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Wahoo! I mean it'd be nice if we could start not building nuclear reactors on fault lines, but I think this is a good start. One of the things people underesti

Wahoo! I mean it'd be nice if we could start not building nuclear reactors on fault lines, but I think this is a good start. One of the things people underestimate in physical systems is the amount of tribal knowledge there is and how it actually takes skill and training for a country to become good at something. One of the biggest challenges facing us right now is the fact that we've been reducing nuclear power and if we want to expand it we're going to need capable professionals to be able to do it, those won't spring out of thing air. Keeping existing facilities open will allow us to start training up new engineers that can work in new installations. b/c tbh ramping up nuclear work is probably one of the most important and pressing issues facing not just America but most countries to an extent right now.

dylan604 3y ago
> Wahoo! I mean it'd be nice if we could start not building nuclear reactors on fault lines, but I think this is a good start. It'll be okay, since when the big one hits and CA falls into the ocean, it'll just take the plant with it. So the rest of us will be just fine.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Chinese or French nuclear power engineers should be in abundant supply, maybe we could just import the knowledge? When I was graduating from high school, I did the navy recruiting thing just for kicks, and after taking the asvab, they said I had a promising career in navy nuclear. But that scared me away from the military, since my dad had a career in nuclear power, we even got a DOE settlement after he died of cancer, they don’t put nuclear power plants in nice places, it’s not the career I wanted. Towards the end of my dad’s career, many of the engineers were Central American (??? Not sure why) or Indian already. We can totally import the expertise in the future, especially if we are will big to build out French or Chinese designs.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  No actually not the same thing. There’s a lot of local cultural expertise that you can’t import (ie regulatory environment and knowing how to work within it). You can import some technical knowhow but that’s only a fraction of the experience problem. Also re cancer, nuclear power plants emit no radiation. All the radiation exposure risk comes when you’re doing certain kinds of maintenance (eg refueling). Nuclear subs are a different matter. I don’t know the safety standards there and the military is typically a lot more loosy goosey with safety.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Sorry, I should have mentioned that my dad got his start in nuclear at a reactor at Hanford. For some reason, he was included in on the settlement due to improper storage of waste, which is why the settlement was from the DOE and not Westinghouse (the company he was actually contracting for). I wouldn’t blame the reactor for the cancer, I’m not even sure it was the waste’s fault, but the cancer was rare enough to qualify. If we bought plans for the French, I’m sure we could merge in American culture quickly. We won’t find any pure nuclear engineers being trained up in the USA anyways outside of the navy, there are only a few programs left.
kelnos 3y ago
We shouldn't be expanding nuclear power in California. We have so much sun, so much wind, and so much open, undeveloped land. The calculus for other places (low-sun, low-wind) will certainly be different, but I don't think it's useful or productive to build new nuclear plants in CA. I think it's the correct move to keep this plant running: it works, today, and shutting it down would undoubtedly mean picking up the slack with more natural gas burning, at least in the medium term, and that would be bad. But building more? I just don't see the need.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  That is incorrect. Nuclear is baseload power and as such is way cheaper than solar at that (no batteries). All those EVs charging overnight (only at 2% of the vehicle market right now)? Baseload power that will have exponentially more growth over the coming decades. We should be building so much nuclear right now it isn’t funny (should be targeting 40-80% of all production to hit net 0 I suspect). That’s like another 3-10 Diablo canyons worth of production. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build solar. We should to have it handle peak energy requirements and derisk things. Also we should be building modern designs like molten salt reactors which are safer and cheaper.

dylan604 3y ago

> Wahoo! I mean it'd be nice if we could start not building nuclear reactors on fault lines, but I think this is a good start. It'll be okay, since when the big one hits and CA falls into the ocean, it'll just take the plant with it. So the rest of us will be just fine.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Chinese or French nuclear power engineers should be in abundant supply, maybe we could just import the knowledge? When I was graduating from high school, I did the navy recruiting thing just for kicks, and after taking the asvab, they said I had a promising career in navy nuclear. But that scared me away from the military, since my dad had a career in nuclear power, we even got a DOE settlement after he died of cancer, they don’t put nuclear power plants in nice places, it’s not the career I wanted. Towards the end of my dad’s career, many of the engineers were Central American (??? Not sure why) or Indian already. We can totally import the expertise in the future, especially if we are will big to build out French or Chinese designs.

vlovich123 3y ago
No actually not the same thing. There’s a lot of local cultural expertise that you can’t import (ie regulatory environment and knowing how to work within it). You can import some technical knowhow but that’s only a fraction of the experience problem. Also re cancer, nuclear power plants emit no radiation. All the radiation exposure risk comes when you’re doing certain kinds of maintenance (eg refueling). Nuclear subs are a different matter. I don’t know the safety standards there and the military is typically a lot more loosy goosey with safety.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Sorry, I should have mentioned that my dad got his start in nuclear at a reactor at Hanford. For some reason, he was included in on the settlement due to improper storage of waste, which is why the settlement was from the DOE and not Westinghouse (the company he was actually contracting for). I wouldn’t blame the reactor for the cancer, I’m not even sure it was the waste’s fault, but the cancer was rare enough to qualify. If we bought plans for the French, I’m sure we could merge in American culture quickly. We won’t find any pure nuclear engineers being trained up in the USA anyways outside of the navy, there are only a few programs left.

kelnos 3y ago

We shouldn't be expanding nuclear power in California. We have so much sun, so much wind, and so much open, undeveloped land. The calculus for other places (low-sun, low-wind) will certainly be different, but I don't think it's useful or productive to build new nuclear plants in CA. I think it's the correct move to keep this plant running: it works, today, and shutting it down would undoubtedly mean picking up the slack with more natural gas burning, at least in the medium term, and that would be bad. But building more? I just don't see the need.

vlovich123 3y ago
That is incorrect. Nuclear is baseload power and as such is way cheaper than solar at that (no batteries). All those EVs charging overnight (only at 2% of the vehicle market right now)? Baseload power that will have exponentially more growth over the coming decades. We should be building so much nuclear right now it isn’t funny (should be targeting 40-80% of all production to hit net 0 I suspect). That’s like another 3-10 Diablo canyons worth of production. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build solar. We should to have it handle peak energy requirements and derisk things. Also we should be building modern designs like molten salt reactors which are safer and cheaper.