Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Can Small Modular Reactors Save Nuclear Power?" video.

@EngineeringwithRosie As an other Australian who has worked in the Australian nuclear industry on the mining side the short answer is: Yes we will need to have nuclear power in future. The long part of this discussion is why and its probably a whole series of videos on the subject starting where the hell are we going with energy generation? Easily the biggest part of the problem is that there are a staggering array of technology promoters all spouting that their solution will save humanity and everything else is worthless. news flash every one of them is WRONG and also partly right. None of them are going to save humanity or the planet, but some of them will play a part in our energy future and if we get very lucky we might save the planet. I did an odd little consult job about 5 years ago and during I discovered just how old our power stations are in Australia and just how big the problem is of replacing them. When I checked around the world its just as bad and in some countries worse. The problem started about 25 years ago when planning for new MAJOR power stations effectively stopped and then construction with it. By "major" I mean Giga Watt class stations of (1,000MW or larger). The problem has been partly masked by the massive rollout of rooftop solar. In the 80s & 90s when our population went from 15 to 20 million we built a bunch of new stations. in the 2000s and 2010s our population went from 20 to 25 million and we built NONE. Anybody who ever took a class in economics knows what happens when demand goes up and supply doesn't match it. Prices go up and that's exactly what's happened. Australia has a huge problem and nobody wants to publicly talk about it. (edit) I had a typo it was supposed to say 25 million not 50
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@danyoutube7491 It surprised the hell out of me when I first found out. When raised it with another engineer one day telling him the issue was: "We had a power system built for 20 million and a population of 25" he called me out for BS. Then I showed him the list of our main power stations and when they were built and he freaked out with "Why aren't we building power stations." Then it hit him - politics and money. That was nearly 4 years ago and NOTHING has been started. There was a burst of consternation a few weeks ago when they announced one of our largest would be closing AHEAD of schedule. Not only has that concern died but the stories totally ignored the fact of how many stations have already shutdown without being replaced and how many are going to shut down in the next 3-5 years WITHOUT any plans to replace them. Did you ever see the hare and greyhounds scene from the film "Snatch"? We are the hare and we are "Proper farked"
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@GreenStarTech Thanks I missed that it was supposed to say 25. And yeah I know its almost 26. My big concern is that there are economists and bankers who want us to get to 50 or 60 million and nobody is asking where we are going to get the power or the water for that many people or handle the waste that many people produce? I was in Canada a couple of years ago for work on a waste water treatment plant. Their problem is they have too much water in they get 6ft (2m) of snow each winter and then it melts. There population's gone from 25 to 38 in the same time ours went from 20 to 25. Those extra 13 million take showers and flush toilets. That's overloading their systems and when the snow melts it flushes the sewerage ponds into the local rivers and creeks. To say they are in the sh*t is pretty accurate. We are going to have similar problems with Sydney and Melbourne before too long. Half our problem is the bankers who want all those extra people because it means all those juicy home loans. They don't care about water and power that's someone else's problem.
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@acmefixer1 Stop trying to argue with an engineer - its annoying. PAY ATTENTION. The Hornsdale mega battery in South Australia has 193.5 MWh (Megawatt hours). The Torrens Island gas thermal power station currently has 800MW capacity down from 1,280MW since they decommissioned the oldest part of it. PAY ATTENTION. 193.5 divided by 800 equals 0.24 or just under 1/4. That means that battery can back up the main power station for the South Australia for less than 15 minutes. Elon's mega battery and all the others like it are good for very fast but very short surges. THAT'S ALL. THEY ARE USELESS for the early morning and late afternoon surges that all modern cities demand. THEY ARE USELESS if a main power station fails. Are they helpful? YES, providing grid stability is a very good thing. Are they good for the long term? NO DAMN WAY. Power stations are needed for at least 25 years. How long does it take before the battery in your phone or laptop starts to show degradation? 12-18 months and they are throw away objects within 5 years. That's because Lithium ion batteries degrade. Hornsdale no longer has 193.5MWh and its getting worse everyday. They need to replace the battery packs every 3-5 years. The current type of Lithium Ion battery cell is NOT SUITABLE FOR GRID LEVEL STORAGE AND NEVER WILL BE. Its great for cars, phones, power tools and other stuff but not grid power. Besides we need that Lithium in our cars, phones, power tools NOT ON OUR WALLS! If you want to ask questions fine but don't try and tell me how to do my job.
