Quote: “”Is building new nuclear plants possible?The chief question is: Can it be done in time and at a cost consumers can afford? History says, “no.” “” New nuclear is much too expensive – they have multi-Billion dollar cost overruns. New nuclear takes too long to build – they have had decade long construction delays.
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Constellation Energy shut down TMI nuclear power plant in 2019. They will restart it subject to approval just to sell the power to Microsoft to power their data centers. Short video https://www.facebook.com/reel/1941868322890930?mibextid=9drbnH Better https://www.facebook.com/reel/3456129351197734?mibextid=9drbnH
Cost overruns from $9 Billion to $25 Billion, most of which customers will have to pay with higher bills. Construction delays of many years costing Billions of dollars. Executives convicted and served terms in federal prison. Incompetent nuclear engineering and Westinghouse bankruptcy. And the whole project was abandoned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal?ref=floodlightnews.org
This is a 35 minute YouTube video on nuclear fusion. It’s a narration but the graphics don’t match up with the narration. I give it a grade of C minus. Quote “”The ITER reactor is designed generate to 500 Megawatts of fusion power for at least 400 seconds, achieving a ten-fold gain in plasma heating
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That’s great news! One thing I just remembered is that the nuclear power plants (Diablo Canyon, Palo Verde) usually shut down for maintenance in the spring when demand is lowest. Otherwise they normally run 24/7 and there wouldn’t be any time during the day when it would be 100% renewables. https://electrek.co/2024/04/15/renewables-met-100-percent-california-energy-demand-30-days/
In the “Original Series” chapter this very interesting Wikipedia article talks about the “hearing aid computer” that used the OC-71 germanium transistors which were used in hearing aids and could go only up to 25kHz clock rate. That was quite slow – tube computers could clock at 500kHz. Later models used faster transistors and could
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In order to get the costs down enough to be competitive, the number of SMRs built will have to be in the thousands. That many will not be built in the next decade, and SMRs will be too expensive and unlikely to succeed. The companies building SMRs are now requiring expensive government subsidies just to
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There is one issue that all nuclear plants have and that Sabine didn’t address, and that’s the huge consumption of water that all thermal plants have. Building nuclear or any thermal plants near a source of coolant water is necessary, and that can become a major conflict when most populated areas are also near water.
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Sam the Electric Viking’s 12.5 min. YouTube video explains SMR and other nuclear power have had massive cost overruns. The costs of solar and wind are still falling. The cost of solar or wind is about doubled when battery storage is added. But it is still 3 to 5 times less than the costs of
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This technical report from NREL dated 2003 discusses the water consumed by thermoelectric power plants. It’s a .PDF available online from the US government.
