Eskom's plan to build small nuclear reactors

LCBXX said:
The West is pumping billions of their, printed, green-energy-nonsense money into this country in order to get their hands on South Africa's coal, whilst we end up sitting with fsckall baseload electricity.
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As part of this evil plot they are forcing China to sell solar panels below cost so that China bankcrupts themselves. And the Western countries are all installing record amount of renewables themselves as a diversion of the fleets of coal power stations they build in secret. And China is so diverted they installing the solar panels they produce at a loss at record numbers themselves. /s :ROFL:
 
Mallinson also expressed his views on nuclear power generation, describing it as “yesterday’s technology” and saying it is cost-prohibitive.
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Right...

Modern technology:
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"Yesterday's technology":


Along with integrated circuits, nuclear power is arguably some of the most advanced pieces of technology humans have developed.

Every single other source of energy you can demonstrate in your home with stuff in your garage.
(yes even the photo electric effect)
 
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konfab said:
Renewables like rooftop solar are great to mitigate against state failure, but they cannot power a data centre reliably. You want that, you need dinosaur squeezings. Or nuclear.

Data center and industrial use are the best case for SMRs are the moment. There is no argument anyone can make against using nuclear to power data centres, and for industrial uses, you can use the heat from the reactor as well to get more energy out the system.

Once that happens, it is kittens for renewables at a grid, as SMRs are designed to be rolled out en-masse. The costs of deploying nuclear (or anything like this) decrease dramatically as you do more of them. And something the renewable retards miss out is the fact that transmitting electricity is actually expensive and difficult. 10-20%, and you have to put wind and large solar in large empty places. (This is why rooftop solar isn't a bad idea because it uses existing infrastructure). Wheras with an SMR (or clusters of them), you can plonk them down at the existing site of a coal power station and wire them up, and everyone in the area will subsequently get much less radiation poisoning.

The other thing is that renewables will never make cheap electricity. You can do it with nuclear. Standard design, standard operating procedure and scale. It will become cheaper to operate than coal. Which then opens up interesting possibilities like using that extremely cheap electricity to do carbon capturing when no-one else is using it.
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Funny that somebody is arguing against something that is being rolled out at scale across the world today saying that we need to wait for a theoretical solution that is not on the market. How the turn tables. /s
 
All the debates yet we all know the tenderpreneurs will loot the funding without any fission reactor being built
 
Johand said:
As part of this evil plot they are forcing China to sell solar panels below cost so that China bankcrupts themselves. And the Western countries are all installing record amount of renewables themselves as a diversion of the fleets of coal power stations they build in secret. And China is so diverted they installing the solar panels they produce at a loss at record numbers themselves. /s :ROFL:
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Sarcasm aside, where is all our coal being shipped to?
 
Johand said:
Funny that somebody is arguing against something that is being rolled out at scale across the world today saying that we need to wait for a theoretical solution that is not on the market. How the turn tables. /s
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You cannot run industry on renewables.
 
Cadres with nukes, what could possibly go wrong with that idea
 
Lupus said:
Ssssh... Of course you can... You just need hydropower, batteries, geothermals and and...
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Well first and second, and solar/wind + battery is cheaper than coal, and depending on time etc. Can be cheaper for modern.

You can definitely run industry on renewable, the shift will just take time.
 
Johnatan56 said:
Well first and second, and solar/wind + battery is cheaper than coal, and depending on time etc. Can be cheaper for modern.

You can definitely run industry on renewable, the shift will just take time.
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How would a 900MW smelter run on renewables?
 
Johnatan56 said:
Well first and second, and solar/wind + battery is cheaper than coal, and depending on time etc. Can be cheaper for modern.

You can definitely run industry on renewable, the shift will just take time.
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We always hear it's cheaper, yet the people who use it pay... Odd that, oh look wind and solar is cheaper, but the consumer pays more. Remember the installation might be cheaper, but all the sundries associated with it aren't, you still need all that infrastructure to be in place for it, more HV, more cables, more backup for it's intermittent supply.
 
wingnut771 said:
but the smelter can't turn off otherwise its ruined.
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Ssssh it must work, it's been deemed, it must run when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. You also need to ensure you have 3600MW for that 900MW
 
LCBXX said:
Sarcasm aside, where is all our coal being shipped to?
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I think India is one of the biggest importers of SA coal.

LCBXX said:
You cannot run industry on renewables.
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Not sure why you would say that. It is already happening. Transformation is happening faster than people can keep up with, because solar PV is so cheap. And batteries are getting cheap. Do you know that the world produced 2.5 TWh of batteries last year? From pretty much only a couple of Gigawatt hours not long ago? In China the capacity factors coal plants are dropping because it is cheaper to not run them and burn coal. It is pretty nuts.
 
Johand said:
I think India is one of the biggest importers of SA coal.


Not sure why you would say that. It is already happening. Transformation is happening faster than people can keep up with, because solar PV is so cheap. And batteries are getting cheap. Do you know that the world produced 2.5 TWh of batteries last year? From pretty much only a couple of Gigawatt hours not long ago? In China the capacity factors coal plants are dropping because it is cheaper to not run them and burn coal. It is pretty nuts.
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Really so they are building more coal for?
www.carbonbrief.org

China responsible for 95% of new coal power construction in 2023, report says - Carbon Brief

China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023, according to the Global Energy Monitor.
www.carbonbrief.org www.carbonbrief.org

Cause they like the smoke it makes?
 
wingnut771 said:
How would a 900MW smelter run on renewables?
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You plug it into the Renewable power grid. Seriously, smelters don't use some kind of different kind of electricity than other users. An electron is an electron.
 
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