In 2014 Tony Seba said Nuclear would be obsolete by 2030 - he was right
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- In 2014 Tony Seba said Nuclear would be obsolete by 2030 - he was right
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#tonyseba #nuclear #obsolete #renewableenergy
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Nuclear maintains the existing power structures in the market and ability to extract monopolistic pricing. Renewables much more decentralized and therefore suppliers have less power. I suspect incumbents don't like this potential shift in market power.
Hi Mr. Viking, you've become one of my favorite channels. No bs info.. not click bait like most of the other Tesla channels.. and focus on sustainable energy and not just Tesla.. loving it, keep going.. 😍
You are perfectly right Sam, there might have been an argument for deploying nuke reactors 20 years ago, when solar and batteries were expensive, but now the costs of these have plummeted, and will continue to drop. CATL battery manufacturer has predicted battery costs will drop 40 % by 2025. Can you imagine how much they will drop by 2034, the 10 years it takes to build a nuke power plant ? Plus renewables are virtually maintenance free, nuke plants will be expensive to maintain to keep them functioning and safe. I’m a retired electrical engineer so I am more familiar with power generation options than most.
Isn't that because of this ominous "overproduction" western Europe and the US are complaining about? 🤣
The argument for nuclear in a green energy arena is , green energy production is never producing power on demand . Nuclear power supplies the power void. A 100 percent green electric energy system will make Hades on Earth. Battery storage to even out and supply the demand void ? I don't think so.
You mean nuclear power that actually works. It only takes so long to build because too much red tape. Solar is unreliable and kills birds.
@@chillfluencer Overproduction of what?
Yes they have also deployed 40mw sodium ion bess in china
In the video Tony Seba said only a small portion of land would be needed to power every country. So not every piece of open land would have to have solar and wind. If solar panels are used more in residential and commercial areas there would be less need for land also.
The last UK coal power station closes in weeks.
The site is 3000 acres.
Solar, wind and battery on that site would be fabulous because the interconnects are already there.
Obviously some upgrading but the power lines for miles in every direction should be put to good use.
If everyone went solar on their roof we face a grim future of exorbitant electricity rates, energy rationing and massive rolling blackouts.
@@ForbiddTV A....H....
@@ForbiddTVthe truth is, you have no clue
@@ForbiddTVZero proof!!!!
You covered the material clearly and concisely so none of the viewers have any doubt that the business case for renewables matched with grid storage is the cheapest solution and the best choice for rate payers.
I love how you always bring up the drawbacks of nuclear and never the benefits. Solar is very intermittent, and we go weeks, even months, without any sun in the winter. I have Solar and go months with little to no energy even when I knock the snow off. Nuclear in up 93% of the time, and the cost will come down as more units are deployed. It is amazing to me how little you know about many of the subjects you spout out about.
Does Nuclear make sense in Australia?
You are so totally wrong. Name just one ex nuclear site which has been returned to farmland or housing.
@@TechnoMonkeyFarm Yes.
Yes I also keep commenting similar answers... Green energy is GREAT!!! But unreliable and I keep linking the "dooms day" link which actually happened already. And similar catastrophic events can happen again... Like volcano eruption can CRIPLE ALL SOLAR for 1 YEAR!!! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
@@TechnoMonkeyFarm yes
Many people are attracted by the word 'small' in the name. It's true that the reactor itself is slightly smaller than a conventional reactor but the reactor is only part of a power station, none of the rest of it can be scaled down at all and the footprint of the site all and the manpower costs are almost identical. Proponents claim that these reactors will be cheap because of mass production but don't take into account how many need to be produced to reach true mass production.. It woud take centuries to scale up manufacturing enough for cost reductions to become significant and that would only be a reduction on a part of a power plant.
On top of that 49% of uranium currenty comes from Kazahkstan, Russia or Uzbekistan, so won't help energy security.
Not centuries, but about a decade. Of course, by that time renewables and storage will have significantly dropped in price.....
@@IronmanV5 I was exagerating in the style of the Electic Viking.
It is well established that Nuclear has a cost scaling law. Doubleing Reactor power incresses cost by 40%. Which means your capitol costs are 30% lower per unit of reactor power and your final cost. This is why making reactors smaller will never be economical, if you do the reverse and half the size of a reactor the capitol cost is going up 43%. And that is just a SINGLE halfing, cut in half again and you have fully DOUBLED your cost per unit power.
@@kennethferland5579 Yes, people keep on harping about how the military use small reactors extensively forgetting that for the military cost is a low priority.
Great video! The province of Ontario has been generating electricity from nuclear since 1971. Currently 58% of the electricity generated from nuclear.
You can rest assured that the cost on maintains and refurbishing those nuclear reactors is very high. There is no way any nuclear power plant can compete against renewable energy from solar mated with battery storage. Ever...
Only when slave labour is used to mine for battery materials and REE
Except that is bunkum.
California has about 54% RE (41% wind and solar, remainder is hydro), so nearly the same as Ontario's nuclear.
Ontario retail rates (a tiered system, I'll look at the MOST expensive rate, Ultra-Low Overnight, but priced during the peak during the middle of the day) - 0.286 CAD/kWh, which is 0.209 USD/kWh (current price, current fx)
California retail rates (average, most expensive is residential retail) - 0.3247 USD/kWh (March 2024, eia data); total retail (including industrial & commercial users: 0.2581.
So, for basically similar proportions of nuclear vs RE, the WORST Ontario prices COMPETE, HANDILY, against both the the average retail rate and the worst residential rate, by a wide margin. We're talking a good 20% or more better!
(with some of the more common plans in Ontario, you would be paying about the US average of 0.14 USD/kWh - some 1/2 to 1/3 of the California rates)
Facts - they are more interesting than believing something to be true.
www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/electricity-rates
www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=CA
Wind and Solar do not have an energy input cost, especially one that varies or has supply chain risks. When comparing costs one needs to look at the total cost over the life of the project. Nuclear has risks that has severe consequences. It is not a question of if but when and which one. All thermal power generators heat water to make steam to turn a generator. This creates heat which causes warming. Plus a lot of water is turned into vapor. As you say the costs are always more than predicted.
The sad reality is, is that Politicians are "Used Car" Salesmen. There is someone behind them thinking. They want what is good for them, not what is good for the people.
The water vapor is condensed and used again in a closed system.
It's not the heat from burning coal or gas that's the problem, it's the CO² produced by combustion that causes global warming. The heat generated from burning the fuel is almost microscopic and completely inconsequential on a global scale!
@@gregbailey45 It's less then inconsequential, if the Earth Atmosphere is unchanged then heat release on the Earth surface can not change the long term temperature equilibrium AT ALL because temperature is determined by a balance between incoming and outgoing radiation. It's like trying to pour water into a full glass it just overtops.
