Bill Gates-backed nuclear contender Terra Power aims to build dozens of UK reactors::A Bill Gates-backed clean energy player is hoping to build dozens of nuclear reactors in the UK and will compete with global rivals.
On the one hand, I think that’s great. We need more nuclear power to mitigate the climate disaster.
On the other hand, I don’t trust anything Bill Gates does after he totally fucked up the U.S. education system.
So travelling wave is out and SMRs are in? Right. What both have in common is that they’re just pipe dreams. Nuclear power never was and never will be economically viable. If we could all just accept that we could get on with real solutions.
The energy density of nuclear fuels is unparalleled.
Modern reactor designs are extremely safe and stable, the only downside is the cost.
The cost is so high because they are basically boutique projects. Having a standardized design with mass produced components would go a long way to making nuclear reactors more affordable.
We’ve had 70 years to figure out how to produce cost-competitive nuclear energy. It’s time to move on.
And electric cars have had over 100 years, so should we have given up on them? Your argument is flawed.
Not at all. We’ve seen massive advancements with EVs, 300+ miles ranges for under $40k are common now. Has nuclear both gotten more capable and cheaper during its lifetime? The answer is a resounding no.
All of those EV advancements were only in the passed 20 years.
The first electric vehicle was made well over 100 years ago. Until very recently they were considered wildly expensive and impractical.
You consider nuclear to me unnecessary and impractical because we’ve had the tech for 75 years and it’s still expensive. Yet nuclear tech is younger than EVs, and you discredit advancements because… reasons.
Your stance confuses me.
Why is it confusing? One is a battery on wheels, the other is controlled nuclear fission, creating steam to drive turbines for electricity generation.
The technology of modern reactors ,like the one in the article, is a greater advancement from early reactors that the 1900th century electric car to a modern one.
The materials, manufacturing techniques, fuels, controls, and components are only achievable due to modern advancements.
The latest reactors will be cheaper, more efficient, and safer. They are a necessary stopgap to overcome the transient nature of renewable energy in the UK and an important piece in ensuring energy availability and detachment from from fossil fuels.
Oh come on. Cheaper? Nuclear reactors frequently go way over budget and take longer than promised to build.
We don’t need nuclear as a stopgap, in fact, it’s not helpful to have base load at all with renewables - nuclear has to run at as close to 100% uptime as possible to make any financial sense. What do you do on windy, sunny days when renewables are generating more power than is required? You can’t switch off a nuclear plant very quickly.
Nuclear makes no sense any more. We need to save the cash and invest in more renewables and storage, and an upgraded power grid.
We did produce cost competitive nuclear. When France went through it’s oil crisis recovery shift to nuclear, they built them every single year for a decade, going from a couple to 40+ in the span of a decade.
We’ve just stopped. So then of course the institutional knowledge disappears.
That’s fair. I’m not anti-nuclear on principle. If we had gone all-in 30 years ago it would’ve made some sense. To build new nuclear now though is a waste of money.
Honestly its a pretty great use of money if you’re thinking long term. A useful if not ideal energy source for the climate crisis especially with batteries not quite being there yet, and thinking past that to more substantial space exploration/colonization its good to already have a working power source that doesn’t rely specifically on earths environment.
Batteries are already “there”, with more chemistries entering production.
You know how nuclear power works, right? It heats water to turn it into steam, which drives turbines so it needs a water source. It’s not something you can use in space. The Mars rover uses the natural decay of plutonium-238 to turn heat into electricity, it’s a completely different thing, no fission required.
No matter how you think about nuclear power in general, it will not be of any substantial help against climate change.
It’s expensive and takes forever to build. Even the optimistic projections of the vendors are well above what wind and solar deliver right now.
Nuclear power is just a tech bro pipe dream. Nobody needs it. It’s just prestige.
The goal of several of these new companies is to build small modular plants that are cookie cutter instead of individual boutique designs. That should bring cost down substantially.
It’s the opposite. Nuclear plants were built as large as possible because that was the only way that made any kind of financial sense. SMRs are a waste of money.
It might have been why in the past, but the issues right now with building new plants is getting a design through production that can survive the review process. Costs come down on the second plant because you have a design you can clone rather than developing it from scratch.
There are already several uses by several countries in using miniature nuclear power plants. This is just an attempt to make it more available to everyone.
Nuclear has never been competitive in terms of cost against the alternatives, first coal and gas, now renewables. In fact, nuclear is only getting more expensive. I really don’t understand why you want to pay more for power than is necessary. I don’t.
Rolls Royce SMRs are more likely to get govt support in the UK
General rule of thumb - if the current UK government is in favor of something it’s probably a really terrible idea.
Dismissing all ideas of those you don’t like is a stupid idea and leads to you becoming dissociated from the views of the population at large but you do you I guess
At least break ideas down into categories small enough that you form a viewpoint on it to compare to theirs, as it’s near impossible to find a group you agree or disagree with on everything
It’s called, “paying attention”. I’ve been watching these crooks dismantle the UK for the past 13 years.
If 90% of their ideas are stupid, you’d still be missing out on a tonne of at least ok ideas
Sounds like you’re not paying attention but instead thinking you know best and so there’s no need to pay attention to anything else
If you want to filter through a mountain of bullshit in order to possibly find a few OK ideas, you’re free to waste your time. You sound like you really don’t have anything interesting to say but you’d like to tone police anyway.
It’s not like you’re looking retrospectively… You sound like a late teen who thinks they’ve got the world all figured out and so have shut everything out, including the things that would make you realise that you actually haven’t
Counterpoint: I’ve actually done the research on this, have you?
I trust RR to build an SMR more than some tech bros.
They literally grow aerospace parts from crystals
The single-crystal structure isn’t intended to cope with temperature, however; it’s to make the blades resistant to the huge mechanical loads that result from their rotational speed. “Every single blade extracts power from the gas stream equivalent to a Formula One car engine,” Glover said. “And the centrifugal force on them is equivalent to the weight of a double-decker bus
I’m not suggesting that a SMR can’t be built, I’m saying that they’re a massive waste of money, unless you hold RR stock.
SMRs are great for decentralization of the power grid.
Which makes the viability of renewables like wind and solar much more viable, as you can have the reactor for each mini grid throttle down based on current renewable yield, and throttle back up when the sun goes down or the wind stops.
It also means that issues like Texas had in the winter of 2021 would be a lot smaller in magnitude, as having one SMR and renewables go offline would only cause a local power outage, instead of entire cities suddenly being without heat or power.
I can’t find any sources that support SMRs being used as peaker plants, conventional nuclear certainly can’t behave this way. Do you have any links?
You can do this but it makes them even more expensive, because you’ve built an expensive plant for operational capacity that you don’t use.
We should be load following with storage, not nukes.
Do you have a source on that? I can’t find anything supporting SMRs for peak use. How quickly can they come online? How much notice to take offline? How long to reach peak generation?