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@EngineeringwithRosie A quick other point. There is nothing new in the safety methodology that they are using with the control rods descending into the core to reduce the reaction. That method has been used for decades. In fact I remember my science teacher explaining that's how Lucas Heights works and I finished high school in 1982. On top of that at my speech night in 1980 we had an old boy from ANSTO give the main speech and he told us that one day we will have nuclear energy in Australia. The world would have to use it because there was no other way that we would be able to keep up with the demands of a growing population. It remember it because it shocked us. We were just kids but it shocked us. I can remember being at home afterwards spitting chips. My father (a science teacher) asked me "Well how else are we going to supply power?" You see even back then when our population was only 15 million recognized that our population would grow and with it the need for power. That reality is about to smash a few countries, Australia being one.
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@Wowzersdude-k5c That's true but also YET to be proven in action. That's one of the more annoying thing these days. There are many great ideas being researched and developed by some really great people, but they lack funding and support. After the catastrophes of 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima there was just less and less development being done. In a vid a while back they showed a chart of the number of students doing nuclear engineering and there was this gradual decline down to almost nothing. Leslie Dewan was very vocal a few years back about the shortage of qualified nuclear engineers. Its like a few other technical areas where western policies have now created huge problems that just be solved tomorrow. I have a similar problem here in Australia with machinists, welders and electricians. We stopped producing them in the 90s and they take 4 years to just get their basic qualifications. Mike Rowe has pointe out the same problem in America and did his famous commencement speech on the subject.
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@kennethferland5579 Your right on all except that can load follow but its limited by the capacity steam header and steam control to the turbine. Other than that you need time with the control rods in the reactor and the problem is that its slow to react. It can be used with planning to follow the duck curve but the real issue is responding to surges or cuts from other supplies. They just can't adjust fast. Coal fired plants are no better. and even hydro plants struggle on that front. The one type that can respond reasonably quickly to demand surges (& drops) are gas turbines.
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@acmefixer1 Dealing with your stuff one part at a time. 1) Nobody knows if we will hit 4C by the end of the century, but we do know that 1.5C is the tipping point where we will need to start geoengineering. 2) Its not going to be hell on earth 4C its just going to be damn fracking hard. Don't claim unliveable when people already know how to live in the harshest of environments from both the cold and hot side. 3) There is such a thing as overcapacity in renewables and it happens all the time. Its caused by a lack of a decent storage system. I AGREE we need to develop green hydrogen ASAP. The real issue is we need a way to easily get electricity back AND DON'T say fuel cells!. If they were good enough it would have been a done deal decades ago and they don't spit out AC power they spit out DC. Going from AC to DC is easy the other way isn't as easy and it involves losses. 4) NOBODY IS GOING TO STORE Hydrogen underground. That's an idiotic fantasy from people who have no idea what they are talking about. Hydrogen from a green electrolyser system is CLEAN. If you pump it into the ground that makes it dirty as well as consuming a lot of energy. After it comes out it would need processing. Compress it store it in tanks - done. For the energy recovery we need an on demand bulk system and the best option there is hydrogen fueled gas turbines with cogeneration (steam of the hot exhaust). Rolls Royce, GE and others worked out all the gas turbine issues for hydrogen out over 25 years ago in the belief that's what aviation was going to use. Cogeneration has been widely used for decades on other gas turbine systems so nobody has to figure it out. Try being less of a drama queen. It helps nobody.
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