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by deepnotderp 275 days ago
Oh my bad, you’re right

Re: Nat gas, agreed, it’s not solar though, storage is much more expensive

Thermal energy still needs to drive a turbine to generate electricity

1 comments

Sure. 600 C is about the temperature of steam in a coal fired power plant, so one of the use cases here is to take an old coal plant and replace the heat source. It's much higher temperature than the steam in a LWR, so the turbine can be smaller and cheaper. Also, no steam generator is needed as in a PWR.
Yes but one of the reasons that coal is being replaced by gas is because of the capex of the steam turbine
Yes? That doesn't mean the capex of a steam turbine for this application would be unaffordable, or that this wouldn't have superior economics to nuclear (which also has a steam turbine, and a more expensive one).