To drive them out of business, electricity from new renewables will have to be cheaper than electricity from old coal. But existing coal power stations will live on, spewing greenhouse gases and damaging health, for as long as it’s profitable. This is wonderful because it means most of the world’s remaining coal deposits will be left in the ground. When an old coal power station is shut down it won’t be replaced with new coal generation simply because the alternatives are cheaper. This includes enough storage or dispatchable 2 generation to meet demand more reliably than coal. Despite what many politicians seem to believe 1, the work of countless dedicated people around the world shows the cost of new renewable energy generation is less than the cost of new coal generation. While the Coalition is content to fiddle while the world burns, the good news is the days of coal generation are numbered. What they actually did was offer to pay the debts of new coal power stations that go bust. As air conditioner power consumption soared on the 25th, 40% of Victoria’s coal generators failed followed by rolling blackouts. When faced with this incontrovertible evidence of coal’s unreliability, the government dedicated itself to the rapid phaseout of coal under its “affordable, reliable 24/7 power” program. Last month the entire country sweltered under an oppressive heatwave - except the half known as Western Australia. If everything goes well, we could see small reactors taking the place of fossil fuel plants very soon.Low Cost Renewables Will Soon Drive Coal Power Out Of The Market The first such reactor is scheduled to be built in Idaho sometime in the mid-2020s, and will serve as a demonstration of the tech’s capabilities. The reactor can be built and fueled in a factory, shipped on a train or truck, and shipped back to be refueled. The reactor design is only about 65 feet long and generates 50 megawatts of power, and comes with enough fuel to last an entire year. The specific reactor approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is built by NuScale, an Oregon-based energy company that has been working on its design for over a decade. They’re also much smaller, making them an ideal fit for rural and suburban communities that don’t need a gigawatt or more of power. These reactors are designed so that all of their components are built in a central factory and assembled on-site, which makes them much cheaper and faster to construct. Small modular reactors are dramatically different from standard nuclear reactors with their iconic cooling towers. With luck, that reactor will be completed in less than a decade. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so construction on the reactor can now go ahead. The first so-called small modular reactor (SMR) design has just passed a Phase I review by the U.S. Nuclear isn’t exactly the best choice when looking for cheap, flexible energy solutions.īut all that might be about to change, thanks to a new reactor design that’s smaller, cheaper and easier to build.
EV NOVA PROBLEM WITH CHEAP REACTOR FULL
The single power plant constructed in 2016, Watts Bar 2, began construction in 1973 and ultimately cost $4.7 billion, including a full $2 billion in budget overruns. There are many different reasons for this, but one of the biggest by far is that nuclear reactors are extremely expensive and complicated to build. Over the last 20 years, only one new nuclear plant has finished construction in the United States. moves away from fossil fuels with renewable energy like wind and solar taking its place, one cleaner alternative has been largely ignored: nuclear power.
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