5 ms·

We started to access nuclear power as a new source, but then stopped for quite a while. It looks like things are starting up again. We'll see.

kragen 2y ago
the issue with nuclear power is that the humans don't yet have the technology to exploit it economically; at their current primitive level it's uncompetitive with other sources of energy. like printing 1000 years ago or heron's aeolipile
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > humans don't yet have the technology to exploit it economically $2,500/kW of capacity isn't too expensive, given the alternatives. https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/catalyst-the-cost-of-nuclear https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/catalyst-the-cost-of-nucl... The recent batch of 11 reactors authorised by China are perhaps 2.8B USD each for 1.1GW plant (plus a high temperature gas reactor).
  - kragen 2y ago
    but 1.1 gigawatts of mainstream solar panels is 0.14 billion usd. $130 per kilowatt of capacity. even at the dismal 10% solar capacity factor achieved in very northerly countries like germany, the reactor is twice the price per average watt, and it needs to be installed far from the point of use—you can't buy a 440-watt nuclear reactor, so you need transmission, distribution, and transformers, all of which incur energy losses, capital investment, and safety hazards you can avoid with photovoltaic that large grid also needs regulation, billing, and political stability. (a reactor is an appealing target for both russian glide bombs and enron-style scams.) and the reactor is not dispatchable over timescales of less than a day, while you can short out a solar panel in microseconds fundamentally the reactor can't compete economically because it's shackled to a pricey steam engine. the reactor itself is a triviality, just a pile of fuel larger than the critical mass. some of them formed naturally at oklo billions of years ago. what's hard is integrating that energy release mechanism into a machine, and that's because the humans are still terrible at making machines
    - chgs 2y ago
      One larger cost you might think of with solar is land - but even in the U.K. where land isn’t exactly cheap leasing prices are about £1k an acre per year, and an acre will generate about 350MWh a year, so that’s well under 1 cent per kWh, so it’s lost in the noise. https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/alternative-land-uses-leasing-land-for-solar-key-points https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/alternative-land-uses-leasing...
      - Retric 2y ago
        Yea and that 0.3c/kWh land cost is in the UK which is a terrible fit for nuclear.
        Retric 2y ago
        Ops, make that “fit for solar”
        kragen 2y ago
        aha, that makes sense
      - kragen 2y ago
        where land cost comes in is that it forces you to put solar generation far away from energy consumption, which incurs transmission and distribution costs which can be several times larger than the cost of the generation itself, as documented elsewhere in this thread for urumqi as an example, a 100-megawatt electric arc furnace might occupy 1000 square meters, and it's amenable to solar's intermittent energy supply in a way that blast furnaces aren't, but even at the ideal kilowatt per square meter, it needs 100 000 square meters of solar panels to power it, about ten city blocks. more plausibly it needs several times that. you can't physically fit those panels closer than hundreds of meters from the arc furnace, and land costs mean you probably have to put them out in the countryside, likely tens of kilometers away
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      > but 1.1 gigawatts of mainstream solar panels is 0.14 billion usd A solar farm is more than just solar panels. This 3.5GW solar farm cost 2.13B USD, so by your estimates the panels make up just 1/5 of the cost of the farm. I'd expect the load factor of the nuclear power station to offset the solar farm's nameplate capacity advantage, and lead to steadier prices/fewer storage requirements etc etc. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/06/worlds-largest-solar-plant-goes-online-in-china-2/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/06/worlds-largest-solar-... > and it needs to be installed far from the point of use Note that this is a problem for solar farms in China; they are installed where land is not valuable. Hence all the HVDC transmission records being broken in China. Plus nuclear power stations can be close to populations. For instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daya_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daya_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Plant is 50km from Hong Kong. > the reactor is not dispatchable over timescales of less than a day Modern reactors have load following capabilities, e.g. the AP1000 can ramp up 5% a minute within the 15%-100% band.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

kragen 2y ago

the issue with nuclear power is that the humans don't yet have the technology to exploit it economically; at their current primitive level it's uncompetitive with other sources of energy. like printing 1000 years ago or heron's aeolipile

chickenbig 2y ago
> humans don't yet have the technology to exploit it economically $2,500/kW of capacity isn't too expensive, given the alternatives. https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/catalyst-the-cost-of-nuclear https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/catalyst-the-cost-of-nucl... The recent batch of 11 reactors authorised by China are perhaps 2.8B USD each for 1.1GW plant (plus a high temperature gas reactor).
- kragen 2y ago
  but 1.1 gigawatts of mainstream solar panels is 0.14 billion usd. $130 per kilowatt of capacity. even at the dismal 10% solar capacity factor achieved in very northerly countries like germany, the reactor is twice the price per average watt, and it needs to be installed far from the point of use—you can't buy a 440-watt nuclear reactor, so you need transmission, distribution, and transformers, all of which incur energy losses, capital investment, and safety hazards you can avoid with photovoltaic that large grid also needs regulation, billing, and political stability. (a reactor is an appealing target for both russian glide bombs and enron-style scams.) and the reactor is not dispatchable over timescales of less than a day, while you can short out a solar panel in microseconds fundamentally the reactor can't compete economically because it's shackled to a pricey steam engine. the reactor itself is a triviality, just a pile of fuel larger than the critical mass. some of them formed naturally at oklo billions of years ago. what's hard is integrating that energy release mechanism into a machine, and that's because the humans are still terrible at making machines
  - chgs 2y ago
    One larger cost you might think of with solar is land - but even in the U.K. where land isn’t exactly cheap leasing prices are about £1k an acre per year, and an acre will generate about 350MWh a year, so that’s well under 1 cent per kWh, so it’s lost in the noise. https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/alternative-land-uses-leasing-land-for-solar-key-points https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/alternative-land-uses-leasing...
    - Retric 2y ago
      Yea and that 0.3c/kWh land cost is in the UK which is a terrible fit for nuclear.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Ops, make that “fit for solar”
        kragen 2y ago
        aha, that makes sense
    - kragen 2y ago
      where land cost comes in is that it forces you to put solar generation far away from energy consumption, which incurs transmission and distribution costs which can be several times larger than the cost of the generation itself, as documented elsewhere in this thread for urumqi as an example, a 100-megawatt electric arc furnace might occupy 1000 square meters, and it's amenable to solar's intermittent energy supply in a way that blast furnaces aren't, but even at the ideal kilowatt per square meter, it needs 100 000 square meters of solar panels to power it, about ten city blocks. more plausibly it needs several times that. you can't physically fit those panels closer than hundreds of meters from the arc furnace, and land costs mean you probably have to put them out in the countryside, likely tens of kilometers away
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > but 1.1 gigawatts of mainstream solar panels is 0.14 billion usd A solar farm is more than just solar panels. This 3.5GW solar farm cost 2.13B USD, so by your estimates the panels make up just 1/5 of the cost of the farm. I'd expect the load factor of the nuclear power station to offset the solar farm's nameplate capacity advantage, and lead to steadier prices/fewer storage requirements etc etc. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/06/worlds-largest-solar-plant-goes-online-in-china-2/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/06/worlds-largest-solar-... > and it needs to be installed far from the point of use Note that this is a problem for solar farms in China; they are installed where land is not valuable. Hence all the HVDC transmission records being broken in China. Plus nuclear power stations can be close to populations. For instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daya_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daya_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Plant is 50km from Hong Kong. > the reactor is not dispatchable over timescales of less than a day Modern reactors have load following capabilities, e.g. the AP1000 can ramp up 5% a minute within the 15%-100% band.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]