[cschwarm]

Question(s) to the nuclear supporters here:

1. Are you talking about global electricity? Or just the West?

2. How much nuclear power do you want? 20%, 50%, 70%, or 100%? Or something else?

3. What nuclear technology? Traditional, Molten Salt, SMRs, or something else?

4. What institutional setting do you image for your nuclear power plants? Private ownership, or nationalized plants like in France?

Just curious...

[brucethemoose2]

1. Yes!

2. Just some more than we have now.

3. Yes!

4. Yes!

Seriously though, I just want some reactor construction to spin up with non ancient reactor designs, to replace some fossil fuel plants. PBR[1] sounds good to me... but what do I know? There are experts who can decide this.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor

[audunw]

These are the kinds of anwsers that makes me think you haven't thought through this much.

There are very clear plans for going 100% renewable. See Marc Z Jacobsens studies for instance. I wouldn't mind some nuclear power myself. But there just doesn't seem to be a clear plan about what approach to take. We don't have time to just dabble in various new reactor technologies.

To me it seems we could either build old simple reactors that we don't really trust anymore. I wouldn't mind, but it's not realistic. Or try to get Gen III+ and Gen IV reactors down in cost. But will it help? Will it be worth the investments? I guess we should at least keep existing nuclear engineers employed.

Seems to me that the only barrier now to just going all-in on renewables is energy storage. The next next few decades will be aaaaall about energy storage and transformation technologies anyway.. so there's an argument to be had that it's a good thing to just go all in on energy storage R&D. That kind of expertise will be critical to decarbonizing transportation, fertilizer and metal production anyway. Better energy storage makes it easier to decarbonize across all sectors. There's excellent network effects. Better nuclear only helps decarbonizing the grid, but that's just a part of our challenge.

Nuclear is not going to power every country anyway. That ship has basically already sailed with solar+energy storage. It's just the simplest way to get up and running with electricity if you don't have a grid, and as technologies improve, developing areas will just continue to scale that up.

The big X factor is advanced geothermal energy. I think once the fossil fuel industry sees the writing on the wall, a lot of engineers from that sector will go into geothermal. If just one of them manages to succeed getting the cost down, and drill deeper, what's the point of nuclear fission?

And then there's the fact that nuclear directly contributes to global warming by directly heating up the planet. Much less than greenhouse gases, but surprisingly much. That's extra heat we can't really afford in the coming decades. Rivers are going to end up being at the edge of ecologoical collapse due to global warming... and we're going to dump MORE heat into them?

[brucethemoose2]

It doesn't seem like pure renewable is the minimal cost, maximum speed solution. Storage is expensive however you cut it, and there is already infrastructure in place to operate nuclear plants that would be wasted if they were slowly retired.

Geothermal is indeed a dark horse/wildcard. I dunno if you have read this, but it is extremely promising: https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-drilling-...

What do you do with old fusion research and the oil drilling industry? Maser drill holes under coal plants, and pipe it to their turbine! Oh and you run the maser with the existing infrastructure at the coal plant. Its almost too good to be true.

[KennyBlanken]

In the US we're replacing nuclear plants with renewables at a 6:1 ratio.

The only people who think we need more nuclear power plants is the nuclear power industry and the politicians they're heavily lobbying to stay relevant.

[Matticus_Rex]

> The only people who think we need more nuclear power plants is the nuclear power industry and the politicians they're heavily lobbying to stay relevant.

And also quite a few energy experts and the people who listen to them. The US nuclear industry's major players are bloated cronies satisfied with ALARA and other idiotic policies that keep them alive by preventing competition.

If ALARA weren't in place, nuclear would be thriving and competitive (and still safe!).

[andbberger]

CAISO penned a series of increasingly urgent press releases on how catastrophic closing diablo canyon would be for grid stability when it's closure was imminent.

[NineStarPoint]

1)Global. Proliferation risks aren’t as relevant to me as solving the reliance on fossil fuels. West+China probably needs to prove out wide scale usage of it first though.

2) However much is necessary to create a stable grid with as minimal an amount of electricity coming from fossil fuel usage possible. I do prefer renewable to nuclear, but I think society scale energy storage isn’t going to be a solved problem in a reasonable time frame. If we only need 20% nuclear to phase out most fossil fuel plants, great. I don’t know the exact point where experts expect that renewables without storage would stop being able to create a stable grid without the existing plants.

3)Ideally MSRs, but given they’re still not completely proven out it’s probably best to start building traditional immediately and switch if the currently in production MSR plants do in fact work out.

4)Start nationalized at least, since they’re more expensive than private ownership allows but necessary for the public good (also, yeah, don’t really want private ownership of traditional reactors). If MSRs work out and economies of scale kick in a little as we build out more plants, maybe private ownership will be viable at some point.

[RobotToaster]

1) both

2) 200% of current demand, to account for the rise in demand caused by climate change

3) whatever we can build now

4) Only governments genuinely have the ability to build nuclear reactors without any outside intervention or help. Even when they are built supposedly privately there's government involvement to make sure radioactive material isn't diverted or dumped. I can't imagine anyone but the most extreme libertarian wants private unregulated nuclear reactors.

[matsemann]

Most of them don't really want nuclear, they just push it as an excuse to do nothing right now (at least here in Norway). Yes, more nuclear is probably good. But planning, permissions, building and getting a reactor up and running probably is 15+ years most places. We need power before then. So we can't stop building wind farms, solar etc. in the meantime. Which is really what they want to achieve where I live: avoid wind farms, so grasping at everything.

[audunw]

Yeah, while the fossil fuel lobby used to fight against nuclear, I'm pretty sure they're indirectly using nuclear to fight renewables right now.

For them, either renewables will cut into their business right now.. or they can argue we should build nuclear instead.. which could either lead to nothing getting built, or that nuclear gets built in 10-15 years. Either way, they delay the threat to their business. So it's a win for them either way. I don't think they have high hopes to fight off renewables or nuclear forever. So whichever is slower is better.

Pure speculation on my part, I'll admit. But I see so many arguing for nuclear who doesn't seem to care AT ALL about climate change or preserving nature when you press them on their arguments. So I can't help think that way.