Reply to post: Re: nuclear power generation is 'fucking expensive'

Re: nuclear power generation is 'fucking expensive'

Any power generating capability these days is fucking expensive, if we're to have enough of it to reliably provide base-load and peaking demand. Not just build cost, but total lifetime cost including environmental damage. Environmental damage which includes resource extraction to build enough of whatever generating source is being built.

Be that nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, hydro, gas, coal, whatever.

Coal and gas have known and proven environmental damage. Gas less so than coal, but still has problems.

Hydro needs massive dams, which flood vast areas of otherwise usable land and can lead to severe downstream problems for people who previously relied on the rivers that are now dammed. The price of generated electricity may be reasonable, and it doesn't produce any GHGs once built, but the construction costs are still massive.

Tidal has been shown to affect coastline erosion and formation patterns, sometimes in ways that are not good. There's also the problem of keeping the things working in such a mechanically hostile environment (salt, water, biofouling, blockages etc.). And the things are really expensive.

Solar has obvious problems more the more northerly lattitudes i.e the UK. Plus you need huge amounts of land area to provide enough panels.

Wind needs huge numbers of massive turbines to make much of a dent, and actual power output is almost always way, way lower than nameplate generating capacity. There's often times of low to no wind, so then the turbines aren't doing anything. Plus they keep breaking. Whenever I've driven past wind farms, it always seems like most of the turbines aren't turning. And again, huge amounts of land area is needed to provide enough turbines.

Where I am now, it's cloudy and there's no wind. It'll be like that all day. Solar and wind would be useless.

Storage could address the intermittency, to a degree. Trouble is you need so much of it, and all solutions are either hideously inefficient (batteries) or have severe site limitations (pumped hydro). Again, the cost to roll out sufficient capacity is enormous. And if there's not enough provision, at some point there will be blackouts, disruption, and even more expense as it's realised that even more storage is needed.

Traditional nuclear costs a lot to build up front. There have been a handful of accidents. Only one was serious enough to have lasting effects. Clean up will be an issue of course, but the problems there are always massively overexaggerated by the anti-nuke movements.

Modern SMR designs are 'walk-away safe' i.e. they don't need constant supervision, and they don't need power to maintain containment. Something goes wrong, they just shut down. They tend not to be pressurised, so there's nothing to "explode". Some designs burn up a huge amount of what's traditionally considered "waste" - which in truth is just another form of fissionable fuel.

Nuclear is the most energy-dense, power-dense generating source we have. It needs by far the smallest land area per generated unit. It is reliable base-load power, and some modern designs can even load-follow to handle peaking.

SMR - if allowed to be implemented properly - has the potential to vastly reduce build costs, provide cleam, reliable power, and address all the safety and waste concerns, both real and imaginary.

Rationally, SMR nuclear is by far the best option. It's that or we waste hundreds of billions on unreliable renewable and inefficient storage, and probably still have to actively manage people energy use. That doesn't sound like a bright and happy future to me.