Thanks so much for watching! If you would like to hear more about my thoughts on nuclear vs. other sources of energy, please check out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XyAgY1dBZMo.htmlsi=3Cp44VKTAkd0zOgo
I think in usa part of the reason for the overruns is that a lot of these plants are built by the government and for free market reasons the government rarely builds shit in house and prefers to contract contractors who contract contractors
29:08 You certainly have sizeable knowledge gaps about renewables. You can do a black start with renewables. It is easy to black start smaller parts of the grid. It didn't happen in real life because there was no need to, but it is already tested and ready to go. Maybe the gaps about renewables stem from different conditions in the US and Germany/Europe. Recycling is another point. At least in Germany is already enough capacity to recycle wind and solar for the coming years. This is the case for nearly 10 years by now. For batteries too btw. People think and work ahead here, maybe not so much in the US? Or it is reliance on unreliable media sources/the bubble.
Wow! 51k subscribers! Way to go! So I wanted to point you at another channel called Plainly Difficult. He has a cool delivery and graphics. He has covered quite a few disasters based around nuclear reactors and enrichment facilities. I know you have done a lot of videos on Chernobyl, but I would ask you to take a look at his short series and maybe do a reaction and spill a little bit of your brain power our way. Gratz again on your subscribers, and keep the videos coming!
Yes, that would be great! See him do Plainly's short Chernobyl series. I like these a lot. The RBMK is now an official character in the Plainly Difficult world😊
I think you should look at Illinois energy prof. This video's block concept came from his channel, and it really is a great RU-vid channel for energy technology, especially nuclear.
Late on the comment but I really like how he references capacity factor. Every single attempt I've ever seen at comparisons always ignores capacity factors and we end up getting wind / solar running 100% CF for capital expense purposes.
Got a couple of questions: - How viable would it be to use a zero-power reactor to destroy forever chemicals in contaminated water through neutron activation of fluorine? - How viable would it be to create a reactor which uses ammonia instead of water as a coolant/moderator, in order to improve neutron economy? - What do you think of cooling things through the infrared atmospheric window? (Barium sulfate is one such substance that can exploit it.)
1. Not viable, you would have to irradiate the entire ocean with isn't very viable. There are better ways to get rid of it but most importantly we must stop producing them in the first place. 2. Ammonia would be a bad coolant. Low boiling point means low efficiency, low heat capacity and conductivity means bad coolant properties and ammonia is NH3 so it still has hydrogen in it which captures neutrons. Uranium enrichment is relatively cheap nowadays so it's easier to increase enrichment than to use a different coolant/moderator. 3. Geoengineering is an interesting idea but acid rain and pollution are not worth the advantages.
@@vaclavzajac214 1. PFAS tend to bioaccumulate. You could take advantage of that with a specially cultured microorganism that loves PFAS, concentrating it all into one place. 2. Even at supercritical pressures? It can achieve a supercritical state at *half* the pressure of water, and supercritical fluid-based reactors are already being developed. 3. Barium sulfate isn't necessarily a geoengineering thing. It can be applied as a paint. An infrared cooling paint based on barium sulfate works by being *extremely* reflective in the visible spectrum, but being very emissive in the infrared specy... And more specifically, it emits its thermal energy in a very specific wavelength which passes right through our atmosphere. You could paint the roofs of a lot of buildings with it to reduce their air conditioning requirements during the summer, and I imagine you could also use it at a powerplant to help get rid of waste heat more efficiently. O.o
@@AmaroqStarwind 1. Yeah, they can bioacumulate in organisms but there's no need to use reactors for disposal. There are cheaper ways to destroy them. 2. As I said, ammonia is neither a good moderator or coolant. Increasing operating temperature to 300°C might be possible but it's just not worth it. 3. I missunderstood the role of BaSO4, there have been reflective paints developed and they could be benefitial for roofs but it would only have local effect and most people don't want to paint their house white.
1 neutronic destruction seems like overkill and wild men at minimum isolating the irradiated material for years to reduce secondary radiation. It would be much better to use the ultra high temperature process that can break basically all of them down if you want to go overboard or use several of the more normal high temperature processes that are less versatile ore even the highly specialized low temperature processes that can break some down but the low temp ones tend to use less stable but more accurately nasty chemicals. 3 a major issue with things like that are chemical weathering and surface degradation basically such paints are very prone to wear and most surface coatings to protect them have other degradation issues or defeat the purpose. Basically the only viable top coat I know of is a uv reactivate polymer and thus the top coat wears out roughly every other year.