Solar and wind are natural nuclear. Everyone that builds nuclear are against solar and wind and almost everything else in terms of energy. Cost overruns are a result of the total economy that have their livelihoods threatened by its success. It’s just easier to go wind and solar from a regulatory standpoint. The safety regulations drive the costs up because the regulators don’t want nuclear. It’s also just so much easier to do solar and or wind. Both are wireless and convenient. It’s been said geothermal is nuclear as well because of the nuclear reactions taking place within the earth’s core. This planet is just flooded with so many energy sources it’s not really that crucial but the human effects make nuclear unfeasible.
Thanks Electric Viking for all your hard work ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️👍⚡️⚡️⚡️
You’re right, it’s all nuclear fusion if you go back far enough. We are stardust, we are golden.
I have never met a single person that wants to build new nuclear that doesn't want to also expand renewables. The enemy is fossil fuels. Not fossil free energy production.
@@raensaeck I’m not anti-nuclear on principle, it’s just that faced rapid climate warming we need to decarbonise as quickly as possible and solar, wind and battery storage can be deployed in a fraction of the time of nuclear, at a fraction of the cost. Not only this but renewables hold out the prospect of genuine energy security and independence for many countries, currently dependent on imported oil, coal and gas. Nuclear still requires the import of a costly fuel, namely uranium. In the current circumstances it’s not clear to me what the case is for new nuclear.
@@raensaeck There is the money math, as well. Keep in mind, the Grid operates on Money -- not energy nor electricity. Typical ratio is you 10x more generation capacity from Renewables over Nukes for the same money. Take that down to runtime or what is called Capacity Factor --and it works out you get about 3x as much overall electricity from Renewables over Nukes -- for the same money. So the fastest and cheapest path is saturate the grid with Renewables, let Coal drop off, let Gas sit around un-used, and let Nukes continue to dwindle down while building few or none New Nukes. In 10 to 20 years, most things should be fully renewable.
“Build it in 100 days or it’s free.” 😉
If only nuclear plants could fly!
UK has just given Sizewell C the go ahead.
……… Jus cause there ain’t no love button -NMFS. !!!!!!!!!!
@@stevemsmith1 Whoop-de-doo. Sizewell C will be 3.2GW - wow-wee! 20 years to build, billions of pounds then even more billions over the next few centuries to 'clean' up the site. Site ready to reuse in 2000 years!
@@stevemsmith1 Sizewell C has been jointly developed by EDF and the UK Government - the Government is now the majority shareholder and is currently investing a total of £2.5bn in financial support for the project-at $38 bullion.That is the original price of Hinkley C which has doubled to $90 billion-with government subsidized power, insurance and decomissioning!!!
I remember watching a documentary about climate change where an expert said we can't build nuclear plants fast enough to make a difference, they're too expensive and take too long to build, I've always thought it would be much better to go full tilt on renewables, they're simple, relatively cheap and can be built out super fast
The Sun is the driver of Climate / Weather not CO2.
@@mikewallace8087That's nonsense, from beginning to end. Greenhouse gases are the overwhelming cause of climate change.
Because there is a big différence between drivable and intermittent power. You are seriously ignoring grid fréquency stability issues when considering going full renewable.
@@vanadium0101when enough batteries and energy storage is deployed what is the relevancy of intermittency? If enhanced geothermal comes along well enough and it looks like it's headed in that direction why doesn't that mitigate your base load issue?
@@mikewallace8087 tell that to Venus
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay to have solar panels and batteries installed in people's homes than building a nuclear power station. Distributed power makes significantly more sense.
And then there are days when you still need a cable to the distribution network and therefore you have to share the cost of a large central system.
Especially in mild weather europe where you have winter days with 0 sun at all (fog, clouds, snow several days in a row).
It does, but not every home can have Solar unfortunately.
There is not a single study that shows that storage + solar is cheaper than nuclear. And the difference only increases for nuclears favor if you also factor in grid costs.
@@raensaeck No, factoring in grid costs tips advantage to on site solar even more. It is now cheaper to generate solar power on site than to deliver it. Distributed generation and storage, and efficiency are now cheaper than coal everywhere. Centralized power plants are dinosaurs.
@@raensaeck www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-releases/gencost-confirms-renewables-remain-cheapest-form-energy-cost-nuclear-reactors-skyrocket#:~:text=“CSIRO's%20report%20also%20shows%20that,clean%2Dgreen%20jobs%20for%20Australians.
Great video Sam! I like Elon's comment. We have a gigantic fusion reactor in the sky. It radiates more energy than we can use. Just capture it (solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc).
Geothermal too - that's just really old energy that came from the early sun, it's never far below anybody's feet and could power the world - basically - for ever.
Unfortunately you have only considered the current financials instead of a more correct whole of life asset management approach. A nuclear plant lasts 80 years, coal or gas lasts 40 yrs and solar 25 years and batteries and wind 15 years. So this means the whole of life comparison should be over 80 years during which time a coal or gas plant would be replaced twice (x2 costs), solar replaced 3.25 times (x3.25 costs), batteries and wind replaced 5.3 times (x5.3 costs) etc.
One must compare the multiple times these short life power generation assets and there renewal costs including disposal costs, for an equivalent 80 year period... So with asset costs don't just compare a one-off installation cost, take into account the multiple (x2 or x3.25 or x5.2) whole of life costs of short life assets over the full 80 years to make it a fair comparison. When you do this then you get a favorable cents per kWh comparison... and you will see like most things, assets built to last, may have higher costs upfront but over their full life its a different story.
Which nuclear plant has lasted 80 years?
Your calculation should be more like: Renewables = (1/3 + 1/6 + 1/12) * Nuclear. (To account for the halving of Solar, Wind and Batteries every 15 years)
@@philwelling7172 Most Solar Electricity is used as it is produced. Needs no battery.
Not a bad stab at Engineering Economics, but you have some basic information wrong, and you entirely missed two factors that wipe out all the money on New Nukes. Basic information error is Service Life on Solar. Typical commercial production warranty for Silicon Solar PV is 25 years, with some now at 30 years. But that is just the warranty. They keep running beyond that -- 40 years Service Life for Silicon Solar PV is now a reasonable number. Missed cost factor #1: Operations and Maintenance Cost. Nukes have a very high O&M Cost as they must be "baby-sat" 24/7, every day of the year. O&M for Nukes is so high that functioning Nukes have been shut down early, even though their construction cost has been fully "sunk" years ago. All US Nukes have now been put on "Welfare" to avoid bankrupting early. Meanwhile Solar PV has almost no O&M Costs. You can leave the stuff unattended on an island or in space for 10+ years, and the stuff just keeps going. Missed cost factor #2: Time Value of Money. The entire construction cost of the MUCH more expensive Nuke is all upfront, and you have to bear interest costs and/or Return on Investment costs across the Service Life. Meanwhile Solar PV is about 1/10th (or less) on the Construction Cost, so it has a much (much, much) lower cost of ownership across its Service Life. So THAT is why the US is now building mostly Solar PV, and letting Nukes dwindle down.
