Nuclear power now makes up about 25% of the generation of Georgia Power, the largest unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co.

First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia::ATLANTA — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.

  • ephemeral_gibbon@aussie.zoneEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    If you mean renewables by that, it’s hardly hypothetical or unproven. I’m in Australia and south Australia and Tasmania (two of our states) have fully renewable grids, Tasmania for the past 7 years. South Australia does still occasionally pull from an interconnect but most of the time they’re exporting a bunch of power.

    Renewables with storage are cheaper and faster to build than nuclear and that’s from real world costs. Nuclear would be fine if it wasn’t so stupidly expensive.

    • tempest@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      Tasmania

      Generates nearly all its power using hydro electric, which is great but pretty dependent on geography.

      South Australia

      Wiki says a pretty big hunk of that is still gas

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Australia#/media/File:Electricity_generation_SA_2015-2021.svg

      In Ontario Canada where I am from it would take > 4000 wind turbines all working at once (not including the batteries) to supplant our nuclear capacity. Even the largest battery storage are in the hundreds of mega watts and only for a few hours at the cost of about half a billion dollars.

      I think it is more productive to approach these technologies as complementary as any proper grid should have both for the near future if we want to reduce global warming.

      • ephemeral_gibbon@aussie.zoneEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Ah sorry, my mistake on that one. Despite how many wind turbines working at once it may take, the power from the is cheaper by a long shot than nuclear.

        The reason I don’t think nuclear is the main solution is just cost + build time. It’s horrendously expensive. Much more so than the cost of renewables with proper grid integration (transmission, storage etc.) that has been modelled.

        Maybe in a while the small nuclear reactors may come close, but currently the full sized reactors are too expensive and smr’s aren’t really a thing yet because of cost.

        If power prices can come down instead of go up it’s going to be a lot easier to convince everyone to transition away from fossil fuels, and from modelling that’s been done (e.g. by csiro) that can be the reality