Hi, T. Folse. How are you doing? Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my first language. I am a ChemIcal Engineering grad student from Brasil, I alredy had deep interest in nuclear engineering, but your channel made it flourish. I even signed up for a transport phenomena lab that uses gamma rays to do some experiments. I stumbled in a interesting video of a nuclear fuel recharge in Angra 2, an Nuclear power plant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It would be great to listen to you insights when you react to the video. Its called: Recarga de combustível em Angra 2, from the channel Eletronuclear TV. Keep on the good work, love to see the notification pop up when you post some new things.
As a Canadian, I'm SO proud of my countries contributions and investment in nuclear power. I know we could spend more on the SMR designs we're working on to get them closer to practicality. But I just feel like we're a step above the US and most of the EU.
French here. There is definitely an opportunity for Canada especially since you guys had the balls to think about new reactor designs that fit your industry and needs, rather than just take PWR as the end-all-be-all of nuclear and blindly try to paste it everywhere. We need more nuclear industries that is actually willing to take pause and consider what's it's trying to accomplish. Here in France we struggle to get shit off the ground despite our substantial nuclear park because in 30 years our builders have forgotten how to construct plants correctly, while our government and regs insist on making the new reactors "everything proof" even past the point of informed reason. On thing specifically that bothers me is how opposed we are to ever consider other core types. We want PWR to do things it's just not good at doing. We want it to be everything it's not yet refuse to ever consider investing into anything else. Basically here if you aren't making a PWR you will never be allowed to make a test core to even prove your shit can work. The regulatory cost is basically several times higher than your build cost at this point. I really hope that other countries, like Canada, can open the door and get us actually thinking about the core principles of core design. If we rely on 50yo design philosophies, how are we expected to ever beat fossil fuels?
@@mobiuscoreindustries France is the reason I said "Most of the EU" haha, my nuclear Conrad! I hear you about the experience deficit. I know thats an issue here in Canada too, I think we got off a little easier because we export our Candu design across Asia and in the middle east, I think last one was in 2018 but we don't build those I don't think. I live about 1 hour from the 2nd largest nuclear power plant thats active Bruce Power Generating station. Thankfully, I think the government and regulators here are also looking for more ways to extend the lifespan too.
After hearing about CIRUS from Asianometry's video on the Indian nuclear program, I have newfound respect for Canada always pushing the boundary to commercialize nuclear power technology.
One day, nuclear proponents will have to convince investors that nuclear will live up to the claimed cost competitiveness, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Not many people will throw money at something that doesn't pay off for 20 years just to get cancelled a decade into construction.
@@fwiffo To be fair, decade long construction is in a big part a failure of Westinghouse having many issues and going over multiple contractors. Rosatom does not have such issues, and is able to build reactors within 5 years. But that seems to be becoming an East/West issue, as the West lost a lot of expertise. While China is gaining it rapidly, partially due to their contractors taking over construction of power plants within China itself. And Rosatom is simply ahead of everyone else, whether in enrichment or in reactor technology.
@@fwiffo Nuclear is expensive and slow because the government made it expensive and slow, they artificially manipulated the market and created a bunch of red tape every step along the way, and invested trillions into renewables and fossil fuels. Private investors don't pass laws, and they don't invest in dumb shit like unreliable, deadly, intermittent and unproven tech. Why do you think renewables and fossil fuels need to be government subsizied by 85 billion and 7 trillion respectively? There isn't a market for them, they hemohrage money and need to constantly ask uncle sam for bailouts funded by your tax dollars. If there was a market for them, they wouldn't need government subsidies in the first place. If we actually lived in a free market economy nuclear energy would dominate, it kills significantly less people than any other form of power generation, it produces the most power and is the most efficient and the most reliable, takes up far less land thus preserving the enviroment and produces no carbon emissions, and it's waste is recyclable. No smart investor is going to take one look and decide on any other alternative, those that do would make significantly less money or lose money entirely.
How’s your nuclear engineering career going? I’m currently going into mechanical engineering as an incoming freshman but I’m stuck between mechanical and nuclear. The only thing holding me back is the job demand of nuclear.