Nice overview. However I would add that Nuclear fission reactors require fuel. The cost of mining, refining, transporting and storage of this fuel over the reactor's 30-40 year lifetime is rarely factored in and is very very expensive.
even I could see the nuclear industry is dead man walking. Nuclear industry yearly report has been clear about the trend for over ten years. Tony Seba just confirms what has been apparent for many years.
Anyone who's paying attention has said for 50 years now 'Nuclear is the most expensive way to boil water known to man'
First heard it from Barry Commoner.
Nuclear is the most reliable energy source period. Cheap, safe, tiny footprint, clean and massively misunderstood.
@@greatearth5861Most of the things we don't understand we fear!
@@greatearth5861 Please tell me what you're smoking - it must be really good.
@@greatearth5861 Not by people who know what they are talking about. Too expensive, little carbon abated per dollar spent, too slow to build, modular reactors are even more expensive per Kwh, the non nuclear part alone is 85-87% of the cost because of a steam cycle. Remove all subsidies from all energy supplies, nuclear dies a swift death and renewables/efficiency storage thrive, we are that far up the S-curve on them.
The 2 MW Copenhagen Atomics molten salt thorium reactor will produce power at a cost way less and much safer than high pressure water cooled uranium reactors. They will produce one reactor a day on an assembly line. The first prototype should be running in two years. Look up their recent CZcams video.
Everything said in the presentation is correct for high pressure water cooled uranium reactors so I agree these will not help with global warming.
In which year will they be producing one reactor per day?
When they do, we will be able to see $/MW and $/MWh and judge if they are a good fit for Australia.
2 MW = 2,000 kW of output. If one was built in a market that was willing to pay 25 US cents per kWh, that is in income of $500 USD per hour. What kind of system can be staffed, financed and paid for on $500/ hour?? Not even a kwickie mart can be profitable on so little net sales profit.
Yumyum love that koolaid.
Two years will easily become four years and then scaling production will be insanely difficult and then they will simply be too late. Solar, wind and batteries will eat the market
If governments were genuine about climate change and pollution they would incentivise industry to install solar on every warehouse roof. There is plenty of suitable real estate that could be used before covering farm land with solar, businesses would be queuing up to install solar on their roof tops if they had the incentive to do so.
I would also like to see solar panels suspended over parking lots also.
Great video! I'm actually going to be debating against nuclear on July 21st and cost is my main argument.
The cost and construction time blowout for nuclear is off the charts, and that's when the California High Speed Rail guys said, " HOLD MY BEER"
I live on a little more than an acre in Florida . I am eyeing solar panels. If battery storage gets cheap enough I will go off the grid. I may even able to go EV and escape gas taxes and gas prices. By law I have to be connected to the grid, so will have to pay a tax to the power company. My power bill is cheaper right now than what I expected . Got a feeling my power company knows this too. A sharp spike in electric price would trigger me to do this sooner.
In WA state they tax your EV tabs to make up for you not paying the gas tax. There’s no escape.
@@jwetzel3141 Florida so far has not. But as more and more cars are EVs that will happen here too. And it is fair.
Batteries are already cheap. The trick is to build your own pack with large LiFePO4 prismatic cells. Do Not buy Tesla PowerWalls at $1,000/ kWh or Signature Solar packs at $325/ kWh. Build your own for $150/ kWh.
As far as being forced to pay to be on the grid, maybe so but they can't make you buy electricity from it.
Poor you, living in the fascist republic of Florida :( Firstly be wary of the insurance companies who are in the pockets of the utility companies and will happily double your rates if you put panels on the roof - so put your panels in the yard somewhere. Sure, you have to be connected to the grid because, well, communism... but nothing stops you having two sets of wiring in your house. Run the low power lighting circuits off the grid and then other stuff can be run off the solar/batteries - they *do not have to be* grid connected. Good luck! And best of luck thumbing your nose at the utilities!
@@jwetzel3141 It's about time road tax/fees were based of a 'how much do you use and wear out the road system' basis. What would be fair is to base the tax on the mileage you do multiplied by some weight factor of the car. The heavier the car, the more wear it does to the road; so tax accordingly.
It makes perfect sense to go for solar energy.
1) it runs on infinite supply of energy from the Sun and doesn't require to mine any raw material from Earth. Except perhaps the material to make the panels.
2) it is much cheaper and easier to manufacture
3) it is much easier and quicker to install than an equivalent generation powerplant that runs on coal and nuclear.
4) it can be installed in a wider area than any other power supply. All building roofs and dedicated land areas can have solar panels installed.
5) most importantly it doesn't emit any CO2 or any other gases or toxins.
Let's talk about that again in 2030.
Most definitely will!
Do your research, invest in Tesla.
Definitely. I’ll be waiting here for you to eat your words.
@@lucadellasciucca967 And where do you think Tesla gets its energy? Ans: fossil fuels. SpaceX is even worse.
...And let us not forget *Mr. Bill Gates* is *_"Just Starting"_* to build his "Spectacular Nuclear Plant" !
Nuclear will be here in 2030 as reverent as it is today.
...And let us not forget *Mr. Bill Gates* is *_"Just Starting"_* to build his "Spectacular Nuclear Plant" !
Nuclear will be here in 2030 as reverent as it is today.
I bought his book, I've read his book. It's BRILLIANT! Bring on The Green Revolution!😊
Expensive toilet paper !!😊
They are the future for countries that have a functioning government.
Thanks Sam, great video.
Glad you enjoyed it
Not only that but there is ZERO danger when using solar. It's simple to build. Easy to maintain (give it a wash every week or so). And NO moving parts. Maintenance is huge in power plants. It eats money like crazy. Solar doesn't need maintenance. If a panel breaks for any reason, just replace it. Solar is also massively redundant. Same with batteries. You can replace individual cells without taking down the entire plant. Just that module. Turn it off, replace cell, turn it back on.
And you simply can't beat solar on cost. Zero maintenance for 30 years. After 30 years, 80% output. No thermal power plant can even compare to solar and batteries. Oh and if they over provision the batteries, it can last for 50 years.
Solar is more dangerous than nuclear if you look at deaths per GW generated. People fall off roofs.
I disagree. Smrl is still in prototypephase. There are yet no factories building them in serial production as is the goal. Outside sunbelt they are part of the future. We do need thorium reactors to reduce nuclear waste to 1/10 amount and to reduce radiation time from 100 000 years to 300 years and get energy at same time. Thorium is abundant, low radiating and can be extracted from mining waste.
