6 ms·

>Ctrl+f for nuclear One hit - I'm actually floored it made it into the article.

by sickofparadox 2y ago

garrettgarcia 2y ago
Watch that Overton window shift... one tentative mainstream mention at a time.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Rather, the Overton window has shifted such that pure climate change denial is not acceptable anymore. So the denialists have caught in the next best thing: nuclear power. Invest in nuclear power today and see another 2-3 decades of unabated fossil fuel use.
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Given the enormous cost and that any project started today won’t supply any power for 20 years no commercial company is ever going to invest in it.
- bigyikes 2y ago
  85% of nuclear reactors are built in under 10 years[1]. It also seems to me that if there were sufficient political willpower that improvements could be made here. It’s a bit like how anti-solar folks complain about the massive cost while ignoring that it is possible to improve costs. 1: http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-plant/ http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucle...
  - auspiv 2y ago
    22600 oil/gas wells drilled in 2022 in the US [1]. Fervo is proposing to do ~20 MW per injector/producer pair [2][3]. that's 11000 potential pairs per year x 10 years = 110000 pairs = 2200000 MW = 2200 GW. total US usage is 4 trillion kWh for 2022 [4], which is 456 GW averaged over the whole year. so in the 10 years that it takes to build 85% of nuclear reactors, the oil/gas industry could drill enough geothermal wells to satisfy 4x the electricity requirements of the entire US. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/965763/number-of-oil-and-gas-wells-drilled-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/965763/number-of-oil-and... [2] https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-breaks-ground-on-the-worlds-largest-next-gen-geothermal-project/ https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-breaks-ground-on-the-wo... [3] presentation in Denver May 2024 by fervo completion engineer said 40 total wells [4] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect...
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Relying on data from the 70s and 80s a have very little bearing on the construction timelines expected in todays advanced service economies. Even getting a finished reactor in the west is a good project. Most have either been cancelled or never progressed past the investment decision. Through all of nuclear powers history we have seen negative learning. The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
- chickenbig 2y ago
  Companies can always site next to an existing power plant. Valuing existing assets more highly can certainly help with filling the construction pipeline. The following video puts nuclear electricity prices up at just under 100 USD/MWh for those who must have power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgLNESOD3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgLNESOD3k
audunw 2y ago
It’s interesting that advanced geothermal energy is mentioned first in that sentence. I honestly think geothermal is likely to be far more important than nuclear within a decade or so. If it can be shown that advanced geothermal can be done at a reasonable cost, you’ll likely get both the political power and engineering expertise of the oil and gas sector on board which will accelerate the pace of transition to clean energy faster than anything we’ve seen. And you won’t have the regulatory hurdles of nuclear energy. The big question is if Quaise can demonstrate that they can actually “drill” several kilometres down at a reasonable cost. Even without that I think horizontal drilling will unlock many promising projects. Regardless. Nuclear is dead. I’d encourage watching Tony Sebas presentations on renewable energy. Not many people think about what happens if renewable energy and battery tech continues to improve at its current pace. There’s basically very little chance that any other technology will be competitive. And no. We don’t need “base load”. That’s an outdated idea that relies on the assumption that we don’t decarbonise transportation and industry. You can’t drive your car with a nuclear reactor. (I actually love nuclear energy. The physics is super interesting. But I don’t see how it could be relevant. Unless Helion Energy’s fusion reactor pans out. Not counting space of course. Can’t do advanced deep space projects without nuclear energy)
- krzat 2y ago
  Cheap geothermal seems like tremendously easier problem to solve than cold fusion, I wish that more effort was put into it.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Cold fusion is perpetual motion.
  - audunw 2y ago
    Geothermal is not sexy. It's incredibly boring. I personally also think we should put a lot more effort into geothermal. Yet I've watched two orders of magnitude more videos on nuclear fission and fusions on YouTube. "Just drill deep and do it fast and cheap" is not as interesting as "if we can just melt and contain molten salts and diffuse the nuclear fuel into that salt we can do fission really efficiently and safely and here's a 100 interesting engineering challenges related to that".
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
The cheapest sources of power to deploy in most situations are PV and onshore wind, and will continue to plummet in price. Nuclear and most other forms are essentially moot at this point. It's not a conspiracy, it's economic reality. And there's no forever hazmat storage requirements either.
- mahkeiro 2y ago
  Great but how do you manage instability in the grid? German still need a huge volume of gas powered plant as there is not enough pumped storage or batteries to stabilize it.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Some combination of strategies. For example, a combination of short term storage (batteries) and long term storage (e-fuels, such as hydrogen) will likely come in cheaper than nuclear. https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Germany is probably under then influence of expediency or big oil interests rather than investing. PES and batteries must be deployed at scale, and also leveraging EV V2G such as SAE J3072.

