This would have been great 20 or 30 years ago but back then "nuclear bad!". It would have been a great bridge between burning fossil fuels and wind/solar/etc. It probably would have prevented climate change from getting as bad as it is now. Oh well, here we are.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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It probably would have prevented climate change from getting as bad as it is now.
I just read the news yesterday that big coal, oil and gas want to step up their game, despite renewables being ridiculously cheap now. So i don't think so.
Greed will be the death of us all
Yep, fossil fuel production is thought to rise up to 2050...
Great! Let's stock up for our madmax future.
There's a lag between human activity and climate change. Rolling out nuclear might have helped a bit, but whether we'd have seen the results today I'm not sure.. the benefits would be in the future.
I doubt cars could have evolved any faster though (well they could, but capitalism, so realistically things went as fast as they could).. so it might not have had much impact at all.
I recall seeing a show on Bill Gates a few years back and his drive to get modem nuclear going. It seems many of the current plants around the world are based on old designs from the 50s and 60s.
Newer and modern designs are much safer but it was going to take a tremendous amount of effort to get past the nuclear is bad mindset.
There's no way to easily educate the masses on a complicated scientific subject and elected officials aren't going to stay around for long pushing that kind of tech, they might as well push solar, wind, and tidal power as they would have better chances at staying in office.
Are there even enough people who knows how to run these?
I know a big issue in Europe is that you don't actually have enough people educated on nuclear power to actually build and manage such a plant
Great question, initially I doubt it. There are the same issues are being seen in the US as they try to move microchip processing back stateside versus Asia. There's a shortage of skilled labour being reported as a stumbling block to making this move happen quickly. Some might argue "cheap" skilled labour but a shortage there still is at present. I don't think the US government is going to stop this move for security reasons.
It's amazing in some ways the Chinese were even able to surpass the US in producing these products as they were pretty far behind the western world production technologies in the late 70s when US manufacturers went in to help setup modern at the time factories. Despite the US being the leader at the time, in some ways they abandoned these skills for economic reasons.
The processing chain of microchips will take years to move over, much like a reinvestment into nuclear.
Places like Alberta are already seeing US oil companies withdrawing from long term projects due to federal government regulations that won't take effect until the middle of the next decade. Think of the shift of those dedicated to these industries and the shortage of those in renewables. Not to worry the latest Alberta government has put the brakes on their current renewables and are tripling down on traditional oil fields even with 1000s of abandoned oil rigs throughout the province the government needs to clean up. They are even threatening to leave Canada yet again. Existing skilled jobs will be saved no matter the cost!
If there ever is an appetite for Nuclear, I'm hoping we are better equipped in the future to assist with training and providing the schooling to those that are needed than we are in the present and in the past. If it is deemed needed for security reasons I'm sure they will figure out the skills issue.
People obviously learn by doing real things, so competitive skilled labor won't be more available than it is now. EDIT: ... if they wait for it to be
They just have to get projects through one by one, then with time there'll be more competent people.
But yes, some effort in schooling won't hurt.
You didn't mention the most important thing here though, economics.
I'm only left wondering how far of a window should we consider this economic window? A quarter, a year, a decade, a lifetime? How does one factor in all the costs of using a particular style of energy?
Often I see people say look at the cost of making a car battery while ignoring the elimination of many parts of ICE vehicles like the tranny, cooling systems, over the various chemicals like oils and fluids that require constant change for ICE servicing. But hey other types of energy are required to make make car batteries including ICE vehicles in the mines . I say fair, tell me what are the WHOLE costs of using other energy sources, on society, on the environment, and the length of time frame.
Most of our forefathers thought faster horses were the only way to go despite the piles of horse shit and dead horse carcasses they were waiting to dry out so they could be removed, filled many city streets. Some city houses had entrances high up to separate the entrance from these things that filed their streets much like a generations earlier had building designs that sheltered the inhabitants of the city below from those emptying their chamber pots into the streets each morning.