Rosatom has over 30 preorders for small nuclear reactors. Uzbekistan signed an agreement with Rosatom to install 6 small nuclear reactors
The pro-nuke people NEVER mention the fact that once these reactor reach the end of their expected lifetimes, the problems and expense only start then. By that time the private money people have taken their profits and dumped the pile of radioactive waste and plant onto the public purse. You name ONE ex-reactor site that has been returned to farmland or housing - just one. And no, thorium is no better and neither is fusion (if that ever materializes).
Tony Seba seems to be our modern day *Nostradams* .
Imagine you understood the laws of gravity before anyone else even understood gravity existed. Tony Seba has sort of done that, but with uptake S curves in disruptive innovation instead of gravity.
Except that he doesn’t write in ambiguous riddles and he uses historical data to predict the future rather than mind altering drugs
Historic data doesnt necessarily predict the future, sometimes it is a warning
@@archiefleming652 historic data can only be a warning if it predicts what is likely to happen.
I hope not - Nostradamus only got about 2% of his entire predictions right which is approximately the incidence of co-incidence.
So if I go back to the 70s electronic cars were the future. It's taken around 50 years for it to come to the market. This is where the small modular reactor is. The technology is sound but the commercialisation is challenging, just like batteries have been.
Renewables do have a life span. What happens to the wind turbines when they need replacing after 15 to 25 years, where do the glass fiber turbine blades get recycled and how, not land fill I hope? And for solar power panels that are expected to last 20 to 30 years, how will the billions of them be recycled and the Phosphorus used in them be recovered? There isn't really only one energy solution here, but we have to adapt many solutions depending on the locations and power requirements
they don't "stop working" after that many years, they are replaced so they can make more money with newer more efficient units. Want to pass a law against that?
You might want to dedicate a video to the new installation going up in I believe is Queensland and do a detailed breakdown including not only the cost but also the time it took to complete the project. Your viewers might be surprised and some may even be shocked.
You're right. The nuclear option has passed. We are already well underway in moving to cells of storage and generation
An argument cited in favour of SMRs is economies of scale. With so many unique designs competing for a limited number of deployments, would any of them really succeed in bringing the price down! Seems more likely SMRs would remain more expensive than large scale plants.
Correct, there about about 50 different designs and we're looking at a very small number of builds. Plus, the 'power block' (where a steam turbine is used to make electricity) is already as good as they'll ever be so no cost reduction through 'learning' to be expected here.
The winner will be the one who provides full service for such reactors. Installing , refueling, utilizing waist and reactors decommissioning
What I don't understand is why building new nuclear power stations seems to get harder and take longer and be more expensive than the last one?
Surely with all the experience gained especially France & China they should be able to build them easier and faster as well as being safer! It seems like they are building one for the first time?
Those SMRs are all first of a kind. Which makes them expensive they can be cheaper, when the experience and the supply chain is build up.
When we want to be fair, then we have to say that China is getting fast by building the hualong one 1GW plant, it takes them 6 to 8 years (4 unita are already running) and they are now building a lot of them.
But the most important thing is do not switch the existing NPPs off like Germany.
How many Steven Mark Ryan’s are there..?? Imagine the CZcams revenue… and size of their TSLA portfolio…
unfortunately the amount of electricity we are using keeps going up. we are no longer facing demand only for mobility, industry, and domestic energy. Now we need to feed the metaverse and the internet of things, which are growing exponentially.
Where is this? In the UK power use has been doing nothing but fall. 375twh in 2007 down to 306twh last year. And probably less than 300 this year. Yes I know ONE 1963 style winter could send it the other way, but for now down is the trend.
Not really. Energy usage overall is pretty flat the last couple of decades. When you consider what the internet replaces, it's probably more energy efficient than most of the older methods. For example, consider magazines and newspapers. Growing/harvesting the wood, paper mills, distribution, printing presses, more distribution to each and every home, then into the trash. Rinse and repeat daily or monthly. Compare that to hosting it on a web server and people access through a common device used for a myriad of other tasks. When you stop and think about it there are a ton of examples like this.
by the way i am in the electric power business. i am not just talking out of my ass. if electricity demand hasn’t gone up where you live it will soon.
@@davehasenford3985 tomorrow, tomorrow, always tomorrow. Only a day away. Sorry have you seen the mythos stuffed into the business side of the business? Wall to wall BS. Since it is what the Utility WANTS to hear, it is all they hear.
so you would be aware of how many consumers are adding solar , and/or battery. Many of us realise we can't wait for the government .
Not sure where it was, probably the excellent “Just have a think” channel which looked into the economics of “small modular” reactors. It just doesn’t stack up because the cost of building them is not much less than a “normal” reactor, you just get less power out once it’s built.
It was either Dave Borlace or Sabine Hossenfelder - or quite possibly both - both of them talk a lot of sense with data and reports to back them up. Sabine is a bit pro-nuke but then she's German and she likes physics :)
the main issue is not night time but winter time... in central and northern europe the yield of solar panels in winter is like 10% compared to summer..
So? put up 10x more. And while you're at it, install some wind turbines and some geothermal. I installed a solar PV system in Scotland at 57 degrees North - and it's still worth it - even in winter.
Nuclear industry is done. In 2001 they were 20% share of the electricity commercially available in the world, in 2021 their share was below the 10% and in 2040 they wouldn't even reach the 5%.
The main reason is because is utterly unprofitable; France, the whiote kninght of nuclear electricity production saw his third largest nuclear company going bankrupt in 2012, then in 2017 the second one (Areva) was bought by EDF (the largest one in the world) at the edge of bankrupcy. But in 2019 the mid term debts of EDF were above 70k million €, and in summer 2022 the debt were already above 100k million € so the French Goverment had to withdraw the company from the stock market. Is still the largest hole in the EU economy, a machine which works burning money, depite EDF is the largest reactor operator in the world. American companies as General Electric and White Westinghouse were only capable to go bankrupt one or two times due their nuclear gereration business but weren't able to tank the French economy in the way EDF is doing it.
Small modular reactors aren't different and also aren't new: they have been the core of the nuclear powered warships (destroyers, cruisers, carrieras and specially submarines), with scaled downs type II reactors. The only innovation in the "new" SMRs were the introduction of more safety through passive designs, but that didn't help at all in terms of finnancials. They are even more expensive than traditional designs due lack of economy of scale. EVERY nuclear company (in both conventional reactors and SMRs ) is just a money beggard asking for founds to solve their iresoluble problem: they will never be profitable. And things will only go worse since renewables are constantly cutting down costs due improvements in efficiency, economy of scale and the simple fact that wind and sun as power sources are free.
Base load concept is also a outdated concept: you only need x2.5 peak demand + renewable diversification + good interconectivity to have your electricity needs covered. Batteries aren't needed that much, and in places were water storage is available (upper to lower dam systems) they storage of electricity is massively larger/denser than using batteries.
And I thought SMR was solving the money problem.
