4 ms·

> Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it saf

> Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners. Nuclear isn't terribly friendly towards this, you can't just go "How about we use 30% less concrete?" > Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Everything does, but nuclear benefits less. Precisely because of what you said, they have no other market use. You'll need to convince industries that it's worth scaling up for that, and that it won't backfire. That will be tricky. > No, we can't. You're missing the point. Here's what I envision: 1. Renewables continue to eat nuclear's lunch 2. Nuclear keeps not getting built 3. Eventually grid destabilizes 4. People want solutions, right now At point 4, nobody is going to sit there and wait 5-10 years for nuclear to be built. Yeah, batteries are expensive, but remember Tesla's battery in Australia that got done in 100 days? So that's how I see things going. Once the shit hits the fan, urgent solutions will be needed. And pretty much everything is much faster than nuclear. I'm not envisioning some utopic future, but one where problems will be ignored until something goes quite wrong, that's going to suck for a while, then things get hurriedly rectified in a huge rush and at great expense, but that will still favor non-nuclear solutions.

Manuel_D 4y ago
> The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Er, no it is the point. We've always been using the safety mechanisms you specified, so it's not going to affect costs because those safety features have always been there. > Everything does, but nuclear benefits less. Precisely because of what you said, they have no other market use. You'll need to convince industries that it's worth scaling up for that, and that it won't backfire. That will be tricky. Quite the contrary, it makes it benefit vastly more from economies of scale. For example, one of the central components in a wind turbine is an alternator or dynamo. We make alternators for all kinds of products, so doubling the production of wind turbines doesn't remotely double the market for alternators because wind turbines are only a small segment of the market for alternators. By comparison, nuclear pressure vessels are only used for nuclear power plants. Thus doubling the production of nuclear pressure vessels doubles the market for pressure vessels. Serialized production of nuclear power at scale would easily expand the market for nuclear power components by an order of magnitude. The same cannot be said of wind turbines and alternators. You're missing the context that renewables are currently being used to supplement a primarily fossil fuel grid. This means we don't actually have to accommodate the intermittent nature of renewable production. Once renewables saturate the energy market during peak production, things become a lot harder for renewables. You're comparing apples to oranges when you compare an intermittent source to a non-intermittent source. People want solutions right now, and intermittent sources are not a solution until cheap and scalable energy storage is invented. Which it hasn't. We have geographically-limited options like hydro which are good for the regions that have access to it. But for everywhere else, it's either continue to use fossil fuels or nuclear power. > Yeah, batteries are expensive, but remember Tesla's battery in Australia that got done in 100 days? How much does it store? Media reports this as "2,000 megawatt seconds" [1]. In other words, 0.55 megawatt hours. This is less electricity than a small nuclear plant produces every minute. To put this in perspective the US alone consumes about 12 TWh (or 12,000,000 MWh) of electricity every day. We'd need tens of millions of these battery facilities. Again, there's a reason why plans for a primary renewable grid assume hydrogen storage, or some new battery chemistry will be a silver bullet for storage. 1. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/07/27/tesla-big-battery-begins-providing-inertia-grid-services-at-scale-in-world-first-in-australia/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/07/27/tesla-big-battery-beg...
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > Er, no it is the point. We've always been using the safety mechanisms you specified, so it's not going to affect costs because those safety features have always been there. Again, the point is a generic one. When we find a problem with nuclear, we add extra safety systems. Those cost money. This is something much rarer with say, solar or wind because there's less that can go wrong, less backups needed, and breakage is much more acceptable. > We make alternators for all kinds of products, so doubling the production of wind turbines doesn't remotely double the market for alternators because wind turbines are only a small segment of the market for alternators. But it does mean there's factories already pumping them out, plentiful production capacity, competition, and cheap prices. > People want solutions right now, and intermittent sources are not a solution until cheap and scalable energy storage is invented. I don't think you're still quite getting what I'm getting at. Consideration on the level you speak of doesn't exist. Nobody is in charge of the whole system, so a full functional system doesn't matter. People will build intermittent sources because they're cheap to build, and because intermittency isn't the provider's problem. Then things break, and people will seek solutions. There will be a rush and various patchwork solutions being implemented in a panic. You're thinking like a sane person, trying to transition to a different stable system and ensuring it will work properly from the start. I think that won't be the case. We will keep pushing until things break, everyone will blame everyone else, and we'll need to fix things in a hurry.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > Again, the point is a generic one. When we find a problem with nuclear, we add extra safety systems. Those cost money. And again, we already added that safety system. There is no "extra safety systems" because it's already there. > But it does mean there's factories already pumping them out, plentiful production capacity, competition, and cheap prices. Exactly: production is already at scale so making a large order for a bunch of alternators for wind turbines isn't going to lead to further saving because it's a drop in the total market for alternators. As a contrast to nuclear power components - where nuclear plants are the only market - so a tenfold increase in the production of nuclear plants leads to a tenfold increase in the production of pressure vessels. > People will build intermittent sources because they're cheap to build, and because intermittency isn't the provider's problem. Then things break, and people will seek solutions. There will be a rush and various patchwork solutions being implemented in a panic. Correct, and the solution to intermittency that we've found is to burn fossil fuels. The battery storage facilities being provisioned are nowhere near large enough to be significant. Hydroelectric storage requires specific geographic features, and isn't widely available. You're right: when we have shortages of electricity people will implement solutions. And the solution grid operators have found to the intermittency problem is to continue burning fossil fuels.
zdragnar 4y ago
> Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners This is painfully wrong. Go shopping for pretty much any industrial part, and you'll pay through the nose for a few. Order a few dozen, and you get massive discounts in price for identical products. It takes time and effort to configure machines and tooling to produce something. Those are fixed costs- the more you order, the per-unit price of those fixed costs drops. > Once the shit hits the fan That's not gonna happen. No climate model is predicting a doomsday event. It's going to continue to be a slow, gradually worsening crisis at worst. From a political perspective, it'll never need an urgent solution, because next year isn't going to be significantly different from this year- just a little bit. Even for those people who finally realize they're going to be displaced, no urgent solution could possibly turn back the clock, short of a massive deployment of C02 removal from the atmosphere.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > That's not gonna happen. No climate model is predicting a doomsday event. I'm not talking about the climate. I'm talking about the grid. My prediction is that we'll keep on building renewables until renewables break the grid, then patch it up in a hurry, and nuclear will still not be built in the end.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    If renewables start straining the grid, they'll just face economically infeasible grid connect fees, reduced or negative rates. That's already the case in California. Power companies don't get to just start supplying electricity to the grid at will; rather than the grid breaking, operators will simply say "no more". At that point, the only urgency will be an artificial, political one.
evilos 4y ago
Everyone is assuming/hoping that a majority renewables national energy system is possible/economical. I don't think it is, but even if you do it's a gamble. No one is sure because it's not been done before. At a minimum you'll have to build several thousands of miles of new transmission and millions of panels/turbines. Those panels/turbines will last maybe 30 years. Batteries aren't going to cut it, you'll need underground hydrogen storage. That's never been done for energy storage before. And hydrogen is a lousy battery, you'll get half your energy back out at best. There's too much uncertainty. Nuclear fits our existing grid paradigm, and it can be built quickly if we let ourselves. Japan's median reactor build time was under 4 years. France built out their nuclear fleet in 15 to 20 years. It's literally been done before.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  A bit pedantic here, but majority renewable national energy systems have been built but only with hydroelectricity. Norway and some other countries generate >95% of their electricity from dams. But of course, dams can't be built everywhere, so it's not a scalable solution.
  - evilos 4y ago
    Fair, I meant 'intermittent' when I said 'renewable'. Geothermal and hydro are very different since they can be relied upon for the most part. Hydro sometimes has issues with water levels, which may be exacerbated by climate change. That's the other baffling part about advocating for solar/wind grids. We're anticipating major disruptions. Why would we want to be MORE exposed to climate change?

