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> 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 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.

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.