A Chat with the Nuclear Barbarian

[@robertr.hasspacher7731]

I'm astonished at how intelligent and informed the guests are on this channel as well as the pithiness of the content. You're my new hero, doc!

[@Joemama555]

just watched "Juice: Power, Politics, And The Grid", great job!

[@chrisconklin2981]

I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation and plan to purchase two of Mr. Bryce's books. I do have to admit my perspectives are different. I have been a renewable energy advocate since the late 1970's and am more convened than ever that this is the road to take. Yes, nuclear has a small place like maybe space travel, maybe fusion, and for the moment as base load. But frankly, nuclear is just a fancy way of boiling water. Industrial grade renewable based high temperature storage and processing is just getting started. Around TM 44:00 you talk about our apocalyptic paradigm about energy. No, our concern is about long term availability, the type of energy, and it's threat to life on this earth. I think this discussion under appreciates the rapid development of renewable energy. Terms like: Smart Grid, VPP, community solar, geothermal, distributed generation, load shifting, heat pumps, and grid modularization are all parts the transition. This transition is possible because of the cost and technical competitiveness of renewables. Our goal is to make nuclear, coal, oil, and natural gas obsolete. Sunlight is free and will last forever.

[@manatoa1]

I really think "skill issue" problem we have in Canada is an education system problem. We have a huge bias in favour of liberal arts. Our teachers (and their unions) are overwhelmingly female liberal arts majors, and their focus seems to be replicating themselves.

[@mcnairfan78]

Lol c'mon no serious person can look at universities in Canada and say there is a "bias in favor of liberal arts." Compare humanities research funding to natural sciences.

[@peredavi]

Same in US. No one wants to get their hands dirty. It’s starting to change. Partly due to high cost of universities. People beginning to realize the good pay in welding, electrical, HVAC, ….. Someone who is willing to go into shipbuilding at Electric Boat ,Groton CT or Norfolk,Va has a career for life.

[@Joemama555]

yay a new decouple!

[@jkelly11785]

Great episode! Does Emmett have a good primer/history of NGOs in the US? That was a great point

[@urbankoistinen5688]

What a pleasure to listen to!

[@iancormie9916]

Perhaps all Sierra Club and EPA offices should be on the priority list for load shedding.

[@daniellarson3068]

Thanks for putting together this video. About 10 miles away from me, there is a coal plant that produces about a gigawatt of power. It is scheduled to be closed in 2025. I believe the replacement is more natural gas generation. Wind and solar are very intermittent here in the Great Lakes region. All the eggs are in one basket, natural gas. Reliable diversified energy sources will meet the requirements of the customer. There are many new designs for these smaller nuclear reactors. I guess I can't figure out why the US government isn't trying one of them out. I guess the DOE dribbles a little money here and there to give these companies some hope, but no pilot plant to test out the processes of any of them is being built. I guess once the lights go out then stuff will get done.

[@fissionphoenix4995]

I hate how my experience as reactor operator just atrophies as I now drive school bus for a living. It's like I was screaming "put me back in, coach" applying to various nuclear power plants and I've come to just accept my position on the bench and try to make ends meet with a job I am less than fully satisfied with. School bus driving isn't a terrible job by any means and I have significant respect for it, but I feel very displaced doing it as a US Navy Nuclear Reactor Operator veteran.

[@iancormie9916]

Better Homer Simpson than a collection of Social Justice Warriors. (The types that can not light a campfire and are stars on "only friends")

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Keep nuclear plants running as they are valuable as they are. It is the big picture that is the point. Cold climates are warming. Burning some fossil fuels in mid winter is a small thing.

[@benjones1717]

Without war the apparatchiks take over, from university, to charity, government etc

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

A grid company that sells time on the grid. It is the grid costs to the millions and millions and millions and millions of customers. The economics of grid electricity expanded to stop CO2 is the danger of building until the economics break and we all pay. The breakdown in this economic model before CO2 emissions are stopped is everyone's greatest fear. You are smart people. Ask how much new grid construction costs. Ask how long the grid is to millions and millions of customers.

[@iancormie9916]

When temperature data is properly peer reviewed and formaized. (note much of our temperature data is corrupted by heat island effect) and all models are history matched to temperature data and modified to include cloud formation, Milancovich and solar modeling - then we can use models for guidance. As for AI, Electricity prices will tell the companies to trim their needs and let the AI companies justify their existence based on their productivity.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Love this analysis 👏 of gas in the city.

[@wm.scottpappert9869]

good convo guys. i might add to barbarians assessment of the dynamics of money flow into REs and energy in general that there is the management class and then there is the investment class. the management class may be the theoretical 'brains' (or non depending on their positions) but they will pander to investment class ideology of course in supporting and directing funds ... hence the situation we are in ... the ideology of renewable tech was generated many decades ago starting around the time of Lovins first FP post and has since patiently waited for it's techno infants to grow ... and currently the RE basket of goods phenomena of cheap 'sustainable' energy has crashed on to the energy market shores whose narrative is being locked down by lib media ... including NPR. convincing the investment class that not only does this basket not meet the targets of climate change but that it's a terrible and destructive long term investment is a narrative that will appear in the WSJ before CNN ... a narrative that needs to be repeated loud, clear and repeatedly so that the investment class knows decisively that the nuke community are the truth tellers and real 'earth nuturers'

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Monopoly grid ownership with government Garrentees is a difficult problem.

