And you sound like someone who's more concerned with the cure than the consequences. Think about that for a moment at the human level.

The irony of that comment...

It's ironic in what way? That you can't connect cure at all costs to quality of life? You're right, extremely ironic and cruel. While you're right about excessive expectations it's also reasonable to take quality of life into consideration.

Because I provided an analogy. Which is obviously not entirely comparable.
There are plenty of patients who go one smoking during chemo. There are plenty of patients who go on drinking while having liver issues. And on and on and on.

You seem to believe that my post was meant to say screw patients and their well being (which given what my research is about is rather funny). But then it’s the lavender room. My fault for expecting anything from this place.

Do you really think it's worth spending trillions of dollars on the Paris Accords when by their own admission it was have no discernible effect on global temperatures? The juice isn't worth the squeeze.

There have been some constructive comments elsewhere in this thread but I just wanted to point something out: at this point, short of a massive direct subsidy, nothing can save coal in the U.S. New coal cannot compete with new natural gas in most power markets and it's basically impossible to finance a new CFPP in the U.S. What will be interesting, to me, is what the future backbone of baseload generation will be in twenty years. Gas won't be cheap forever.

Nuclear: The regulatory and logistical burdens for building a new LWR/BWR nuclear power plant in the U.S. (and most developed nations frankly) are so monumental that I doubt they'll ever make a comeback. That said, there's a lot of promising alternative reactor designs out there. India has a pressurized heavy water reactor designed to run on thorium that has a lot of potential. Maybe GE will finally sack up and build a PRISM reactor or perhaps some other conglomerate will take on the task of commercializing the LFTR. In the more distant future we might see some sort of a fission direct energy conversion reactor.

Solar: PV solar will never provide baseload generation but CST could in the southwest. Unfortunately, Ivanpah was absolutely botched so it will be a while before utilities are willing to touch that technology again.

Wind: will never be able to provide baseload generation and will likely never contribute more than 10% to the NA grid.

Geothermal: viable for baseload but costs in the U.S. are much higher than what the economy is accustomed to.

<pink>I wonder if we are already at peak natural gas</pink>

Your analogy sucks first of all and 2ndly I've read enough of your posts to know that you have difficulty connecting patients mental health to their current situation. IE. "I've got cancer now, so why should I give a fuck?"

It's actually a problem I understand very well, and a problem that remains a head scratcher for many.
Roughly half the smokers who get diagnosed with lung cancer report quitting.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC2684817/

You can say whatever the hell you want about what you think of me, and what you think you know about mental health during cancer.
I really don't care. Cancer is just one example. There are many other examples in healthcare where patient's behavior would yield much better
clinical outcomes, yet patients don't change their behavior. Obesity and type 2 comes to mind.

That certainly does not mean that all or even close to a majority of patients think 'I have cancer screw it, I'll do what I want'. Changing behavior is very difficult, even under critical clinical conditions. But it's still a behavior that is observed in some patients, and a non negligible rate.

As for my analogy sucking. Yes possibly. Very probably actually since clearly, it has totally missed the mark, as far as you are concerned.

You can also use head injuries and American football.

Another note.
It is sad that in a country with many of the world's best universities, it is not fashionable for some to be scientific ignorant. We have anti vaccine, anti evolution to anti physics (climate deniers).

I had to laugh when someone posted a video of Lamar Smith. Lamar is a christian scientist, that means he is e science denier. He has a science understanding of a 3 year old.

Thank you for that interesting analysis. But I am a bit skeptical. Everything you say sounds rational and informed; however, I wonder how a man can be so informed about golf, tri-bikes, and energy. ;)

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

Actually, I'm curious (since you seem to know a lot about energy) what your take is on nuclear.
France draws over 76% of its electricity from it, largely a consequence of the "Plan Messmer" in the early 70s.
It's allowed us to get electricity for cheap, and I think France still exports a lot of its production.
Now, I have no idea how expensive it is, the pros and cons, and knowing my birth country, I can't imagine any of
this NOT crawling under intense regulations.

I guess you're missing the point. The alternative ... not changing anything ... will see temperatures continue to rise to "dangerous" levels. So Yes, spending money and changing direction on fossil fuels - even if it means global temperatures remain the same - is a lot better than doing nothing.

The Paris agreement also set the stage for further agreements and cooperation between developing and first world nations to reduce emissions. Trump has done serious damage to that longer term process.

