5 ms·

Forgive me for being cynical at this point, but I'll believe it when it comes online. I sure hope they're successful, though. Nuclear is still the only thing we

by mjhay 2y ago

Forgive me for being cynical at this point, but I'll believe it when it comes online. I sure hope they're successful, though. Nuclear is still the only thing we have going for relatively near-term non fossil-fuel baseload. Anything not near term is too late.

hedora 2y ago
It's a race between nuclear, batteries, and using direct air capture to make up for remaining fossil fuels, concrete and other corner case greenhouse gas emissions. I think direct air capture is going to be the technology that gets us over the finish line, simply because it's the only one that has a path to net-zero. Nuclear, renewables and batteries all make carbon capture more affordable, so the ultimate answer is probably "all of the above".
- mjhay 2y ago
  Direct air capture is really about the least realistic of popular geoengineering proposals. The atmosphere is huge. We didn't get into this situation overnight - it took almost two centuries and oodles of factories, vehicles, concrete plants, etc. It's vastly cheaper just not to output more CO2 in the first place. Thermodynamic constraints mean that tremendous amounts of energy are required to do DAC in the first place, not to mention the knock-on biosphere effects of the production required to build that hitherto-unseen scale of capability. We can't magic-tech our way out of this situation. It will take huge effort, and more importantly, sacrifice of the unthinking low-value abundance we have. Nuclear power is hard, but it is still much more realistic than unproven wundertech like DAC.
  - thehappypm 2y ago
    Yep. We basically doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we had a machine that could take some volume of air and scrub all the C02 out, we’d need to pass half of the atmosphere through it to cut the CO2 in half.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    I think the point is that even if we can scale up DAC to work, we need some carbon-free source of energy to power it. Fixing the atmosphere essentially means we need enough non-emitting energy to run civilization since 1850 in reverse, and preferably much faster than 1x.
- nojvek 2y ago
  Trees are technically “direct air capture”. Trees capture C02 + H20 + sunlight into glucose/wood + O2. So if we can reduce our C02 output, and preserve the rain forests, they’ll do their job. Even getting to zero carbon electricity in top economies is going to be a huuuuge deal.
  - mjhay 2y ago
    No argument from me. Trees work. Stopping forest loss is an absolutely low-hanging fruit, but one that we still cannot achieve. Rewilding of massive areas must be a primary goal. If we can't do that, we certainly can't do DAC. In general, the Earth's homeostasis (and thus, thus homeostasis of human civilization) depends on continued, robust functioning of the biosphere. The biosphere is resilient and adaptable. However, it has never faced intelligence before. Humans - more and more unfettered by their own physical limitations - will seek (as always) to bend their environment to their own particular wills - even when it conflicts with the interests of humanity as a whole. Even in a decaying and impoverished environment, people may still seek out ever more marginal benefits at greater and greater social costs. I hope I'm wrong, but we may be at the great filter.
    - WorldMaker 2y ago
      Right now most of our cities are directly dealing with the problems of the "Heat Island effect". It's dangerous and causing very real, very scary death statistics. We know the easy fixes: add more trees to parking lots. Replace more parking lots with trees. We know exactly why that is an unpopular solution: most parking lots are privately owned and trees don't pay parking fees. Also, our cities are so car-centric parking is "important" and removing any parking spaces is seen as hurting surrounding businesses because fewer people will commute there from the suburbs/exurbs. "Ban cars and reforest parking lots" is a joke of an extremist take, but also both one of the easiest solutions and one of the hardest solutions, to the Heat Island effect specifically, but also as a microcosm of the things we need to do to solve climate change issues in general.
readthenotes1 2y ago
Another article reported that the required fuel is only produced in Russia and China
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Between now and 2030 there will be a lot of energy generation coming online. Hundreds of GW basically. The vast majority of that is going to be renewables. Nuclear is not going to contribute much at all. It might actually shrink proportionally as several reactors are scheduled to be decommissioned and there just isn't a whole lot being approved for construction. This project is only adding some 340 MW. Not nothing of course but probably expensive and just not a lot in comparison. And of course that 2030 target date will likely slip. And in good tradition the article doesn't actually talk about budgets or money. Because obviously, this being a nuclear plant, it will blow through whatever budget was defined. By about 2x at least. > Today couldn’t have happened without the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is supporting the project with the largest single contribution the federal government has ever committed to a private project. Which in short, is why Bill Gates is still involved at all: tax payer money is covering the budget and most of the risk. Which is substantial. And he gets to look all visionary if/when this thing comes online at great cost at some point in the 2030s.
- mjhay 2y ago
  I'm glad more renewables are coming online, but that's not the 24/7 base capacity that is really needed to fully replace fossil fuels. Solar and wind are cheap now, but they only generate power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Thus, energy storage on a huge scale is needed if they are to replace fossil fuels. Power grid unreliability is politically untenable. People will march headfirst into the destruction of industrial civilization, ignoring the warnings of climate scientists, before they will accept an electrical grid that is offline for 5% of the time. For as difficult as nuclear is, storage is much harder yet. Nuclear is proven tech. It works at scale. The main obstacles political, but they are much more easily overcome than objections people would have with an unreliable grid.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Baseload power producers ceased to be relevant decades ago. The nuclear industry has coopted the term because they know they can’t compete on cost. With storage now coming online in large enough quantities to meaningfully affect the grid the window of opportunity for nuclear energy has passed. It had a chance if the reactors started in the 2000s had delivered on time and on budget. They did not deliver. https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/ https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
janice1999 2y ago
The last attempt at an SMR failed due to out of control costs and that was a conventional water cooled plant (NuScale Power). I would be shocked if TerraPower built anything before 2030 close to their projected costs.
Herz 2y ago
You might be one of those who embrace electric vehicles today, yet it's worth remembering that electric cars were once considered obsolete. They were revived through persistent belief and innovation, despite the dominance of internal combustion engines. This same principle of perseverance and innovation applies to nuclear energy and solar panels. We cannot predict with certainty which technologies will dominate the future, but it's clear that innovation and research should always be our priorities. Dismissing nuclear power as a relic of the past is illogical. Instead, we should focus on improving it and continuing to explore all potential solutions for sustainable energy. Nobody can predict.

