3 ms·

That's probably not going to happen at this rate. The proposition here is to throw a lot of time and money into a design that might not even work satisfactoril

That's probably not going to happen at this rate. The proposition here is to throw a lot of time and money into a design that might not even work satisfactorily, and might not ever make any money even if it does. The first is for practical reasons. I'm sure the theory works. But what if the practice is something like a pipe leaking, a liter of highly material spilling on the floor, and it being too contaminated to touch for a year? Yeah, that won't kill anyone, but won't be good business either. There's lots of possibilities for it working perfectly as promised, but just having various issues that make it non-viable anyway. And I have a very hard time imagining a design that could compete with renewables. Because no matter how you slice it, nuclear has complex requirements that say, solar can just completely ignore. This is especially so when you start talking about not yet production designs, so maybe the first one will be built in 15 years from now.

p1mrx 3y ago
Assuming that humanity actually has enough collective sense to stop burning fossil fuels and scrap the infrastructure, maintaining 99.999% grid uptime will be very challenging. There are theoretically possible ways for renewables to meet that challenge, but until that actually happens, I think nuclear can remain competitive. On the other hand, if we continue to burn fossil fuels without paying for carbon emissions, then nuclear is economically doomed.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Nuclear already isn't competitive. Nobody is building anything new, they only maintain what was built, and even that is going down and not being replaced. The problem is that nuclear is heavy on capital costs, and cheap renewables dig in very badly into its business model, making it even worse. Also, nuclear isn't completely reliable either. Plants do go down. Spare capacity is still needed. IMO the long term future is a mix of renewables supplemented by something like gas, batteries, other storage, overprovisioning and interconnection (eg, Europe).
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    > Nuclear already isn't competitive. Because we're still burning fossil fuels. It's hard to compete when your opponent is cheating. > Also, nuclear isn't completely reliable either. Plants do go down. Spare capacity is still needed. That's what multiple plants are for, ideally of heterogeneous design. > something like gas If gas (as in fossil methane) is part of our long-term future, then we are quite screwed. Maybe it's viable with carbon sequestration, but that's unproven technology. The other options you listed will be required to make renewables 99.999% reliable.
    - dale_glass 3y ago
      > Because we're still burning fossil fuels. It's hard to compete when your opponent is cheating. No, the cheapest are renewables. Because say, pumping out solar cells by the billion is what mass manufacturing does best, and nuclear has nothing remotely comparable to that. > If gas (as in fossil methane) is part of our long-term future, then we are quite screwed. Maybe it's viable with carbon sequestration, but that's unproven technology. The other options you listed will be required to make renewables 99.999% reliable. You seem to be treating this as a moral issue. I see it as a practical one. Gas is just fine to fill whatever holes we might have. Yes, it's not clean. But using say, 10% fossil fuels rather than 60% would be a vast improvement. We can always improve further.
      - p1mrx 3y ago
        > No, the cheapest are renewables. Renewables are cheap most of the time, so we should build lots of them. The interesting question is what to do when the weather is bad. Currently the answer is to burn fossil fuels. We need to stop doing that. > You seem to be treating this as a moral issue. No, it's a physics issue. Every gram of CO2 we put into the air, someone in the future needs to remove at great expense. There is no reward for solving 80% of the problem and cooking our civilization a bit slower.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        > There is no reward for solving 80% of the problem and cooking our civilization a bit slower. Heh. The older generations said "we'll be dead by then so it doesn't matter." Now younger generations are thinking along the lines of "If we can delay it until after I'm dead, that'll do."

p1mrx 3y ago

Assuming that humanity actually has enough collective sense to stop burning fossil fuels and scrap the infrastructure, maintaining 99.999% grid uptime will be very challenging. There are theoretically possible ways for renewables to meet that challenge, but until that actually happens, I think nuclear can remain competitive. On the other hand, if we continue to burn fossil fuels without paying for carbon emissions, then nuclear is economically doomed.

dale_glass 3y ago
Nuclear already isn't competitive. Nobody is building anything new, they only maintain what was built, and even that is going down and not being replaced. The problem is that nuclear is heavy on capital costs, and cheap renewables dig in very badly into its business model, making it even worse. Also, nuclear isn't completely reliable either. Plants do go down. Spare capacity is still needed. IMO the long term future is a mix of renewables supplemented by something like gas, batteries, other storage, overprovisioning and interconnection (eg, Europe).
- p1mrx 3y ago
  > Nuclear already isn't competitive. Because we're still burning fossil fuels. It's hard to compete when your opponent is cheating. > Also, nuclear isn't completely reliable either. Plants do go down. Spare capacity is still needed. That's what multiple plants are for, ideally of heterogeneous design. > something like gas If gas (as in fossil methane) is part of our long-term future, then we are quite screwed. Maybe it's viable with carbon sequestration, but that's unproven technology. The other options you listed will be required to make renewables 99.999% reliable.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    > Because we're still burning fossil fuels. It's hard to compete when your opponent is cheating. No, the cheapest are renewables. Because say, pumping out solar cells by the billion is what mass manufacturing does best, and nuclear has nothing remotely comparable to that. > If gas (as in fossil methane) is part of our long-term future, then we are quite screwed. Maybe it's viable with carbon sequestration, but that's unproven technology. The other options you listed will be required to make renewables 99.999% reliable. You seem to be treating this as a moral issue. I see it as a practical one. Gas is just fine to fill whatever holes we might have. Yes, it's not clean. But using say, 10% fossil fuels rather than 60% would be a vast improvement. We can always improve further.
    - p1mrx 3y ago
      > No, the cheapest are renewables. Renewables are cheap most of the time, so we should build lots of them. The interesting question is what to do when the weather is bad. Currently the answer is to burn fossil fuels. We need to stop doing that. > You seem to be treating this as a moral issue. No, it's a physics issue. Every gram of CO2 we put into the air, someone in the future needs to remove at great expense. There is no reward for solving 80% of the problem and cooking our civilization a bit slower.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        > There is no reward for solving 80% of the problem and cooking our civilization a bit slower. Heh. The older generations said "we'll be dead by then so it doesn't matter." Now younger generations are thinking along the lines of "If we can delay it until after I'm dead, that'll do."