I always maintained that if climate activists dismiss getting nuclear power plants built to supply clean energy to their citizens then they’re not really climate activists.
I'm inclined to agree. The main thing we found success with in domenstic energy production using these was to stablizing wind and solar production which is all over the charts in consistency.
I agree with Musks suggestion. Most countries have laws where you can’t have a plant within a certain distance of civilian home. Let’s say it’s 1 mile for ease.
So musks suggestion was to fill that 1 mile space with solar panels which can either help power the plant or just be there to please the Greens.
Michael - interesting article and important topic of discussion. I served on nuclear powered submarines in the Navy for years. I trust the technology implicitly. Like anything, it needs to be handled with care and by trained professionals. But the Navy's nuclear power program has been running strong for years without any nuclear incidents. And on a submarine you are always within 300 feet of a running reactor. I don't know anyone who has sprouted a third eye on their forehead.
I’m a relatively new reader here. Great piece. Really informative. My thinking on nuclear was back to the Simpsons model. This is truly game changing. Thanks!
I found this very interesting because I have heard many people, particularly guests on the Joe Rogan podcast, talk about the viability of nuclear energy and how safe it is to use. However, I never heard anyone explain exactly why it is safe for the kinds of uses that you described. Thanks for connecting the dots for me!
Awesome to hear. I appreciate the feedback and I agree with your observation about the other conversations on the topic. It's great but why is it different?
Yes! I think everyone who honestly assesses the situation eventually concludes that nuclear has to be a huge part of any kind of clean energy transition, and nuclear is many, many times safer than the alternatives. The math does not lie.
I'm not sure we have the full picture of how bad Chernobyl or Fukushima really were, but I'm also confident that they pale in comparison to the damage burning coal has done over even a fraction of the time reactors have been up and running.
We hairless apes are not good at thinking outside of our very, very short time horizon or geographic area. And yet, here we are harnessing ones and zeroes to communicate across vast distances! What a weird paradox.
Interesting comment by Ehrlich and Lovins. They appear not to be worried about nuclear power, per se, but about the dangers of excess (anything) to humanity. I suppose if we analyze our society, we can judge for ourselves at this point in time.
I agree we should be dethrottling nuclear. But I am curious about the "cheap" part of the equation.
Costs can clearly fall dramatically with mass-produced modular reactors. Our current approach yields such expensive nuclear power generation that almost anything would be better. Undoubtedly there are use cases for this sort of system. But even the optimistic price target put forward by Valar for 2030 seems like it won't beat projected solar + battery systems.
I do think derisking with nuclear makes sense, since something as historically common as a big volcanic explosion or an asteroid strike puts so much soot in the atmosphere to dramatically lower solar radiation reaching earth, but it's a different argument.
Good points. In my analysis, the costs aren’t due to the technology but the regulation. We’ve burdened it to the point of smothering which has also stiffled innovation.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this particularly since hearing about this the first time. It would be great to have self sustaining households in terms of power generation. It pretty much eliminates the possibility of power outages. Having been considering things like Tiny Homes, many of them talk about being off the grid. This would provide an opportunity to expand it.
When I read the opening lines, I smugly assumed you'll be discussing nuclear fusion and its potential (something both Bill Gates and Sam Altman are betting heavily on).
I was not at all aware of the mini reactors and Triso fuel!
It's such a shame that the largely irrational fears are preventing large-scale deployments of such promising tech.
Do you know anything about the current traction these type of initiatives are having in political and corporate circles?
I know there's a big push in the DoD to roll these out and there are quite a few trade organizations but you don't see it in the general media because of the fear. I know www.quillette.com has had a bunch of articles over the years on nuclear power needing to be rethought.
Thank you for discussing your first hand experience evaluating a small reactor. The more people like you write about the actual safety of nuclear reactors, the more likely they are to be accepted by everyone. We’ve already seen a huge shift in public opinion over the past few years.
There’s a video of a fully fueled fighter jet smashing into the very thick concrete wall (just like the ones surrounding nuclear reactors) and the wall is still in good shape.
Despite all the shelling and fighting around Ukraine NPPs there hasn’t been a single accident.
The US is the only country that has a problem with nuclear 'waste.' by waste, they still contain 90%+ of nuclear capability and can be re-enriched / recycled back into useful material. The issue is that the politics in the US deny that where as France, I believe, has no such issues.
The nuclear materials that we have in storage can get consolidated, recycled, re-enriched, and reused dramatically reducing the volume of final waste.
There were even invistigations about putting the waste in deep ocean subduction zones to suck it into the mantel and dispose of it back in the deep mantel crust.
Subduction zones are actually brilliant. It can't really contaminate at that depth / temp / pressure, and it gets sucked back into the magma layer and recycled naturally. You can't even get down there to try and get it out.
You make a great point and one I echoed in the draft of my second novel describing the conclusion of the first.
"Humans were surprisingly confident in where they built their cities. They built at the foot of volcanoes, next to huge fault lines, and along unstable waterfronts. Their cities were now reduced to a rubble of slag and stone, washed away, or subsumed under lava flows."
I always maintained that if climate activists dismiss getting nuclear power plants built to supply clean energy to their citizens then they’re not really climate activists.
I'm inclined to agree. The main thing we found success with in domenstic energy production using these was to stablizing wind and solar production which is all over the charts in consistency.
I agree with Musks suggestion. Most countries have laws where you can’t have a plant within a certain distance of civilian home. Let’s say it’s 1 mile for ease.
