Comment by defrost

Comment by defrost 2 hours ago

I more or less agree with your comment but feel it should be pointed out the CSIRO economic feasibility study is specific to Australia.

The arguments made there; why Australia is better to pursue renewables now rather than hope for nuclear eventually have no bearing on, say, China's use of nuclear for 20% of Chinese baseload.

A large part of the CSIRO argument is the greenfield standing start no prior expertise massive upfront costs and long lead time to any possible return.

China, by contrast, has an existing small army of nuclear technologists, multiple already running reactors, and many reactors of varying designs already in the design and construction pipeline.

cycomanic 2 hours ago

Even China who committed to significant nuclear capacity and wanted to ramp up their nuclear percentage to 20% (IIRC) is slowly moving away. The percentage of nuclear has in fact reduced over the last 5 years and initial commitments/projections of nuclear capacity are likely not going to be med. The whole reason being that solar (and to a lesser degree wind) have become so cheap that nuclear just doesn't make economical sense even for China.

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defrost 2 hours ago

You say that and yet China is still building new reactors and have staged plans for more.

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jmyeet 2 hours ago

China is a special case. In fact, it's the one country on Earth I'd actually trust to build, maintain and regulate nuclear power.

I don't believe China is convinced (yet) of the long-term viability of nuclear power (fission or fusion) but, like with many things, they're hedging their bets. In the US? It's just another opportunity to transfer wealth from the government coffers to private hands through a series of cost overruns, massive delays and under-deliveries.

China's advantages here are extreme. They have the manufacturing base, would likely use the same plant designs in multiple places (rather than a separate procurement process in every city or province) and they have a bunch of existing infrastructure that gives them options, like they're pioneers in UHVDC transmission lines that might make it more viable to build a nuclear reactor away from populated centers. Even UHVDC development was to solve a largely China-only problem: the power generation is mostly in the west part of the country whereas the people are in the east.

And yes the CSIRO report is Australia-specific but the timeframes for building nuclear power in the US are similar: 10-15 years. Starting today it's unclear if such a plant would be online by 2040. Yet we can build solar in months.

That's the other part of this: if we're just looking at data centers, theyh can be placed anywhere. You can ignore where fiber runs. You just build more fiber if you have to. DCs need power and water, basically. The Southwest is very efficient for solar [1] but light on for water. There's the Colorado River but that's been tapped beyond its limits already.

Along the Mississippi is another option. Not as efficient as the Southwest for solar but water is plentiful. Inclement weather is an issue though, both tornadoes and the winters.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7fk7eu/solar_power...

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defrost 2 hours ago

> And yes the CSIRO report is Australia-specific but the timeframes for building nuclear power in the US are similar
* The US has existing commercial scale nuclear power stations. Australia does not.
* The US has an existing nuclear weapons industry. Australia does not.
* The US has existing advanced courses on nuclear technology for workforce scale populations. Australia has extremely limited coursework.
* The US actively builds and maintains SMRs for submarine use. Australia does not.
These are fairly critical differences in terms of additional costs to Australia above and beyond build times.

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