Nuclear has absolutely enormous potential that is suffocated by regulation. In the case of France, the near-entirety of its fleet consists of second generation light water reactors. They're perfectly safe but many of them are nearing the end of their service lives. To replace them with modern LWRs/PWRs/BWRs would probably double the cost of electricity in France. Why is this? Simply put, a Gen 3/4 LWR uses nearly 10x the raw material as a Gen 2 LWR largely owing to what's known as a "core catcher" along with absolutely absurd emergency cooling tanks that are operated by gravity in the event of an emergency. Also, every single step of building a modern LWR requires intense oversight from engineers. Every nut and every friggin bolt is inspected. Every single power plant may as well be a bespoke unit even though there are many standardized and approved designs out there.

What's needed to turn the tide for nuclear are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) that are factory built and fueled and then shipped to site for installation. LWRs aren't terribly cost effective if they're shrunken down for a variety of physics driven reasons so an entirely different design must be pursued. Ideally the reactor would run much hotter and thus have a higher power density. Theoretical designs for such a reactor have abounded since the sixties but the problem is nobody has been willing to bear the cost of validating such a reactor. You have to keep in mind that LWRs and BWRs were basically validated by the U.S. Navy. The cost of validating a new reactor design for civilian nuclear power is incredibly high.

Edit to add: a high temperature SMR coupled with a super-critical CO2 turbine has the potential to compete with natural gas in NA which is to say it would be quite cheap. There's a precedent for a CO2 cooled reactor in the British AGR though I'm not up to speed wether or not anyone has proposed scaling this down to an SMR.

IMO, in another severe economic downturn a wise expenditure of public funds in any western country would be to fund the construction of SMRs for installation on large military bases.

Don't forget the MS in Economics. Also, I could function as a MOS 91F tomorrow with hardly any additional training ;) In short, I've led an interesting and incredibly random life thus far.

I guess the latter point being to mitigate potential risks of a terrorist attack.
If on a military base, I guess no need to add an incredible amount of regulations (besides those already implemented on MBs) ?

In the U.S, a nuclear power plant owned by a branch of the armed services and installed on a military base or vessel would not be subject to NRC regulations or oversight ;)

Why couldn't the same reactors used on subs and aircraft carriers be used commercially. Seems like they would be your small, factory built reactor, that could be delivered and installed easily.

Eh... it's not quite that straight forward. First, you have to understand that nuclear reactors built for submarines don't really have to worry about emergency cooling systems because they're surrounded by the ultimate heat sink: the ocean. Second, power output sort of scales with volume and certain fixed costs (for example: security but also many others including control systems which are going to be expensive regardless of scale) favor larger reactors. In short, it's complicated. See this presentation but page eight in particular.

My gut take on the sector is that *if* nuclear makes a comeback it will be driven by some sort of small modular molten salt reactor cooled by CO2 directly powering a supercritical CO2 turbine but such a design is not without significant issues of its own. More advanced direct energy conversion designs are many decades away for civilian applications though they would have the power and energy densities you'd normally only see in science fiction.

According to which model? To say they have struggled to accurately predict the future is a massive understatement. I do not think the ready, fire, aim approach is wise when we are talking bout trillions of dollars and thousands of lost jobs.

Clearly your mind is made up but I doubt very much you have taken the time to read much of the respected science on the topic.

Whats the deal with the replacement plant in uk? That will be first new next gen plant here.

I think qatar has several hundred years of gas. Super size LNG tankers have been getting bigger. Why would gas prices rise? Qatar can build another train and bring it on line.

Arent most Nuclear plants PPP deals so financed from private sector over multiple decades?

I don't necessarily disagree, but feel compelled to say "Yeah, we tried that".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program


I drive past an entombed SM1A on a regular basis.

I haven't followed what's going on in the UK but if I had to guess significant budget overruns are involved.

Regarding natural gas, I'd like to quote the great Yogi Berra: "things tend to work until they don't." The whole world is investing in natural gas fired electrical production. Gas is cheap and plentiful for now but the geological formations we're drilling now are subject to the same rules as everything we've drilled in the past: the low sweet spots of fields are drilled first and as time goes on the gas cap grows smaller. Reservoir pressures drop. Production declines. There might be a ton of gas in the ground but it might take 2x the number of rigs to meet a certain daily production ten years from now than it does today. Maybe 4x or 10x in 20 years. If the entire world acts like gas will be cheap and abundant forever, you can be assured that it will become scarce.

Right, but at no point in the time period was massive Keynesian stimulus in the forefront of policy maker's minds. In fact, the U.S. was shuttling along on one of the largest influxes of government stimulus in history (WW2). There will come a time in the not so distant future where policy makers will have to come up with stimulative projects they can sell to the public. SMRs for DOD facilities would be an easy sell IMO.