It will still be the cheapest bidder, most corrupt, every corner cutting subpar material using fake report producing contractors building, inspecting, certifying and operating this stuff.
Exactly this is the problem. The physics and engineering are well understood, nuclear reactors can be built and operated reasonably safely, but that'll cost (particularly when considering malicious actors).
Well, then there is also the issue of long term storage of radioactive waste ...
Cobalt 60 from radiotherapy machine can kill you in exactly same way as spent Uranium rod from a power plant. For human body there is no difference between those two.
And we are not even getting to burning coal and subsequent nuclear fallout from it, which is completely uncontrolled.
No it wasn't. That film wrecked the nuclear industry and contributed to climate change as people turned to other carbon rich electricity generating methods.
Similarly, Chernobyl Nuclear power plant continued operating until 2000, 14 years after the incident.
Shutting down functioning reactors with no issues in an era where electricity consumption is growing on multiple fronts is wasteful, especially while there is no grid scale storage available and we need to decarbonise. Adding more reactors, as expensive as it is, will pay for itself over their lifetime (we have reactors today operating for 70 years and scheduled to operate past that, meanwhile solar panels and wind turbines have much shorter lifespans).
You can do the same calculation for renewables. There is nothing stopping us from building wind turbines with 70 year lifespans.
With the current crop of renewables you can reinvest the profit 2-3 times over the lira of a nuclear power plant.
Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years.
Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.
> There is nothing stopping us from building wind turbines with 70 year lifespans.
Why don't we then? And what about the associated storage needed to replicate what a nuclear power plant does?
And note, 70 years as of now, many as scheduled to go up to 90-100 years.
> Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.
Long term, not horrific.
> Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years
Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.
A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
> Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.
Great that you admit to having zero economic knowledge. That is the exact reverse of how it works.
Money now are worth way more than money in the future, even when adjusting for inflation etc.
Thus the need for short cycles and the huge risk premiums that get added when going above 10-20 years.
It won't be used to decarbonize our economy. It will be used to further the profits of Big Tech, who are already preventing coal power plants from shutting down, in their desire to feed their data centers. (Eg, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/08/google-me... )
This will make it harder for other sectors to switch away from fossil fuels, by raising the price of fossil-free electricity relative to planet-killing sources.
As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area.
> As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area
Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start. Their other deals with small modular reactor companies will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life, and make it available and affordable.
> Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start.
No, it isn't. Tax corporate profits at rates we did in the 1950s, use the taxes and regulations to decarbonize, similar to how we used taxes to electrify and provide phone service.
If we build out 20% new non-fossil energy sources, and all of its goes to data centers, then we haven't decarbonized our economy in any ecologically meaningful way.
> will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life
And if it doesn't, we are 10-15 years later with even more CO2 in the air. This is a Hail Mary by companies afraid to suffer from the consequences of their pollution.
Fantastic news. The combination of nuclear and renewables is the foundation for a carbon free future. I’m also excited at the prospect of the new nuclear designs being built by the hundreds which will dramatically lower the per unit cost. Abundant, 24/7 reliable, clean power generation will decouple economic growth from environmental damage.
The power generated won't be used to power homes. It will be used to train LLMs. This does nothing to move us away from carbon. I agree nuclear should be utilized but only for the benefit of the working class. Nuclear for the sake of capital interests is a recipe for disaster.
Electrical usage will go to the highest bidder. If Amazon can stomach more $ kw/hr than a homeowner, prices simply rise and CO2 increases, not that LLMs simply don’t get trained. You need to understand how things work in the real world, not in an imagined socialist utopia.
How will nuclear power and renewables combine? They compete for the same slice of the grid, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition new built nuclear power loses due to be horrifically expensive.
Thus nuclear power becomes forced into ever more marginalized peaking roles.
Try calculate the cost for a kWh of electricity from a peaking nuclear power plant.
How do they compete for the same role? Nuclear is the definition of base power generation, whereas solar/wind/etc (when backed with massive battery farms) are perfect peaker plants due to their near instantaneous demand response.
Technologie has changed, but mankind has not.
It will still be the cheapest bidder, most corrupt, every corner cutting subpar material using fake report producing contractors building, inspecting, certifying and operating this stuff.
Exactly this is the problem. The physics and engineering are well understood, nuclear reactors can be built and operated reasonably safely, but that'll cost (particularly when considering malicious actors).
Well, then there is also the issue of long term storage of radioactive waste ...
> Well, then there is also the issue of long term storage of radioactive waste ...
You have that issue regardless if you have nuclear power plants or not as you have radiation devices in hospitals or industry.
Your comment reads as "other industries have radioactive waste, so it's not a concern here."
The type and volume of waste differs and is very relevant.
