this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Or at least not decommissioning old ones. A dollar invested into new solar or wind goes further than new nuclear right now, but we'll see if it tips more towards nuclear once the grid is a higher percentage intermittent and needs a lot more energy storage with it.
Modular nuclear reactors seem really cool though for replacing large long term generators like at construction or excavation sites.
a lot of older nuclear plants were built in the 70s and 80s and those plants are going to be EOL even with extensions, unless we're going to extend the lifecycle of those a second time. They should probably be decommissioned, unfortunately.
I obviously don't know all the cases, but if extending the life a second time is cost comparable to renewables, yes we absolutely should do it.
i think comparing nuclear to renewables is irresponsible at face value. Nuclear energy and renewables pair together extremely well, and i feel as if we should be building nuclear to satisfy the hard challenges of renewables, while building renewables to augment nuclear.
Nuclear is a base load power plant, of which nothing but very few hydro plants are capable of accomplishing, most nuclear plants have an extremely high capacity factor, i've even seen some operating at 100%+ Solar pairs extremely well with residential cooling throughout the summer, providing cheap power when most needed. While also pairing reasonably well with heating in the winter, since you want it colder at night anyway. Though you would have a relatively low draw in the morning heating up your home throughout the day until the evening when you stop heating it, or possibly even earlier.
The main reason i mentioned a second extension is that im not sure its even possible, legally speaking it would have to be approved, and they've already approved one extension, so it might very well be "EOL, legally speaking" by now.
Nuclear plants almost alleviate energy storage problems with renewables, if not alleviate, because most nuclear plants (modern ones) also have some capacity of thermal battery, meaning they can operate some level of peaking. (more than likely just using it for augmenting renewables though)
They are extremely expensive to build, however, that makes them very apt for subsidies and government spending. It's also relatively insured power production after having been built, considering that you can run them for 30 years, minimum. Maintenance costs are relatively high, but modern plants are a lot simper than they used to be, and i've seen pretty reasonable price estimates out of designs like the SSR, though they have the downside of not existing yet.
It seems like the future of nuclear reactors is going to be either, molten salt pool reactors, or molten metal type pool reactors. Either using lead or a eutectic mixture of lead and bismuth. Like russia is currently developing.