2 ms·
It is an argument based mainly on learning rates. He doesn't need to know any details about the economic model of nuclear; the observations are based on the eco
by roenxi 2y ago
It is an argument based mainly on learning rates. He doesn't need to know any details about the economic model of nuclear; the observations are based on the economic model changing over time.
> The baseline cost of fuel rods alone ends up being ~0.9c/kWh.
I saw a quote from the 4th generation reactor wiki page (it came up while people were talking about China getting started on the build out of next gen of nuclear tech) that mentioned "100–300x energy yield from the same amount of nuclear fuel" as a potential advantage. People will figure out how to make fuel rods cheaper. We haven't really pushed the limits of this stuff.
Besides, even in the current climate 1c/kWh is still a great lower bound to aspire for. Possibly even that would be worth pushing through the political blowback for.
- Retric 2y agoGen IV doesn’t mean anything specifically. No individual gen IV designs has every single advantage you see in any of those designs. You need to look at a specific designs in isolation as well as what trade offs are involved in that design. “100-300x energy yield from the same amount of nuclear fuel” That’s one of those things that sounds good in isolation, but ends up being more expensive. It’s just like CANDU reactors don’t need enrichment and can operate on natural uranium, but it turns out fuel costs drop by 20% when they started enriching the fuel. Similarly LWR/HWR could make better use of their fuel if they could operate at higher temperatures, but that causes a world of other problems. Unfortunately nuclear engineers aren’t dumb, they’re doing things for surprisingly solid reasons even if counter intuitive reasons.