@@Noah-ot1sv just started a job with a major nuclear company 2 months ago, I’d say if you’re REALLY into nuclear and you don’t wanna work anywhere else go for it! There’s more than enough jobs for good students in my experience but I will say, I work with mostly mechanical engineers, so you absolutely don’t need to be a nuclear engineer to work in the industry, if it’s an option, minoring in nuclear engineering can be a great option as well. Aside from job prospects there are other factors you can consider depending on your university: department size (nuclear is generally smaller so you tend to know everyone in your class which I prefer), department undergraduate research opportunities (there were a ton in nuclear in my school but not nearly as many proportionally in mechanical engineering), and professor quality (sometimes there’s only one nuke class so if it’s taught by a bad professor you can’t switch like you might be able to do in a bigger department). Last thing I’ll say is mechanical and nuclear engineering are pretty similar, I’d describe nuclear engineering as mechanical lite but you know about radiation (you’ll slowly start to realize many people including engineers don’t know anything about radiation, just not necessary knowledge for most people). If you have any more questions or concerns feel free to ask, since I’m fresh out of college the experience is still fresh in my mind
@@Noah-ot1sv left a fat reply but it didn’t seem to go through? Anyway the gist is if you only wanna work for the nuclear industry and don’t see yourself anywhere else, go for it, I’m two months into a job with a major nuclear company straight out of college and most of my classmates who were looking found jobs with little issues. I work with mechanical engineers mostly though so if you need the security, mechanical with nuclear minor might be a good option. Consider your university’s discipline size, undergraduate research opportunities per discipline, and professor quality when making your decision. Feel free to ask any questions to me since I just went through college and it’s still fresh in my mind :)
Gonna chime in as an infrastructure finance guy and clear up some terms. Risk was used a little loosely in both videos. Risk is uncertainty that what you're anticipating won't happen, so it doesn't matter how long your build-out is so long as you predict it accurately. Generally utilities aren't risky because they're needed and you can be pretty confident there will be a need for electricity (or water) in 50 years. Not too many other industries where you can say that. There's a risk to changes in prices, but this is why governments should help in minimzing that risk. You don't want to deter investments in energy because prices are unpredictable, but you also don't want to facilitate over-building so prices are low and your paying for power no one needs. Investors are investing in companies not in plants. Bonds could be issued for specific projects, but the plant is likely to be one of many owned by the company. A company generating free cash flow is looking for investments that will keep that going. A home builder that stops building homes eventually runs into cash flow issues, so does the power company that milks old capital investments without thinking where future cash will come from. As these are typically publicly traded companies no investor is stuck for 20 years waiting for a dividend. Any good news on the faster build-out or higher anticipated prices could cause more people to be interested in buying the stock at a highrr price from someone who got in earlier. The concept of discounted future cash flows was nicely introduced, but again, since you're looking at something that's pretty predictable (like utilities) the rate at which future money is discounted is quite small relative to other private investments. There's no doubt that the long build-outs reduce ROI, there is a place for the government to step in and keep those discount rates low so that the long life of the facilities make them attractive investments. I also think that most folks would agree that build-times decrease with the frequency and familiarity. If the government prioritized nuclear for the rest of the century, we'd get faster and cheaper builds. The priority could be a nuclear base, solar with storage for local needs, and gas for following demand beyond that. If people didn't needlessly get spooked about nuclear 40 years ago, we could be there now.
There is a missing calculation in this economic comparison. I.E. the 'End of life' deconstruction cost. Demolition of gas / wind /solar plants will be relatively cheap. However, deconstructing a nuclear plant must allow for perhaps decades of cooling of High grade nuclear fuel waste. But the real High costs would be the disassembly of the reactor vessel, and items like the ancillary water pump gear inside the reactor loop. That dismantling will take years while radioactive components either reduce emission via half life decay, or the process de-assembles High level waste. Just the time and storage costs, while there is no income stream, should need to be considered as part of the full economic process.
few years ago a combined cycle gas plant was built in beloit wi. the data plate is like 1200mgw. 500mw at the engin end and remainder at the steam turbin. and there kinda small but really can be built in bout anw size. a combin cycle plant should take 1.5 years to build. and thats going with standard amount of hicc ups. normaly 1 year can be built if job was pre planed very well and no major delays.
