It's already non-competitive with solar + battery for any new start builds. I doubt a single commercial installation would exist of these microreactors before battery and solar/battery costs drop another 50-80%.
Even hydro will have issues competing in 20 years.
Batteries, as well, are impacted by the cold in their own ways.
Is a tiny reactor the answer? Probably not. But energy at a constant rate all year round that also self warms? That sounds pretty good to me.
The problem with this theory is it takes too long between the step where the boosters sell the town with job creation and when the plant can't be cancelled. If you get a city on board today, chances are you won't have a permit in 10 years, and you need to keep them on board the whole time until the permit is issued or they'll derail the permit. It's better to keep them on board at least until the reactor is fueled... but once it's fueled, the jobs engine will probably sustain itself.
Actually, these datacenters are much, much worse in different ways if you'd consider they are much bigger, louder, and resource-intensive. While hypermarts put local business out of business and take up comparatively less land including parking lots (while still being huge), their effects are bad but in different ways, especially given they abuse low wage workers who require government subsidies (indirect corporate welfare) and when they leave suddenly they create food deserts.
How much faster, is for somebody more knowledgeable than me to answer.
And now politics comes into play: these ships would have to not only have significant permanent armament, but given significant latitude to use lethal force.
And I agree that nuclear is not competitive with solar.
But we haven't really invested in nuclear for more than 4 decades now. Nuclear is just a technology. There is no reason to think nuclear capital costs need to be forever locked at the current levels. China has at least three times lower capital costs for nuclear power plants (judging by the cost of the Karachi units 2-3 at $9.5 BN [1] vs the Vogtle units 3-4 at $36.8 BN [2]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Nuclear_Power_Complex
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
Well, yes. When consider 'health and safety' as a 'down on the priority list' requirement, there are any number of cost cutting opportunities available to you.
Small Modular Reactors should upend that hegemony through mass production but so far still can't compete. SMRs would be perfect for converting every single existing coal fired plant and allow our power generation to go carbon free in record time.
I'm pro-renewables but believe we need as many energy options as possible.
In total something like a ~$100-200B investment in nuclear technology. The nuclear investment evidently did not pan out.
How much more should we have spent? Should we just push through no matter the cost even though we have cheaper alternatives?
> Should we just push through no matter the cost even though we have cheaper alternatives?
This is a false dichotomy. I am not saying we should not build solar, or wind. And I am not even saying we should divert resources to nuclear. It should be the private sector. Are you saying even the private sector should not invest in nuclear? Why? Don't you think people are smart enough to decide for themselves what do to with their money? If Bill Gates wants to invest his money in Terrapower, why do you think this is a problem? He invests a lot of money in renewables too.
Personally I think nuclear costs are closely aligned with the Baumol effect. [0] It is construction and does not become more efficient while wages rise as an economy develops.
Therefore there is a small timespan to build nuclear power with acceptable costs right when the economy is advanced enough to manage the technology but wages haven't caught up yet. Like they have done in the west.
> Are you saying even the private sector should not invest in nuclear? Why?
The private sector can do what it wants. But that is not what is happening in the west, the few construction projects that get greenlit do it on the base of absolutely massive subsidies.
Looking at the current crop of nuclear startups they are relying on government handouts until those run out and then they silently disappear. Making absolutely no progress on the economics of nuclear power.
Today no one talks about NuScale anymore, because they had to admit not solving the problem. Instead it is the latest PowerPoint reactor still being able to claim it is cheap, fast to build and ”by default safe”.
5-10 years earlier the name of the game was mPower. Until that became too expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26W_mPower
Keep throwing private money at it, and launch demonstrators when they like SpaceX prove they have something to the world.
The current status of massive handouts with nothing in return is just laughable.
Profits from government handouts leads to stocks rallying.
Again, absolutely massive handouts with no plan for commercialization.
If the NRC went over the regulations with a bit of common sense, reactors would be dramatically less expensive.
It's ignorant people who complain about "regulations" as a monolithic, monochromatic evil MacGuffin that exist merely to stop progress rather than encompassing health and safety regulations written in blood and graves.
I remember my coworker who had to destructively flame test half of the wire nuts he sold to a nuclear energy concern by verifying they self-extinguished within X seconds. Rigor might be expensive, but lives, health, and peace of mind are worth more even if techbros and billionaires don't think so.
I also don't want to give the impression that I watched this one video and know ride around on a high horse.
My company has a nuclear division, and while I am not part of it, I am totally aware of the struggles they have.
Solar, wind, and battery tech are getting so cheap so fast, it's hard to know whether this will be enough to make nuclear economical.
Reactors in towns are dumb. They make sense in remote locations where solar doesn’t work, e.g. West Australian or seabed mining, or on the Moon.
For example, a water and sewer utility near me, serving a similar scale customer base as one of these reactors (a few hundred to a thousand or so), just had to get put into receivership. All the infrastructure has been falling apart for years and the utility had not been investing anything into upkeep, putting its own customers in danger. What if they had owned one of these reactors?
I don’t know of a reel that can spool up a cable at 270 km/h.
Our current longest power cable is 5376 m long. So we’re only 406k km short of bridging the gap (our longest is only 0.0013% the length required).
Half /s
Glad you can help!
Your Billionairs
arghandugh•4mo ago
greenie_beans•4mo ago