6 Comments
Jun 1Liked by Angelica Oung

When I heard that SMRs might need to build several GW to pay down factory investments it clicked for me. Their first of a kind models are likely to cost plenty. And at those prices the financing issue that seems to be their true raison d'etre aren't much better than for a GW scale project. More than anything it appears that cost overrun insurance is the building block that a nuclear renaissance can be built on

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You are right. The firm establishment of supply chains and the maintenance of a large, skilled workforce are essential to a successful build. One must also point out that there is a lack of managers who have the skill and experience to handle multi-billion-dollar projects where there might be 500 workers and 30 machines on the job site and a critical path with 2,000 tasks.

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1. The cost overruns for Vogtle were on top of estimates that already accounted for “First of a Kind” status.

2. Maybe Unit 4 was really completed at a cost 30% below Unit 3. Or maybe the industry has returned to the practice of loading all common costs onto Unit 3, in which case the “cost reductions” for Unit 4 have little real bearing on future plants.

3. In the past, vertically integrated utilities, like Georgia Power, also loaded lots of nuclear costs into corporate “Administrative & General” accounts. Things like fringe benefits, regulatory costs, public relations and executive costs were not allocated to nuclear O&M, making costs per kWh distorted.

Buyer and pundit beware.

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Thanks. This morning, even Varney on fox business was talking about the need for nuclear power. the word is getting out. Keep up the good work.

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Has Jigar had a change of heart following his somewhat questionable behaviour on Decouple?

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GHE theory fails because of two erroneous assumptions: 1. near Earth space is cold & w/o GHE would become 255 K, -18 C, ball of ice & 2. radiating as a 16 C BB the surface produces “extra” GHE energy aka radiative forcing (caloric).

Without the atmosphere, water vapor and its 30% albedo Earth would become much like the Moon, a barren rock, hot^3 400 K on the lit side, cold^3 100 K on the dark.

“TFK_bams09” GHE heat balance graphic & its legion of clones uses bad math and badder physics. 63 W/m^2 appears twice (once from Sun & second from a BB calculation) violating both LoT 1 and GAAP. 396 W/m^2 upwelling is a BB calc for a 16 C surface for denominator of the emissivity ratio, 63/396=0.16, “extra” & not real. 333 W/m^2 “back” radiating from cold to warm violates LoT 1 & 2. Remove 396/333/63 from the graphic and the solar balance still works.

Kinetic heat transfer processes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules (60%) render a terrestrial BB (100%) impossible as demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.

Since both GHE & CAGW climate “science” are indefensible rubbish alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.

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