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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

Why nuclear plants and not solar, wind or geothermal?

It works reliably and predictably in all weather conditions. It is able to produce enough energy to meet all of our needs.

None of the other options satisfies both of these things. Some satisfy neither.

I bet you would see more, cheaper energy if you overbuilt solar and wind and strategically placed it across all the time zones of America.

> It works reliably and predictably in all weather conditions.

So they don't need to be shut down when it's getting too hot to cool them?

https://qz.com/1348969/europes-heatwave-is-forcing-nuclear-p...

https://www.energylivenews.com/2012/08/14/us-nuclear-plant-s...

It’s highly ironic that fossil fuels might be creating a problem that cripples nuclear fission going forward. That being said, I’m hoping we manage to scale up direct energy transfer and bypass the need for turbines.

The real irony is that environmental activism using FUD against nuclear energy tech in the ‘70s through early ‘90s crippled it even more.

We have one on central Arizona that never needs to shut down due to heat and definitely does not rely on sea water for cooling. So no, they don’t need to shut down when it gets too hot if they are designed for the heat.

It seems like that's only a question of when it needs to shut down rather than if:

https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-power-plants-struggling-...

> In the US, the sole desert-based nuclear facility, the Palo Verde plant in Arizona, relies on municipal wastewater rather than rivers or seas, though the facility has struggled with rising costs as more industries compete for limited supplies.

Because French were cheapening out on cooling towers and water returning back to river would be too hot. It is not problem of fission in general. It is just construction defect of those types of plants.

And takes ages to build. Solar is here now not in 15 years.

solar - nuclear is always on

wind - nuclear has a small defined footprint and doesn't kill animals

geothermal - nuclear can be built anywhere

nuclear - is safe and effective

> nuclear is always on

When is peak energy demand during the day/month/year?

> nuclear can be built anywhere

Like Fukushima? How do you handle lack of cooling water during droughts (see France 2022)?

> doesn't kill animals

How many animals get killed by wind farms roughly?

> is safe and effective

What is the cost per MWh including building cost + waste disposal costs?

>How many animals get killed by wind farms roughly?

Half a million a year in the US. Maybe.

https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

For complete context, that's out of 7.2 billion birds in the US [0]. So 7 per 100k per year.

[0] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrea...

>> nuclear can be built anywhere

>Like Fukushima? How do you handle lack of cooling water during droughts (see France 2022)?

Fukushima had problems that were known before the tsunami, that TEPCO failed to address.

Likewise, EDF has (and still had) power-delivery in France during the summer of 2022; "summer" being an event that has happened with some regularity in southern Europe for some time.

> How do you handle lack of cooling water during droughts (see France 2022)?

As far as I know, it was not lack of cooling water, but water retuning back to river being too hot, because that specific French design does not have cooling towers and discharges water back to river.

It works 24/7

Except it doesn't work for the 20 years that it takes to build a nuclear power plant.

Skill issue - overcome after we build a few and streamline the onerous permitting process.

That will still take at least 20 years.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit." Long term investment into the future is a good thing.

I agree with that sentiment but do we have 20 years to spend waiting to stave off climate change?

I'm not saying to only build nuclear, but it'll certainly help us out down the line, and not building it is almost certainly far worse than the potential of it being slow to build.

Oh, is it 20 now? Strange that the US does so much worse than the global average, which is 6-8 years. Is it a competency issue, you think?

It amazes me how we could do things so quickly in the past (e.g. build a nuclear power plant, get to the moon). Shippingport was built in 4 years.

Solar and wind are already being built almost as fast as they can (grid permitting).

We are already building those - at significant taxpayer subsidy. The companies actually creating most of the pollution should help deal with base load by building many large nuclear plants.

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