Tanada wrote:Not to side track this thread any further but the "high cost of nuclear" is at least half an illusion cast by cherry picking short time cycles... However when you amortize that cost figuring in the very inexpensive fuel compared to fossil energy over a 60 year lifespan for the plant and equipment the cost differential is clearly favorable to the Fission energy option. Even over a 30 year timespan...
I'll take your word for it Tanada, but upfront costs is what seems to matter now in our debt laden world. Then there is the grid, the worn out over-stretched monster that threatens to have a heart attack any day now. Any future expansion or major replacement scheme must take that into account too, and we must ask ourselves, is centrally controlled power transmitted over major grids really going to be the future? What happens in a depression, when no one can pay? How is the grid maintained when people bail out due to high costs. Many are bailing now, they simply can't pay their bills.
Covid-induced poverty and rising power bills make an explosive combinationhttps://countercurrents.org/2022/04/covid-induced-poverty-and-rising-power-bills-make-an-explosive-combination/
One in four surveyed households has unpaid electricity bills. The total amount they owe is skyrocketing.
June 9, 2021 https://blog.arcadia.com/unpaid-electri ... rocketing/Oil exploration is all but unprofitable, no one is building new refineries and here in Oz they are closing them all down, why? Because the companies see no future in oil obviously, at least no 40~60 year future as they did when they built it all back in the 20th century.
I imagine a similar number crunching is going on in the electricity industry and brighter minds than us, with more detailed information on the issues, could well be deciding it's not worth the effort and expense to replace all the plants with Uranium burners. On forums like this the entrenched thinking is "How can we power the future based on what we use now" Like all the air conditioners, like all the cars and truck miles we drive now converted to EV. But what built this world we enjoy was a 100 year bounty of super cheap oil and coal.
Take that away and you are making cement clinker for concrete at much higher cost, Re-bar for concrete at much higher cost. In other words things that require high temperatures to make and that's best done with oil and coal. Our world is built on electricity but just as equally on Steel and Concrete. The men running the big power companies know this and have to factor it all in, for 30 to 60 years in the future.
Personally I think most of the big grids will be gone in 60 years, it seems obvious to me that locally generated power will be the model, people with money having power and people without, going without. Back in the days of slavery in the South all the big plantation owners' homes would have been brightly lit by candles and oil lamps but I doubt the slave quarters had but one candle.
I wouldn't count on the Grid being functional in 30 years, I'm not.