29:00 How does LCOE NOT take into account the capacity factor? LCOE doesn't multiply the plant maximum theoretical output with it's lifetime, it calculates with the average (the actual energy produced per year) or rather the sum of energy produced over their entire lifetime. The capacity factor is included in Et. Is it not?
6 years to get a nuclear plant up? HA! Not in the US, people will fight the building of it in court for 6 years easily before a single drop of concrete gets poured.
The gas plant near me (goreway power station) was only $800 million usd equivalent but took 3 years. It's a combined cycle, at 875 MW. The 3 gas turbines are excellent load followers. The steam turbine is a bit slower.
Nuclear in 6 years, how nice, mochovce 3 started build in 1985, Hot test went in 2022, full production late 2023.... 6 years and 6 bilions is in case you build several units alonside if you build lot of them, if you go for one unit both skyrocked
1:34 or that's why Co2 g/kW are still so low for Germany, now that they use a lot less gas and have ramped up production with brown coal, it's higher..
The fact that alot of people are disregarding nuclear power at this point is just dumfounding. Nuclear energy done right, with maintenance including in the pricing and plans, is no doubt the best chance we have of combating climate changes I also think the impossible reusing if materials used in windmills is a great factor as well. The fact that you can’t reuse the glass fibre in windmills is never taken into account.
With how long nuclear plants takes to build compared to gas and how short the gas powerplant lifespan is, I'm wondering if it would be possible to "retrofit" gas plant that are aging by building a nuclear reactor that replace the gas heat source when it's too old to keep the more general purpose turbines running for much longer than it would ever be possible with just gas or nuclear alone.
I don't think the retrofit concept alleviates the "how long it takes to build", because the refit would be affected by it as well. If you can't build a nuclear reactor in 4-5 years, you're doing something wrong and need to reconsider your industry and regulatory environment. P.S. retrofitting gas plants is difficult as it requires a high temperature gas reactor to be a "compatible" replacement. You can retrofit steam plants (coal or oil boilers) with typical LWR type reactors though.
So apparently DOW is making progress towards getting the first Small Modular Reactor (SMR) in my state. If successful, I imagine other plants and refineries will follow suit
in wi we see alot of our combine cycle plants run as peakers and them run down to base load. that said in a half hr ish there making steam for the turbine. but the jet engines are making power as soon as there up to speed and synced. so half load in 10 15 min about. vs a coal plant run up of about 6 to 8 hr. the maintince side when they do that tho well lets just say there not ment to go from cold stop to steam in a half hr. so the tubes and heades end up with alot of cracking very fast. so maintince costs go way up but dont think conpairs to nuclear cost of maintince.
Do comparisons like this already include the fact that we kjnd of have a lot of "security" factors (building codes, etc) build into nuclear as well as the "waste" storage codes compared to other forms of energy production? I'd really be interested how the comparisons would look if fossil fuels also have to have their waste (greenhouse gasses for example) priced realistically with regards to the damage that has, is and will be done worldwide (health impacts from particulates included). Because it seems to me this is a bit disingenuous, because nuclear powerplants basically seem to have negative "subsidies" due to all the standards they have to uphold, but for fossil fuels we are basically like "Meh, whatever it's basically diluted in the air". I know about the fact that CO2 is supposed to be slowly priced into the production cost (or something along those lines), but I'm not asking about the "ease-in" pricing scheme meant to slowly drive investment to energy production methods, but the real cost if we would be as strict with those forms as production as we are with nuclear.
Pricing in emissions (e.g. a carbon tax) helps cost competitiveness vs. fossil fuels, but not renewables or grid storage. It also doesn't help with nuclear's risk (as an investment) nor the PR expense. There is a lot of grid storage coming online, and lots of new grid storage methods in the development pipeline, which solves the biggest problem with wind and solar. It's also getting cheaper.