Not making it worse. 😉
If we let the Greenies get away with eliminating fossil fuels without nuclear energy we face a grim future of exorbitant electricity rates, energy rationing and massive rolling blackouts.
@@andrewsaint6581 It does, but some people are hopelessly anti-nuke not even knowing why.
@@ForbiddTV Yes, with on site A.I. as overlord supervising ,the worry of human error is greatly reduced.
@@mikewallace8087 HAL would disagree.
If we can put nuclear systems in submarines and ships surely we can do something similar on land?
Trident submarine costs £20bn and has a crew of 140. So £200m per crew member, not bad compared to UK house prices 🤣
The harbour in Plymouth is full of scrap nuclear submarines. Who is going to deal with them as they rust away and become unstable?
@@jsanders100 I think ten feet of water will stop radiation. However, fish will go closer, so better not to go fishing there. Over a (very) long time the radiation will dissipate. Note I am a layman without the benefit of a deep science education.
It is doable yes, but practical no. A submarine uses sea water for cooling, and cost is no issue, unlike electricity generation which needs to be affordable.
Sam, we need to compare the costs per kwh for each type of power generation in a medium to longterm scenario. In absence of this, talk is cheap. The first SMRs will be expensive. The question is the price of power from mass produced SMRs.
Add enhanced geothermal for some base load energy generation. Cost will be comparable to solar. Its safe and can be done in 18 months.
Exactly. If a hundredth of the money spent (wasted) on the nuclear nonsense was spent in drilling/geothermal research and technology, we would have unlimited power for the entirety of human existence.
Where geologically available, I.e. not many places!
Dictators do not trust Dictators. 😮
It might also be fun to have you do a review of all the upcoming renewable energy projects planned for Austrailia in the next few years. Some people might be surprised at the scale of these new projects.
I wonder what kind of security it would take to run a small modular nuclear reactor.
It's about the nuclear industry surrounding the reactors. The nuclear fuel needs to be procured and manufactured and then the waste reprocessed and reused or stored as long term waste.
i have been on off grid solar for 17 years and it costs me about one dollar per day to replace batteries
I 100% agree. I can't see how Nuclear stacks up on cost or timeframe compared to renewables.
You didn't discuss Australia specifically here but there is no Nuclear industry so it would be even longer to get a plant or SMR up and running. I would say it would be at least 20 years knowing how govt works and all the approvals that need to be done. 20yrs is just not time that we have. We need to act now on converting our energy grid to 0 emissions. Over that 15-20 yrs that we would use to get nuclear up, solar, wind and battery would get cheaper and better so there really doesn't stay up at all
I used to think that small modular Nuclear reactors could help, but with the falling costs of solar and battery storage, I have changed my mind and believe we could do all of this from renewables. This would also be achieved at a much cheaper cost.
Most capital projects which involve new tech run significantly over budget. The more accurate description is not a cost and schedule ‘overrun’; rather there is systemic UNDERESTIMATION of time and cost, because they haven’t been attempting before.
The key question is whether the cost and schedules can be reduced with the experience of having built a few.
Who cares about cost or schedule? When that becomes an issue the decision makers will be long gone as Sam nearly said in the video.
SMR's are still possible. The very small units are portable and are very safe compared to what most people have seen in the media and could still find very useful application at low costs.
The electricity cost from SMRs is very high. What is "cheaper" is that you're only building small units so the investment is obviously lower - but you're also producing less that with one big plant.
The truth is that Russia and China are building nuclear plants, and in some cases, even nuclear sea vessels. Also, with the wakening up of Africa, the leaders of various countries are eyeing nuclear power very seriously.
Yet, they are investing in solar/wind/batteries
@@studyonline4763 They're investing and manufacturing everything. The materials for renewables and their construction don't come into existence via magic.
They might be in the west but it seems like Russia Korea and China seem to be making nice profit on it . India is coming along nicely too
Until they face the decommissioning costs
I really think living in Australia biases your opinion. Much of the worlds population doesn't live in a solar frying pan like Australia or California. Yeah it's working pretty good there. But much of the worlds population lives in Northern climates with very limited sun in winter. A winter month of overcast sky is a problem for renuables. A base load source is still nessecary for a stable grid. Nuclear may go away, but it would probably have to be replaced by a successful deployment of geothermal power. That is the only green future tech I see to replace 24/7 base load capabilities with the ability of a widespread rollout. We could potentially put it in a lot of places, unlike Hydro.
Geothermal could scale well too. Population grows? Dig more wells. But the tech needs validation first.
Remember, one of the reasons EVs work so well is the cheap electricity coming from a baseload in the middle of the night.
IE. The batteries you say you will rely on are often charged by off peak baseload, and at 3 am that aint coming from solar.
The vast majority of the world population lives in the sun belt (about 80% of the population). It makes sense to have a solution that works in the majority of cases. There are some case uses where nuclear might be a viable solution but it makes no sense to build nuclear in the sun belt. Solar/wind do not work well with a nuclear base load and it is more important to build electrical capacity now. Engineering with Rosie did a good video on this. You are better off spending the money on battery banks.
@@yodaiam1000 The "fact" I've really struggled with is the amount of land, both forest and farm land that I see disappearing to solar. Elon Musk came up with a figure that all of US power supply could be met with 100 miles by 100 miles of solar. But when I get the figure for current US power usage, and add say a 30% increase if we convert transportation and other fossil fuel users to electric, it doesn't compute. When compared to the 11 acres per deployed megawatt of solar that has been the norm here in Georgia for basically all the new solar projects, the amount of land that will be required seems far higher than advertised.
I look at the Buc-ees service station by the interstate near here. They have 18 Tesla chargers but also have 120 fuel pumps. It would take a multi thousand acre solar farm to fuel up the same number of vehicles plus cover backup if they were all EVs.(given the traffic figures I have seen published of 4500-7500 vehicles per day). And you would require Tesla megapacks by the hundreds depending on the number of days of backup you wanted to cover for. That's all for one gas station. And even then the average range per vehicle charged would be conciderably less than gas or desiel equivalent, so more Buc-ees would need to exist than is required now. I think it was Two Bit Devinchi that said in a video that two Teslas charging on level 3 Tesla superchargers in a Walmart parking lot are using the same or more electricity as the Walmart is. When we start calculating charging class 8 trucks it really gets ridiculous. Paving 3 to 5 Georgia counties wall to wall with solar to meet our states needs seems less than ideal, especially with no viable recycling option for the panels on the horizon. I do understand point of use solar on houses etc. will be significant, and I actually do like the Idea of an electric society. I just think there are a lot of rose colored glasses being worn by its most ardent supporters. This channel being an example.
Ok...I had to lookup who Tony Seba was and once I did, I understood why I never heard of him. But putting that aside, here are some facts, most of which I already knew, but verified that they can be found with a ten minute Google search.
