Nuclear Reactor Development History
According to this chart [0] the installed capacity of fossil fuel plants is 4TW. Lets cut it down to 2TW because we don&#x27;t know how much of that infrastructure is actually utilized. Let&#x27;s say I&#x27;m sold on nuclear and want 2TW of installed nuclear plant capacity. Each power plant should be able to generate 700MW. This means we have to build 2857 new power plants. Half of them need to be done by 2050. The other half should be in construction by 2050 but are allowed to take 10-15 years to be built. Surely economies of scale should be able to reduce nuclear plant costs to around 2 billion USD per plant [1] but that would still cost 5714 billion USD.<p>Open questions:<p>Which nuclear technology is available today that can be deployed 1400 times today as soon as today without any massive safety flaws? Theoretical reactor designs may sound cool but nobody is going to wait for them.<p>Who is going to pay for the prototypes and first dozen plants? How are you going to convince the rest of the planet to install your nuclear plants?<p>Is this ambitious timeline even possible? Can you train enough people and build an extensively optimized nuclear supply chain that can scale thousands of reactors?<p>What happens once the &quot;building&quot; rush is over? Will the supply chain die again and be hard to start back up?<p>Can every country be trusted to operate their own nuclear plants? Will they openly report flaws and safety problems in the power plant and take those reports seriously by turning off defective or unsafe plants until they restored the safety of the plant? Fukushima was easily preventable but there was no accountability and no incentive to prevent an accident. Nobody in charge felt responsible to actually add adequate safety measures.<p>Can we mine enough fuel to power these plants? Will mining activity have to increase to meet the new demand? Can that mining be powered by nuclear energy? Is mining for nuclear fuel worse than coal?<p>Is waste disposal feasible today in every country? Can this cost be reduced through economies of scale or is it fixed per unit of waste?<p>None of these things are impossible but they require time, money and trust.<p>People who don&#x27;t care about climate change are not going to give you money for nuclear or renewables.<p>Time isn&#x27;t exactly on our side. We are at a point where we have figured out lots of alternatives to fossil fuels, it is just a matter of sticking with one choice and actually doing it. Hesitation will cost a lot of time so it&#x27;s now or never.<p>We are also short on trust. The UK doesn&#x27;t like the EU. Other continents are not unified at all and it is common for countries to be at war in the middle east and Africa. Why would they want a power plant that is a juicy target for terrorism?<p>Because of these concerns I&#x27;m not going to hope for a nuclear future but I&#x27;ll let myself be surprised if things turn out better than I predict.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;267358&#x2F;world-installed-power-capacity&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;267358&#x2F;world-installed-p...</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;schlissel-technical.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;reports_35.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;schlissel-technical.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;reports_35.pdf</a> (summary: coal plant went over budget and cost 2 billion usd)