"Notice: Multiplying nuclear plant construction by 540x"
Correction; it was 4 GW / 540 days vs 1 GW / day. That is a 135X (540/4) bigger.
That is to replace everything in the world in 10 years. I agree that 10 years is unreasonable. But, 30 years is reasonable since our current rate of nuclear plant construction is so low. In fact, France took less than 30 years to saturate their power generation with nuclear.
Alex is arguing that replacing all power with nuclear would be hard. But, it is also hard to expand power production by 50% by 2050 using fossil fuels.
Any new power is going to be hard. It requires building the plants, the transmission network, and the distribution networks. The last part is actually a huge deal. The transformers on the power poles (or wherever the distribution transformer is), the power lines, the wires in houses, and the connections to houses will need to get upgraded to support more power usage.
The economics of power is that generation is about half (huge variability across the US) the total cost of powering things in your house.
To me the biggest knock against nuclear is that it is not a peaking power generator today. Fission creates Xenon gas as part of the decay products. That Xenon is "burned" by the neutrons in an active reactor as fast as they are generated. When the reactor is slowed or shut off the Xenon builds up and the reactor need to shut down for days. Restarting too soon leads to a Chernobyl.
Power usages changes every second. The rotating energy in the generators smooths it out so that they have to throttle up and down at about a minute timescale. Today, peaking power plants like natural gas turbines handle these load changes.
Nuclear plants could do this if they were molten salt reactors (MSR). In these reactors, the nuclear fuel is a liquid. That allows the Xenon gas to bubble out of the fuel.
Molten salt reactors are not a mature technology. But, they could be if we wanted to make nuclear power important.
If not, a mix of gas turbines and batteries are a great alternative for peaking power. It would only be about 20% of all energy produced. Compared to 100% coal it would remove about 90% of the CO2.
I’m curious how little discussion and weight is given to the positive impact proper economies and more preferable public policy would have on expediting that timeline. It seems silly to presume that we would both 1) Approve the plans given such a sluggish pace (perhaps as a last ditch effort) and 2) not AT ALL improve over more than a decade in efficiency in turning nuclear plants online.
It seems like a particularly non-economic and bad faith response for someone who otherwise was optimistic for nuclear. One of the clear advantages of France’s program was the standardization of reactor builds and investment in the types of support infrastructure such as having a market with competing firms. Sadly, these markets have significantly changed over the last 50 years. Should not be a shock that if we took nuclear and dumped military level spending into the program for civilian industry (like would be required to achieved the goal) that we wouldn’t see these same efficiencies arise in essential a new market for Nuclear industry and technology.
If that’s the worst we can come up with, I’m otherwise optimistic then.
It is sad how rare it is for people to face up to reality. In addition to the points made in this article, the amount of land that would be necessary for the wind and solar fantasies is simply mind-boggling.
The chapter of my book that has caused the most blowback isn't "The End of Veganism," but "Climate activists are to blame for some of the suffering caused by climate change"
I'm surprised: it seems the obvious role for nuclear is to replace fossil generated electricity at the power plant level. Still need a LOT of fossil fuel. But that's not even my main reason to support nuclear: it's cheap! Or at least it could be if the gov't regulators got out of the way and allowed for innovative designs to be built and tested. The tide is turning...but at the speed of government!
"Notice: Multiplying nuclear plant construction by 540x"
Correction; it was 4 GW / 540 days vs 1 GW / day. That is a 135X (540/4) bigger.
That is to replace everything in the world in 10 years. I agree that 10 years is unreasonable. But, 30 years is reasonable since our current rate of nuclear plant construction is so low. In fact, France took less than 30 years to saturate their power generation with nuclear.
Alex is arguing that replacing all power with nuclear would be hard. But, it is also hard to expand power production by 50% by 2050 using fossil fuels.
Any new power is going to be hard. It requires building the plants, the transmission network, and the distribution networks. The last part is actually a huge deal. The transformers on the power poles (or wherever the distribution transformer is), the power lines, the wires in houses, and the connections to houses will need to get upgraded to support more power usage.
The economics of power is that generation is about half (huge variability across the US) the total cost of powering things in your house.
To me the biggest knock against nuclear is that it is not a peaking power generator today. Fission creates Xenon gas as part of the decay products. That Xenon is "burned" by the neutrons in an active reactor as fast as they are generated. When the reactor is slowed or shut off the Xenon builds up and the reactor need to shut down for days. Restarting too soon leads to a Chernobyl.
Power usages changes every second. The rotating energy in the generators smooths it out so that they have to throttle up and down at about a minute timescale. Today, peaking power plants like natural gas turbines handle these load changes.
Nuclear plants could do this if they were molten salt reactors (MSR). In these reactors, the nuclear fuel is a liquid. That allows the Xenon gas to bubble out of the fuel.
Molten salt reactors are not a mature technology. But, they could be if we wanted to make nuclear power important.
If not, a mix of gas turbines and batteries are a great alternative for peaking power. It would only be about 20% of all energy produced. Compared to 100% coal it would remove about 90% of the CO2.
I’m curious how little discussion and weight is given to the positive impact proper economies and more preferable public policy would have on expediting that timeline. It seems silly to presume that we would both 1) Approve the plans given such a sluggish pace (perhaps as a last ditch effort) and 2) not AT ALL improve over more than a decade in efficiency in turning nuclear plants online.
It seems like a particularly non-economic and bad faith response for someone who otherwise was optimistic for nuclear. One of the clear advantages of France’s program was the standardization of reactor builds and investment in the types of support infrastructure such as having a market with competing firms. Sadly, these markets have significantly changed over the last 50 years. Should not be a shock that if we took nuclear and dumped military level spending into the program for civilian industry (like would be required to achieved the goal) that we wouldn’t see these same efficiencies arise in essential a new market for Nuclear industry and technology.
If that’s the worst we can come up with, I’m otherwise optimistic then.
Geothermal, too. Fewer obstacles.
A quick online search revealed only blatant lies, evasion , ambiguity and anti-human nihilism in opposition to nuke power.
It is sad how rare it is for people to face up to reality. In addition to the points made in this article, the amount of land that would be necessary for the wind and solar fantasies is simply mind-boggling.
The chapter of my book that has caused the most blowback isn't "The End of Veganism," but "Climate activists are to blame for some of the suffering caused by climate change"
https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Happy New Year, everyone!
Have a good, safe time traveling. You're practically an anthropologist now!
Speaking of very few people seem to want to make public comments! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RGaaG5GWv2oBIdsPqZPwWcZAXhZg12jSwDHu2NGZgN8/edit?usp=sharing
I'm surprised: it seems the obvious role for nuclear is to replace fossil generated electricity at the power plant level. Still need a LOT of fossil fuel. But that's not even my main reason to support nuclear: it's cheap! Or at least it could be if the gov't regulators got out of the way and allowed for innovative designs to be built and tested. The tide is turning...but at the speed of government!