One nuclear tractors take about 5-8 years to build and have a lifespan of about 80 years, extended in 20 year increments. There are currently 15 power plants on extended licenses in the US with more to come. Upfront costs are high, but operating costs are low. They operate at 92% efficiency compared to solar and wind which reach at best around 35 percent. Only a tiny amount of nuclear waste is unrecyclable and dangerous.
Wind and solar power damage the environment. Wind kills millions of birds each year in the US alone. Solar also kills birds for some unknown reason, but it also creates toxic waste which needs to be disposed of at the end of a psnel's 5-20 year lifespan. Since a panel's waste never degrades and no one seems interested in recycling it, it is currently dumped along with the rest of our tech garbage, in poor, mostly African countries that none of you care about. For all that, a solar farm needs 3-8 million solar panels to produce the same electricity as a single nuclear reactor. For context, wind and solar generation would take up 25% of England's land just to meet its current needs.
There you go, feel free to look it up. There are plenty of actual scientists even on CZcams who can explain it all for you. There are also papers available online on the subject.
Fortunately for the species, how this will go is not in the hands of idiot techbros and grifters. The US. and other countries are quietly moving towards building new nuclear power plants and refurbishing existing ones because they know the above facts and they realize that windmills and solar panels will not fare well in extreme weather conditions.
My prediction is that nuclear power will be the dominant renewable by around 2035 with other renewables being employed on a case by case basis. Anybody can make a prediction, but it doesn't mean much unless you can see the future.😏
Wind turbines do kill birds but less than house cats in the UK. Colouring one blade brings the number down considerable. A large number of birds die flying into buildings too. Over time, birds may learn not to fly into wind turbines, I suppose.
@@robertwhite3503Here's the thing. We are once again repeating the same mistakes that led to where we are now. Dumping your trash on poor people in a faraway country doesn't mean it went away. Destroying ecosystems to build solar and wind farms is counterproductive and will have disasterous consequences in the future.
The biggest problem with centralised generation is the extremely expensive national grid to the millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of customers.
The grid cash flow means 5 cents kWh from the central generator costs the millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of customers 50cents kWh.
WTF.
If customers go offgrid, then electricity costs will explode for the remaining customers. 😮😮😮😮😮
Nuclear needs fixed interest rates.
Nuclear needs government guaranteed cash flows.
Nuclear needs government disaster insurance.
Totally right, I came across a study (proper researchers, not a Google search) that proves that overbuilding of the cheap renewables (onshore wind and solar) plus storage, was cheaper than centralized renewable generation and upgrading the grid. It was in fact a part of a set of studies I got from a renewable energy charity that is pushing to get NZ fully renewable asap. The studies would be applicable to a lot of other countries with a similar layout as Australia, where these studies were done. Large population centres, spread out quite far from each other. We'll get there, I just wish it would go faster. More and more people are reaching the same conclusions and acting on it (I'm one of them :)).
Not quite. All those off-grid solar generators (plus battery storage) will make a massive contribution to the grid - thereby reducing costs.
@iscadean6038 And if it does reduce costs, it will reduce costs to the producers. But that reduction in costs hardly ever get passed down to the consumers the customers. 😒
I've just moved to Australia from South Africa a month ago, watching the news in Oz said that nuke power will cost twice as much and will be ready in like 2040. As renewable will cost way less and ready in 2030 will backup.
@@icosthop9998 the new OFFGRID customers will leave the remaining ONGRID customers with a bigger grid cost. So more will go OFFGRID.
That is the Tony Seba S curve.
Landline telephone businesses collapsed with mobile phones' popularity increasing.
According to the 13th five-year plan (2016) China was supposed to build 100GW this decade. In reality it is at least x2 less. In best case the global nuclear fleet will grow from existing 400GW to 700GW in 2050.
This maybe the only prediction Seba is wrong about.
I predict
I think the average time to build a nuclear power plant is 16 years, not 10.
Sizewell B took 7 years to build. I should know, I was there.
Mr Bard,
depends wher you live, for example:-
"It took on average 190 months to build each plant. During that period, Korea has built a total of 13 nuclear power plants. The average construction period for each plant was only 56 months, more than three times faster than other countries building nuclear plants.
@@brendanpells912 But of course you understand how averages work I expect, which is what the OP was referring to, which would mean, with plants like your example, there are other plants that have well and truly exceeded the average. So don't leave those out.
@@BrentonSmythesfieldsaye Yes, I know, because like with the UK AGR reactors, they're a new design and it takes a long time to get it right. This is why Sizewell B was based on the well-proven Westinghouse PWR design with a few extra safety systems added. Once they built the first, the rest would just be direct copies, but, of course, the rest never got built because gas was cheaper.
@@brendanpells912 So in the 2020s, 1970s generation technology should be used? I see.
The latest forum concluded that nuclear energy needs to triple in order to reach net zero 2050.
Doesn't matter whether they are small or large.
Seba is wrong. He is talking about 1970s era pressurized water reactors and not next-generation molten salt reactors, which are 1/3rd the cost and have 1/100th the waste stream of traditional nuclear power. Traditional nuclear plants are expensive because they have been regulated into uneconomic. This new type of nuclear power plant can be load following, so can complement intermittent wind and solar.
BTW, unlike communism, nuclear power has worked in the real world. Look at France, getting 70% of power from nuclear.
Unless they run out of coolant (low river levels) or find cracks in their 40 year old reactors. Electricity is cheap over there - because it's heavily subsidized. Spot market prices are higher than in Germany but end user prices are lower.
Molten salt reactors are cool, theoretically. Practically they don't exist and have not proven the figures you claim.
You can't get a single watt of power until the whole nuclear plant or natural gas plant or even a concentrated solar thermal plant is built. You can get power out of a single photovoltaic panel as soon as it is fabricated if you wanted to. If a photovoltaic installation has to end after only a fraction of the construction is completed, power can still be generated. You can also add on more generation capacity in modular fashion. This greatly reduces the financial risks for energy providers and investors.
Exactly friend. Don't forget about the TOXIC waste!
That's really almost a non issue, the actual amount and danger of the waste created is vastly overstated and fearmongered. The real issues are dealing with planning, zoning, cost overrun and delays. If the amount of battery/storage capacity can be mobilised to bypass the intermittency issue then it is a done deal, but I am uncertain that we are there in a practical sense.
@@Reimalken You have not looked at Time-of-Use and Time-of-Production. Humans mostly use most electricity during the day. Since Nukes run flat production day and night, they are surplus in the night (not profitable) and weak in the day (cannot hit Peak), unless they way overbuilt in surplus and/or massive storage. Meanwhile Solar PV produces much faster and cheaper during the day when electricity is actually wanted and used.
