US hit record oil production of 13.1M - Thanks Biden!

We’ve had emission free energy available for a loooong time. Nuclear. We could easily be at 80% or more emission free by now. If that’s all that matter is emission free then let’s build 25 new nuclear plants. They are reliable safe and endless in energy production. In my opinion this is just another feel good sound bite that conveniently ignores critical factors such as cost, availability, reliability and abundance.

 

I’m going to agree with 90% of what you just said, but I differ in that I think it is appropriate for government to fund endeavors when they are in the national interests, such as renewable energy. Chances are without the subsidization it would not have advanced as rapidly as it has.

You may have better info but my perception is that “clean coal” is largely a pipe dream.

 

we need the smaller, replicable, lower pollution, safer next gen nuclear plants built at existing coal sites and then at existing nat gas sites. there are several competitors currently building prototypes. It is on the horizon and I like it to generate the base load in lieu of massive battery banks

 

It seems like your perspective of what we should be investing in is inversely proportional to the actual cost of generating electricity by each form. The data shows that expense goes, in order from least to most expensive: wind, solar, coal, nuclear. Why are you advocating nuclear and coal, as if they are cheaper than solar and wind?

 

have to supply base load. solar and wind can't do that without massive battery banks. next gen nuclear >>> current or proposed battery banks

 

We don't actually know that on nuclear. It is possible, but I have not seen evidence of this "next gen" nuclear having been constructed and operated on a commercial scale. I'm not opposed to R&D investment (I don't want to make the same mistake that fossil fuel advocates made a decade ago in underestimating the rate of technological development), but, with the decline in storage prices, we seem a lot closer on wind/solar with batteries than nuclear. Not sure that we have 5-10 years to sit around and see what happens on nuclear.

 

they haven't. they are under construction but have been setback due to lack of fuel. current batteries have a tremendous carbon footprint. reduce that and I'm in. It will, and should be, a combination that can be weighted towards the best total performance

big problem with next gen nuclear is lack of fuel that dates to clinton buying uranium from Russia. see this thread

Clinton Era Deal Killed US Uranium Production | Swamp Gas Forums (gatorcountry.com)

and this for Gates Next Gen plant being built in Wyoming

Wyoming nuclear plant on track despite industry setback, developer says - WyoFile

 

I am conceptually for nuclear but it keeps failing to expand due to measures of cost. It just costs too much up front. Nucor just laid off a bunch of employees as a program didn’t move forward.

Nuclear May play a role but it is just too expensive to scale in any timely manner.

Why is it conservatives are pro fossil fuel and pro nuclear and anti other forms of renewables, just as a matter of principle?

 

I read the Wyoming article. That isn't terribly encouraging, although it appears to be very early stage in the development process as a technology. Sounds like one project already failed and that there are predictions of that one failing too. We will see, but it doesn't look nearly encouraging enough to sell out on that technology (especially given that we haven't even gotten to a whole new set of problems that would develop as you tried to install it around the country).

 

I think it will be difficult to get to 100% solar/wind in any reasonable time frame, but I think we can get a long way there. In TX in the hot summers I think solar and wind are kicking in 30-40% of the load. That pretty significant. No reason why we can’t double that in a reasonable number of years. However after that there are going to be base load issues - night, cold, etc. Batteries will help somewhat. To the degree we can decentralize and people have solar and batteries at home it will become easier to lessen the need for baseload.

 

they have had further setbacks.

Oregon nuclear power company NuScale acknowledges layoffs, says 154 lost their jobs

 

explain to me how we can power a nuclear aircraft carrier with a reactor and we can't build that same reactorin Peoria?

 

they need commercial customers at a higher price than projected as they have not perfected/value engineered the construction process yet. this is where subsidies to commercialize help a nascent industry. it isn't that their tech doesn't work, it just costs too much in this early stage.

found these sentences pertinent and am curious as to what the western companies that cancelled projects chose in lieu of.

Projected costs for the Idaho project ballooned by 75% last year, to $9.3 billion, and the target price for power from NuScale’s reactor climbed by more than 50%. That made it less appealing to the utilities seeking an affordable alternative to electricity generated by fossil fuels.

NuScale said Monday that its layoffs represent a shift away from the research stage of its operations toward commercialization of its small modular reactors. But it did not announce any deals to actually deploy reactors.

“Our U.S. Nuclear Regulatory-approved, industry-leading SMR technology is already many years ahead of the competition,” John Hopkins, NuScale’s CEO, said in a written statement. “Today, commercialization of our SMR technology is our key objective, which includes near-term deployment and manufacturing.”

 

It is going to be difficult convincing utilities that this is just a new technology issue when nuclear has had issues with cost overruns for basically its entire existence. There are some financially intriguing elements to this push for smaller nuclear plants (notably, that it limits the risk of obsolescence), but the costs still seem to be an issue. I'm not opposed to some degree of subsidy on the technology (as it would potentially have social benefits if developed), but it just doesn't look all that promising as a commercial product right now without some sort of major innovation.

 

That’s the thing, everything with nuclear always has massive cost overruns. It would take near unlimited commitment to fight through them to ever get to scale. Perhaps we will get there but it could take a long time.

 

I don’t know. I suspect the cost of power for a nuclear submarine is only a secondary consideration. Plus the safety issues (and perceptions) of a sub in the middle of the ocean is probably less than a residential neighborhood.

 

historically, costs have been high because each plant had its own unique design. one of the main objectives of next gen is to be plug and play. same design everywhere, that should result in substantial reduction in costs. and the more they build, the cheaper they will become as the supply side of the components can ramp up to volume to cut production costs. theoretically...

 

Agree that is the point. But that means that they need to deliver that advantage pretty soon to continue to justify the investment. If they can do that, I would prefer that to fossil fuel burning.

 

few things. Interesting you consider clean coal a ‘pipe dream’, seemingly not worthy of investing in technology to improve efficiency but then talk about the necessity to invest in other unproven technologies. We are sitting on centuries of supplies of coal and it’s safe and easy to transport. Instead we are on the precipice of crippling ourselves. As far as drilling the technology has come a long way. The percentage of dry holes is a fraction of a fraction of what it was. Rather than demonize and hinder the fossil fuel sector the regulators and never ending unfriendly lawmakers and administrations, they could have partnered and made those options cheaper, cleaner and more efficient. We could have had more modernized refineries. More efficient coal, more efficient and cheaper sources of production of oil and natural gas. Would be world leaders in safe and abundant nuclear. Then turning that around and exporting cheaper energy to third world countries and truly lifting them out of poverty vs garbage Chinese belt and road imprisonment and telling them they can’t use fertilizer or pesticides in order to save the planet…. As if they care. But instead we spend decades threatening to destroy and in some cases truly the ending portions or all of a sector. They could have even taxed that a small fraction to pay for alternative energy research and Design. There are a multitude of options for all off the above policy. But instead here we are and the least able are the ones bearing the brunt of all the energy cost increases, while the elite worry about where to plug in their Tesla’s.

 

All this because you can't simply say "the liberals were right" about solar and wind. You are asking for investing in technology that even the lowest estimates suggest would take $600 Billion to develop to a point in which it could commercialize at scale (more balanced estimates put it somewhere around $1 trillion). At the end of this process, you are still left with all of the other pollutants. Instead, we could build more of the types of energy with the lowest cost of generation in the world. Lower than coal. But, you would prefer that we invest hundreds of billions of dollars on a tech that might not even work, just so that you don't have to admit that the liberals were right about this one.