So musks suggestion was to fill that 1 mile space with solar panels which can either help power the plant or just be there to please the Greens.
I like it.
Michael - interesting article and important topic of discussion. I served on nuclear powered submarines in the Navy for years. I trust the technology implicitly. Like anything, it needs to be handled with care and by trained professionals. But the Navy's nuclear power program has been running strong for years without any nuclear incidents. And on a submarine you are always within 300 feet of a running reactor. I don't know anyone who has sprouted a third eye on their forehead.
I wish I had more space to talk about that here but the naval use of nuclear power is a perfect example of how safe it is.
Thank you for sharing your experience Matthew!
I’m a relatively new reader here. Great piece. Really informative. My thinking on nuclear was back to the Simpsons model. This is truly game changing. Thanks!
Welcome and glad you joined the conversation. I wasn't really aware of the incredible technology increases until about 5-10 years ago myself.
I found this very interesting because I have heard many people, particularly guests on the Joe Rogan podcast, talk about the viability of nuclear energy and how safe it is to use. However, I never heard anyone explain exactly why it is safe for the kinds of uses that you described. Thanks for connecting the dots for me!
Awesome to hear. I appreciate the feedback and I agree with your observation about the other conversations on the topic. It's great but why is it different?
Yes! I think everyone who honestly assesses the situation eventually concludes that nuclear has to be a huge part of any kind of clean energy transition, and nuclear is many, many times safer than the alternatives. The math does not lie.
I'm not sure we have the full picture of how bad Chernobyl or Fukushima really were, but I'm also confident that they pale in comparison to the damage burning coal has done over even a fraction of the time reactors have been up and running.
That's exactly right. The point explosion of Chernobyl might have been bad but the 200 years of burning coal?
We hairless apes are not good at thinking outside of our very, very short time horizon or geographic area. And yet, here we are harnessing ones and zeroes to communicate across vast distances! What a weird paradox.
Yeah it is odd how myopic we can be while how advanced we are.
Interesting comment by Ehrlich and Lovins. They appear not to be worried about nuclear power, per se, but about the dangers of excess (anything) to humanity. I suppose if we analyze our society, we can judge for ourselves at this point in time.
Good points.
I agree we should be dethrottling nuclear. But I am curious about the "cheap" part of the equation.
Costs can clearly fall dramatically with mass-produced modular reactors. Our current approach yields such expensive nuclear power generation that almost anything would be better. Undoubtedly there are use cases for this sort of system. But even the optimistic price target put forward by Valar for 2030 seems like it won't beat projected solar + battery systems.
I do think derisking with nuclear makes sense, since something as historically common as a big volcanic explosion or an asteroid strike puts so much soot in the atmosphere to dramatically lower solar radiation reaching earth, but it's a different argument.
Good points. In my analysis, the costs aren’t due to the technology but the regulation. We’ve burdened it to the point of smothering which has also stiffled innovation.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this particularly since hearing about this the first time. It would be great to have self sustaining households in terms of power generation. It pretty much eliminates the possibility of power outages. Having been considering things like Tiny Homes, many of them talk about being off the grid. This would provide an opportunity to expand it.
Diamond nuclear batteries might be one way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_battery
Sounds like it has potential.
What a fascinating read!
When I read the opening lines, I smugly assumed you'll be discussing nuclear fusion and its potential (something both Bill Gates and Sam Altman are betting heavily on).
I was not at all aware of the mini reactors and Triso fuel!
It's such a shame that the largely irrational fears are preventing large-scale deployments of such promising tech.
Do you know anything about the current traction these type of initiatives are having in political and corporate circles?
I know there's a big push in the DoD to roll these out and there are quite a few trade organizations but you don't see it in the general media because of the fear. I know www.quillette.com has had a bunch of articles over the years on nuclear power needing to be rethought.
Thank you for discussing your first hand experience evaluating a small reactor. The more people like you write about the actual safety of nuclear reactors, the more likely they are to be accepted by everyone. We’ve already seen a huge shift in public opinion over the past few years.
Typo? “Fuckashima” 🤣
lol. I love typos. Let me look!
And I still remember running the simulation and realizing that exploding an MNR was was the safest alternative.
There’s a video of a fully fueled fighter jet smashing into the very thick concrete wall (just like the ones surrounding nuclear reactors) and the wall is still in good shape.
Despite all the shelling and fighting around Ukraine NPPs there hasn’t been a single accident.
Very true.
The US is the only country that has a problem with nuclear 'waste.' by waste, they still contain 90%+ of nuclear capability and can be re-enriched / recycled back into useful material. The issue is that the politics in the US deny that where as France, I believe, has no such issues.
The nuclear materials that we have in storage can get consolidated, recycled, re-enriched, and reused dramatically reducing the volume of final waste.
There were even invistigations about putting the waste in deep ocean subduction zones to suck it into the mantel and dispose of it back in the deep mantel crust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_floor_disposal
Subduction zones are actually brilliant. It can't really contaminate at that depth / temp / pressure, and it gets sucked back into the magma layer and recycled naturally. You can't even get down there to try and get it out.
You make a great point and one I echoed in the draft of my second novel describing the conclusion of the first.
"Humans were surprisingly confident in where they built their cities. They built at the foot of volcanoes, next to huge fault lines, and along unstable waterfronts. Their cities were now reduced to a rubble of slag and stone, washed away, or subsumed under lava flows."