Re:First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in opera...
by epistasis on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @11:00PM
(#38789886)
A 100x increase would get us back to what we were building half a century ago. Current nuclear production has been nonexistent, which is why this one reactor is such big news.
Nuclear power already produces 10% of the world's electricity [1]. A 100x increase leaves the world with 10 times as much electricity as is needed, all coming from a decarbonized energy source.
Wind and solar are cheap because we don't currently have to even out their intermittency. Take away peaker plants and then intermittent sources become way more challenging. Solar produces energy in a sinusoidal pattern daily, requiring at least 12 hours of storage for truly non-intermittent solar plants. It also fluctuates over the course of the year due to weather and inclination of the Earth [2]. Wind power similarly sees fluctuations over the course of the year [3].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods...
2. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Estimated-normalized-mon...
3. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53637.pdf