Manuel_D 4y ago

> The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Er, no it is the point. We've always been using the safety mechanisms you specified, so it's not going to affect costs because those safety features have always been there. > Everything does, but nuclear benefits less. Precisely because of what you said, they have no other market use. You'll need to convince industries that it's worth scaling up for that, and that it won't backfire. That will be tricky. Quite the contrary, it makes it benefit vastly more from economies of scale. For example, one of the central components in a wind turbine is an alternator or dynamo. We make alternators for all kinds of products, so doubling the production of wind turbines doesn't remotely double the market for alternators because wind turbines are only a small segment of the market for alternators. By comparison, nuclear pressure vessels are only used for nuclear power plants. Thus doubling the production of nuclear pressure vessels doubles the market for pressure vessels. Serialized production of nuclear power at scale would easily expand the market for nuclear power components by an order of magnitude. The same cannot be said of wind turbines and alternators. You're missing the context that renewables are currently being used to supplement a primarily fossil fuel grid. This means we don't actually have to accommodate the intermittent nature of renewable production. Once renewables saturate the energy market during peak production, things become a lot harder for renewables. You're comparing apples to oranges when you compare an intermittent source to a non-intermittent source. People want solutions right now, and intermittent sources are not a solution until cheap and scalable energy storage is invented. Which it hasn't. We have geographically-limited options like hydro which are good for the regions that have access to it. But for everywhere else, it's either continue to use fossil fuels or nuclear power. > Yeah, batteries are expensive, but remember Tesla's battery in Australia that got done in 100 days? How much does it store? Media reports this as "2,000 megawatt seconds" [1]. In other words, 0.55 megawatt hours. This is less electricity than a small nuclear plant produces every minute. To put this in perspective the US alone consumes about 12 TWh (or 12,000,000 MWh) of electricity every day. We'd need tens of millions of these battery facilities. Again, there's a reason why plans for a primary renewable grid assume hydrogen storage, or some new battery chemistry will be a silver bullet for storage. 1. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/07/27/tesla-big-battery-begins-providing-inertia-grid-services-at-scale-in-world-first-in-australia/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/07/27/tesla-big-battery-beg...

