[acidburnNSA]

I think we should be building the best LWRs right now to decarbonize immediately: ABWR, APR-1400, AP1000. My favorite decarbonize rapidly at scale idea is to build a shipyard-based nuclear reactor gigafactory and mass-produce floating PWRs. (This was actually almost done in the 1970s in Jacksonville Florida. They had a manufacturing license from the NRC, the world's largest gantry crane installed and, everything [1]).

Assuming we do build 1000+ gigawatts soon, then we will need to look into nuclear fuel recycling with breeder reactors. The most popular Gen-IV concepts in this area are sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFR) and thorium molten salt breeder reactors (T-MSRs). We have 450 reactor-years of experience with SFRs and like 5 with MSRs. Many of the SFR years were not great, and the MSR tech performance has never been seen at industrial scale (though China is about to turn on a T-MSR really soon!)

So yeah I'm kind of a "decarbonize now with what we know 100% works" person. Focus on Gen-IV is fine for some people, but I think the industry and fans of the industry are way too overhyped on Gen-IV and not nearly hyped enough about Gen-III+. Japan can build gigawatt-class ABWRs in 36 months.

We had a ABWR licensed and ready to build at South Texas Project but we just let it sit there. What a sad sad thing. That's a billion carbon-free watts we are not using.

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-01-26-offshore-power-sys...

[natmaka]

As far as I know there is, after 70 years of research in many nations, not a single industrial satisfactorily working fast-breeder reactor. Is there one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Development_an...

The most advanced one is Russia's BN-800 (now burning 60% MOX). Its planned big brother was cancelled "In 2015, after several minor delays, problems at the recently completed BN-800 indicated a redesign was needed. Construction of the BN-1200 was put on "indefinite hold", and Rosenergoatom has stated that no decision to continue will be made before 2019." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor

This is not due to a lack of interest or funding because Russia launched a new project towards another architecture and builds a small reactor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor)

[cycomanic]

So if nuclear is significantly more expensive that wind/solar like stated in the original article and faster to build (or are you disputing the numbers?), why would we not use the same money to instead build more renewables to get us there faster?

[s1artibartfast]

The classic answer is storage and on-demand production. Massive pumped storage is one partial solution the solar energy but I think the environmental impact is great enough that it would prevent it from ever being implemented in the United States.

[trashtester]

I haven't seen the numbers that justify that wind/solar are cheaper than nuclear if you aim to fully de-carbonize (get rid of coal and gas completely). Massive amounts of storage would be needed, which is hard except in areas with a lot of hydro dams available.

[freemint]

Salt water + molten salt sounds like a real headache to maintain.

[AtlasBarfed]

Existing plants are barely competitive with the worst wind/solar from the LCOE graphs I've seen.

There's NO WAY a new LWR will ever beat LCOE of solar + wind + battery. And that is current day prices that doesn't count forthcoming sodium ion storage, LFP, and solar/wind cost improvements.

And it won't come online for a decade at best, with inevitable massive cost overruns.

LWR/PWR is all the crap with waste, fuel rod reprocessing, only using select isotopes of uranium, and while I'm not an expert at nuclear plant economics and accounting, have tons of unpriced externalities.

I wouldn't support any LWR/PWR unless it had LFTR or other reactors built with it that could "online process" the waste. And if we had those, why bother with the huge shield domes?

I'll read your blog posts though carefully, maybe I'll change my mind. But a cursory look seems like it is caged too much in the baggage of the last century of nuclear, which IMO are just dead ends that won't practically advance nuclear for the next century.

As in, we need a couple decades of wind/solar to wipe clean the current slate of nuclear, from politics to actual installations.

Edit: The old designs are interesting, but they are huge and expensive.

What I look forward to in next gen nuclear is basically all of these:

- breeds (so you can use thorium and reprocess old spent waste to usable stuff)

- meltdown proof (LFTR has the melt plug and cooling tank that will decriticalize the liquid)

- scalable to a bunch of shipping containers or smaller (LFTR allegedly fit in a closet for the demo)

- 99% fuel use (per the docs, no idea if this is true or not)

LFTR promises those, if it can deliver due to containment degradation issues, who knows.

When I look at the gee-whiz LFTR presentations, what sticks out to me is the closed fuel cycle/complete usage, promise of breeding old waste to non-waste or new fuel, and so many other things that fix the errors of nuclear history.

The other thing that is missing is computer simulation. We should be able to develop far more usable designs with modern simulation software. We know the military has a lot of fission simulation software. Materials degradation and so many other things can be calculated far better than was available in the 1960s.

The final thing holding back nuclear is that despite a lot of their idiocy, the fact of the matter is that the "greenies" were correct about nuclear energy. It was poorly designed from a long term perspective, played fast and loose with waste, and many other considerations which probably derived from its military inception. The military only cares about the end result, and giving a 100,000 people cancer from spillage/meltdowns, dealing with the full cycle of waste, or actually maintaining safe operation.

Tepco, a japanese company with all the supposed strict adherence to process, was operating the reactor incompetently. Fukushima wasn't an outlier, it was an indictment of the large reactor design over the long haul.

LFTR design addresses SO MUCH of that. Far better meltdown protection, and full fuel use so there's practically no waste (not by the old solid fuel rod standards).

So if the nuclear industry doesn't reformulate around things that LFTR can do, then it will just fail in the long run again.

[webXL]

Targets to ban internal combustion engines will put an enormous strain on battery costs. Someone mentioned "massive pumped storage" but there's hardly any water where you'd want to build solar plants.

Industry and even the modest of living standards depends on energy density & reliability. So there's really no way to get completely off of fossil fuels without nuclear or literally starving people. That's your choice.

If Fukushima wasn't an outlier, then I wouldn't want to live anywhere close to a traditional reactor. Yet accident statistics & population trends don't really support that conclusion.