- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
It’s worth noting that he also fired many of the staff who know how to ensure that they’re actually safe, as well as the staff who would approve financing.
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Beginning investments nuclear at this point when renewables so obviously to everyone in the know are beating them on all accounts is extremely on brand for someone as dumb as Trump
Nope, today nuclear actually makes sense. Renewables are cool and relatively cheap but only as long as they output power. Then what? Spin up that coal power plant such as during night? And produce a ton of climate warming co2 and a lot of pollution. The problem is that we don’t have energy storage nor a viable solution for it. Said that, cutting corners is a big no-no.
Nuclear doesn’t make sense for that purpose because it’d have to quickly be able to spin up and down. Most reactor designs aren’t really able to do it quickly in normal operations, and those that can can’t do so in a way that makes any economic sense. They’re financially outcompeted by their alternatives.
Storage is the solution, which we can build today in a viable way and is rapidly becoming cheaper and cheaper.
The financial case for nuclear today is shoddy at best. It’s why no company wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole unless heavy government subsidies are involved. The case for nuclear in ten years is, given the continuous advancements in renewable energy costs and battery storage tech, almost certainly dead.
Nuclear doesn’t make sense for that purpose because it’d have to quickly be able to spin up and down. Most reactor designs aren’t really able to do it quickly in normal operations, and those that can can’t do so in a way that makes any economic sense. They’re financially outcompeted by their alternatives.
Yes, you are right about nuclear output flexibility. Their purpose is to provide stable output, not chime in when required - and that’s the problem with renewables - there is no good solution to compensate when they are not producing. Feel free to list those alternative reliable solutions.
Storage is the solution, which we can build today in a viable way and is rapidly becoming cheaper and cheaper.
And I have yet to see real energy storage data. All I read is just “energy storage is the solution (which, of course, it is, someday)” yadda yadda. So, numbers, please.
Our best current alternative option that’s already there is sadly gas. It’s fast, cheap and emissions are not the worst of the bunch. Still bad though.
As far as battery storage is concerned, battery prices have dropped 97% in the last three decades (and it’s still dropping quite quickly). See https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline for a pretty good overview. And that’s not taking into account other forms of energy storage like water-based storage or new batteries based on sodium.
The batteries we have now are already cheap enough to purchase for individual customers, and including solar panels means it’s already possible to effectively take houses off the grid. In 10 years those prices will be 50-25% of their current price in pessimistic scenarios. Solar is dropping in price at similar rates.
Yep, gas is a good climate warming enabler. Which we want to avoid since we are fighting climate warming - funny eh, that renewables instead of nuclear causes more gas/coal being burned.
As for batteries, perhaps, but today we don’t have any of those at scale required. And while houses could get off grid today with li-ion batteries where lithium is not infinite (nor are rare earths required), it doesn’t solve cities and industry or energy storage at scale. Plus those batteries tend to catch fire which is hard to extinguish. Water based storage is limited by geography. And so on.
If we got our head out of our ass and invested into battery tech - e.g. sodium-ion batteries or proton batteries, we could very quickly build sustainable energy storage instead of relying on technology that is potentially dangerous or continuing to rely on fossil fuels.
There are too many if-s in there. When you build energy strategy for at a country level, you can’t base it on if-s. And even if we had viable battery technology today, there are still problems building them at scale, their cost and their volume. As of today, the more renewables you have, more expensive stable energy gets or you simply burn coal or gas when required.
There’s only ifs because powerful forces (that do not represent the will of humanity) do everything they can to suppress or derail renewable energy efforts and divert our collective focus to war and conflict.
China is proving sodium-ion batteries are viable. Sodium is abundant and the batteries seem cheap to produce. Solar panels are also cheap to produce.
Instead of economic war or other forms of conflict, we could cooperate on these technologies and move forward as a species.
It’s all very easy when you realize that war and conflict are not in anyone’s best interest, with consequences that could spell the end of our planet’s habitability, and could cause death and suffering that make previous World Wars look like child’s play.
We already know fossil fuels are undesirable for the planet and we’ve already had plenty of nuclear disasters.
Let’s worry about expanding nuclear technologies when we achieve fusion and the world achieves stability.
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We invest in battery tech that utilizes supply chains with slavery and child labor to make those disposable cigarette batteries - and they just go straight into the landfill.
Lithium-ion batteries are absolutely not anything to be proud of - it’s a rare material and not scalable like other emergent technologies.
Lithium-ion has the potential for fire/explosion, is hazardous, and has poor cold-weather performance when compared with sodium-ion batteries.
And earlier this year and late last year in Northern California, we had two lithium battery plant fires that very likely contaminated a significant amount of our agriculture and soil.
The contaminated farmlands produce 70% of America’s greens and vegetables (a.k.a. the Salad Bowl of America). We were ill-equipped to address this situation or remediate it - see Status Coup News’ reporting to see how it affected the health of residents in a 50-100 mile radius.
Even if we stored it properly (away from anything it could contaminate including people), lithium-ion is simply not viable for energy storage.
but only as long as they output power.
