• @Forester
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    6 months ago

    The US Navy has had functional Small modular reactor designs mostly PWR designs since the 1960s in the 5mw to 500mw range with no major failures yet.

    • The problem is that none of these designs have ever been used to power the grid. Every nuclear project in the recent past has blown by cost and time estimates. Wind and solar are not only cheaper than nukes, they can also be installed much quicker and predictably. Nukes have a place, but we need clean energy now.

      • @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        -36 months ago

        Wind and solar are great, but they cannot provide consistent 24 hours base load production. Even with massive battery farms, they cannot replace bas load consistently.

        That’s where nuclear needs to be, replacing the base load production currently being handled via coal and natural gas.

        • @JGcEowt4YXuUtkBUGHoN@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          The US at least already has enough nuclear to handle base loads when solar and wind are unavailable. Nukes in some contexts are needed, but I believe we have 30% or so nukes in the US. Diverting resources to new nukes is a waste when we could be making carbon fuels unprofitable soon by investing in solar and wind.

          • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            16 months ago

            But are they in the right places? There’s always loss in power transmission, so you can’t use reactors that are in, say, Illinois, to make up for grid deficits in Alabama (or, not directly). And Texas, being a special snowflake, isn’t tied into the national grid, so they always need their own systems.

        • NaibofTabr
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          106 months ago

          Er… how would the military nuclear reactors not be operated on a military budget?

          • @Forester
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            -16 months ago

            I’m asking for a citation that it is more expensive to operate than a standard pressurized water reactor. Since I did not make the claim that they are more expensive to operate, I don’t have to back that up. That’s how it works. I don’t know everything, but I did look quite deeply into this career path at one point.

          • @Forester
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            06 months ago

            If I had the time and the resources I’m certain I could. It took me 15 minutes to figure out of the cost per reactor by reading declassified foia documentation.

    • @kalkulat@lemmy.world
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      56 months ago

      That’s thanks to the training (started with Rickover) and discipline and no shareholders. Commercial nukes don’t measure up, e.g. when it comes to leakages and knowing what to do in case.

      • @Forester
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        -36 months ago

        Now you’re just being disingenuous. I am certain that qualified individuals from the private sector and qualified individuals from the military both receive adequate training to operate their facilities

        • NaibofTabr
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          36 months ago

          What’s funny about this is that most of the qualified private sector individuals are former Navy personnel. The civilian nuclear industry loves to hire people with nuclear training from the Navy because they’re already trained and experienced.

          The Navy does operate a lot of nuclear reactors, and quite safely overall, but they also spend DoD money on building and maintaining them and training personnel for them.

        • @kalkulat@lemmy.world
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          26 months ago

          Way to start out with an ad hominem. Cheap too. Since you’re ‘certain’ (and I know very well that’s hard to come by for this sacred cow), your #1 reference?

          • @Forester
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            -36 months ago

            If I called you stupid that would have been an ad hominem attack, I’m saying you’re misrepresenting facts which would require intelligence. Therefore, disingenuous.

            • @kalkulat@lemmy.world
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              06 months ago

              Poor governor of Georgia, one more in a long, long line.

              I learned much of what I know about how facts are misrepresented by reading advertisements by the industry. Like the full-page regional newspaper ad along the lines of "One myth about nuclear power is … instead the fact is this … " back in the 1970s. Or my all-time favorite fact, one of the earliest: Safe, clean, ‘too cheap to meter’, said AEC chairman Lewis Strauss, in 1954.

              Maybe it was catching? But the facts, like those countless millions of escaped curies, were invisible. Convenient.

              This 14-year-old Fermi story might help: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-detroit-nuclear-20161003-snap-story.html

        • @kalkulat@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Way to start out with an ad hominem. Cheap too. Since you’re ‘certain’ (and I know that’s hard to come by for this sacred cow), your #1 reference?