The fundamental problems with nuclear can't be solved by redesigning them. They are waste management (a political problem), cost, risk (a societal problem). You cant design any of those away. We tried. We failed.
Reprocessing also increases the extractable energy density of uranium 100 fold, meaning that with only known uranium reserves, humanity could meet 100% of its current energy needs from fission for 38,000 years.
You clearly didn’t read the list of constructed and operating Gen III / III+ reactors on the page I linked.
Not sure why you’re ignoring them. For reasons?
Both the constructed Gen III and yet to be built Gen IV reactors represent design improvements you claimed never materialized in an earlier post.
Germany is emitting much less CO2 than before they shut down their nukes. They elected to spend what it would have cost, to keep them working, instead on wind turbines. This has yielded much more generation than the refurbished nukes would eventually have offered, but immediately.
Germany is actively building out more renewable generating capacity to displace more carbon emissions, but there is a very large amount of work to be done. Building nukes instead would take much longer and yield much less.
Germany's CO2 emissions are on an upward trend now that there reactivating coal plants to get off of Russian gas. Furthermore, the decision to shut down nuclear plants resulted in greater emissions that what would have occurred had they kept them active.
Of course they will be cancelled when it turns out no one will buy their power at a price they can offer.
Germany is burning more coal than last year and less NG, which drove up CO2. That says nothing about what they would be emitting with the nukes and without the wind farms. But we already know that answer.
It absolutely says what they would do: add the nuclear power that was eliminated and subtract the coal. Remember, they didn't need to build new nuclear plants they just needed to not shut down their existing ones.
100% renewables mix is extremely difficult to manage cause we are far from having enough storage. Storage is a big challenge on its own.
Coal producers lately love nukes because they mean at least ten more years of reliable sales, more if it is cancelled. They know they are doomed, but with enough nuke projects can hang on long enough to retire. If civilization collapses, it probably won't be immediately, and that is good enough for them.
We don't have storage because we have not built out storage. Just now, a dollar is much better invested in renewable generating capacity, so we build that. When storage comes to have value, we will build out storage. After storage, carbon capture, but not before, same reason.
Not a real problem.
>cost
Self-inflicted problem.
>risk
Not a real problem.
Good. Lets kill the $200 million liability cap then.
If it's not a real problem they should have no issue paying for their own insurance.
Once the tech has plunged in price to solar/wind/pumped storage levels and the industry feels confident enough in its own safety that it doesnt need taxpayers to shoulder potential catastrophe costs we should absolutely build tons of nuclear power.
Nuclear is cheaper than solar, wind and pumped storage. There's a limited number of economically viable pumped storage sites. You essential need an alpine lake close to a freeway to build one economically. Otherwise you're talking about pouring massive amounts of concrete to build a big tub, which is an expensive project. The reality is that dams are the only effective means of energy storage. Lake Meade is one the biggest batteries in the world. Intermittent sources are viable for regions close to hydroelectric plants, but for everywhere else nuclear power is the only feasible route to decarbonization.
1. https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accid...
There are not, in fact, a limited number of pumped storage sites, and you do not, in fact, need any alpine lakes. Dikes are not commonly made of concrete.
And, there are numerous other cheap alternative storage media, for places without hills.
But first we need to build out enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. It would be stupid to pour capital into storage that cannot be charged, particularly as prices are falling so fast that building will be radically cheaper when we come to need it.
There are a limited number of economically viable pumped storage sites. You can find papers claiming an effectively limitless amount of hydroelectric storage. The problem is that most of these places either already use dams for most of their energy production and thus don't need to build any storage. Or, they are in extremely remote areas where construction is prohibitively expensive. There's huge hydroelectric potential in Tibet. But that's incredibly remote and prohibitively expensive to develop.
> And, there are numerous other cheap alternative storage media, for places without hills.
Such as?