Re:Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
by pyrale on Thursday May 11, 2023 @04:43AM
(#35899480)
I can see that there's a lot of momentum for that, indeed. But as you told me earlier, we moved from a system where engineers and planners offered options to choose from to a system that is driven by political will, and implementation concerns come down the line.
Both systems have their flaws: the first one is clearly detrimental to democratic oversight, and may sometimes cause authoritarian problems, where administrators don't see or overlook problems caused to individuals.
On the other hand, political-first systems tend to kill unviable or uncompetitive projects way too late, because implementer signal is attenuated.
A good example of this is the development of nuclear power in France and the UK in the 60's: both countries had a local reactor project which was politically favored. France, where engineers had a strong influence on politicians, killed it quickly and bought US licenses for its program. The UK on the other hand moved on with their local graphite-gas reactors, which proved much harder to implement, and hampered their program.
All of this to point out that power2gas is currently at a very early stage, and since this program is dominated by political will, it's extremely hard to know how well it will work, let alone have a good idea of the economic figures.
Maybe it will work. I hope so. But it's certainly not a done deal, and it's extremely unsettling to see our countries' energy safety be debated based on a few scientific papers or a planned demonstrator by people that won't have to actually implement it.
Both systems have their flaws: the first one is clearly detrimental to democratic oversight, and may sometimes cause authoritarian problems, where administrators don't see or overlook problems caused to individuals.
On the other hand, political-first systems tend to kill unviable or uncompetitive projects way too late, because implementer signal is attenuated.
A good example of this is the development of nuclear power in France and the UK in the 60's: both countries had a local reactor project which was politically favored. France, where engineers had a strong influence on politicians, killed it quickly and bought US licenses for its program. The UK on the other hand moved on with their local graphite-gas reactors, which proved much harder to implement, and hampered their program.
All of this to point out that power2gas is currently at a very early stage, and since this program is dominated by political will, it's extremely hard to know how well it will work, let alone have a good idea of the economic figures.
Maybe it will work. I hope so. But it's certainly not a done deal, and it's extremely unsettling to see our countries' energy safety be debated based on a few scientific papers or a planned demonstrator by people that won't have to actually implement it.