dale_glass 4y ago
> Er, no it is the point. We've always been using the safety mechanisms you specified, so it's not going to affect costs because those safety features have always been there. Again, the point is a generic one. When we find a problem with nuclear, we add extra safety systems. Those cost money. This is something much rarer with say, solar or wind because there's less that can go wrong, less backups needed, and breakage is much more acceptable. > We make alternators for all kinds of products, so doubling the production of wind turbines doesn't remotely double the market for alternators because wind turbines are only a small segment of the market for alternators. But it does mean there's factories already pumping them out, plentiful production capacity, competition, and cheap prices. > People want solutions right now, and intermittent sources are not a solution until cheap and scalable energy storage is invented. I don't think you're still quite getting what I'm getting at. Consideration on the level you speak of doesn't exist. Nobody is in charge of the whole system, so a full functional system doesn't matter. People will build intermittent sources because they're cheap to build, and because intermittency isn't the provider's problem. Then things break, and people will seek solutions. There will be a rush and various patchwork solutions being implemented in a panic. You're thinking like a sane person, trying to transition to a different stable system and ensuring it will work properly from the start. I think that won't be the case. We will keep pushing until things break, everyone will blame everyone else, and we'll need to fix things in a hurry.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > Again, the point is a generic one. When we find a problem with nuclear, we add extra safety systems. Those cost money. And again, we already added that safety system. There is no "extra safety systems" because it's already there. > But it does mean there's factories already pumping them out, plentiful production capacity, competition, and cheap prices. Exactly: production is already at scale so making a large order for a bunch of alternators for wind turbines isn't going to lead to further saving because it's a drop in the total market for alternators. As a contrast to nuclear power components - where nuclear plants are the only market - so a tenfold increase in the production of nuclear plants leads to a tenfold increase in the production of pressure vessels. > People will build intermittent sources because they're cheap to build, and because intermittency isn't the provider's problem. Then things break, and people will seek solutions. There will be a rush and various patchwork solutions being implemented in a panic. Correct, and the solution to intermittency that we've found is to burn fossil fuels. The battery storage facilities being provisioned are nowhere near large enough to be significant. Hydroelectric storage requires specific geographic features, and isn't widely available. You're right: when we have shortages of electricity people will implement solutions. And the solution grid operators have found to the intermittency problem is to continue burning fossil fuels.

zdragnar 4y ago

> Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners This is painfully wrong. Go shopping for pretty much any industrial part, and you'll pay through the nose for a few. Order a few dozen, and you get massive discounts in price for identical products. It takes time and effort to configure machines and tooling to produce something. Those are fixed costs- the more you order, the per-unit price of those fixed costs drops. > Once the shit hits the fan That's not gonna happen. No climate model is predicting a doomsday event. It's going to continue to be a slow, gradually worsening crisis at worst. From a political perspective, it'll never need an urgent solution, because next year isn't going to be significantly different from this year- just a little bit. Even for those people who finally realize they're going to be displaced, no urgent solution could possibly turn back the clock, short of a massive deployment of C02 removal from the atmosphere.

dale_glass 4y ago
> That's not gonna happen. No climate model is predicting a doomsday event. I'm not talking about the climate. I'm talking about the grid. My prediction is that we'll keep on building renewables until renewables break the grid, then patch it up in a hurry, and nuclear will still not be built in the end.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  If renewables start straining the grid, they'll just face economically infeasible grid connect fees, reduced or negative rates. That's already the case in California. Power companies don't get to just start supplying electricity to the grid at will; rather than the grid breaking, operators will simply say "no more". At that point, the only urgency will be an artificial, political one.

evilos 4y ago

Everyone is assuming/hoping that a majority renewables national energy system is possible/economical. I don't think it is, but even if you do it's a gamble. No one is sure because it's not been done before. At a minimum you'll have to build several thousands of miles of new transmission and millions of panels/turbines. Those panels/turbines will last maybe 30 years. Batteries aren't going to cut it, you'll need underground hydrogen storage. That's never been done for energy storage before. And hydrogen is a lousy battery, you'll get half your energy back out at best. There's too much uncertainty. Nuclear fits our existing grid paradigm, and it can be built quickly if we let ourselves. Japan's median reactor build time was under 4 years. France built out their nuclear fleet in 15 to 20 years. It's literally been done before.

Manuel_D 4y ago
A bit pedantic here, but majority renewable national energy systems have been built but only with hydroelectricity. Norway and some other countries generate >95% of their electricity from dams. But of course, dams can't be built everywhere, so it's not a scalable solution.
- evilos 4y ago
  Fair, I meant 'intermittent' when I said 'renewable'. Geothermal and hydro are very different since they can be relied upon for the most part. Hydro sometimes has issues with water levels, which may be exacerbated by climate change. That's the other baffling part about advocating for solar/wind grids. We're anticipating major disruptions. Why would we want to be MORE exposed to climate change?