Billions of dollars have gone into nuclear fusion research because the fusion reactor in our sky was too expensive to use. The falling price of solar panels and batteries is game-changing, meaning there is no need to have a local nuclear reactor. It’s a fact that nuclear power investors will be very unwilling to accept.
Solar and battery is the way to go. Clean, renewable, well understood, and getting cheaper every day. 👍
Still too expensive , and requires enormous land area and massive increases in mining to make toxic batteries.
I used to handwave away the problem of nuclear waste, in part because I hate the whole category of safety arguments when there are so many other good reasons why nuclear is a dead end. But after reading the book “Wasteland”, by Oliver Franklin-Wallis, I’m up in arms about nuclear waste. The book is about various streams of waste in our society - secondhand clothes, recycling, etc - but it ends with a description of a high-level nuclear waste storage facility in the UK, and it’s terrifying. We don’t have the facilities to handle the high level waste we have, much less 10x more. And no, it can’t all just be recycled in some magical thorium breeder reactor (not to mention freely transporting it to reactors all over the world would inevitably lead to a horrible accident or 10).
The initial cost is extremely prohibitive.
The benefit of solar and wind is that you can build a small/large solar plant/wind farm
You can't build a little nuclear reactor.
the major reason biggies were all hot on nuclear was simply coz it would be good for weapons industries
In the UK new nuclear power station (Hinkley Point), 14 years and counting, plus 6 Prime Ministers 😅
To be fair, conservative prime ministers last about as long as a 2 Lt in Vietnam.
Sizewell C is being built - golly wow - when finally complete (in decades) it will output a whopping 3.2GW. China installed 200GW of Solar last year - not one radioactive particle in sight. The UK government state that installing 70GW of solar is completely feasible just by using commercial buildings. There's already 22GW of wind turbines in the north sea and enough room for ten times that generation. Nuclear is just so dumb.
I'm with you on nuclear - too expensive money and time wise. Solar + wind + batt + geothermal everywhere, in that order will dominate the clean power revolution. It's so good to see! Nuclear carries national security risks as Ukraine is experiencing in war. The others are more militarily robust, more and more economical sense with each passing year. Good times for clean power my friend!👍👍
There is a very vibrant growing nuclear movement. Podcasters such as Robert Bryce, Chris Keefer, Emmett Penny and Mark Nelson have a much higher level of intellectual content. Michael Douglas from the movie, The China Syndrome just switched to pro nuclear.
wow. If some paid salesmen and even a Hollywooder said so . . . . It MUST be true! Take Muy Money!
Great video Viking. Just goes to show how out of touch Duttons mob is by pushing the idea of setting up small nuclear reactors everywhere as a backup or replacement for renewables.
Literally the exact opposite of what we need right now too. Eh at this point I'm convinced that humanity decided that it has a pretty bad flesh wound and has opted to just keep injuring it while rubbing dog feces on it as well instead of seeking basic medical treatment. I suppose it will just hasten things and diminish the long term suffering. 😮💨
The whole idea of the SMR is that it’s the cost of bespoke designs for each reactor that makes them expensive. Looking at the costs of developing prototypes doesn’t tell you the cost once in series production. The automotive industry has the same problem. Creating a small run of or one single vehicle is expensive (especially if it needs to go through certification processes). Mass production of both makes things cheaper, and once the approval process becomes something well understood by both governments and the manufacturers that should become faster also.
The big question is how much storage capacity and excess generation (to allow storage to be filled) would be needed to cover periods of low sunlight and wind. Put numbers against that and we’ll see how cost effective nuclear actually is.
The so-called 'learning curve' for mass production is achieved by making 10s of thousands of iterations. With SMRs we're looking at a) 50 different design, and b) a very small number of builds. Plus, the 'power block' (where a steam turbine is used to make electricity) is already as good as they'll ever be so no cost reduction through 'learning' to be expected here.
I think the steam generator tube alloy you refer to is incorrect. Alloy 6000 is a group aluminum alloys which are used in many applications, mostly aircraft related, but never PWR steam generators. I think the correct alloy is Alloy 600, which is more accurately called Inconel 600 or generically as NiCrFe. Inconel 600 is a nickel based superalloy commonly used in PWR steam generators as well primary and secondary plant piping systems.
The Electric Viking, nice video keep it up dude
《 Arrays of nanodiodes promise full conservation of energy》
A simple rectifier crystal can, iust short of a replicatable long term demonstration of a powerful prototype, almost certainly filter the random thermal motion of electrons or discrete positiive charged voids called holes so the electric current flowing in one direction predominates. At low system voltage a filtrate of one polarity predominates only a little but there is always usable electrical power derived from the source Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise. This net electrical filtrate can be aggregated in a group of separate diodes in consistent alignment parallel creating widely scalable electrical power. As the polarity filtered electrical energy is exported, the amount of thermal energy in the group of diodes decreases. This group cooling will draw heat in from the surrounding ambient heat at a rate depending on the filtering rate and thermal resistance between the group and ambient gas, liquid, or solid warmer than absolute zero. There is a lot of ambient heat on our planet, more in equatorial dry desert summer days and less in polar desert winter nights.
Refrigeration by the principle that energy is conserved should produce electricity instead of consuming it.
Focusing on explaining the electronic behavior of one composition of simple diode, a near flawless crystal of silicon is modified by implanting a small amount of phosphorus on one side from a ohmic contact end to a junction where the additive is suddenly and completely changed to boron with minimal disturbance of the crystal pattern. The crystal then continues to another ohmic contact.
A region of high electrical resistance forms at the junction in this type of diode when the phosphorous near the ĵunction donates electrons that are free to move elsewhere while leaving phosphorus ions held in the crystal while the boron donates a hole which is similalarly free to move. The two types of mobile charges mutually clear each other away near the junction leaving little electrical conductivity. An equlibrium width of this region is settled between the phosphorus, boron, electrons, and holes. Thermal noise is beyond steady state equlibrium. Thermal transients where mobile electrons move from the phosphorus added side to the boron added side ride transient extra conductivity so they are filtered into the external circuit. Electrons are units of electric current. They lose their thermal energy of motion and gain electromotive force, another name for voltage, as they transition between the junction and the array electrical tap.
Aloha
@@CharlesBrown-xq5ug Does any country have one of these contractions up and running ?❔️
Not here. We just opened (2023) a new 1600MW nuclear powerplant and we are going to use it next 35 years, minimum!
That only works in countries that already have a nuclear industry and the legal system to protect it. But even they will become isolated assets once energy costs get so low they are unprofitable to run. Unless of course you want to pay more for electricity than others will who generate and control their own energy needs.
An evaluation of nuclear is incomplete, without explaining how the natural intermittancy of renewables gets filled. It’s going to be a long time before renewables are widespread enough to fill in all the gaps in wind/solar
Personally, I don't think that solar or wind power will be the only way to produce electricity, because not all countries are the size of Australia or the USA, there are many countries where there isn't enough space to build all these installations, and let's not forget that nobody wants a wind or solar farm next to their home.