Now I love my ICE vehicles and don't see myself owning a electric vehicle anytime soon so I do understand the want of keeping my horses around, and my overhangs on buildings to protect me from piss and shit being thrown into the street below, but I also can acknowledge in the long term the world I have figured out for myself is not something that is going to last as the world continues to evolve/devolve around us.
Despite these foreign things to us today, they cried think of the economics and the job losses as Ford was providing new technology and freedom to the masses. Think of the economics of whole horse related industries that were mothballed and in many ways replaced as road infrastructure was required for these new fangled ICE vehicles.
How does one measure the economics of this change? By the quarter its terrible, especially to the individual that needs to shell out for a car, and all the new things it requires over the established upkeep of horses. Think of people unemployed by the lack of horses. Hey we really don't need to leave our farms that often do we?
By the year it's not looking great initially either unless you are Ford or a oil outfit. Then by the decades things look a lot different on the whole. Perhaps these cars were a good thing for everyone overall?
At this stage the environment is paying a cost we don't even understand yet. Even if we do, who cares as it is plentiful in the new world and it seemed like it would never end much like the wood supplies to build the great wooden ships that previous empires use to run the world with. So who cares if yet another Valley or field is ruined? There's plenty more where that came from! And for many years that was the case.
What are the economic costs to deal with clearcut valleys, tailing ponds, manufacturing waste, abandoned mines, and various other wastes? Often the problem of governments and the taxpayers to deal with long after the initial profits have been taken in those quarters, years and decades. After a lifetime overall is not wonderful but fuck them, I got mine!
So which the economic scale are we thinking?
So which the economic scale are we thinking?
I guess the one where investors pull their money out of new nuclear?
I'm having difficultly following your analogy. I'm not sure the horses to ICE comparison is illuminating in relation to SMRs.
Not surprising. I would imagine the cost per kWh is more for smaller installations. I never understood the push for these aside from a giveaway to nuclear companies.
There are good guys at INL (although all the guys with MP5s walking around makes for a creepy atmosphere) but there clearly was not much of a future here.
Maybe. I would imagine that having all the portions built at one location and shipped/installed at the site would be quicker and have less variation in final cost.
The last US nuclear power plant built wound up being 7 years late and a face shattering $17,000,000,000 over budget. Who wants something to take an extra unexpected 7 years to have something built and pay seventeen billion dollars more than you planned on to get it?
Less land required as well which is also cheaper.
But ya, being and to produce them in a factory was going to be a big savings. They'd get cheaper as things improved.
a giveaway to nuclear companies
That's how we roll in Canada. The best part is, the guys who own the nuke plants also own the oil pipelines! Even when they lose they win!
Can we let them lose at the oil and win at the nuclear, please?
The US Navy has probably around 100 nuclear powered vessels, both submarines and Nimitz class carriers. Each of those have miniature nuclear plants on them.
I know their use cases are different but small and portable is small and portable. Virginia class subs typically stayed within cost budgets, but newer V blocks saw cost overruns, as well as the Gerald Ford carrier, which was about 3 billion over budget if I remember.
Not sure if overruns were due to being nuclear or because of other reasons. They are high tech military items that aren’t exactly mass produced, so lots of ways to overrun. However they are more mass produced than nuclear power stations in the civilian sector. Maybe some lessons can be learned.
Edit: Also forgot an important point that modularization was a key design point of the Virginia sub.
Any botanist can explain how they managed to grow a nuclear reactor plant?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nuclear power provides energy that is largely free of carbon emissions and can play a significant role in helping deal with climate change.
But in most industrialized countries, the construction of nuclear plants tends to grossly exceed their budgeted cost and run years over schedule.
One hope for changing that has been the use of small, modular nuclear reactors, which can be built in a centralized production facility and then shipped to the site of their installation.
Their smaller size makes it easier for passive cooling systems to take over in the case of power losses (some designs simply keep their reactors in a pond).
The government's Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project.
NuScale CEO John Hopkins tried to put a positive spin on the event, saying, "Our work with Carbon Free Power Project over the past ten years has advanced NuScale technology to the stage of commercial deployment; reaching that milestone is a tremendous success which we will continue to build on with future customers."
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