this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
2167 points (94.2% liked)

World News

38987 readers
1859 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not all 7,000 construction workers would be working on the site concurrently. Different trades come and go depending on the phase of the project. So at first you'll have the civil engineering earth movers come in, who clears the site and excavates the foundations. Then you'll have the concrete crews come in who pour the foundations and do all of the concrete work. Obviously on a nuclear power plant there is a lot of foundation work, as well as a lot of above ground concrete so probably a good chunk of the construction workers will fall into this category.

Power plants also have a lot of structural steel work, electrical and special equipment that would likey fall under the piping category but each of these uses a separate set of skilled labor that does not overlap.

If you were going to actually try to build 3,300 nuclear power plants, you would rotate crews from project to project which would increase efficiency rather than hiring 27 million separate workers.

In any case, I don't think converting the world's total electrical power generation to 100% nuclear is by any stretch of the imagination a good idea. Personally I think maybe 15 to 25% nuclear power generation would be a more realistic mix, similar to the US electrical power generation. The rest of the power should be solar, wind, hydro, wave and geothermal as they are absolutely cheaper to build.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I agree with how you'd be able to execute on that level or organized construction safely, but I think we're also reaching the "impossible-to-be-sure hypothetical" territory, so I'll concede the point for now.

I think my problems of cost and time still stand. It looks like adding rooftop solar with batteries to every building is still cheaper (on startup, and likely per MW) than nuclear plants. Regions that cannot support solar, onland wind, geo, or hydro can justify nuclear (at least unless shipping batteries or hydrogen conversion becomes cheap enough to compete), but I don't think they amount to nearly 15% of the power needs in the world since they represent fairly distinctive regions with low energy demand.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We do it all the time in the construction industry.

For instance, Bechtel has 55,000 people in the US.

"Since the 1950s, Bechtel has designed, serviced, or delivered 80% of all nuclear plants in the U.S.. Bechtel has provided engineering and construction services for 88 of the 104 operating nuclear plants in the United States."

So just hire them. Too bad they lost almost all of their institutional knowledge about nuclear construction compared to what they used to have.