CogentHedgehog

9 ms·

1.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Nah, the nuclear industry got a TON of R&D funding too, and continues to. Plus I don't think you realize just how much governments subsidize and assist nuclear power. $8-10 billion per reactor is more money than companies can easi
2.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
So you're saying the 1% of people driving electric cars should pay for the climate change caused by the 99% that are not?
3.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
> Do people readily go to school to study nuclear engineering? Yes, people do study nuclear engineering. I was considering that path myself in university, but ended up going more towards science and doing several years of research in nu
4.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Small reactors were part of the original 1st gen nuclear reactors. The world went to bigger reactors in the 60s-70s because it ended up being much cheaper than building lots of small ones. Reactor fabrication is complex, and it's eas
5.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
> Citation needed. I already provided a citation for this - https://www.reuters.com/article/france-electricity-solarpowe... ) Quote >> France aims to rapidly develop renewable wind, solar and biomass capacity t
6.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
China's nuclear industry and the way the government interacts with it is just... very different from pretty much any other country. This is true of some of their other sectors. Yes, they can do some things incredibly quickly by more o
7.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Yeah, and there's not enough viable vendors in the nuclear sector to be able to just switch if someone does not play by the rules. You are correct that wind has a lot more flexibility in this area than nuclear. It is also much easier
8.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Passive safety is what you describe. That's a requirement for reactors to be classified as Gen III, so all of the models listed above have some variant of that. > eliminating the need for ever increasing safety tech and complexity
9.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
> which is not what France is doing. They literally are, and have formally said so. They're not shutting down all their reactors right away or anything. But for a country that took pride in betting big on nuclear, officially plann
10.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
You're trying to argue that the solar market in 2020 looks the same as it did in the 1970s? Seriously? When the cost of solar PV has dropped 70% just in the last decade alone...? https://www.lazard.com/media/4514
11.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Click the link and look at the graph in my parent comment. Gas started rising in 2002, when wind and solar had an invisibly small presence in the US market. It sure sounds like you were arguing that renewable energy had a time-travel effec
12.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Today I learned that Wikipedia and OurWorldInData are "press releases"... Yes, we get it that you have a wholly irrational dislike of renewable energy and are willing to grasp at straws to argue against it. > because all those
13.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Gas plants are replacing coal plants: https://www.power-eng.com/2019/04/11/eia-gas-fired-combined-... They're generally cheaper to run and better at load-following. Coal has been on the way out for a dec
14.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
It's not looking so hot for SMRs right now though. NuScale, one of the most promising SMR companies, is losing backers for its first big reactor build. This is a result of cost under-estimates and delays: https://www.scienc
15.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
There's a reason countries don't build breeder reactors. Fuel costs are a tiny fraction of the costs for a nuclear powerplant: less than 10%. Breeders save a bit of money on fuel in exchange for a higher capital cost (cost of co
16.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
> But if its truly cheaper than all the worlds CO2 production problems are solved!! I mean, the International Panel on Climate Change certainly thinks renewable energy is a core part of solving carbon emissions. Their special Report on 1
17.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Wind is a pretty solid source of baseload actually, as long as you build enough. The supplementary materials from Caldeira's Geophysical Constraints paper (usually used to argue AGAINST renewable energy) show that with 50/50 wind
18.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
The reactors being built today are Gen III/Gen III+ designs: AP-1000, the EPR, VVER-1200/ AES-2006, APR1400, etc. These include all the design and engineering refinements we've been able to cram in. They're a far cry f
19.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Nothing in there actually refutes my point that France wants to REDUCE its dependence on nuclear energy overall. France is the poster-child for a nuclear-focused powergrid. If they want to move away from nuclear, that suggests it is not w
20.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
This is... really off base for 2020. Solar and wind in the US are incredibly cheap sources of energy. Literally the cheapest options: https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg Residential solar is
21.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Worth noting that Unit 3 at Olkiluoto in Finland was started before Flamanville and it hit massive cost overruns and delays as well. It was another EPR -- it's not like Flamanville was the very first build of this design, they had anot
22.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Yes, nuclear power projects bid below what they know it will cost and then pull a shocked-pikachu face when the final bill ends up several times the original "cost estimate". Look at Flamanville in France: budget triple the "
23.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Counter-example: the Boeing 737 MAX
24.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
You realize that World Nuclear News is not an unbiased source, right? The UK is doing fine with a renewables-heavy powergrid, as are Spain and Portugal. 40% of their electricity comes from this, and the share is rising steadily.
25.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
NuScale just lost a bunch of their backers for their project after announcing several years of delays and cost overruns. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities... > announced that com
26.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Exactly. Watts Barr in Tennessee just got a big fine from the NRC for safety violations, after trying to lie about an incident to the NRC and firing a whistleblower who reported safety issues. https://news.yahoo.com/federal-
27.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Unit 3 at Olkiluoto in Finland was started before Flamanville and it hit massive cost overruns and delays as well. It was another EPR -- it's not like Flamanville was the very first build of this design, they had another to learn with
28.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Exactly, and when a reactor takes 10 years to build it's almost guaranteed you'll discover some issues after construction begins.
29.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
The Messmer plan (France's big reactor build) was enacted 40-50 years ago. The energy market looked vastly different then. It would not work in 2020. In fact, France is looking to REDUCE their dependence on nuclear energy now. Source
30.
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Even if they can reduce costs a bit, the economics are still not in favor of nuclear energy, and renewable energy has become incredibly cheap. Between 2010 to 2019 wind energy become 70% cheaper and solar became 89% cheaper[1] -- and they&#

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