy in Unit 3 weren’t properly separated. Earlier, Georgia Power had to repair a leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool [0]https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2021/11/04/georgia-power-nuclear-reactors-plant-vogtle-cost-doubles-energy-costs/6286729001/ https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2021/11/04/georg...
      - _hypx 4y ago
        Just to be clear, the power from a nuclear reactor is very different than that of a wind or solar farm. Vogtle is 2GW of baseload power, and is comparable to significantly larger amount of renewable energy. It is also the result of decades of low investment into nuclear until expertise has retired and now we struggle to find the right people to build new reactors. The type of problems that are reported at nuclear power plants are basically ignored at other plants. Most power plants don't have any real redundancy, nevermind the insane levels of redundancy requires at nuclear power plants. The plant would have easily ran with those issues, but we just refuse to take even the smallest risk.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        > Just to be clear, the power from a nuclear reactor is very different than that of a wind or solar farm. Yes. Forced outages are typically complete rather than partial. They're heavily correlated and last months. So storage or backup needs to be many weeks to make it reliable at even the 95% level. Much of the generation happens at night when industries have to assign expensive graveyard shifts to utilize it effectively. It's also so expensive that increasing coverage for a set power target by overprovision is prohibitive. > It is also the result of decades of low investment into nuclear until expertise has retired and now we struggle to find the right people to build new reactors This must have been why reactors completed in 1979 were on average so much more expensive than the ones finished before. And why prices have gone up almost every time the same design is built again. > The plant would have easily ran with those issues, but we just refuse to take even the smallest risk. I love this line where you crow about how safe it is out of one side of your mouth, then whine about how if it didn't have to be safe, it'd be cheap. Let's replace the 'excessive' regulatory requirements with removing the liability cap and see who lines up to provide insurance on an entire city. Also the residents around kadapa or husab would love it if they could have some of this safety you're talking about.

by RC_ITR 4y ago

_hypx 4y ago

FYI, coal is nowhere near dead. In fact it had it's biggest year just last year. It's most likely replacement is... natural gas. And if you replace "fusion" with "fission" it is a very sensible argument.

RC_ITR 4y ago
> FYI, coal is nowhere near dead. In fact it had it's biggest year just last year. Maybe globally because India/China, but the US has shed Gigawatts of coal capacity over the last two decades. > It's most likely replacement is... natural gas. Yeah. > And if you replace "fusion" with "fission" it is a very sensible argument. Like it or not, we are losing our ability to build fission plants (Google Vogtle if you’re not familiar) and the only way an Electricity CEO in 2023 should be single-mindedly thinking about fission is if they have some inside information that the government is going to subsidized the heck out of it. Otherwise, they'll just be the CEO with unconstrained capex and higher prices (and an angry utilities commission that has a singular mission to cut the rate base to reduce said prices as much as possible)
- _hypx 4y ago
  And replaced it with natural gas... Coal is nowhere near dead. Europe is increasing production right now. People have greatly exaggerated the death of fossil fuels. We are decades away from moving away from fossil fuels. A lot of the opposition to nuclear fission is just bad environmentalism. Take that away and we'd be building hundreds of reactors right now. We can easily reduce construction cost if it wasn't for excessive regulation designed to make it expensive.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    >And replaced it with natural gas... Yeah. >Coal is nowhere near dead. Europe is increasing production right now. People have greatly exaggerated the death of fossil fuels. We are decades away from moving away from fossil fuels. Again, Yeah. >A lot of the opposition to nuclear fission is just bad environmentalism. This is categorically wrong. A lot of the opposition to fission is that it is not cost competitive with natural gas. Again, please google Vogtle. It took $30bn and 15 years to add two gigawatts of generation capacity to our grid. Meanwhile, Indeck Niles in Michigan took $1bn and 2 years to add one gigawatt. >We can easily reduce construction cost if it wasn't for excessive regulation designed to make it expensive. I'm going to need a citation on all of this. What regulation exactly caused Vogtle to cost $30bn? Was it the regulations that the site should be built to spec and not leak[0]? >In August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found two sets of electrical cables meant to provide redundancy in Unit 3 weren’t properly separated. Earlier, Georgia Power had to repair a leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool [0]https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2021/11/04/georgia-power-nuclear-reactors-plant-vogtle-cost-doubles-energy-costs/6286729001/ https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2021/11/04/georg...
    - _hypx 4y ago
      Just to be clear, the power from a nuclear reactor is very different than that of a wind or solar farm. Vogtle is 2GW of baseload power, and is comparable to significantly larger amount of renewable energy. It is also the result of decades of low investment into nuclear until expertise has retired and now we struggle to find the right people to build new reactors. The type of problems that are reported at nuclear power plants are basically ignored at other plants. Most power plants don't have any real redundancy, nevermind the insane levels of redundancy requires at nuclear power plants. The plant would have easily ran with those issues, but we just refuse to take even the smallest risk.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        > Just to be clear, the power from a nuclear reactor is very different than that of a wind or solar farm. Yes. Forced outages are typically complete rather than partial. They're heavily correlated and last months. So storage or backup needs to be many weeks to make it reliable at even the 95% level. Much of the generation happens at night when industries have to assign expensive graveyard shifts to utilize it effectively. It's also so expensive that increasing coverage for a set power target by overprovision is prohibitive. > It is also the result of decades of low investment into nuclear until expertise has retired and now we struggle to find the right people to build new reactors This must have been why reactors completed in 1979 were on average so much more expensive than the ones finished before. And why prices have gone up almost every time the same design is built again. > The plant would have easily ran with those issues, but we just refuse to take even the smallest risk. I love this line where you crow about how safe it is out of one side of your mouth, then whine about how if it didn't have to be safe, it'd be cheap. Let's replace the 'excessive' regulatory requirements with removing the liability cap and see who lines up to provide insurance on an entire city. Also the residents around kadapa or husab would love it if they could have some of this safety you're talking about.