Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
Underway is different from completed. They have an important role to play. But China is building reactors than any other country. Just one, Linglong-1 on Hainan, is an SMR — and just barely by the standards of how big small some proposed reactors are. The rest are gigawatt-scale units. That should tell you something.
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miguelito
@mc
Yes, SMR is used to describe plants that aren’t SMRs
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Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
It’s mostly a branding exercise I think.
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miguelito
@mc
SMRs are needed but the tech remains a long way off imo The physics are hard Spent a decent amount of time looking at investments in the value chain but too early; better opportunities in renewables value chain
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Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
Enhanced geothermal has a lot of promise and offers similar qualities to nuclear in terms of land efficient, clean firm baseload. There’s a new Rhodium Group report out that suggests 64% — pretty eye popping number — of data center demand growth could be met with geothermal by the early 2030s.
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miguelito
@mc
That would be surprising Haven’t seen the report but will take a look Think most data center demand goes behind the meter, and I don’t know the costs of transmission Co-location of wind and solar with storage may be more economical?
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miguelito
@mc
Does it talk about the overlay with fiber networks?
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Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
One of the enhanced geothermal companies does have the capacity to use its wells as storage for wind and solar so that’s very cool.
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