http://lair.haggisnet.org/~josh/blog/archives/2008/11/10/personal-nuclear-plant/ I told him I'd give him whatfor! Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:13:17 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://lair.haggisnet.org/~josh/blog/archives/2008/11/10/personal-nuclear-plant/comment-page-1/#comment-28088 Moonglum Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:53:14 +0000 http://lair.haggisnet.org/~josh/blog/?p=1497#comment-28088 Yeah, I'm a big fan of nuclear power. I used to love getting the quarterly reports from ComEd stating that 90% of our power was coming from nuclear. Modulo stations going temporarily offline. But then they changed how they bought and generated power and now it is 40% from "unknown sources". Meaning that they bought it. Meaning that it is coal. Ugh. Ideally we would not burn things we dig out of the ground for power, but if we are going to do it anyway, the least we could do is burn the things that burn most efficiently. Yeah, I’m a big fan of nuclear power. I used to love getting the quarterly reports from ComEd stating that 90% of our power was coming from nuclear. Modulo stations going temporarily offline. But then they changed how they bought and generated power and now it is 40% from “unknown sources”. Meaning that they bought it. Meaning that it is coal. Ugh. Ideally we would not burn things we dig out of the ground for power, but if we are going to do it anyway, the least we could do is burn the things that burn most efficiently.

]]> http://lair.haggisnet.org/~josh/blog/archives/2008/11/10/personal-nuclear-plant/comment-page-1/#comment-28074 BOB!! Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:47:18 +0000 http://lair.haggisnet.org/~josh/blog/?p=1497#comment-28074 I'm going to comment on this now, since I missed it the first time around. These are incredibly cool - but note that the $25M probably doesn't take into account the costs of "Buried deep underground", "guarded by a security detail" or the things that aren't mentioned on their page - transmission losses, transmission line maintenance and administration costs, all of which wind up being substantial chunks of the price you pay for electricity. It wouldn't surprise me at all of these things wind up being cost-effective, but conventional nuclear power would be cost-effective if we actually got around to building it. I’m going to comment on this now, since I missed it the first time around.
These are incredibly cool – but note that the $25M probably doesn’t take into account the costs of “Buried deep underground”, “guarded by a security detail” or the things that aren’t mentioned on their page – transmission losses, transmission line maintenance and administration costs, all of which wind up being substantial chunks of the price you pay for electricity. It wouldn’t surprise me at all of these things wind up being cost-effective, but conventional nuclear power would be cost-effective if we actually got around to building it.

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