A nuclear power plant is essentially a coal power plant with free fuel.
Today, if you literally built a coal power plant with free fuel it would not be cheaper than solar.
My question: If you built a small modular coal power plant, would that be cheaper than solar? It necessarily has to be cheaper than nuclear.
It can provide power when solar and wind are not generating, and while doing so also provide base generation that allows the grid to be robust against fluctuations in solar and wind.
except it cant do that without going bankrupt. Nuke power costs too much, you have to be selling it at 100% 24x7 to have any chance of paying back the capex.
Modular nuclear is a great idea, sadly right now and in the foreseeable future solar is absolutely king in terms of cost/kWH, we should build what makes sense for our needs with regards to power in the USA then worry about other tech later considering the state of our grid.
Solar gives power in the wrong time, making the duck curve a thing, and requiring conflict prone minerals storing dangerous amount of powers to smooth out. On net, this is probably worth it, but solar isn't free as you claim.
Pumped hydro is fantastically expensive, not all that efficient, and only works with extremely specific (and rare, aiui) geography. It also comes with the same ecological disasters as dams, displacing entire ecosystems or towns and producing a ton of methane emissions from the now-submerged and decaying plant life.
A lot of the duck curve can be solved by tiny changes on the demand side. Uranium isn't exactly conflict-free either. Grid storage can also be done with sodium ion batteries or iron redox batteries - even better than the current EV-spinoff lithium ones.
Sure, solar isn't free, but most of the problems it faces aren't exactly insurmountable. In fact, we are already seeing those solutions being deployed in the world - mostly for economic reasons.
When I google "what percent of a coal plant operations is cost of fuel" the response is:
> The cost of fuel typically accounts for 70% to 75% of a running coal-fired power plant's variable operating expenses.
I'm not going to do deep research here but it sounds pretty right. And I don't think solar is 4x cheaper than coal yet, especially solar + battery to spread out the load over non producing hours.
Uranium mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication are all not free.
Because of protection from radioactive radiation, you have higher costs handling anything in a nuclear reactor compared to a coal plant. Then you have the issue of runaway nuclear reactions, hydrogen buildup etc.
By "free" I mean that you need so little fuel over the lifetime of the reactor the cost is negligible compared to all the other extensive costs of building and managing the plant.
The comparison to solar is incomplete, because nuclear and coal aren't sunlight-dependent. You need to compare solar + energy storage. I know that solar generation is cheaper. Is it still cheaper with storage?
There are between 6 to 9 orders of magnitude difference between coal energy and nuclear energy... and between 4 to 5 orders of magnitude difference on waste generation
That’s exactly why I prefer whole-system modelling over simple LCOE comparisons. Backup, seasonal balancing, transmission, lifetime and integration costs all need to be accounted for.
What I find interesting is that the system studies I’ve been looking at, from Australia to Denmark and Finland, still don’t find new nuclear improving the least-cost outcome.
And they’re not assuming another Vogtle, Flamanville or Hinkley. They generally give nuclear much more optimistic NOAK or adjusted future costs.
So I’m curious: what system-cost study are you relying on that reaches the opposite conclusion?
Over/Under how many weeks until a "How can I get away with wire fraud?" query is used as evidence to convict a moron?
But actually at first glance this is incredibly helpful. I got a definitive answer about what counts as preventative care with sources. I could not get that myself from anyone or anywhere in my couple of hours of research prior.
Depends a lot on terrain. Las Vegas to SD is brutal for elevation. Only 332 miles but I had to stop to charge twice in order to arrive with at least 20% charge in my 330mi range EV. Maybe I could have done it on 1 stop but I didn't want to risk getting my family stranded.
That is a fair point. Although ABRP tells me I should be able to do it with a single 11 minute stop, only bringing SOC up to 55%. But to be completely honest, I have not driven the route, so ABRP estimate is the best I have to work with (it is usually a good match for me).
Ohio probably does not have a hill higher than ~1500 ft within a three hour drive :).
Hire a CISO and let them build a team empowered to improve your security. Don't depend on a decentralized approach.
The most important aspect in my opinion is locking down permissions so that no one has access to everything and each team only has access to the components they need access to. Then one hack doesn't take down the whole company.
Does Eyesight beep at you frequently? My 2020 Outback beeps every time it can't see the lanes, which is about once a mile where I live. I'll probably never by another Subaru because of that issue alone.
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