Greenpeace screwed all the pooches on that

Post #442,015 by drook 9/4/22 8:37:46 AM 9/4/22 8:37:46 AM Reply	Greenpeace screwed all the pooches on that I read an interview with one of the founders who said conflating nuclear power with nuclear weapons had kept us on fossil fuels for decades past where we should have been off of them. -- Drew
Post #442,017 by Another Scott 9/4/22 12:44:03 PM 9/4/22 12:44:03 PM Reply	Dunno. I'm against expanding nuclear. Maybe keep existing plants going past their original decommissioning date if it can be done safely, maybe. Look at Vogtle in Georgia: The NRC’s decision takes Vogtle Unit 3 “out of the construction reactor oversight program and moves it into the operating reactor oversight process,” the commission said. Vogtle Unit 4 remains under construction. Vogtle units 3 and 4 are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over their initial budget. The total cost estimate for the two units is now more than $30 billion. Major construction on Vogtle began in 2012 with a $14 billion price tag and expected startup dates of 2016 and 2017. A series of contractor delays, a litany of rework, problems with finishing individual tasks on time and the bankruptcy of reactor designer Westinghouse Electric Co. LLC have doubled the project’s costs. Nuclear has all kinds of problems. It has always been more expensive than promised, even before Westinghouse went under. Plus, there's the perpetual issue of what do you do with the waste? DW - Fact Check - Is Nuclear Energy Good for the Climate? The Alta Wind Energy Center in California has 1550 MW installed capacity and cost $2.9B. $1.9M/MW. Vogtle 3 and 4 each have 1250 MW gross capacity. $12M/MW. We could buy a *lot* of wind and solar for the cost of these nuclear plants. TANSTAAFL, there's no One Weird Trick, and something, something clear, simple, and wrong. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #442,041 by CRConrad 9/9/22 5:20:26 AM 9/9/22 5:20:26 AM Reply	"Something, something": No matter the problem, there is always a solution that is... - H. L. Mencken IIRC.
Post #442,043 by drook 9/9/22 9:57:36 AM 9/9/22 9:57:36 AM Reply	Wind and solar still need storage tech, or other baseline generation There are still calm nights where wind and solar won't provide enough. We need either industrial-scale short-term storage, or baseline generation that you can spin up. Smaller nukes would do that. It's likely that if we hadn't demonized nuclear power in the 60s that wind and solar wouldn't be as advanced as they are now. But now that they are maturing, it's time to talk about a reasonable end state. Which I think is wind and solar for primary generation, and increased storage (large scale or distributed, or both), and nuclear that can spin up when needed. And since we're going to need nuclear, we should standardize on one small, repeatable design so we don't have to re-do all the design and inspection and certification work from scratch every time. -- Drew
Post #442,047 by Andrew Grygus 9/9/22 12:41:05 PM 9/9/22 12:41:05 PM Reply	Of course, the real solution is fusion power . . . . . but nobody's gotten it to work yet.
Post #442,051 by drook 9/9/22 8:22:04 PM 9/9/22 8:22:04 PM Reply	Govt knows dilithium is the solution but their fossil fuel lobbyists won't let them talk about it -- Drew

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