
chris keefer
@Dr_Keefer • 35,035 subscribers
ER Doc. Energy Analyst. Host Decouple Podcast: https://t.co/DU8cCdW3X0 President Canadians for Nuclear Energy: https://t.co/HThtnXtbr6
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In which I explain the extraordinary energy density of nuclear power using the world‘s most famous equation E=MC2. Start with a 100 tonne fuel load in a 1 GW PWR. We fission 3kg of heavy metal per day. Everyday 3g of that mass is transformed into energy. According to E=MC2 thats 3g x the speed of light 300 million m/s squared. 3g x 90,000,000,000,000,000 m2/s2 equals a lot of Joules. Expressed in more familiar terms for the power sector thats 75GWh thermal or 24GWh electric. So to summarize that 3g/day powers 1 million homes every day for 18 months. To watch the full interview on the Great Simplification podcast with Nate Hagens see the link in the replies.
chris keefer46,416 次观看 • 4 个月前

Europe imports 80% of the hydrocarbons it consumes and that oil and gas keeps getting more expensive as they unplug from Russian gas and become hostages of the Strait of Hormuz. Germany resisted deindustrialization during the “China Shock” of the early 2000’s in large part due to the ultra cheap Russian pipeline gas that it built its economy around since the 1970’s oil shocks. France electrified its way out of its oil dependence with 54 large reactors built in 20 years. Today’s Europe is short on domestically produced hydrocarbons, refuses to explore for more and has lost the state and industrial capacity to build nuclear effectively. It has somehow convinced itself that deindustrialization and offshoring emissions to Asia was climate heroism. That buying hydrocarbons from elsewhere rather than producing them at home would absolve them from their sins. Will 1970’s energy literate leadership return to Europe? What do you think?
chris keefer33,403 次观看 • 4 个月前

China is a prisoner of geography. Its energy pragmatism is in direct response to choke points like the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca and the first Island chain through which it’s vital liquid hydrocarbon imports, 12 million barrels of oil per day, must traverse. It is extremely vulnerable to blockade and has organized its energy policies: its massive coal fleet, impressive solar build out, EV dominance and coal to chemicals industry accordingly. For the full interview check out my interview with Nate Hagens on the Great Simplification. Link in replies.
chris keefer23,910 次观看 • 4 个月前

China is eating our lunch in nuclear construction. This video shows the positioning the CA01 module of a CAP1000 reactor. The CA01 module is a significant structural component designed to house key elements such as steam generators. Due to its substantial size, over 1000 tons) it is constructed on-site as a “super module” because it is too large to be transported by road or rail.
chris keefer49,259 次观看 • 1 年前

What if the logic at the core of the SMR paradigm is faulty? One of the key promises of SMRs is to move a greater percentage of work from the unproductive construction site to a productive factory environment... but what if large modular reactors do a better job of that? Module construction for the nuclear steam supply system and balance of plant containing key components, HVAC, electrical, plumbing etc... can be moved to the factory environment in small or large modular reactors like AP1000, ABWR or the most recent CANDUs. Civil works and site preparation cannot. The problem with grid scale SMRs like BWRX-300 & AP300 etc... is that the civil works and site preparation don't scale down proportionately with the decreased reactor output. The nuclear steam supply system and turbine island is typically only 25-35% of the overnight construction cost of a nuclear plant. The civil works, site preparation, installation work dominate overnight cost. Therefore with grid scale SMRs ~300MWe you actually end up with a greater proportion of work per MWe being on the unproductive construction site compared to a large modular reactor defeating the premise and promise of SMR productivity gains.
chris keefer59,623 次观看 • 2 年前

“I would call Westinghouse Electric Company an American Company. It’s a legacy American company… it has a Canadian partner in Cameco Corporation but it’s an American company.” United States Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. He went on to say. "This is a plan to partner across the country to build a large amount of power…and to do so in a way that’s efficient…to re-stand up the supply chain IN THE UNITED STATES.” It doesn’t get any clearer than this. It’s time that Canadian policymakers like Timothy Hodgson wake up to the reality that building Westinghouse reactors in Canada will sacrifice huge economic benefits, and make us dependent on an increasingly unreliable and even hostile partner. The policy with the clear return on investment for what will be some of Canada’s largest capital projects of the 21st-century is clear. Investing in CANDU, our national reactor technology, locks in energy sovereignty, and 100 years of high productivity value add jobs in engineering services, component replacement and fuel fabrication, jobs that are nearly all based in the United States in the case of U.S. headquartered Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. We should not be making 100 year 50-100 billion dollar bets on U.S. generosity and goodwill. We have every indication that there is a strong "America First" tendency firmly rooted in the American body politic that will continue to rear its ugly head long after the Trump presidency has passed. Now that the USA has made the decision to invest 80 billion into Westinghouse projects south of the border in exchange for a future 20% stake in the company we can suffer no illusions about any false equivalency between Westinghouse and CANDU as Canadian champions. In 1980 Canada had 13 large CANDU reactors under simultaneous construction in 3 different countries around the world. These reactors have gone on to be the 3rd most widely deployed reactor technnology in the world alongside the American Pressurized and Boiling Water Reactor and have been amongst the top performers in the global fleet. In the aftermath of the collapse of Canadian telecoms giants and aviation aspirations its time to drop the inferioriy complex and lean into one of Canada's last bastions of high productivity, value add Canadian intellectual property and jobs. We have every incentive to do so.
chris keefer12,422 次观看 • 9 个月前

Throwback to my confrontation with Steven Guilbeault over his opposition to nuclear energy at COP 26 in Glasgow at the beginning of his tenure as Environment minister. Yesterday Mr. Guilbeault resigned from cabinet. He was a long time proponent of shuttering the Pickering Nuclear Station. This week the Pickering refurbishment was locked in. This nuclear power plant will quite likely still be splitting atoms after both of us have drawn our last breath.
chris keefer11,341 次观看 • 8 个月前

Tariffs and deregulation are not going to bridge the skills gap required to re-industrialize the rust belt and reshore critical industry. A critical challenge is human capital particularly in areas like precision manufacturing. The U.S. education system is structured increasingly as a rent-extraction vehicle, focused on harvesting students debt, rather than as a pipeline for the mass production of skilled engineers and tradespeople. As Apple CEO Tim Cook points out in this video, the number of precision tool engineers in the U.S. could fit in a small auditorium, while China has enough to fill entire stadiums. Even with immediate educational reforms which due to vested interest is hard to imagine, closing this skills gap would take at least a decade.
chris keefer11,416 次观看 • 1 年前
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