CommieGIR posted:Nukes, nukes, and more nukes. Extending the use of nuclear power significantly is not practical on a near-future timescale without the kind of massive effort and expenditure you could also use for poo poo like geoengineering, global modernization of all industrial equipment, and so on.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:39
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CommieGIR posted:We're going to spend triple that with renewable grids anyways, nuclear is starting to look cheaper. Gen III designs still have fundamental safety concerns, but we'll leave that aside for right now. So, are you proposing greenfield sites, or expanding existing sites with additional units? In the first case, you need a gigantic array of surveys to identify suitable sites, in the second case, merely a large array of surveys to determine how to construct the additional units. Simple geographical concerns would dictate a mixture in any case. So, you've got anywhere from 5 (Perry)-15 (Fermi Unit 2) years to construct a unit and have it generating power. How are we going to speed that up? If we're not speeding that up, now we've got to add the cost of the additional natural-gas and renewable facilities to deal with the oncoming generation shortfalls in, not that that's a gigantic cost. But let's look at the raw cost of construction. Using estimated overnight costs at the low end, $2000/kW, we get $740 billion to replace all the non-nuclear with nuclear as far as current energy generation goes. Using the Moody's estimate of $5000/kW for actual construction costs, we get $1.85 trillion. Not, by any means, a small matter politically, even if only one-seventeenth of US GDP. Global estimates for going nuclear at current levels of electricity generation would in turn require about $12 trillion, about one-seventh of global nominal GDP. Now, I am neglecting renewables, but bear in mind that electrical demand will continue to grow. Just for kicks, bringing everyone up to 10,000 kWh of electrical consumption (about average between the USA and Germany, France, Japan) using nuclear alone would take $40 trillion, more than half of nominal world GDP. But these costs will necessarily be amortized out over how long you plan construction to take. Over a decade, it would take only $4 trillion to bring the world up to the electrical capacity of developed countries. In turn, however, this means less effectiveness as a response to climate change. The actual numbers don't matter so much, however, as the political matter of selling such expenditures, even if we assume a global police state that can crush lay dissent. Similarly, you need to develop more people who can work in a nuclear power plant. For the US, we would need roughly quadruple the current amount of engineers, operators, and so on, and for nuclearing the world, nine times as many, and for the just solution, thirty times as many. The best way would be to cadre current people, which in turn would necessitate nationalizing, or probably internationalizing, existing reactors. Along with the expenditures necessary to produce people who have the basis for training in turn. Then you've got the increased demand for skilled laborers, and you've got to sort that mess out, probably necessitating a reworking of labor relations if we're not in the global police state for real. And then there's the political opposition that would emerge to all this. So, really, you're massively underestimating the costs.
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Nov 10, 2015 01:01
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Grognan posted:So instead of the Iraq war we could have closed all coal plants in the US? Yep! Think about that one for a while.
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Nov 10, 2015 01:14
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