7 ms·

> So what is your proposal? A realistic one, please, not a scenarion of "we should have done X decades ago", but one that can be worked on right now, on the bas

by phil21 3y ago

> So what is your proposal? A realistic one, please, not a scenarion of "we should have done X decades ago", but one that can be worked on right now, on the basis we have. Sometimes the only realistic answer is "We should have done X, many years ago" - I think society and humans in general need to get better at admitting this. Sometimes we back ourselves into a corner and we just need to accept that as a fact. But due to the situation we are in, the actual realistic answer I have is continue to burn coal and gas as a bridge while we do a crash program to train up the next generation of nuclear engineers and construction workforce. Start 100 reactor sites right now and understand they are mostly going to be used as on-the-job training for construction crews for the next decade while we burn co2 and learn how to build things again. Of course continue to install as many gigawatts of solar and wind during that time period as you can while expanding the grid. As you spin up your "nuclear batteries" you can then start spinning down coal and gas and let your renewables take up the peak loads. Load prediction and larger grids have become reliable enough now that you can spin up nuclear in a predictable fashion for load-following, with a small amount of grid battery hanging around for those few hours of surprises per year. Hydro is interesting but effectively 100% utilized worldwide at this point. Once you get your nuclear workforce geared up and the initial surge of demand completed, perhaps start looking at modifying as much hydro capacity in the world to act in both directions as pumped storage. Imagine pumping water back into Lake Mead from downstream when there is excess power generation. Exceedingly inefficient - but starts to become interesting when you have grid-tied batteries that actually work at scale. Edit: Nuclear is only dead in the developed world because we chose it to be so. Society can decide tomorrow to change that decision if properly motivated. We have many times in the past for much harder things than building a few hundred industrial plants we already have built before.

hef19898 3y ago
There were two new nuclear reactor projects launched in Europe in the 2000s / 2010s: two new reactors in Finland and Hinkley C in the UK. Finland canceled one and got one 1600 MW reactor online this year. Hinkley C is already 3 years late and will take at least 5 more years. In the same time Hinkley C was planned until now, the UK installed 10x the capacity of Hinkley C in wind alone. You see the maths here, right? Not to mention wind and solar are cheaper than Hinkley C, already were in 2015 or so (based on 20 year bid prices per kWh for both alternatives). Nuclear in the developed world is dead because it is too expensive. Nuclear isn't dead in the developing world because governments there want it, and it is better than coal (which makes nuclear a better choice for me, no idea if that really factors into those decisions or not). Developing countries could as easily go for renewables straight away as well so. It is not society that needs to change to make nuclear viable again, it is the economics behind it. And with renewables, especially solar, following Moore's law to a T so far, that wont happen ever.
- phil21 3y ago
  I mean, the same exact argument can be made for public transportation (e.g. subway/rail) construction in the US. It's too expensive to be realistic! Well, sure. But why is it that expensive? It's expensive because we decided it to be so. If it became an existential problem for society you would see the cost per mile of rail plummet 10x or more. The same goes for nuclear. The expensive bits are almost all societal constructs. Much like all large projects in the developed world. Once the shit hits the fan so to speak, those costs tend to mysteriously evaporate and society magically gets stuff done in record time. See: historical shifts to wartime production. If your only argument against nuclear is cost, I'm afraid it's not a very compelling one to me. Now, renewables may surprise me and somehow we crack the storage problem. But I will continue to posit nuclear power plants are the best grid-scale battery tech we've yet to invent. I say this due to the costs. Not the monetary costs, but the return on energy invested cost which is really the only thing that will end up mattering in the end.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Public mass transport is freaking expensive, everywhere. Just look at all the cost overruns for similar projects in Germany (which I know of off top of my head). The alternative to public transports is a car. The alternative to nuclear power are, among other things, renewables which are readily available, faster to deploy at scale and cheaper (that is happening right now for almoat a decade). So the comparison is somewhat wrong. Edit: Cost is the compelling argument for everyone with the money, everything else is either political or ideological. And the money truely has spoken.

by phil21 3y ago

hef19898 3y ago

There were two new nuclear reactor projects launched in Europe in the 2000s / 2010s: two new reactors in Finland and Hinkley C in the UK. Finland canceled one and got one 1600 MW reactor online this year. Hinkley C is already 3 years late and will take at least 5 more years. In the same time Hinkley C was planned until now, the UK installed 10x the capacity of Hinkley C in wind alone. You see the maths here, right? Not to mention wind and solar are cheaper than Hinkley C, already were in 2015 or so (based on 20 year bid prices per kWh for both alternatives). Nuclear in the developed world is dead because it is too expensive. Nuclear isn't dead in the developing world because governments there want it, and it is better than coal (which makes nuclear a better choice for me, no idea if that really factors into those decisions or not). Developing countries could as easily go for renewables straight away as well so. It is not society that needs to change to make nuclear viable again, it is the economics behind it. And with renewables, especially solar, following Moore's law to a T so far, that wont happen ever.

phil21 3y ago
I mean, the same exact argument can be made for public transportation (e.g. subway/rail) construction in the US. It's too expensive to be realistic! Well, sure. But why is it that expensive? It's expensive because we decided it to be so. If it became an existential problem for society you would see the cost per mile of rail plummet 10x or more. The same goes for nuclear. The expensive bits are almost all societal constructs. Much like all large projects in the developed world. Once the shit hits the fan so to speak, those costs tend to mysteriously evaporate and society magically gets stuff done in record time. See: historical shifts to wartime production. If your only argument against nuclear is cost, I'm afraid it's not a very compelling one to me. Now, renewables may surprise me and somehow we crack the storage problem. But I will continue to posit nuclear power plants are the best grid-scale battery tech we've yet to invent. I say this due to the costs. Not the monetary costs, but the return on energy invested cost which is really the only thing that will end up mattering in the end.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Public mass transport is freaking expensive, everywhere. Just look at all the cost overruns for similar projects in Germany (which I know of off top of my head). The alternative to public transports is a car. The alternative to nuclear power are, among other things, renewables which are readily available, faster to deploy at scale and cheaper (that is happening right now for almoat a decade). So the comparison is somewhat wrong. Edit: Cost is the compelling argument for everyone with the money, everything else is either political or ideological. And the money truely has spoken.