Where does Nuclear Power stand as an energy alternative?

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The lowest common denominator is that it's too expensive.
And it will only continue to become more so relative to the falling costs of renewables.
Every other argument is an add on...
 
It's got a great future with Russia and China, the latter which has their own indigenous reactor design which they'll be able to roll-out at a lower cost than anyone else. Russia has partnered with numerous countries to construct their latest reactor designs.

Up here in Canada, SMR's have a very bright future, as they are being actively pursued. We just announced the Environmental Assessment for the first build at Chalk River, which means the next milestone is construction.

In the USA? Things look a lot less rosy. Though there is some positive stuff around SMR's, other countries, including Canada, are much further ahead, providing an environment that's significantly more conducive to nuclear startup success.
 
Originally Posted by Imp4
The lowest common denominator is that it's too expensive.
And it will only continue to become more so relative to the falling costs of renewables.
Every other argument is an add on...


CAPEX is only one metric to gauge cost. This makes up the bulk of the "too expensive" argument for Nuclear, and is by far the biggest obstacle for new builds that are not publicly funded. "Renewables" in comparison have massively lower CAPEX, but the ongoing cost of firming them isn't cheap, nor have been previous methods of securing VRE roll-out via subsidies like FIT for example.

The goal with the various SMR programmes is to alleviate the CAPEX issue and entice private funding, which is basically the only way to ensure success in the states. In other parts of the world, all of this, including past programs, have been funded publicly, which is why China is providing state financing for its external builds abroad, alleviating the CAPEX anxiety.
 
With clean coal, who needs nuclear? Too expensive to build without government subsidies and too dangerous when something happens. Also, what do you do with spent fuel...

With clean coal, you have cheap, healthy electricity.
 
Great info OVERKILL, thank you. So beside the cost factor, what is the main obstacle facing nuclear energy as an alternative? Perception of safety? The Chernobly series on HBO probably didn't help any. What are the current risks facing modern nuclear plants? Making nuclear establishments safe from natural disasters?

*Please don't make this political, we are all adults here. This is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with IMO.
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I posted this to learn. I'm not familiar with this subject.
 
Originally Posted by Alfred_B
With clean coal, who needs nuclear? Too expensive to build without government subsidies and too dangerous when something happens. Also, what do you do with spent fuel...

With clean coal, you have cheap, healthy electricity.


Technically if you look at the numbers, more have died from coal from coal miners to deaths from lung disease than have ever died from any nuclear accident in the US. I think if you include Chernobyl, that still might be true. Of course only the Russians were crazy enough to run a type of reactor like Chernobyl.

As for the spent fuel, well they just keep it on site now.
 
Originally Posted by Alfred_B
With clean coal, who needs nuclear? Too expensive to build without government subsidies and too dangerous when something happens. Also, what do you do with spent fuel...

With clean coal, you have cheap, healthy electricity.


CCS is an energy intensive nightmare (>20% penalty), massively increasing overall consumption, and you still have the coal mining, which is hugely destructive and emissions intense. "Clean coal" isn't any kind of long term solution, it's simply a temporary harm reduction technique to reduce the environmental impact of currently operating plants (scrubbers + CCS) until something better can be put in place to replace it. And that doesn't even factor in the pandora's box of where and how you are storing the captured carbon.
 
Nuclear is in our future, once natural gas and coal become too expensive/rare to keep relying on them. Renewables are rapidly approaching a price floor and we're now seeing higher than anticipated maintenance costs so don't expect them to be enough to replace fossil fuels without continuing if not increasing dependence on nuclear.

We can't build enough wind and solar farms to meet the growing needs of a transition to EV's (eventually), and certain regions must retain the land for farming as the population continues to increase, especially if chicken littles out there keep demanding organic, no pesticides, no GMOs which drastically reduces crop yield.

Gates is trying to do something different, not just thrusting more nuclear power on the world but rather doing it before other sources become more expensive, with his expensive, complicated design. This is not a sign that all nuclear has this hurdle, just what Gates is trying to do and he's trying to put a reactor in a different country which (obviously) won't get any US DOE funding like competitive nuclear strategies, nor should it.
 
Originally Posted by Alfred_B
With clean coal, who needs nuclear? Too expensive to build without government subsidies and too dangerous when something happens. Also, what do you do with spent fuel...

With clean coal, you have cheap, healthy electricity.


I'd personally would rather see more nuclear plants than coal plants. Controlling NOx isn't cheap and where you going to put all that radioactive fly ash?
 
