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Comment by warcher | Hacker News Reader

“The intermittency problem is lessened when large geographical areas share their generation capacity.”

Are we having a serious discussion here? We’re pretty darn good at transmitting power and there are physics problems at work here that are really frustrating to have to explain over and over to people who desperately want to believe there is some silver bullet around the base load problem.

There isn’t. There is no grid scale solution. There is no mix of renewables that is going to get around the base load. It doesn’t exist.

We. Can’t. Afford. To. Wait.

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We are having a serious discussion. If you have good sources showing why HVDC and/or hydro are a less economical solution please share.

But to your point about not being able to wait, I agree. So if we were to greenlight a new nuclear power plant today how long until it produces electricity? (Let’s even assume we have all of the trained personal available to build and operate it.)

The Vogtle plant took 14 years, and that was at an existing site. I’m putting my bet on a solid 2 decades if a new site is needed. To say nothing of the cost overruns.

But, let’s be generous and say 14 years. We can’t wait for 14 years to remove fossil fuels off the grid, to say nothing of growing demand. We need to build something that will produce green electricity next year.

Again, nuclear can certainly have its place. But it has a bunch of economic challenges to overcome to earn that place.

> We can’t wait for 14 years to remove fossil fuels off the grid

'We' == just the US that struggles to build a nuclear plant, or 'We' including, say, South Korea with 25 reactors operating and another four under construction and due to be finished by 2030 (along with boofing up and extending some of the older plants in the same time period)?

The US could ask South Korea for assistance, of course, but they might be tied up building nuclear reactors in Uganda and potentially other one or two other countries in Africa.

It’s true South Korea is doing a little better. Shin Hanhul 1 and 2 only took 10 years (a mere 100% schedule overrun) to build. So that is better. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what that 2030 estimate turns into in the end.

They have their work cut out for them with countries in Africa, I didn’t believe they currently have the local expertise or supply chains.

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