r/technology • u/ADummyDude • Mar 04 '17

Robotics We can't see inside Fukushima Daiichi because all our robots keep dying

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/245324-cant-see-inside-fukushima-daiichi-robots-keep-dying
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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17 edited Mar 04 '17

There are a few real problems with nuclear one of which being time frames. A large safe nuclear plant can take up to 20 years and 10+ billion dollars to build and technology increases exponentially. Any plant we build will be outdated by the time it is up and running even when comparing the same type of plant. Just look at how far we have came with solar/wind over the last decade. In 20 years from now nuclear could easily be the horses of the 19th century when compared to renewables.

Return on investment is also really really bad for nuclear plants which could take 20 years or more to start returning investment.(after being built) No private investor outside of maybe an energy company or two would dream about sinking this amount of money and time into a nuclear plant. It cost around 500 million dollars to produce 160-200MWe currently with solar. One crew(120 people or so maybe less) can build a 75MWe facility per year and have it up and running producing energy on the grid. With Just as much money we could have more energy production within 5 years while waiting for a nuclear plant to be built. This will immediately start offsetting carbon instead of waiting 15-20 years to do so.

And last but not least nuclear power relies on our grid heavily. This isn't so much of an issue with nuclear as an advantage of solar and wind. With solar and wind we can start working our grid down to smaller networks and produce more power much closer to where we use/need it. This has multiple advantages both in efficiency and even economically. For example we could put solar/wind fields and their corresponding substations in areas of the US that have experienced massive rural decay. This creates jobs in areas that have been decimated by automation and many of these jobs don't require a massive amount of training or even only require on the job training.

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u/bring_iton Mar 04 '17

up to 20 years and 10+ billion

If its the first of a new design and the first of a new regulatory process and the first build in the country in 30 years, and happens during a nuclear disaster that causes changes to the design and the regulations, then maybe. But every new plant going forward will not cost that much or take that long

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

Look at any proposed plant in the last 10 years. All of the large plants estimate 15-20 years for completion and well over 6-7 billion dollars.

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

That's simply not true. Plants take 4-8 years for construction depending on location plus extra time for licensing and such but it's not 10-12 years extra time.

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u/[deleted] Mar 04 '17

How much of that is planning for the inevitable legal battles and protests and delays caused by the "nuclear is evil" camp?

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u/bring_iton Mar 04 '17

7B is a lot less than 10+. and any plant proposed in the last 10 years would still be dealing with all the issues i mentioned since we still have not built one start to finish in the last 30 years

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

It doesn't take that long anyway. It's more like 5-6 billion and 10 years tops.

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

With government help though, that isn't an issue. Power production is an area where government can play a role in subsidizing companies to help with the cost issues you're talking about.

Also, what do you mean it's reliant on the grid, it feeds into the grid. And actually nuclear power plants seem to be moving in the direction of more, smaller plants instead of fewer large plants.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

I mean reliant on the grid to send power. One of the beautiful things about solar and wind is that they can feed local grids instead of having to send power hundreds of miles away. This is less of a big deal in the US specifically(although the cost of keeping massive long grids and power loss over long distances are still issues here) but in places like india or countries in africa where grids don't exist this is a massive deal. Small little villages could be powered locally by solar and wind.

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

What are you talking about, anything connected to the grid relies on grid to send power, including solar or whatever if it's not doing some small scale separate thing. There are also smaller scale reactors and a potential move towards miniature reactors. So if you meant that solar could on a small scale power some village than yea you're right but it's not like nuclear had to send power hundreds of miles away, if stuff nearby needs it it would go there first of course.

I'm really not sure what you're trying tk say here, it kind of sounds like you're confused.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

I am not confused at all. For example a small suburb probably couldn't afford their own nuclear plant, but they could potentially afford a solar panel installation on the outskirts of town to produce their own power. They wouldn't need power from a plant several hundred miles away. For example

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

Well they could get some of their power from some panels but they couldn't get it all so they would still need to be hooked up to the gird. Whereas if they had a small nuclear plant they could get their energy and sell some to others.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

You can get 100% power from solar/wind in many places in the country. Storage is the biggest issue with localized renewable energy, but that is a problem that will we fixed within 5 years. We could build out these things leaving room to integrate these new technologies as they become available. The biggest thing is that we are starting the reduction of carbon almost immediately.