@@fwiffo I was not comparing nuclear to renewables. I explicitly named fossil fuels because it is fossil fuels that nuclear should have to content with primarily in my view (to force phasing out fossil fuels first, could care less if we phase out nuclear after that to be honest). And this only works if we compare apples to apples. So if nuclear is more expensive because of all the safety precautions, than the solution is not to be lenient to other forms of energy production, but instead apply ALL applicable precautions we already use in nuclear on the same scale to each energy production form. But that will most likely never happen, I doubt even the carbon tax will price-in the true cost ofdamages done worldwide (not just direct damages from warming, but also effects on eco-systems, general pollution and such) because people would rage vote for right wingers - I guarantee it. Rant Incoming: Especially in Germany people like to turn more of a blind eye to fossil fuel related stuff, while arguing like "nuclear is dirty, bad long term effects (storage etc), too expensive" Funnily enough fossil fuels get more of a pass because it is seemingly much cheaper (because no one gives appropriate shit compared to nuclear with regards to long term effects world wide). Not to mention the richer parts of the world basically decided to just go and keep burning fossil fuels in hopes that CCS works out - "pump it underground for thousands of years" which obviously is not similar to storing nuclear waste underground for thousands of years. Like if anyone argues that storing nuclear underground is a potential danger because future humans might not know it's there, I'd fucking like to know the difference if a massive underground storage of co2 is damaged and spills its shit back out again. If nuclear storage is not acceptable, then CO2 (or other greenhouse gasses) storage should not be either. There are like 2 neighbors around me that I know of which basically installed gas heaters (maybe also other stuff like cooking appliances, not sure though) in the last 1-2 years instead of heat pumps, because gas is supposedly cheaper when doing the dumb comparisons (i.e. comparing gas price vs kwh directly instead of taking into account "efficiency" of the heating system overall, not even taking into account you can use solar to generate some electricity yourself for heatpumps).
one thing he didn't mention is that not all energy solution work for all countries. for example solar energy makes economical sense in California where it receives a lot of sunlight. but somewhere like the UK for example solar power makes less economical sense because the UK most of the year round is overcast and wont receive much sunlight. so only wind, nuclear or natural gas are the only solutions that makes sense in the uk. he also forgot to mention that because California have gone all in on solar energy and electric vehicles at the same time that there has been a constant overloading of the grid and has almost caused blackouts due to people using electric cars as well as other necessities and electrical appliances as well. so although solar has worked well for them relying purely on solar to supply the baseload of power is not a great idea. renewables need to work alongside nuclear and/or natural gas.
Solars and wind have a lot of problems too, solars are bad for environment ( production of them is bad) especially that they are mostly made in places without laws about protection of environment, so they just polut rivers and dirt with they waste.
Could you guesstimate what portion of nuclear plant construction cost overruns is due to actual problems with building the plant and how much is caused purely by government regulation/corruption? For some reason, I had the impression that Watts Bar and other slow-to-construct nuclear plants would have been finished much quicker if not for politicians' meddling. It's just a hunch, though, so I'm probably wrong.
dont forget to mention the fact that government "corruption" is caused directly by fossil fuel industries subverting democracy with their profits. not necessarily an inherint problem with government in gneral, its more of an effect of a particular economic system
There was a raft of deregulation and subsidies in 2005, and as a result, almost 30 new reactors were planned. All were cancelled at various stages except the 2 at Votgle. That project has been loaded with delays and cost overruns, and only one of the reactors just came online. As for politicians' meddling, you'd have to be more specific. The only incentive for a politician to block a plant in their jurisdiction would be demands of the voters. So, that's just democracy in action.
@@fwiffo Yes, it's democracy in action. Doesn't mean that public opinion can't change its direction in the future. I merely wonder how much faster - and cheaper - nuclear plants could be built if the public opinion shifted over the next 20-30 years. Obviously, each nuclear plant is still a very expensive project that takes a while to build, especially if you want it to be safe... and the risk scares away investors, as the video has explained. But how expensive and risky would they be if the political climate was favorable? --- As for incentives, I can think of three reasons for politicians to sabotage attempts to build nuclear plants: - easy votes, - pressure from the media, - and perhaps money from the coal/oil industry. Perhaps.
@@oleg4966 The nuclear industry has had 60 years to get its act together when it comes to cost and public relations. Wind and solar have their problems, but they've at least managed to overcome opposition from fossil fuel money, NIMBYs, etc., and they've brought down cost over time. Nuclear just keeps falling further behind. There isn't a magic wand to make it popular or cost competitive.
all fine and good, lets talk about waste storage? i really miss that point on here, how much it costs? on gas/wind/solar i don't have any nuclear waste i have to process nor can be thing melt down and potentialy kill a few 100'k people.