by mjhay 2y ago

hedora 2y ago

It's a race between nuclear, batteries, and using direct air capture to make up for remaining fossil fuels, concrete and other corner case greenhouse gas emissions. I think direct air capture is going to be the technology that gets us over the finish line, simply because it's the only one that has a path to net-zero. Nuclear, renewables and batteries all make carbon capture more affordable, so the ultimate answer is probably "all of the above".

mjhay 2y ago
Direct air capture is really about the least realistic of popular geoengineering proposals. The atmosphere is huge. We didn't get into this situation overnight - it took almost two centuries and oodles of factories, vehicles, concrete plants, etc. It's vastly cheaper just not to output more CO2 in the first place. Thermodynamic constraints mean that tremendous amounts of energy are required to do DAC in the first place, not to mention the knock-on biosphere effects of the production required to build that hitherto-unseen scale of capability. We can't magic-tech our way out of this situation. It will take huge effort, and more importantly, sacrifice of the unthinking low-value abundance we have. Nuclear power is hard, but it is still much more realistic than unproven wundertech like DAC.
- thehappypm 2y ago
  Yep. We basically doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we had a machine that could take some volume of air and scrub all the C02 out, we’d need to pass half of the atmosphere through it to cut the CO2 in half.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  I think the point is that even if we can scale up DAC to work, we need some carbon-free source of energy to power it. Fixing the atmosphere essentially means we need enough non-emitting energy to run civilization since 1850 in reverse, and preferably much faster than 1x.
nojvek 2y ago
Trees are technically “direct air capture”. Trees capture C02 + H20 + sunlight into glucose/wood + O2. So if we can reduce our C02 output, and preserve the rain forests, they’ll do their job. Even getting to zero carbon electricity in top economies is going to be a huuuuge deal.
- mjhay 2y ago
  No argument from me. Trees work. Stopping forest loss is an absolutely low-hanging fruit, but one that we still cannot achieve. Rewilding of massive areas must be a primary goal. If we can't do that, we certainly can't do DAC. In general, the Earth's homeostasis (and thus, thus homeostasis of human civilization) depends on continued, robust functioning of the biosphere. The biosphere is resilient and adaptable. However, it has never faced intelligence before. Humans - more and more unfettered by their own physical limitations - will seek (as always) to bend their environment to their own particular wills - even when it conflicts with the interests of humanity as a whole. Even in a decaying and impoverished environment, people may still seek out ever more marginal benefits at greater and greater social costs. I hope I'm wrong, but we may be at the great filter.
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    Right now most of our cities are directly dealing with the problems of the "Heat Island effect". It's dangerous and causing very real, very scary death statistics. We know the easy fixes: add more trees to parking lots. Replace more parking lots with trees. We know exactly why that is an unpopular solution: most parking lots are privately owned and trees don't pay parking fees. Also, our cities are so car-centric parking is "important" and removing any parking spaces is seen as hurting surrounding businesses because fewer people will commute there from the suburbs/exurbs. "Ban cars and reforest parking lots" is a joke of an extremist take, but also both one of the easiest solutions and one of the hardest solutions, to the Heat Island effect specifically, but also as a microcosm of the things we need to do to solve climate change issues in general.

