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LouSanous t1_jd9rdvg wrote

Can I just say that so many of you all finally getting it about nuclear makes me happy. Im an ex nuclear employee, EE.

Already existing nuke is fine enough; expensive power, but I'm not going to crusade against it either.

But I have been debunking building new nuke for a long time, often on this very sub, and getting downvoted to hell for it. I cite everything and the arguments are fucking watertight. Some layman will post one article about a SMR that's like 20 years out from commercialization as if it's a rebuttal to any of the 15 points I made prior.

As a professional engineer in power, these people make my blood fucking curdle.

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silentsnip94 t1_jda4f7x wrote

Are you for new nuclear technology? It's really impressive tbh

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LouSanous t1_jdam1un wrote

In theory, if it was commercially available and could be built out in less than 2 decades, sure

Neither of those things are true though.

New Nuclear should be confined to the laboratory until we have decarbonized, then we can build a nice shiny new reactor that has all the bugs worked out and uses some super common fuel like thorium once the existing renewables start to reach their end of life.

It probably has a place in that future, but going after it now doesn't make any sense. We have serious problems that require immediate solutions and nuke just ain't it.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_jde7l7s wrote

> once the existing renewables start to reach their end of life.

renewables don't reach an end of life. That's the point.

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LouSanous t1_jdg4ae2 wrote

Solar panels have a lifespan. Anything with moving parts has a lifespan. That includes wind turbines.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_jdg4xbv wrote

so do nuclear plants so to there is no net gain from building those over priced messes.

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LouSanous t1_jdg68c8 wrote

I agree. I would only consider nuclear in the event that there was some new reactor that could burn spent waste, reducing the half life of it, used no water for cooling and had minimal or no meltdown risk. We have solutions now to these problems that don't involve nuclear

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Throbbing_Furry_Knot t1_jdbk0cs wrote

>Some layman will post one article about a SMR that's like 20 years out from commercialization

Out of curiosity, what do you think of Rolls Royce's efforts? Their first commercial SMR is supposed to power up 6 years from now. I imagine I will probably be disappointed with that timeline, but their previous experience with nuclear submarines, and that they are going the generic and not reinvent everything route makes me think it may be possible.

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Excellent_Impact6860 t1_jddhm4n wrote

Here, take my downvote. Your arguments stand on water. New nuke is expensive NOW, after west killed the industry for 3 decades and made it a niche, low numbers "homemade" enterprise. If it was deployed in economies of scale, the economics would look completely different.

Just look at chinese nuclear

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LouSanous t1_jddqhpx wrote

Look at Chinese anything. We build light rail in the US for 202 million per mile. The Chinese build HSR for 14.7 million per mile. What's your point?

Comparing the US to China on building costs is apples and oranges. For one, steel, concrete, banking, and construction are all state enterprises in China. They don't contract out the construction of infrastructure or the materials to for-profit companies.

Consider the following inequality:

If A(>)0 and B(>)0 then,

A+B (>) A

Where A is cost and B is profit.

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Excellent_Impact6860 t1_jde5byn wrote

And yet china can afford to build it at this pace and price point for 2+ decades now, so I guess my point is western inefficiency?

But of course that would be not true. West is plenty efficient where real "free market" is in place, i.e. supply of office furniture, toilet paper, mass produced meat etc are all very efficient and affordable

But the west became disgustingly inefficient where politics or local power interests are involved - so construction became ridiculously expensive. Housing became expensive. Transit became expensive. Energy is next to become expensive if people won't push back.

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LouSanous t1_jdg46sw wrote

>2+ decades

7+ decades.

>supply of office furniture, toilet paper, mass produced meat etc are all very efficient and affordable

All of that stuff is significantly cheaper in China. Whatever perceived efficiency the US has is due primarily to unequal exchange.

The US is a failed state. See the TikTok debacle from today for all you need to know about how useless our regulators are.

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Kaz_55 t1_jdh4xbi wrote

>after west killed the industry for 3 decades and made it a niche, low numbers "homemade" enterprise.

The nuclear industry has been the most well funded and subsidized energy industry in history, and this was still the case up to ~2005

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/energy-subsidies.aspx

"The west" didn't kill the nuclear industry. The inherent limitations and problems, along with eternal stagnation as far as results are concerned is what "killed" the nuclear industry. And citing "but China" isn't going to change that. Even the chinese have been scaling back their nuclear efforts:

https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes

while pretty much every project involving renewables over there overdelivers. Nuclear is a dead end, simply because it's too slow, too expensive and it can't be scaled the way renewables can. Nuclear wouldn'T even be able to provide global base load capacity without running into massive issues.

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