We could say the same about nuclear power:
EDF cuts nuclear production in reaction to soaring temperatures
Sure, they are not perfect. But newer ones are much more resilient to droughts. And such droughts are not that common, also while they affected power output it’s not by that much - if I recall it was something in line with 10%.
No, we have viable energy storage solutions already. We haven’t built them out, but they are already feasible. And the best part about them is that they get more feasible each year, while nuclear becomes less and less feasible each year.
Assuming that you start today, by the time the first nuclear plant comes online, it will be so wildly uncompetitive that only huge amounts of subsidies will be able to keep it running.
Closing down existing nuclear was a mistake, and there’s probably an argument to be made that scaling back on its construction and R&D was also a mistake. But trying to go back to nuclear at this point when renewables and storage are so obviously taking over is a larger mistake.
What viable solution we have for i.e. a week worth of energy in worst case scenario? Let’s take Slovenia for example with yearly consumption of 12.95 TWh, a week worth of energy would be 248 GWh. And during winter this number is probably higher. How would you store it? Note that US consumption is twice as high and population is x150.
A scenario where you get zero production for a week is very unlikely - broadly speaking, you cope with this by building out production to produce a massive surplus, with various industries that can at variable rates use up the massive amounts of cheap power in the base case, then you build up storage to cope with the most likely scenarios of capacity reduction/smoothing out the price curve throughout the day.
It’s also important to note that demand is far from static - people can and will reduce their usage when incentivized to do so, usually in the form of raising prices in low capacity scenarios. It’s already starting to become quite popular to do so today, with spot price electricity plans allowing people to pay ridiculously low rates by aligning their energy usage with capacity availability - things like charging EVs/running laundry/running dishwashers/storing up thermal energy.
That’s why I wrote “worst case”. Imagine a winter rainy week with short days when heat pumps are running like crazy. But again, I have yet to see real energy storage solutions or real such scenarios.
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Nuclear is needed for the AI tech industry. He doesn’t give a fuck what the people need. These are pushes from META, Google, Amazon and Open-AI. But guess who is gonna pay.
AI needs large amounts of cheap power. Nuclear does not deliver on those requirements - vast quantities of renewables would be far more suitable for this purpose. However, renewables are woke and as such Trump would never lean into them, no matter how profitable it would be.
AI needs large amounts of reliable power (24/7 delivery). Renewables can power AI for now, but for the long run the demand is showing that expanding nuclear power is mandatory.
There is nothing woke and shit for that. The problem is that they play with safety in nuclear power.
Why would you need 24/7 delivery for AI? You can vary the load for training as much as you want, while inference can be throttled to meet energy availability. There’s nothing inherent to AI that warrants that type of power profile.
You can not stop training that easily, it takes weeks or months of planning. Also idling hardware is bad usage of capital. Companies do not like these. They want to eliminate energy bottlenecks. Its not that AI needs it, its economics.
great idea, nothing wrong will come from pressuring the nuclear power regulators. nuh uh.
The one fucking thing you never want to cut corners on, and this clown is deregulating it. JFC.
Individually alot of his ideas could be good, with proper care and planning. Instead he does them all at once without any sort of considerations, its wild to witness this train wreck.
It really depends on what these reactors are going to be used for. Are they going to be licensed to private corporations to power data centers, or are they going to provide power to citizens homes?
AI
I guess the good news is when we have an iron man uprising it won’t cause blackouts to humans to cut the power.
This is the Titan Submersible all over again, only on a devastatingly national level.
Let me elaborate. I think nuclear power is a great option, but not if you’ve removed real scientists and proper engineers. Trump doesn’t like scientists and engineers. Or anyone really, that doesn’t agree with him.
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No discard all that so we make steam now!
/s
Quite glad that America is far away from where I am.
I am sure making consideration of climate change impacts illegal during the approval process won’t have adverse consequences. When the water used to cool the reactor dries up, we’ll have plenty of money and foresight to just pump it in from somewhere else, right?
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Soviet quality nuclear plants. Great idea. What could possibly go wrong?
We need to work on permitting of New plants. Not new construction of Old plants.
But I get it, Don likes towers.
I seem to remember something going wrong before when corners were cut with nuclear…
If the nuclear industry is going to be quadrupled, and gas and oil are similarly enlarged, and renewables are at least not shrinking, what are people supposed to do with all that extra power in such a short time? I mean, I get that induced demand is a thing but… a quadrupling of long-standing industries? Is there any intention for this plan to be realistic?
Feed the hungry AI, I guess?
If you even get a doubling of power usage that way, I’d be surprised.
What prevents the approval of the reactors, is it bad designs or just a case of planning permission delays because people don’t want a nuclear reactor built. Surprised to see Trump being in favour as nuclear as he normally seems to favour the oil industry.
- they are really expensive
- have a history of costing far more than promised
- nuclear executives have a history of dishonesty, so you need to check absolutely every detail
Probably, the comapny behind the reactors (the only one who has a financial benefit) promised to build a Trump tower instead of the cooling tower, so 2 companies/families benefit now and 99.9% have to pay for that.