Tyler, some of the perspective from Real Engineering is because of the type of engineer he is, he is a civil engineer, so he is always looking at averages and how a city and such is put together, he doesn't have as much knowledge in a specialized engineering such as nuclear like you would.
You said boiler. Do a lot of Natural gas plants operate with boilers? Where I and as far as I know our natural gas peaker plants are all directly run off of gas turbines.
Just saw Kyle Hill calling kurzgesagt spam. Very disappointing. I have no doubt that there is a lot of science-based spam on youtube but not this station. They are German so yes they use a computer generated voice for English narration.
There’s a lot of interest in Australia for nuclear power, it’s currently banned so theres very little expertise to even do the analysis. Could you shed some light on the things a country with no background would need to do to be ready to fireup a first reactor.
Why not have governments build the plants out by contracting out experts and labor from the industry and then sell the plants as soon as they’re ready to begin making money? That way the main investors are really the taxpayer, who benefit from greatly reduced energy prices, and corporations can start repaying the debt immediately and begin generating profit from day 1. When companies and the private sector are way too short-sighted, that’s generally when governments should step in to provide public goods that everyone benefits from- in this case cheap and efficient energy
Your assuming a government can do anything in an efficient or cost effective manner. All government can do is gum up operations and interfere. That can be a good thing, some things should be slowed to give time to shake down unintended consequences.but when it comes to doing anything on time or under budget, don't look to government.
any time you use tax dollars to pay for private contractors youre going to have these private contractors essentially ripping off tax payers. this is why nationalizing the power would be better
lol. because of private interests corrupting government . see a government serve the population without the corruption of private interests and youll see why most countries nationalize industry over the opposite. unless your real interest is so serve the minority shareholders, nationalizing services is always going to be the better option@@jerryfick613
@@jerryfick613 I’d encourage you to investigate the principle of public goods, because they can most adequately provide services that every single citizen benefits from. Let’s make an example. An old water reservoir that sources drinking water is collapsing, and repairing or replacing it will cost millions. Who’s going to pay for that? You? If you know everyone needs it, that means other people will be willing to pay for it right? So why pay at all when you can just let someone else pay for it? Government-funded public goods just make sense because through the tax dollar, everyone has to pitch in for things that benefit the entire community. Please notice that is a very separate function of government then regulation or wealth redistribution, which I think where most of the current economic tensions currently lay. Edit: continuing that example, let’s say you still hate having to pay a government to build the reservoir but you decide to pool your money together with everyone else in the community. You don’t get enough funding because not everyone contributes, so you start insisting on payment from the freeloaders to actually pay their fair share or else you all literally die. Maybe you even shun or penalize them for not contributing when you know they could. Sounds a lot like a government to me
@MichaelJones-wj4mo you suggested that a government could build infrastructure in a more cost effective manner than private industry. That is the primary point I was disputing.
It's simple. Build a 1 GW PWR for at most 2 billion dollars (like the US used to be able to, and some places still are), and it's just unquestionably economical. Don't build literally the same reactors for 10 billion dollars a piece.
@@wumi2419 So what? If you build a reactor for that price, it will be the most economical energy source. You have to then screw up really bad on opex to cancel that build cost out.
@@zolikoff first half of video is basically about that. And I would assume it's using 5-years-ago gas prices, which are couple times lower than modern ones.
I'm curious why megawatt was the unit chosen. Obviously, nobody likes to add unnecessary conversions in any unit system, but we have energy production at kW, mW and gW scales and I hear each unit used at different times along with tW for grids and cumulative production. Is the use of mW here instead of gW or kW seeking a middle ground, or is it functionally easier to use? My instinct would be to expect kW because it minimizes sub-1 values and the low end of changes in output/usage are in kW. That's similar to why planes describe altitude in feet or meters rather than miles or kilometers because they change altitude in smaller increments. Feet are actually used even in most metric countries because all the early work in aviation standards was in feet. For example, 1000 ft is also a standard separation distance, which has to be loosely converted to 300 meters (about 5 meters short, but the round number is more important for memory as it's not a precision guideline).
I don't that matters as much, since converting between KW, MW, GW, TW is quite straightforward. 1 TW = 1,000GW = 1,000,000 (million) MW = 1,000,000,000 (billion) KW. For power generation, MW I guess is used as the power plant generate around these power levels...
