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Bill Gates-backed nuclear contender Terra Power aims to build dozens of UK reactors
(www.cityam.com)
what timeline are we in that bill gates is not the worst guy
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Crazy times indeed. He is for sure not the lesser evil of all the billionaires but he has the best PR team of them all.
i'd argue that musk has even better pr team, if your goal is forming a cult that is
Lets hope they don't run windows.
Rolls Royce SMRs are more likely to get govt support in the UK
General rule of thumb - if the current UK government is in favor of something it's probably a really terrible idea.
Dismissing all ideas of those you don't like is a stupid idea and leads to you becoming dissociated from the views of the population at large but you do you I guess
At least break ideas down into categories small enough that you form a viewpoint on it to compare to theirs, as it's near impossible to find a group you agree or disagree with on everything
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I trust RR to build an SMR more than some tech bros.
They literally grow aerospace parts from crystals
I'm not suggesting that a SMR can't be built, I'm saying that they're a massive waste of money, unless you hold RR stock.
Well, this Tera Power project is also for SMRs...
SMRs are great for decentralization of the power grid.
Which makes the viability of renewables like wind and solar much more viable, as you can have the reactor for each mini grid throttle down based on current renewable yield, and throttle back up when the sun goes down or the wind stops.
It also means that issues like Texas had in the winter of 2021 would be a lot smaller in magnitude, as having one SMR and renewables go offline would only cause a local power outage, instead of entire cities suddenly being without heat or power.
I can't find any sources that support SMRs being used as peaker plants, conventional nuclear certainly can't behave this way. Do you have any links?
You can do this but it makes them even more expensive, because you’ve built an expensive plant for operational capacity that you don’t use.
We should be load following with storage, not nukes.
Do you have a source on that? I can't find anything supporting SMRs for peak use. How quickly can they come online? How much notice to take offline? How long to reach peak generation?
Why would you get a small unit when you can get big one.
Why?
As much as I dislike Bill Gates, I hope that this project finds success. With that said however, they're going against Rolls Royce, GE, and Hitachi, which are probably more trustworthy for the government than a relatively new startup
Rolls Royce, GE, and Hitachi are more likely to succeed, but they're doing little to innovate beyond light water reactors. Even among LWRs, NuScale has a more interesting design because it contains enough water to shut down without human intervention.
It's good that some startups are trying to improve long-tail safety, because the probability of failure increases with the number of reactors in the world.
Idk about you but in a world where collapse is a distinct possibility, I'd rather not have a bunch of nuclear facilities just hanging around.
You should inform yourself better. Nuclear power plants are not like on the Simpsons.
I know nuclear power plants need vast amounts of water pumped around them to keep them cool. If the worst of the climate models come true (which is likely as it stands) and we have mass civil unrest, there's no guarantee water and power will flow to them.
It's an unnecessary risk, we have other options.
You think the seas are just going to dry up? You're more dense than the uranium powering these plants.
Lol "water exists so how can a nuclear power plant possibly not get it". Who's the dense one here.
Keep being a science illiterate retard lmao
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I'd cheer if it was Thorium. Uranium is only going to get more expensive. And I worry Bill is only after the tech that goes into UK submarines powered by these small RR reactors.
Thorium is nowhere even close to being a viable technology. Even at the most optimistic estimates (that are somewhat based in reality) it'll be multiple decades until this stuff can make an impact. We don't have that kind of time.
I accept that. But if were Thorium I'd be jumping up and down with pompoms.
On the one hand, I think that's great. We need more nuclear power to mitigate the climate disaster.
On the other hand, I don't trust anything Bill Gates does after he totally fucked up the U.S. education system.
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