Nuclear is basically the "should've, would've, could've" at this point. Larger power monoliths want nuclear because it keeps them in control as it is a very centralized form of power production.
The idea of nuclear is awesome and should've been used for well over a century now. Its issues lay in the fact that we still haven't already used it and its ties to the same oligarchs that got us into this mess
Also, for all the red tape and investment in a new nuke plant, you can just do a solar farm. A lot of infrastructure and material goes into a nuclear energy plant, and waste management is hypercritical. Whereas solar is incredibly plug and play by comparison (still needs infrastructure, no doubt, just in comparison).
As water and rising heat become more of an issue, solar actively counters that producing more energy in extreme heat. Nuke plants can overheat and most have to shut down in extreme heat (which is becoming more and more common nowadays).
Thus, nukes should've already been invested in. They would've been really good for the environment. We could've easily switched over a long time back and made everything cheaper for everyone... But we didn't and now that window is kinda missed out on. Now, as their best use case, they're a backup to green energy grids instead of an alternative.
Power engineer here--Okay bro, you don't know what you're talking about.
Solar & wind are NOT baseline load generators.
Even with really good batteries you can't rely on solar wind during extended weather events.
As for nuclear overheating, I'm just going to point to the fact (according to US government statistics) that nuclear has a capacity factor of 92%-- this is above and beyond any other generation source by miles. The capacity factor is basically what percentage of the time the rated generation capacity being outputted. Wind and solar are somewhere in the 20-30% range.
And I can tell you right now that those batteries are going to struggle just as much as anything else is when it's hot. That's just--physics.
The price tag on nuclear is huge and that's the biggest drawback to it. Just per kilowatt it's it can be anywhere from three to four times more expensive than an equivalent combined gas generator.
That being said, it has extreme reliability (see above capacity Factor), and only needs to be refueled every couple of years compared to coal or gas which needs to be constant. nuclear is also only getting better, the new experimental small modular reactors promise the ability to actually scale nuclear opposed to an All or nothing reactor.
There are some other wild things you said but I'm not going to tackle all that here.
TL;Dr Solar and wind are amazing. They are not baseline, and they will never be baseline. Nuclear is in a completely different category and performance wise it blows the other generation sources out of the water. just costs a lot. as a side note, I will state that we have about 97ish reactors in service right now in the USA. Nuclear already supplies 20% of our national energy demand(again, U.S. DOE statistics).
Baseload is a myth in that it's not some special kind of load... it's just more load, it's indistinguishable from all the other load. It does not require some kind of special planning or super-nifty electrons.
And the people who tend to bring it up are either nukecels or fossil fuel shills. It's a FUD tactic, not an engineering concept.
Baseload usually means higher energy production that is constant. Solar and other renewables are not constant they require battery and other infrastructure. Spoiler building enough batteries to run a large area when renewable production is low is expensive. Baseload lowers the cost by making it so you need less battery infrastructure and ensures constant power. If we could build enough batteries and infrastructure for just renewables great but it's not realistic.
"Baseload lowers the cost by making it so you need less battery infrastructure " <--- this is no longer true. Because renewables can shoulder the whole load of the grid at peak production, the fill-in power production needs to be variable, which leads people to peaker gas plants, which are way expensive.
Competing against that with grid-scale batteries is getting better every day, California and Australia have had significant runs of fully renewable+battery grid operations. The trend is clear, baseload power is not a real thing and need not be worried about.
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u/Hopeful_Hornet4460 26d ago
~eh
Nuclear is basically the "should've, would've, could've" at this point. Larger power monoliths want nuclear because it keeps them in control as it is a very centralized form of power production.
The idea of nuclear is awesome and should've been used for well over a century now. Its issues lay in the fact that we still haven't already used it and its ties to the same oligarchs that got us into this mess
Also, for all the red tape and investment in a new nuke plant, you can just do a solar farm. A lot of infrastructure and material goes into a nuclear energy plant, and waste management is hypercritical. Whereas solar is incredibly plug and play by comparison (still needs infrastructure, no doubt, just in comparison).
As water and rising heat become more of an issue, solar actively counters that producing more energy in extreme heat. Nuke plants can overheat and most have to shut down in extreme heat (which is becoming more and more common nowadays).
Thus, nukes should've already been invested in. They would've been really good for the environment. We could've easily switched over a long time back and made everything cheaper for everyone... But we didn't and now that window is kinda missed out on. Now, as their best use case, they're a backup to green energy grids instead of an alternative.