>Ctrl+f for nuclear One hit - I'm actually floored it made it into the article.

garrettgarcia 2y ago

Watch that Overton window shift... one tentative mainstream mention at a time.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Rather, the Overton window has shifted such that pure climate change denial is not acceptable anymore. So the denialists have caught in the next best thing: nuclear power. Invest in nuclear power today and see another 2-3 decades of unabated fossil fuel use.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Given the enormous cost and that any project started today won’t supply any power for 20 years no commercial company is ever going to invest in it.

bigyikes 2y ago
85% of nuclear reactors are built in under 10 years[1]. It also seems to me that if there were sufficient political willpower that improvements could be made here. It’s a bit like how anti-solar folks complain about the massive cost while ignoring that it is possible to improve costs. 1: http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-plant/ http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucle...
- auspiv 2y ago
  22600 oil/gas wells drilled in 2022 in the US [1]. Fervo is proposing to do ~20 MW per injector/producer pair [2][3]. that's 11000 potential pairs per year x 10 years = 110000 pairs = 2200000 MW = 2200 GW. total US usage is 4 trillion kWh for 2022 [4], which is 456 GW averaged over the whole year. so in the 10 years that it takes to build 85% of nuclear reactors, the oil/gas industry could drill enough geothermal wells to satisfy 4x the electricity requirements of the entire US. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/965763/number-of-oil-and-gas-wells-drilled-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/965763/number-of-oil-and... [2] https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-breaks-ground-on-the-worlds-largest-next-gen-geothermal-project/ https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-breaks-ground-on-the-wo... [3] presentation in Denver May 2024 by fervo completion engineer said 40 total wells [4] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect...
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Relying on data from the 70s and 80s a have very little bearing on the construction timelines expected in todays advanced service economies. Even getting a finished reactor in the west is a good project. Most have either been cancelled or never progressed past the investment decision. Through all of nuclear powers history we have seen negative learning. The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
chickenbig 2y ago
Companies can always site next to an existing power plant. Valuing existing assets more highly can certainly help with filling the construction pipeline. The following video puts nuclear electricity prices up at just under 100 USD/MWh for those who must have power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgLNESOD3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgLNESOD3k

audunw 2y ago

It’s interesting that advanced geothermal energy is mentioned first in that sentence. I honestly think geothermal is likely to be far more important than nuclear within a decade or so. If it can be shown that advanced geothermal can be done at a reasonable cost, you’ll likely get both the political power and engineering expertise of the oil and gas sector on board which will accelerate the pace of transition to clean energy faster than anything we’ve seen. And you won’t have the regulatory hurdles of nuclear energy. The big question is if Quaise can demonstrate that they can actually “drill” several kilometres down at a reasonable cost. Even without that I think horizontal drilling will unlock many promising projects. Regardless. Nuclear is dead. I’d encourage watching Tony Sebas presentations on renewable energy. Not many people think about what happens if renewable energy and battery tech continues to improve at its current pace. There’s basically very little chance that any other technology will be competitive. And no. We don’t need “base load”. That’s an outdated idea that relies on the assumption that we don’t decarbonise transportation and industry. You can’t drive your car with a nuclear reactor. (I actually love nuclear energy. The physics is super interesting. But I don’t see how it could be relevant. Unless Helion Energy’s fusion reactor pans out. Not counting space of course. Can’t do advanced deep space projects without nuclear energy)

krzat 2y ago
Cheap geothermal seems like tremendously easier problem to solve than cold fusion, I wish that more effort was put into it.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Cold fusion is perpetual motion.
- audunw 2y ago
  Geothermal is not sexy. It's incredibly boring. I personally also think we should put a lot more effort into geothermal. Yet I've watched two orders of magnitude more videos on nuclear fission and fusions on YouTube. "Just drill deep and do it fast and cheap" is not as interesting as "if we can just melt and contain molten salts and diffuse the nuclear fuel into that salt we can do fission really efficiently and safely and here's a 100 interesting engineering challenges related to that".

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

The cheapest sources of power to deploy in most situations are PV and onshore wind, and will continue to plummet in price. Nuclear and most other forms are essentially moot at this point. It's not a conspiracy, it's economic reality. And there's no forever hazmat storage requirements either.

mahkeiro 2y ago
Great but how do you manage instability in the grid? German still need a huge volume of gas powered plant as there is not enough pumped storage or batteries to stabilize it.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Some combination of strategies. For example, a combination of short term storage (batteries) and long term storage (e-fuels, such as hydrogen) will likely come in cheaper than nuclear. https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Germany is probably under then influence of expediency or big oil interests rather than investing. PES and batteries must be deployed at scale, and also leveraging EV V2G such as SAE J3072.