readthenotes1 2y ago

Another article reported that the required fuel is only produced in Russia and China

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Between now and 2030 there will be a lot of energy generation coming online. Hundreds of GW basically. The vast majority of that is going to be renewables. Nuclear is not going to contribute much at all. It might actually shrink proportionally as several reactors are scheduled to be decommissioned and there just isn't a whole lot being approved for construction. This project is only adding some 340 MW. Not nothing of course but probably expensive and just not a lot in comparison. And of course that 2030 target date will likely slip. And in good tradition the article doesn't actually talk about budgets or money. Because obviously, this being a nuclear plant, it will blow through whatever budget was defined. By about 2x at least. > Today couldn’t have happened without the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is supporting the project with the largest single contribution the federal government has ever committed to a private project. Which in short, is why Bill Gates is still involved at all: tax payer money is covering the budget and most of the risk. Which is substantial. And he gets to look all visionary if/when this thing comes online at great cost at some point in the 2030s.

mjhay 2y ago
I'm glad more renewables are coming online, but that's not the 24/7 base capacity that is really needed to fully replace fossil fuels. Solar and wind are cheap now, but they only generate power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Thus, energy storage on a huge scale is needed if they are to replace fossil fuels. Power grid unreliability is politically untenable. People will march headfirst into the destruction of industrial civilization, ignoring the warnings of climate scientists, before they will accept an electrical grid that is offline for 5% of the time. For as difficult as nuclear is, storage is much harder yet. Nuclear is proven tech. It works at scale. The main obstacles political, but they are much more easily overcome than objections people would have with an unreliable grid.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Baseload power producers ceased to be relevant decades ago. The nuclear industry has coopted the term because they know they can’t compete on cost. With storage now coming online in large enough quantities to meaningfully affect the grid the window of opportunity for nuclear energy has passed. It had a chance if the reactors started in the 2000s had delivered on time and on budget. They did not deliver. https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/ https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/

janice1999 2y ago

The last attempt at an SMR failed due to out of control costs and that was a conventional water cooled plant (NuScale Power). I would be shocked if TerraPower built anything before 2030 close to their projected costs.

Herz 2y ago

You might be one of those who embrace electric vehicles today, yet it's worth remembering that electric cars were once considered obsolete. They were revived through persistent belief and innovation, despite the dominance of internal combustion engines. This same principle of perseverance and innovation applies to nuclear energy and solar panels. We cannot predict with certainty which technologies will dominate the future, but it's clear that innovation and research should always be our priorities. Dismissing nuclear power as a relic of the past is illogical. Instead, we should focus on improving it and continuing to explore all potential solutions for sustainable energy. Nobody can predict.