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John Plodinec's avatar

Had this been done in TX, we probably wouldn't have had the February fiasco. No worries about the lack of sun and wind; no worries about the lack of fossil fuel; no worries about too few interconnects to external power sources.

Now if we can just get by the NIMBYs...

One question – what is the likely "water intensity" of the nukes vs coal?

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DiogenesNJ's avatar

Availability of fuel is an issue. For 20 years, starting in 1992, the Megatons to Megawatts project arranged for the US to buy highly enriched U-235 from Russian warheads to be blended down into reactor fuel. Great idea, but it inhibited US uranium mining and enrichment capacity. By 2022, Russia was providing 50% of the world's enrrched uranium and 25% of fuel for the existing US fleet. In the present geopolitical climate, being dependent on Russia does not seem like an optimal scenario, as Germany discovered. It will take a parallel effort to improve US fuel capacity for this admittedly excellent idea to work. Perhaps getting rid of the now-ludicrous once-through fuel cycle, and copying France in reprocessing spent fuel, would go a long way to solving the problem.

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