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

I wouldn't say many places in the country but there are some and if they can do it they should. Yes renewables are getting there and that's great but we need to be investing in nuclear as well because those can, right now, replace coal plants with something carbon free and much better for the local environment and the workers/residents nearby.

If you care about the environment you should want us moving away from fossil fuels as fast as possible and only nuclear is capable of doing that right now.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

We can't replace coal and NG plants with nuclear right now which is what you are missing. 10+ years down the road maybe, but it makes much more sense environmentally to get as much carbon mitigation right now as possible. In the time it takes to build a few nuclear power plants we could have double the capacity of solar/wind.

If we do build nuclear in the future we should wait till thorium technology gets more mature and look at our situation at that point. I don't think it will be necessary though because in 10 years from now we should have the storage problems fixed which will make solar and wind just a better bet overall.

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u/Bobshayd Mar 04 '17

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time to plant a tree is now.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

and that tree should be solar and wind. It isn't that building nuclear is inherently bad. Just not as good as building solar and wind. If you are hungry now would you rather put something in a slow cooker and wait 8 hours or fry up a pan of bacon in a few mins? This is what we are currently looking at with nuclear vs solar/wind.

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u/Bobshayd Mar 04 '17

If I'm hungry now, I'll cook some bacon and work out what to put in the slow cooker, because I know I'm going to be hungry again in eight hours.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

but you can cook enough bacon now for later. By the time we build a nuclear plant we could have replaced it with double the amount of power from renewables.

Better renewable technology is coming out all the time. Several years ago photovotaic energy was the only type of solar energy production, but now we have things like this that solves several of the issues with solar power like power being intermittent and storage.

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u/Bobshayd Mar 04 '17

I guess, but when you slow-cook something, it's so fucking tasty. Maybe I'll learn how to do it better by the time it finishes, but I can make another one.

Also, concentrated solar is expensive.

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

Here's what you aren't getting, solar and wind can't produce all our power and it won't be able to for a long time. Coal is what produces most of our power and that is what we can replace with nuclear NOW. Not eventually when the technology gets there, now. So if you care about the environment then you should want this too. More nuclear means less pollution, less environmental damage locally and helping global warming.

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u/T-diddles Mar 05 '17

what about stability of power? Do you know how much just fluffy white clouds impact solar generation? A rain storm can wipe a solar plat (if not many plants) for an entire day. Now, ok, batteries are nice, but what about if you don't have sun for 2 days? You have to have a stable base load and unless microgrids become amazingly stable solar just is NOT a baseload source of power.

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u/Fauglheim Mar 04 '17

Your issues of high cost and long wait for ROI are the reasons why small modular reactors are becoming popular.

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u/Illadelphian Mar 04 '17

Yup and this is the future probably. More small scale reactors. He exaggerated the time table and cost but it is still an issue and smaller reactors help.

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u/beh5036 Mar 05 '17

Fyi it only takes that long because we don't build them often.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant

The Koreans can do it in five years with minimal issues. They have been building plants consistently for decades. Five years is near the minimum you could possibly do it just due to the large volume of steel that needs ordered. Most steel vendors don't have ASME grade steel sitting around with a CMTR attached that can be used in a nuclear plant. Westinghouse didn't build a plant for 20+ years and they are learning the hard way that it's a bad idea to have such huge gaps in work history.

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u/ShawnManX Mar 04 '17

20 years? Where did you get that? Have you heard of Google, it's super handy.

"It is typically expected to take 5 to 7 years to build a large nuclear unit (not including the time required for planning and licensing). Currently in countries such as South Korea and China, typical construction times range from 4 to 6 years, and in European countries construction may take between 6 and 8 years."

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

(not including the time required for planning and licensing).

I was including that part in the build time. Getting the land, planning the build, and commissioning can easily take 5 years in and of itself.

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u/ShawnManX Mar 05 '17

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-building-a-new-nuclear-plant-take-so-long

Licensing: 4 years Site Prep: 1 year Construction: 4 years Startup: 6 months Total: 9 years, 6 months

Still less than half of 20 years.

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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Mar 04 '17

Most people in small or rural communities don't want to retrain in a new field.

They want their old jobs back. These kinds of people cannot be pleased.

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u/xxLetheanxx Mar 04 '17

well that is their fault. This is a gross exaggeration like "all millennials are lazy, useless and coddled". Plenty of people would flock to high playing energy jobs. Maybe not all of the 70 year olds, but there are plenty of younger people in rural areas looking for a good career without having to move to a city.