Of course, wind and solar power will play a bigger role in the future, but they won't be the only way to generate electricity.
Pat , many people here are dense and unwilling to discuss, you will be ignored.
@@mikewallace8087I'm dense and willing to discuss. All roofs should have solar and there are plenty of places to tuck away a battery. The main complaint about wind turbines seems to be noise, but I don't have enough experience to judge that. If I was a farmer I would be happy to have both. There are crops (e.g. grass and poly tunnels) and livestock that will happily co-exist.
I dont think so.
When the Netherlands would use the Northsea in total for windmills, put huge amounts of electrolysers on land to make Hydrogen to use in powerplants . . . . there would be hardly enough land and sea to power the consumption of the Dutch industry and homes. We are a small country with a lot of people.
To fill the gap when the sun does not shine, and no wind, and in the 4 months winter time, there is no amount of batteries large enough. So, we need Nucleair energy to help out.
You don't know jack about the safety profile. I said from the beginning SMRs are the wrong form factor. We need microreactors the size and shape of shipping containers so they can be built on assembly lines.
It's amazing how many experts on nuclear power plants there are loitering on social media platforms. Must be impossible to get a job in the nuclear energy sector these days.
I fear we are forgetting resiliency against natural disasters in the quest for the lowest overall cost per kwh. While I agree battery backed solar will be (by far) the lowest cost, we should not be so quick to mothball or abandon other means of production. Solar farms are not immune to freak storms, tornados or flash floods.
The main issue with wind & solar, is climate change. To build farms based on current weather patterns & not expect them to change is ridiculous. Current nuclear is too expensive when scaled down but new tech is emerging, so we’ll see.
Great stuff Sam. Thank you! I was not sure why Elon thought this would be a good part of the energy issue. If we get to fusion, maybe. But Tony Seba made the point that you still have to transmit the electricity over power lines. That's a huge expense. Elon has said that if you took the space allocated for nuclear reactors and used it for solar power, solar would be cheaper.
The prediction was great, the numbers are clear. What is still very hard to predict though is how much powerful companies making their money with non-renewables will be able to meddle with the process.
That is the concern for sure! Hopefully the economics creates enough of a buffer against that though. I for one do not want my taxes being used to underpin politcally motivated investment failures!
They have for the past 30 years! With EVs and renewables. Now it s done.
Jai Hind. Other than Russia, we Indians had build a commercial Sodium based Fast breeder reactor which could potentially use spent nuclear waste or thorium for energy production
Fast reactors. Whether or not they breed more fuel depends on whether or not you allow it to bombard depleted uranium with neutrons, but it's not fundamental to how the reactor works. You can have a Fast reactor that doesn't breed fuel.
Power exists where people THINK it exists therefore it’s self fulfilling. A breeder reactor like LFTR is important to rid the world of the nuclear fuel left over by traditional nuclear power stations all over the world.
potentially sometimes eventually we might get a pilot going by 2040 give us the money now or we will make it 2050
I've seen / read quite a bit in recent months about molten-salt Thorium reactors; comparatively simple system with fail-safe shutdown. The entire reactor unit is close to shipping-container sized and produces waste that has very much reduced radio-activity within a few centuries. Thoughts..?
@@LoneWolf-wp9dn Copenhagen Atomics.
Vogtle is AP1000 and both units are now operating. Cost shown is low by 19B and time from first dirt move to last unit online was 16years (approximately). Units appear to be operating well but are in first fuel cycles.
Even this extreme example shows how ruinables are more expensive than nuclear.
Total cost of ownership… I agree Small Modular Reactors are not the answer at the moment. But Nuclear is required first a baseload energy supply. How much is the cost of transmission and the equipment required first energy security? Plus let’s not forget Nuclear reactors can last at least 80 years
Solar is not practical for base load power in northern US and Eroupe. And batteries have to be replaced and recycled. Most of the US have giant hail storms every 3ish years and destroy solar panels. Our neighborhoods have replaced their roofs from hail damage 2 times in last 10 years. We need a combination of wind, solar and nuclear if we are all going to have electricity in the coming years.
I've had my roof replaced three times here in Colorado (2004, 2010, 2017) due to massive hail. My solar (installed in 2006) was not damaged. Nearby National Renewable Energy Laboratory with their then (2017) ~1700 panels had to replace six.
If it's going to be obsolete by 2030, any project you start now is going to end up a stranded asset by the time you finish. Unable to sell power because it's too expensive for people to want to buy it vs alternatives and because nobody wants to buy your power nobody wants to buy your power plant. So you have a giant paperweight.
But ruinables are more expensive than nuclear if you use real numbers.
@@ForbiddTVAny proof?
@@205rider8 Sure, lots of proof.
@@205rider8 The Greenie numbers are RATED capacity. Wind rarely puts out rated capacity, and solar NEVER puts out rated capacity.
@@205rider8 As an example, all my solar systems put out only about 1/4 of its rated capacity in the best summer months, and only about 1/32 of its rated capacity in the worst winter months. Aside from maintenance periods, nuclear can put out its rated capacity 100% of the time.
The only application that nuclear might make sense for is concentrated high temperature industrial uses. Distributed household use needs distributed grids so distributed solar and batteries (and maybe wind) may far more sense.
you are overlooking Copenhagen Atomic´s Thorium based SMR. That is one that actually might be worth while.
There is a long way to go before we can store wind and solar for several weeks, maybe months. During winter, there is very long periods of practically no solar and very low wind.
Talking about Scandinavia and probably Canada, Russia, Alaska…?
He did not predict data centers for AI that have a power demand equal to a state. Nuclear is not done.
except . . . they do not. Those "demands" are mostly industry wishful future thinking being misrepresented as reality.
The nuclear industry is actually experiencing increased demand around the world. About 60 nuclear reactors are under construction this year and more projects are planned. The need for more energy is increasing and nuclear is part of it. Renewable energy is great but not every corner of this planet has enough renewable resources and unfortunately lack of it is mainly produced using coal.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
sometimes you need million times more dense energy than just batteries or combustion, spacex.
"Sometimes"
I produce 15000 kWh per year. About 3000 kWh in may. 60 kWh in December. My power need is 180° out of phase with my production. To even it out, I would need like 7000 kWh of storage. That would fill my entire house with batteries…hmm.
Don't know what type of power plant Tony was\is talking about. But nanny power plants just built in 2020's. China has lot built recently. Right now, the top 3 countries are USA, China, and France
Even Russia has built nuclear power for some countries (few recently) but n Russia is the 4th.
China is the only one with advanced technology which can be safer, cheaper, more power etc I've only read little few years ago. China is building a nuclear power for Pakistan (?) and was attacked by terrorist twice (they think US behind these terrorist attacks)