Nuclear is expensive even after the reactor is build.

And I wouldn’t call it progress to still rely on steam machines for energy

What's wrong with steam?

It's better than carbon. And solar + battery requires more carbon to produce than nuclear energy as there's a lot of mining and physical construction involved + you must overbuild to supply power or rely on non solar sources.

All for building solar. Do not understand the constant need to denigrate nuclear in favour of carbon sources while doing so.

(If carbon sources were at zero this would be a different conversation)

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epistasis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nothing inherently wrong with steam, just as there's nothing inherently wrong with spinning rust hard disks or punch cards.

We are at the end of the tech curve for steam, we have pushed it hard and made some super impressive technology, but it's not advancing anymore. Supercritical CO2 might have some advantages, or other fluids.

We have zero-carbon tech that uses non-steam principles, and is currently on a tech curve that's getting cheaper than any thermodynamic cycle. We have storage tech now which is an even bigger revolution for the grid than cheap solar, because a huge limitation of the grid has always been the inability to store and buffer energy.

I still have pinning rust disks, but only because they are cheap. If SSDs were cheaper, then we would see a massive switch.

(BTW denigrating steam also denigrates all fossil fuel electricity sources, because they use the same mechanism, except for some natural gas turbines)

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croes 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s an inefficient way of producing energy. Only 30-35% results in electricity

	▲	ai_critic 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you believe that figure, that's still comparable to solar's best ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-cell_efficiency ). Optimal steam plants can get do better, exceeding 50% in some configurations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined-cycle_power_plant#Eff... ). Steam is awesome.
	▲	graeme 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Could you please provide comparable figured of EROI for solar vs Nuclear? For a useful comparison you have to compare both sides, not give a stat in isolation and assert it is worse without comparing.
	▲	ethmarks 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What alternative do you propose that's more efficient?

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ethmarks 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Nuclear is expensive even after the reactor is build.

Solar panels and wind turbines need maintenance too. And they have much shorter operational lives than nuclear power plants, meaning they'll need to be expensively replaced much more frequently.

> And I wouldn’t call it progress to still rely on steam machines for energy

Could you please explain your objection to steam-based power? Is it purely aesthetic, or is there some inherent downside to steam turbines that I'm not aware of? Also, concentrated solar power systems that concentrate sunlight and use it to boil steam[1] are significantly more efficient than direct photovoltaics.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power