Re:First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial...
by dragonwriter on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @03:06PM
(#36960917)
> Average car in the US is 12.2 years old. To offset cars purchased yesterday someone needs to be driving a 24.4 year old car to average 12.2 years.
12.2 was a year ago [0], 12.5 now [1], but you could also get to that with 9 at 13.9 years for each one today, instead of one at 25.
[0] https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera...
[1] https://fortune.com/2023/05/15/average-age-of-cars-on-u-s-ro...
Re:First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial...
by Retric on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @03:10PM
(#36960996)
The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast, or to randomly pairing things off which doesn’t tell us anything.
If we pair the newest with oldest car and work to the middle things don’t quite work due to antiques, the pandemic, and increasing production, but it’s close enough for 25 years to be a safe estimate.
Re:First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial...
by dragonwriter on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @03:19PM
(#36961129)
> The rate of new car production is fairly consistent. The only way to get 9 at 13.9 years is for 13.9 years ago cars to have been produced 9x as fast.
Its not at all consistent, and the reason the average age has gone up is supply chain issues driving costs up and sales down for new cars.
Re:First new US nuclear reactor in decades enters commercial...
by Retric on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @06:12PM
(#36963902)
I didn’t say constant, just reasonably consistent. Individual years don’t matter much here it’s the overall trend we care about and the trend shows nothing close to an 9x increase and decrease:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA (Note the graph minimum is 7.5 not 0.)
As to electric demand, “The average miles driven per year is 13,489 in 2021.” Efficiency varies, at say 4 miles per kWh that’s 3,372 kW per year, we’re talking roughly 0.38 kW bump that to 0.4kW per car * all 762,883 EV’s sold in 2022 and your up to 305 MW nationwide. Meanwhile this single reactor is putting out 1,100 MW so ~3.5 years of EV sales at the current rate.
Critically unlike watching TV people have a great deal of flexibility when can charging EV’s and therefore mostly use cheap energy Aka when other demand is low therefore minimizing risks of brownouts.