Cobalt 60 from radiotherapy machine can kill you in exactly same way as spent Uranium rod from a power plant. For human body there is no difference between those two.
And we are not even getting to burning coal and subsequent nuclear fallout from it, which is completely uncontrolled.
https://archive.is/Pv8vJ
The China Syndrome was a great movie! Looking forward to a revival of this great genre.
No it wasn't. That film wrecked the nuclear industry and contributed to climate change as people turned to other carbon rich electricity generating methods.
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl wrecked the nuclear industry. Why blame a movie when the real disasters were enough?
It was a bad movie, because people started to believe it was based on reality...
Similarly, Chernobyl Nuclear power plant continued operating until 2000, 14 years after the incident.
Shutting down functioning reactors with no issues in an era where electricity consumption is growing on multiple fronts is wasteful, especially while there is no grid scale storage available and we need to decarbonise. Adding more reactors, as expensive as it is, will pay for itself over their lifetime (we have reactors today operating for 70 years and scheduled to operate past that, meanwhile solar panels and wind turbines have much shorter lifespans).
You can do the same calculation for renewables. There is nothing stopping us from building wind turbines with 70 year lifespans.
With the current crop of renewables you can reinvest the profit 2-3 times over the lira of a nuclear power plant.
Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years.
Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.
> There is nothing stopping us from building wind turbines with 70 year lifespans.
Why don't we then? And what about the associated storage needed to replicate what a nuclear power plant does?
And note, 70 years as of now, many as scheduled to go up to 90-100 years.
> Touting the “long lifespan” is simply an admission that nuclear powers economics are horrific.
Long term, not horrific.
> Maybe you have heard of calculating interest and how much more value money now has rather than in 90 years adding 20 years to your 70 year lifespan. Or when being able to reinvest your profits every 10-20 years
Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.
Because it is economic insanity to rely on your asset to have an economical life across 70+ years.
Then some storage boogeyman. Do check out California.
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
> Exactly, paying an obscene amount of money now means that in 90 years' time, that money is much cheaper compared if you had to spend it in 90 years, or every 20 years to replace your renewables and storage parks.
Great that you admit to having zero economic knowledge. That is the exact reverse of how it works.
Money now are worth way more than money in the future, even when adjusting for inflation etc.
Thus the need for short cycles and the huge risk premiums that get added when going above 10-20 years.
Here’s some reading for you:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/timevalueofmoney.asp
> and we need to decarbonise
It won't be used to decarbonize our economy. It will be used to further the profits of Big Tech, who are already preventing coal power plants from shutting down, in their desire to feed their data centers. (Eg, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/08/google-me... )
This will make it harder for other sectors to switch away from fossil fuels, by raising the price of fossil-free electricity relative to planet-killing sources.
As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area.
> As this article points out, Microsoft is willing to pay twice normal rates for the area, which means none of the TMI electricity will help decarbonize the local area
Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start. Their other deals with small modular reactor companies will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life, and make it available and affordable.
> Microsoft's new electrical consumption being carbon free is a good start.
No, it isn't. Tax corporate profits at rates we did in the 1950s, use the taxes and regulations to decarbonize, similar to how we used taxes to electrify and provide phone service.
If we build out 20% new non-fossil energy sources, and all of its goes to data centers, then we haven't decarbonized our economy in any ecologically meaningful way.
> will also give them money that will hopefully bring this tech to life
And if it doesn't, we are 10-15 years later with even more CO2 in the air. This is a Hail Mary by companies afraid to suffer from the consequences of their pollution.
Fantastic news. The combination of nuclear and renewables is the foundation for a carbon free future. I’m also excited at the prospect of the new nuclear designs being built by the hundreds which will dramatically lower the per unit cost. Abundant, 24/7 reliable, clean power generation will decouple economic growth from environmental damage.
The power generated won't be used to power homes. It will be used to train LLMs. This does nothing to move us away from carbon. I agree nuclear should be utilized but only for the benefit of the working class. Nuclear for the sake of capital interests is a recipe for disaster.
Electrical usage will go to the highest bidder. If Amazon can stomach more $ kw/hr than a homeowner, prices simply rise and CO2 increases, not that LLMs simply don’t get trained. You need to understand how things work in the real world, not in an imagined socialist utopia.
How will nuclear power and renewables combine? They compete for the same slice of the grid, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition new built nuclear power loses due to be horrifically expensive.
Thus nuclear power becomes forced into ever more marginalized peaking roles.
Try calculate the cost for a kWh of electricity from a peaking nuclear power plant.
How do they compete for the same role? Nuclear is the definition of base power generation, whereas solar/wind/etc (when backed with massive battery farms) are perfect peaker plants due to their near instantaneous demand response.