5 ms·

Hmmm. The Titanic had sixteen watertight compartments. Did the pebble-bed reactor's "commercial-scale inherent safety" also pass a test with an compromised con

Hmmm. The Titanic had sixteen watertight compartments. Did the pebble-bed reactor's "commercial-scale inherent safety" also pass a test with an compromised container, which would admit air that would cause the graphite to burn?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> which would admit air that would cause the graphite to burn? Rats, then it would cause about as many deaths per GWh as the coal it's replacing.
- natmaka 2y ago
  The real underlying subject isn't "coal or nuclear" but "nuclear or renewables", and a potential nuclear plant not inducing any risk of major nuclear accident (nor any annoying waste? nor any dependency towards any fuel?...) would induce quite new way to consider it.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > real underlying subject isn't "coal or nuclear" but "nuclear or renewables" Not in the real world. We're deploying solar and wind as quickly as we can because they're the cheapest sources of power. The bottlenecks are production and permitting, and there is no indication either of those are seeing a step change in the next decade. There is a reason America and Europe, where anti-nuclear sentiment runs ripe, are building gas power plants and infrastructure at the fastest clip in history. In the West, the choice is gas or nukes. In the China and India, it's coal or nukes.
    - natmaka 2y ago
      Nuclear is plateauing, and renewables are booming: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-nuclear-direct-substitution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-nuclear-direct-... World: Energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... Electricity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa... China, while being the most efficient nation at deploying nuclear, illustrates it perfectly: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables?country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest&country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa... India: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables?country=~IND https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest&country=~IND https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa... Europe: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest&country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Blocks of links aren't an argument. > Nuclear is plateauing, and renewables are booming Nobody said otherwise. I literally said "we're deploying solar and wind as quickly as we can because they're the cheapest sources of power." You're arguing against a straw man. Renewables are booming. So is gas [1]. Your analysis fails on two counts. One, it ignores the substitution effect [2]. If we're talking about grid stability, et cetera, this is fine. If we're looking at emissions, it's not. Two, you're lumping together fossil fuels. That masks the fact that we've added about as much natural gas capacity as solar. The growth rates are different. But so are the base levels. I'll say it again: we're building renewables as fast as we can. We can't build them substantially faster. That means there is never a choice between renewables and something else; it's always renewables by default. Where there is a choice, therefore, it must be between the other options. The convenient lie the gas industry has sold the nuclear nervous is that it's a competition between solar and wind and fossil fuels. It's not. We're investing trillions of dollars in gas infrastructure with 20 to 40-year investment theses despite renewables booming because power demand is booming too, and the difference has to be made up somehow. That gas infrastructure's thesis only works if we exclude nuclear energy. (It also precludes us reaching our 2030 and 2050 emissions commitments, but nobody seems to care about those anyway.) We're building gas instead of nuclear in the West for the same reason China and India are building coal plants: it's cheaper than nuclear. Nobody is acting on emissions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_energy#/media/File:Global_primary_energy_consumption_by_source_1900_-_2021.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_energy#/media/File:Glo... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-substitution-method https://ourworldindata.org/energy-substitution-method
        pfdietz 2y ago
        And also for the same reason China installed 180x more PV than nuclear (on a rated power basis) in 2023: PV is cheaper than nuclear. China also installed more than 4x PV than coal on a rated power basis in 2023. I don't know the capacity factor of their coal -- I hear it's operated at fairly low capacity factor -- so PV installs could well exceed coal installs (especially net coal installs) on a levelized basis there.
GeoAtreides 2y ago
the compartments weren't watertight 100%, they weren't sealed at the top

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> which would admit air that would cause the graphite to burn? Rats, then it would cause about as many deaths per GWh as the coal it's replacing.

natmaka 2y ago
The real underlying subject isn't "coal or nuclear" but "nuclear or renewables", and a potential nuclear plant not inducing any risk of major nuclear accident (nor any annoying waste? nor any dependency towards any fuel?...) would induce quite new way to consider it.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > real underlying subject isn't "coal or nuclear" but "nuclear or renewables" Not in the real world. We're deploying solar and wind as quickly as we can because they're the cheapest sources of power. The bottlenecks are production and permitting, and there is no indication either of those are seeing a step change in the next decade. There is a reason America and Europe, where anti-nuclear sentiment runs ripe, are building gas power plants and infrastructure at the fastest clip in history. In the West, the choice is gas or nukes. In the China and India, it's coal or nukes.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    Nuclear is plateauing, and renewables are booming: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-nuclear-direct-substitution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-nuclear-direct-... World: Energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... Electricity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa... China, while being the most efficient nation at deploying nuclear, illustrates it perfectly: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables?country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest&country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa... India: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables?country=~IND https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest&country=~IND https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa... Europe: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nuclear-renewables?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-share-nucl... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewables-nuclear-line?time=2001..latest&country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      Blocks of links aren't an argument. > Nuclear is plateauing, and renewables are booming Nobody said otherwise. I literally said "we're deploying solar and wind as quickly as we can because they're the cheapest sources of power." You're arguing against a straw man. Renewables are booming. So is gas [1]. Your analysis fails on two counts. One, it ignores the substitution effect [2]. If we're talking about grid stability, et cetera, this is fine. If we're looking at emissions, it's not. Two, you're lumping together fossil fuels. That masks the fact that we've added about as much natural gas capacity as solar. The growth rates are different. But so are the base levels. I'll say it again: we're building renewables as fast as we can. We can't build them substantially faster. That means there is never a choice between renewables and something else; it's always renewables by default. Where there is a choice, therefore, it must be between the other options. The convenient lie the gas industry has sold the nuclear nervous is that it's a competition between solar and wind and fossil fuels. It's not. We're investing trillions of dollars in gas infrastructure with 20 to 40-year investment theses despite renewables booming because power demand is booming too, and the difference has to be made up somehow. That gas infrastructure's thesis only works if we exclude nuclear energy. (It also precludes us reaching our 2030 and 2050 emissions commitments, but nobody seems to care about those anyway.) We're building gas instead of nuclear in the West for the same reason China and India are building coal plants: it's cheaper than nuclear. Nobody is acting on emissions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_energy#/media/File:Global_primary_energy_consumption_by_source_1900_-_2021.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_energy#/media/File:Glo... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-substitution-method https://ourworldindata.org/energy-substitution-method
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        And also for the same reason China installed 180x more PV than nuclear (on a rated power basis) in 2023: PV is cheaper than nuclear. China also installed more than 4x PV than coal on a rated power basis in 2023. I don't know the capacity factor of their coal -- I hear it's operated at fairly low capacity factor -- so PV installs could well exceed coal installs (especially net coal installs) on a levelized basis there.

GeoAtreides 2y ago

the compartments weren't watertight 100%, they weren't sealed at the top