3 ms·
Nuclear cannot be deployed anywhere, it needs a source of water. It also needs staffing, and it needs to be kinda near to people who need electricity. This las
by rtpg 3y ago
Nuclear cannot be deployed anywhere, it needs a source of water. It also needs staffing, and it needs to be kinda near to people who need electricity.
This last point is important because nuclear plants generate a lot of power, so you cant easily build a plant “just” for 500 people in the same way you can for other energy sources.
I am fine with nuclear in principle. There are real reasons nukes are expensive and not the ideal option in many situations. We have to be clear eyed about this.
- willy_k 3y agoMolten salt reactors don’t need a source of water, as much staffing, and could be used for industrial and other purposes given their improved safety profile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
- rtpg 3y agoI want to believe with MSRs but the it’s had 80 years to prove itself and I have a hard time believing its large scale feasibility at this point. Lobbying only explains away so much. Remember, France is a large industrialized nation still building nuclear power plant. There’s gotta be some real reason they didn’t pick up MSRs.
- gimmeThaBeet 3y agoAlso as was seen in France this summer for instance, one of the interesting edge cases of water cooled reactors (really any generation that needs a lot of water) is that they can get basically thermally throttled e.g. the inlet water is too warm, you might be limited on how much water you can discharge to curtail affecting local ecology. I guess it makes sense to me that the conditions that spike electric demand also stress generation and transmission, but I do find it astonishing how universal it is, solar/wind/hydro/nuclear included.
- m4rtink 3y agoThere is at least one (I would say rather nice looking!) nuclear power plant that was build in arid climate & is cooled by evaporating treated waste water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_... Also you can reduce the heating requirements to use some of the waste heat for district heating. Modern heating pipelines have negligible losses even over dozens of kilometers, you you can heat even quite distant cities. Such a project is now in the works here in Brno: https://energycentral.com/news/czech-nuclear-plant-dukovany-supply-brno-district-heating-0 https://energycentral.com/news/czech-nuclear-plant-dukovany-... Though its just an older project that has finally been restarted: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:13700211 https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:13700211 https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:20085810 https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:20085810