With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online.<p>The nuclear plant consists of two units each with 1200MW production capacity. Let's be pessimistic and assume that we need 24 hours of storage or roughly 57600MWh. A modern redox flow or lithium ion battery can cost as little as $100 per kWh but Tesla's grid battery with 129MWh cost 66 million which is around $500 per kWh so we will use that.<p>Well it turns out 57600MWh * 500$/kWH is exactly 28.8 billion USD. No power grid on earth needs a 24 hour battery but even with this crazy assumption grid storage isn't significantly more expensive than nuclear power.
I see so many people against nuclear but I wonder if they read books such as Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. As I understand it, either we kill ourselves fast, or we use this as a stop-gap until we can figure it out for real. With newer reactors being much better, maybe another generation (helped by more implementations) will even be good enough not to have to be a stop-gap solution.
I'm writing this from Japan. I do not have the numbers, but as I cross the country in the Shinkansen I see a sea of solar panels.<p>Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already at the core of their transportation system.<p>Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.
Just a nitpick, neutrons aren't <i>blasted</i> into the nuclei of fissile isotopes. The faster a neutron is going, the less likely it is to cause fission. You want slow neutrons.
The thesis, <i>A new generation of environmentalists is learning to stop worrying and love atomic power</i> is unsupported by the text if the article.<p>My readthrough of the article failed to reveal supporting evidence that there is widespread change in opinion about nuclear in younger generations, much less that a pro-nuclear movement is growing.
Another factor to consider with nuclear is how it perpetuates complete dependence upon the grid, a single point of failure model. Perspective articulated here by Sunnova CEO John Berger.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922</a>
Now there'a title that Ed Bernays would be proud of. 'A new generation approves.' So, where's this new generation? What demonstrates their love? Show me pictures of a dozen, or it didn't happen. Then, show how that scales with full knowledge of history, not just free jelly babies.<p>Fantasy fiction isn't going to solve our dilemma. Advanced, less toxic technology will. Nuclear has had its chance.
Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar? I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels". People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements, but with more development wouldn't the technology improve?<p>I imagine a future where the technology improves to the point where people who live in cloudy areas can still generate plenty of power. Is that unrealistic?
I recommend Whole Earth Disciple by Stewart Brand. One of the founders of the environmental movement explains why he was wrong about nuclear power and other issues.<p>“We are as gods, and have to get good at it.”
The Russians have been building floating nuclear power plants to deploy to remote areas that need power.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...</a>
The recent piece by HCN on our nuclear past stands in sharp contrast. [1] Anyone reading that, environmentalists or not, will have reason for extreme concern and skepticism about a single generations ability to manage consequences that can last thousands of years.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no-easy-fix-for-our-nuclear-past" rel="nofollow">https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no-ea...</a>
No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extracting uranium from the earth uses tremendous amounts of heavy equipment, but the carbon outputs from mining (and cleanup) are never mentioned anywhere in order to sustain the "clean power" myth.
We have the opportunity now, to decide to not kill everything bigger than bacteria. We could shutdown nukes, and store the waste. Or we could go for broke - if we go extinct - everything goes extinct.
Yet another article about the complex subject of power generation that wilfully conflates fusion with fission. (Usually it's 'nuclear power' - here it's 'atomic power'.<p>That's assuming we're happy to think we have a power problem, not an an energy problem. Anti-solar types (who similarly conflate PVC with solar thermal) like to mix or muddle those. Fission apologists who think that because Lithium is mined, then mining Uranium should be just fine, also seem keen to blunt some semantic nuances.<p>Nuclear fission's time has been and gone - it's great for bombs, and was an interesting experiment, but the costs are way higher than anyone should reasonably expect to pass onto future generations.<p>(Plus they snuck in that nasty 'metric ton' construct. 1000kg is a tonne.)
This is a ridiculous and fundamentally flawed proposition. The obvious omissions and lack of consideration of other factors threatening the planet belies this author's bias/naivete/stupidity/other motivations.<p>First, the demand for energy is only a small fraction of numerous ways the planet is being compromised - irrevocably. Satisfying all energy demands worldwide cleanly will not "save the planet".<p>Second, carbon-free is completely different than being clean energy. The byproducts (generally leaking radioactive waste) are significant, highly toxic, and long-lasting. While the emissions of fossil fuels is considered, other cleaner alternatives are not.<p>Third, the demand for energy is, for the most part, contrived. We are sold on the ideas of the need for one car for each person, the need for cars to travel in the first place, whole house heating and cooling, electrical solutions to simple manual tasks, etc ad infinitum. We could massively reduce energy needs by using low-power and no-power solutions.