Originally Posted by buster
Great info OVERKILL, thank you. So beside the cost factor, what is the main obstacle facing nuclear energy as an alternative? Perception of safety? The Chernobly series on HBO probably didn't help any. What are the current risks facing modern nuclear plants? Making nuclear establishments safe from natural disasters?

*Please don't make this political, we are all adults here. This is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with IMO.
55.gif


I posted this to learn. I'm not familiar with this subject.


Biggest obstacle beyond cost is regulatory environment followed by public perception, which varies massively by geography. Remember, there have been disinformation campaigns waged by the likes of the Sierra Club (fossil fuel front) and Greenpeace conflating civilian nuclear power with nuclear weapons, spreading fear and lies....etc for decades. There was an oceanographic wave height chart being used at one point as a map of the radiation flow from Fukushima for example, and people believed it and shared it, even though the legend on the bloody map indicated wave height!
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Current risks also vary on reactor design and siting. Our plants in Canada are insanely safe because of how they were designed, and this was because we had our own tiny incident back in the 1950's at Chalk River that resulted in a leak, and so preventing that in all future iterations of anything designed by AECL became paramount. Our plants are also not going to get exposed to a tsunami (Fukushima) because none of them are on the ocean.

When you ask about modern plants, are you talking about 3rd gen or 4th gen designs? 3rd gen designs like the EPR are more like evolutions of existing designs with even better safety mechanisms and more automation, whilst the 4th gen designs (think SMR's) are mostly clean slate which vary significantly in design, cooling, fuel....etc. Many of them are passively cooled and don't require traditional waterbody cooling for example. Others are designed to run on existing waste stores. All of them are designed to be "walk away safe"; essentially meltdown proof.

China's indigenous Hualong One design, which borrows heavily from the builds they partnered on with Westinghouse and Areva, is a 3rd gen design, so, unlike the SMR's, these are big, high output plants. While China is actively pursuing SMR's, they lack the CAPEX problem (state funding) that new builds elsewhere are facing, and so pursuing series builds of a 3rd gen design appears to be their current trajectory, with 30+ of these units planned.
 
I agree. Coal is basically endless and creates scores of jobs.

It's what I use to heat my house.
 
Originally Posted by Dave9
...Renewables are rapidly approaching a price floor and we're now seeing higher than anticipated maintenance costs so don't expect them to be enough to replace fossil fuels without continuing if not increasing dependence on nuclear.


And on top of that, solar and wind have serious environmental impact none of their proponents could foresee.
 
Originally Posted by Y_K
Originally Posted by Dave9
...Renewables are rapidly approaching a price floor and we're now seeing higher than anticipated maintenance costs so don't expect them to be enough to replace fossil fuels without continuing if not increasing dependence on nuclear.


And on top of that, solar and wind have serious environmental impact none of their proponents could foresee.


I forgot about this... our panels get covered when it snows. Snow covered panels=no power.
 
Most coal mine deaths are in unregulated mines. There is still no place to safely keep the spent fuel rods. I believe it's still all about the money. Build a nuclear plant now......worry about the fuel rods later.
My vote is go back to more coal.
 
All you have to do is reprocess the fuel rods; But no, that is too scary, plutonium and all;

No safe place. Thorium is even better.

Rod
 
Originally Posted by Skippy722
Originally Posted by Y_K
Originally Posted by Dave9
...Renewables are rapidly approaching a price floor and we're now seeing higher than anticipated maintenance costs so don't expect them to be enough to replace fossil fuels without continuing if not increasing dependence on nuclear.


And on top of that, solar and wind have serious environmental impact none of their proponents could foresee.


I forgot about this... our panels get covered when it snows. Snow covered panels=no power.

And the sun goes down every day like clock work. No solar power then, no way around it.
And the wind doesn't always blow, so renewable energy can't replace stand alone power generation. In fact it requires BOTH sources be capitalized since renewables require a backup source to generate when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. And despite what many wish to believe renewable energy does have negative environmental impacts. Wildlife is negatively affected by wind mills and solar farms. Both take up massive amounts of real estate. And nobody wants one in their back yard.

Do you know the most efficient and reliable source of renewable power? Hydro electric. The sun moves water into the atmosphere in the form of water vapor, it precipitates at higher elevations, and is stored in reservoirs where it can be used 24 hours a day for generation when demand calls for it. And for those that believe carbon is a poison, it has no carbon footprint. It also has drawbacks and environmental issues, but all sources of energy do.
 
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