Cool cool, still at some point you cannot cool that shit anymore. This is true for any form of technology, to be honest, but I’d rather have a burning solar panel, than a runaway nuclear reaction.
Nuclear plants are better than coal or gas, but. They are far outperformed by solar/wind plus batteries. We haven’t even begun tapping into the full potential of this form of power generation and already nuclear is not financially viable anymore. Your point with coating deserts in Solar is obviously valid, but we have soo much underutilized / stupidly utilized land, that can be filled with solar and batteries.
Yes they require minerals that need to be mined, but so does a nuclear reactor which then consumes mined and processed uranium, while in the stuff thats built into a solar cell is needed once and then generates power for free for decades.
Imo this is the way we need to go, given that its not only more environmentally friend but also sooo fucking cheap, that anything else doesn’t even begin to make sense. But given the way the world works, we will build coal/gas/nuclear plants that need to be subsidized heavily and then disassembled using public funds, like we’re doing in Germany.
The thing is, solar and wind are not out producing a nuclear plant. We see this expressed in a power sources capacity factor. Or what their actual output is in comparison to their theoretical output.
Solar sits at about 25% right now, meaning, if you wanted your “output” to be 1 MW, then you will need to find out how many solar panels makes that output and multiply it by 4. Then you have to consider the storage aspect, since it isn’t on demand.
As a submariner and somebody that currently working on industrial uninterruptible power supplies, you are not as afraid of batteries as you should be.
They are far scarier than the reactor. If it shorts to ground, there is nothing you can do to stop the reaction or subsequent fire. If our ships battery shorted to our hull, it would melt the hull of the submarine, that’s how powerful these things are.
Also, as for cooling, Palo Verde NPP in Nevada is cooled by the treated waste water from Phoenix. So again, not an engineering problem, just politics.
The reason nuclear is expensive is because we make it expensive. We disincentivize long-term planning on almost every aspect of our economy, including energy. We don’t require the people who built the wind turbines or solar panels to have a disposal plan in place, so they are off the hook the moment they turn their solar farm over to a utility, or privately owned power company (which shouldn’t be a thing). NPP require disposal plans for all waste and all of that is held under intense scrutiny.
Not to mention that Reactors last far longer than wind turbines or solar panels, they require less material overall because of how power dense they are, and they work well with our AC grid, where solar panels need inverters or High voltage DC over long distances, which adds hidden costs and infrastructure costs if you want it to scale at all.
Cool cool, still at some point you cannot cool that shit anymore. This is true for any form of technology, to be honest, but I’d rather have a burning solar panel, than a runaway nuclear reaction.
Nuclear plants are better than coal or gas, but. They are far outperformed by solar/wind plus batteries. We haven’t even begun tapping into the full potential of this form of power generation and already nuclear is not financially viable anymore. Your point with coating deserts in Solar is obviously valid, but we have soo much underutilized / stupidly utilized land, that can be filled with solar and batteries.
Yes they require minerals that need to be mined, but so does a nuclear reactor which then consumes mined and processed uranium, while in the stuff thats built into a solar cell is needed once and then generates power for free for decades.
Imo this is the way we need to go, given that its not only more environmentally friend but also sooo fucking cheap, that anything else doesn’t even begin to make sense. But given the way the world works, we will build coal/gas/nuclear plants that need to be subsidized heavily and then disassembled using public funds, like we’re doing in Germany.
The thing is, solar and wind are not out producing a nuclear plant. We see this expressed in a power sources capacity factor. Or what their actual output is in comparison to their theoretical output.
Solar sits at about 25% right now, meaning, if you wanted your “output” to be 1 MW, then you will need to find out how many solar panels makes that output and multiply it by 4. Then you have to consider the storage aspect, since it isn’t on demand.
As a submariner and somebody that currently working on industrial uninterruptible power supplies, you are not as afraid of batteries as you should be. They are far scarier than the reactor. If it shorts to ground, there is nothing you can do to stop the reaction or subsequent fire. If our ships battery shorted to our hull, it would melt the hull of the submarine, that’s how powerful these things are.
Also, as for cooling, Palo Verde NPP in Nevada is cooled by the treated waste water from Phoenix. So again, not an engineering problem, just politics.
The reason nuclear is expensive is because we make it expensive. We disincentivize long-term planning on almost every aspect of our economy, including energy. We don’t require the people who built the wind turbines or solar panels to have a disposal plan in place, so they are off the hook the moment they turn their solar farm over to a utility, or privately owned power company (which shouldn’t be a thing). NPP require disposal plans for all waste and all of that is held under intense scrutiny.
Not to mention that Reactors last far longer than wind turbines or solar panels, they require less material overall because of how power dense they are, and they work well with our AC grid, where solar panels need inverters or High voltage DC over long distances, which adds hidden costs and infrastructure costs if you want it to scale at all.