I know the conversion rate is simple, but both he and Brian (Real Engineering) were talking about "1000 mW" instead of 1 gW. And that's something I have noticed with plants. 0.5mW, 1500mW, etc. I do get using consistent units so you don't make conversion errors (easy as it is, I dropped a zero in my first pass at this reply). I just was wondering what made mW the preferred scale. Like you said, some plants operate where mW makes sense, but there are plants like I mentioned where gW and kW make more sense. You just usually don't hear "thousand" of any unit unless there's a specific reason to keep it in lower units and I was hoping someone more knowledgeable than me could say what it is.
@@Merennulli For nuclear most reactors have power output in multiples of 10 or 100 MW. Ones I see often is 1000, 1200, 200, 600. It's often similar with other power plants. 0.5MW seems weird for a power plant, as it's a scale of big generator.
@@wumi24190.5 mW is SMR scale, so for purely nuclear I understand, but from the video it was comparing "a 1000 mW nuclear power plant and a 1000 mW natural gas power plant" and for small communities, 0.5 mW range small hydro power plants are something I'm aware of. Though they're usually stated in kW, hence my confusion at what seemed like inconsistent handling of units.
It’s not that investors don’t think long term, they absolutely do. But an investment of that length presents with risk, especially with political figures who would prefer to prop up wind and solar because that’s where THEY are invested.
@@antoineroquentin2297 I dont know why you'd need to guard it. you just have to make sure it's contained, which it does in these near-indestructable casks.
@@ExarchGaming Some invididuals might try to use radiactive materials as weapon. Or it might be the target of a terrorist attack. Or it needs do be monitored if everything is sealed, if there is water ingress, etc.
The problem with these sorts of discussions are manyfold. One of the big doozies is picking your construction costs out of what you'd politely call a beta (i.e. development) reactor like Flamanville, then pretend the downing tools for covid or problems with development are going to multiply for every reactor (when they aren't). The n most importantly you've got to got to cherry pick your fuel and running costs from a reactor that is making nuclear materials for weapons and has a small side business in producing electricity like, IDK, the Magnox reactors. It's an easy problem to solve: France has the lowest pre-tax energy prices on the planet and France has lots of nuclear energy. See, easy. Wait until Rolls-Royce get their reactors licensed for civil energy production if you want to see how quickly the world can change. It's coming soon and a _lot_ of countries already have orders in. 470MWe per reactor, basically submarine reactor tech small enough to be built on a production line and not needing the huge nuclear islands of something like an EDF EPR and significantly smaller reactor buildings all making the civil engineering significantly simpler and cheaper (people don't realise it's mostly the _extreme_ civil engineering that makes reactors so expensive to build), by orders of magnitude. It's kinda mind-boggling nobody thought to do that before with the safety record that marine reactors have. Honestly though, I disagree with the thesis anyway - a 40-50 year ROI for a government is nothing, for a sovereign wealth fund or even for many private investment banks. That's not the problem - the problem is a lack of long-term thinking and planning preferring instead quick fixes that have catastrophic implications later. Nick Clegg the former deputy PM of the UK, now some sort of big deal at Facebook now said some years back he was against building nuclear power because it wouldn't come online until 2022, so that was a pointless exercise - 2022 being the year the UK could have really done with some more power generation so it didn't have to rely on gas. Also nuclear energy is safe relative to wind power, let alone natural gas.
Fossil fuel is finite and we consume an ungodly amount of it we will eventually run out of it. When we find ourselves in permanent decline is difficult to know a head of time and it’s not going to cause the end world scenario that some alarmists claims a few decades ago. But it will mean the end of that industry. We know simply due to the laws of nature that out of coal, oil and natural gas, natural gas is the least plentiful and that’s the one we are investing our resources in. I claim that it is foolish to do so when we could invest those resources in an energy source so plentiful on earth and in the solar system that it might as well be considered infinite.
19:45 $30 billion dollars for 2 nuke plants and like you mentioned, those prices and construction time and come down drastically with experience. The USA has given $75 billion dollars worth of aid to Ukraine. Over half a trillion dollars in foreign aid from 2022-2021. Trillions of dollars on wars over the last 20 years. Near trillion dollar defense budgets every year. Probably more trillions in government waste over the last 20 years. We could be 100% off fossil fuels by now. And still provide healthcare for the country.