[@yvonraoul2198]

I guess the Chinese don't subscribe to this view: their university are producing first class engineers in every scientific fields connected to research and innovation. Yes, we need 'welders', pipefitters etc but we are only (barely) doing well because we are hiring graduates that do have top class education from outside North America. Sorry, the Homer Simpson mentality won't do it.

[@randacnam7321]

I've had to deal with Chinese engineering students in college. _They. Cheat. On. EVERYTHING._

[@ronwalker4998]

You should dig a little more into china's demographics and understand how few engineers are replacing the old guard of engineers .. that is a problem throughout the economy

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Grid electricity needs the grid More electricity, 15% to 100% 7 times more. More electric grid capacity. No situational awareness. Grids cost $1million per km 1million km $trillion × 7 = $ 7 trillion. Plus new generation plant × 7 = $ 1 trillion For 25million Australians Grid rental plus cheap electricity is the electricity bill. Australia GDP is $1.5 trillion. Australia has a grid $ cost problem. Situational awareness problem.

[@Joemama555]

are the sunglasses in homage for the bright future or to protect against the mud flung slog of the future in energy markets?

[@cheeseandjamsandwich]

Demographics??? No... Skills. We're not short of humans, or of humans of a young age, we're short of skilled workers! How do we get more skilled workers? Train them... Why aren't they going to uni, college to get these skills? Because it's astronomically expensive. That is a huge barrier... Only the rich kids will be able to entertain the thoughts of getting higher education. So to fix this, we need to remove this barrier. We need to make going to university, to college free... Such that kids can choose to get higher education, no matter what background they come from, no matter if they're poor. Should we make them pay later? Well... It depends on whether you value what they actually add to the economy. I'd guess that it's worth investing in the future of your own country. Train up anyone, everyone, and everyone wins! We need to stop scraping profit from every single thing we can. And if you think this is bollocks... Then some other country will do this, they'll overtake, dominate, and you'll get left behind. Invest.

[@acwojtkowiak]

Have you any experience with college/university courses. University degrees are just one component in evaluating a person's competence/performance on the job. It is an aspect of the system we have presently. Professors have a vested interest in challenging students but not in effectively "teaching" i.e. transming kpnowledge to students. Arbitrarily throwing money at Learning Institutions is not necessarily the best policy. This is just an observation here.

[@cheeseandjamsandwich]

@@acwojtkowiak Yes. A UK OND, HND & BEng in Mech Eng. And I'm old enough such that i started college receiving a full grant. £2.4k per year (skint parents). But finished when it'd transitioned off of grants to only a student loan... And a few years later they introduced Tuition Fees. When i started, we were given money to do any higher education course we wished. Sure, many people did 'just do' some fluffy arts and history courses, but everyone had the chance to do whatever, and many did choose to do STEM course. We simply cannot cry about skill shortages if we're not investing in our own children's education. Our own future workforce's training. Every form of higher education, should be free and support given to those from poorer backgrounds, such that we can tap into the enormous pool of potential that we all have, but have chosen to neglect, just so a few people can get rich. And yes, some might say that we should prioritise STEM only, and make students pay to study the 'fluffy' stuff... But that's a bit unfair really. And societies, birth rates, prosperity, affluence, etc. all benefit from a population being well educated. No matter what the education is. And if we need STEM & tradies, pay them well! Good wages attract applicants. And yes, the type of graduate we may be producing might not be as good, as optimised as it should... So how about we work out what they should be coming out with, and change the education, the syllabus, the courses such that they actually produce better graduates! There's no shortage of employers that are moaning about the state of graduates that would be happy to tell us what they want! Adapt, or die. Invest!

[@davidwilkie9551]

Just want to say that Engineers of the age old "builders with simple tools", and Slide Rule induced Intuition, have more Accuracy in Principle than Precision in application. This is what counter intuitive means. Eg the problem for Physicists engaged in Astronomical Observation using Precision Instrumentation is the failure to understand the Principle of Form following Function well known in Bio-logical Recursion to the Mean, ie it's dead if it's not alive. Ie fears about AI are justified as long as expectations rely on mathematical precision instead of self knowledge of socially required personal peer qualifications, aka morality. Because, analog QM-TIME Completeness cause-effect Actuality requires all naturally probabilistic/superimposed questions be dealt with immediately, case by case in the logical sequence of self-defining situations.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Grid electricity is uneconomical because the grid is extremely expensive to build. 15% of energy is grid electricity. 100% is impossible. $TRILLIONS and trillions and decades and decades. Just the new grid capacity. New grid is the economic killer of both distant renewables and nuclear both.

[@chapter4travels]

No new grid gets built without new demand to pay for it. This is how every mile of electricity has ever been built and will ever get built. There is no problem here.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

@chapter4travels electricity is the most expensive energy, and fossil fuels are dirt cheap in comparison. Our economy runs on the dirt cheap part of the energy supply. The luxury priced electricity part is a necessary part, and a small part.

[@chapter4travels]

@@stephenbrickwood1602 What does that have to do with anything? If we replace coal plants first with nuclear and later natural gas, there will be very little new transmission needed.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

@@chapter4travels nuclear electricity to stop CO2 emissions worldwide is the point..

[@chapter4travels]

Correction; Nuclear-based industrial heat to provide/promote prosperity worldwide without coal pollution is the point.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Grid solutions means distribution of small generators. Dispersed energy saves grid costs, that is my point. Universal EVs will be a huge energy storage resource. EVs have energy storage way beyond one day. That is a massive resource. EVs and nuclear are both projected possibilities.