- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- climate@slrpnk.net
First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled::NuScale and its primary partner give up on its first installation.
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Might save you a click:
Too many investors pulled out of the project, at least in part due to rapidly falling prices of renewables.
It is time
Yeah the same reason nuclear is being rejected everywhere, it’s economically unfeasible and a huge liability - no one wants to end up with a hugely expensive powerstation that no one wants to buy power from because it’s a thousand times more expensive per kWh than any other option.
Solar power was actually pushed by big oil in the 70s, 80s and 90s because they were afraid of nuclear.
Solar was not viewed as a viable energy system by big oil back then.
Does solar power use some rare earth minerals and stuff like that? They own those, but you probably need them for nuclear and others
I can’t put a nuclear station on my roof or in my basement
Were you… Were you going to?
I mean, a teenage boy scout once built something like an amateur reactor in a shed in his parents backyard shed, so I see nothing wrong with a tractor on the roof or in a basement.
Watch me.
Currently, no. With enough investments in nuclear and less fear mongering, it’s possible that’s be an option. Small scale nuclear reactors can exist and can be safe, and the amount of nuclear material they’d need is fairly small.
Silicon, iirc
Made from sand. A very rareaterial.
I remember so many nuclear stans on lemmy a bit ago refusing to acknowledge that renewables are getting so good and cheap that they are more important to solving climate change than nuclear. I wonder how they feel seeing investors pull out in favor of renewables?
Like crap? Renewables are good in places where they work. Nuclear works everywhere and is more reliable.
Investors pulling out of a nuclear project like this just looks like a, really dumb kneejerk reaction. “Oh! New shiny thing!”
Nope, the writing was on the wall for almost a year on this one. The whole nuclear industry in general is a long history of cost and schedule overruns. This is more of the same. Investors are not dumb.
You can invest in a solar or wind deployment and have it running and producing revenue in six to twelve months. You can invest in nuclear with a stated schedule of five years, have it blow past that mark, needing more money to keep it going (or write the whole thing off), and then start actually getting revenue at the ten year mark. This isn’t mere speculation, it’s exactly what happens. Oh, and it’s producing at least half the MWh per invested dollar as that solar or wind farm.
It’s amazing anyone is putting any money into nuclear at this point. For the most part, they aren’t. The federal government has shown willingness to sign new licenses for plants. Nobody is buying.
SMRs do not appear to change any of this.
Now, something I think we should do is subsidize reactors that process old waste. Lots better than the current plan of letting it sit around, and probably better than storing it in a cave for millenia, too.
This. Green energy works best when complimented with nuclear energy. Then, we can ween away from big oil.
Might be easier to get people’s opinions if you don’t insult them in the first sentence.
“stan” is a common word for excessive fanatic. It isn’t always purely an insult. I also was specifically referring to people that were pretty rude in their behavior before. Feel free to assume I’m not talking about you, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with people who like nuclear.
Think of me as a solar stan if it makes things simpler
Nuclear stans? Us vs them thinking here.
Yes my political opponents are the people I disagree with. I don’t see your point here.
Fixing our energy demands so they stop fucking the planet doesn’t require us to hold hands and sing together, we just have to invest in the proper energy infrastructure. Arguing about what energy infrastructure is proper is a good way to make sure we are looking at all sides of this.
I’m not the one who downvoted you, but I understand where you’re coming from. I just think that both technologies are useful. Nuclear has clear advantages over all fossil fuels, so it would be a good thing to invest in. This would be in addition to solar, wind and battery farms.
Apparently most people from this assumed I was anti-nuclear, when actually I am just very pro-renewables. I don’t really have a problem with nuclear, not unless it is used improperly or inefficiently. I just recently had seen many arguments on lemmy where a lot of people seemed to be against using renewables in favor of nuclear.
I have no idea why you would want to pick one over the other when both have their specific uses and will both be needed to replace fossil fuels for electricity generation. I’m just lucky enough to live in a city that’s almost entirely hydroelectric.
I’m in both camps. We need massive amount of renewable energy installed and we should keep going.
But there comes a point where the last 20% will be extremely expensive to do via renewables. We will do the last 20% much cheaper if we keep our nuclear expertise and plants going.
I’m not saying “build only nuclear”. I’m saying “keep it going”.
I agree with this. I like nuclear, I think it’s neat, but I think it will be a minor player in solving climate change and meeting energy demands (unless there is some miracle breakthrough in fusion). It is perfect for specific locations/contexts.
I’m just bothered by:
People who think nuclear everywhere is the only possible solution to getting off fossil fuels, and have unrealistic expectations about its ease of building and price
and
People who trash talk solar and wind while being wholly uninformed about how effective and cheap those things are, and how fast they are getting cheaper and more effective.
For some reason, these people are often the same people.
I wouldn’t say 20% is a minor player. But agree we can get 80% there with renewables, in some locations (like Scandinavia, blessed with abundant hydro and wind) probably to 90%.
There’s no doubt that integrating renewables is cheaper than nuclear right now, partly as a function of how little nuclear we’re building, but majoritively a function of how much steerable generation we have from fossil fuel (mainly gas) plants. But as steerable capacity disappears, we will need to build more and more very expensive storage to keep integrating renewables.
The fora I’m in where nuclear is discussed seems fairly even tempered to me. But it may be that you’re encountering some immaturity in renewable fora you’re in - I just haven’t come across very much.
Ah, the specifc numbers, 80%/20%, or 90%/10%, I’m not sure we exactly agree on, but hypothetical future specifics like that aren’t productive to argue about, I’m sure it will be solved by practicality at the time it becomes relevant.
But also important, and I should have said something about it before, battery and other power storage method technology is also getting cheaper and more effective, faster and faster. 2023 battery tech is better than 2022 battery tech and 2024 battery tech will be better yet, all by noticeable margins. It doesn’t really concern me, they get better faster than we can build them. And we are getting more efficient at recycling the rare materials too, we aren’t far from it being cheaper to recycle a battery than mine new rare materials.
I feel indifferent. Nuclear is good way to do shitload of energy. Not sure about the small reactors
It was such a unnecessary opinion that turned up so often on social media that I have to imagine it was seeded by mining companies.
Well you still can’t meet normal demand with how unreliable renewables are.
We still need the good and cheap batteries that doesn’t exist yet for it to be viable as a baseline power source.
Hi! Your information is outdated and we very much have the technology necessary to meet energy demand with renewables.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nuclear power provides energy that is largely free of carbon emissions and can play a significant role in helping deal with climate change.
One hope for changing that has been the use of small, modular nuclear reactors, which can be built in a centralized production facility and then shipped to the site of their installation.
Their smaller size makes it easier for passive cooling systems to take over in the case of power losses (some designs simply keep their reactors in a pond).
The government’s Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project.
Under the plan, the national lab would maintain a few of the first reactors at the site, and a number of nearby utilities would purchase power from the remaining ones.
NuScale CEO John Hopkins tried to put a positive spin on the event, saying, “Our work with Carbon Free Power Project over the past ten years has advanced NuScale technology to the stage of commercial deployment; reaching that milestone is a tremendous success which we will continue to build on with future customers.”
The original article contains 505 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Damn
We’ve wasted so much money in r&d simply because it’s a tech that allows the rich to maintain their power monopoly, if we’d spent all that on more sensible options we’d be far closer to an ecologically sustainable future.
What’s not sensible about nuclear power?
