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as someone who has been working in a nuclear power plant in operations for 15 years and have been in the industry for 20, all i'm asking is for you to take the following as a learning experience. i can't force you to agree with anything here nor can i force you to broaden your research. if anything, take this as a bit of an eye opener into how complex a problem the power grid and supply really is. as an old professor i had many years ago always said, "the question is simple. the answer is infinitely complex".
that being said yes the US would do well to better interconnect power grids. this is the downside of having a bunch of smaller private generators. other countries have much more interconnected grids and it often helps with stability.
Like it or not, wind and solar are at the mercy of the environment. there is no such thing as 'permanent power'. with high reliance on renewables, what happens when night comes and the wind stops blowing? grid collapse is what. another reason for storage. that whole cascading thing. we will come back to that.
i'm actually not against this in theory, but the inherent instability in wind/solar must be dealt with. cost must be considered. like it or not, solar panels everywhere is not cheap. who pays that bill? if you want to examine a world recognized clean grid, look north to ontario. ontario doesn't use coal and hasn't for many years. natural gas is used but only for peaking power. base load is provided by a strong fleet of hydroelectric and nuclear reactors. wind and solar were tried...and bailed out. they got far too expensive and it wasn't enough to make enough of a difference. the unstable nature of it is problematic. not to say that wind and solar aren't used. don't believe me, see for yourself:
https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply
take a look through the data and note how incredibly unstable wind is despite having a good capacity. now compare to hydro and nuclear. solar is far less capacity available due to cost per MW at time of construction but it also suffers the same problem. Furthermore, solar panels are not always efficient depending on the time of year. they're heavily affected by temperature and tend to be most efficient in the spring time when it's not cold but not hot either - precisely the time that we don't need all that power.
There is currently no good approved design that can use thorium effectively. yes the CANDU can technically burn thorium in a canflex bundle. doesn't make it ideal despite what everyone thinks. i'll come back to that as to why in a sec. the SMR/molten salt designs are interesting, but are not yet ready for construction. maybe close, we shall see. there's a huge technological hurdle here though - how do you maintain the equipment? in a molten salt design the fuel is dissolved in the liquid so there's no way to remove all the fuel from inside say a pump or a valve. work crew opens that up and is greeted with a rather dangerous radiation hazard.
that brings me to my next point. uranium 232. thorium itself is not a fissile fuel. instead, with a neutron source (such as U235) it will transmute into U233 and U232. great nuclear fuel, short lived, very energetic. U232 in particular throws out a stupid amount of gamma radiation! there's no plastic suit or otherwise to protect you from gamma, it goes through everything. lead blankets reduce it but do not stop it completely. it's enough of a hazard that the way we currently build nuclear is not ideal for this. it would be unsafe for the workers, especially when opening equipment for maintenance. this is also why the CANDU isn't ideal for thorium, the fueling equipment is designed for uranium. it's not as simple as add more shielding.
last point is you seem to want to use nuclear for backup power. this doesn't work, at least until we get fast fission figured out better. we run nuclear plants at full power all the time for good reason. reactor physics is the barrier due to production of xenon. iodine-131 is a normal byproduct and it readily decays into xenon. that xenon is a neutron absorber and must be taken into account or the reactor just shuts down. you can read all about that with the X-10 plutonium production reactor during the manhattan project. short explanation is extra power is required to overcome the xenon. since there's a lag, it has to reach equilibrium. when running up a reactor and putting the generator on the grid, there are planned holds for physics. they can't simply go to 100% or the reactor would shut down. same goes for reducing power output, you'd take away the needed neutron flux to overcome the backlog of xenon.
cost of solar panels is another problem. according to google, expect to pay $12,000 to $17,500 per home. who's paying that? maybe government grants could sweeten the pot, etc. but then who maintains it? still a consideration when cost of living is a concern.
to say that the current grid is inefficient or failure prone is a yes and no. since the great blackout of 2002, there have been a lot of changes to prevent that from happening again. citing texas as an example isn't really accurate either since texas has their own isolated grid for the most part. look at the continent as a whole. as far as being 'weak and failure prone' the same argument can be made for solar with no storage for backup. raw MW output isn't really enough because you're only considering residential. it's great to power a home (at least when the sun is shining), not a factory. the load demands are much higher and different too. residential tends to have resistive demands while many factories are capacitive. reactive power is also a concern there, not something solar is good at.
constant generators such as hydroelectric, coal, natural gas and nuclear in particular are incredibly stable with a constant 60 Hz output (depending on where you live in the world, frequency can vary). they are constant suppliers with constant load and voltage capabilities. wind and solar cannot claim this in any way - and that's why we need storage. think of it as a large capacitor.
here's what really happened, and no it wasn't due to wind and solar:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-21/what-caused-spain-blackout/105228732
but it does paint an interesting picture. this was a human problem where the plants ignored requests from grid control for whatever reason. keep in mind that wind and solar don't listen to grid control ever...again, need for storage.
as discussed, that interconnectivity is great but comes with a high price tag. the infrastructure that is currently in place is not capable of handling the kind of load you're suggesting. this doesn't make it a bad idea, it has been done elsewhere in the world! now it becomes a political issue. correct that solar cannot be the only source, there's good reason for a diverse supply. cost and effectiveness must be evaluated carefully and a country must make their own decisions based on what their economy can tolerate.
another thing i'd like you to consider is waste from solar. those panels wear out and cannot simply be repaired. do you have any idea how highly polluting manufacturing of those panels is? its awful, the chemical waste is insane. the panels themselves are hazardous waste too, very nasty stuff inside them if they are broken open which is pretty well a guarantee at some point. maybe we can recycle them far more effectively one day, that is not today.
thorium reactors like what you're thinking do not exist at this time. it is being worked on, that much is true. i believe we will get there one day.
wind and geothermal where it makes sense i can completely agree with. problem with geothermal is we're not very good at drilling deep enough to build that in most places. very few locations is it feasible.
offshore wind is a nice idea, it has the same issues as land wind plus a few others. supply is more stable but not 100% by far. maintenance is an utter pig as is transmission. i too would like to get rid of polluting plants worldwide but at some point we have to consider the cost.
as nice as this would be, unfortunately the grid does not work like this. the grid works on supplying a changing demand and although you can generate more power than is required, this is not a good scenario. when this happens one grid controller will route it to another even if it means selling it at a loss. Changing generation to match demand is far more effective in every way - this is why we like to use natural gas turbines for peaking power. not much out there responds faster.
Again, would be nice but the grid simply does not work this way. you are not considering the power loss through transmission over longer distances. to reduce line losses, we use transformers to step up the voltage - this is why we have big towers, to keep the high voltage lines away from people. those transformers only handle so much current flow. if a grid were to be upgraded to handle this kind of back and fourth power flow, it would require major upgrades to both lines and transformers to handle the extra current flow. this is not a simple upgrade and would be obscenely expensive. this is why storage is being developed!
that being said yes the US would do well to better interconnect power grids. this is the downside of having a bunch of smaller private generators. other countries have much more interconnected grids and it often helps with stability.
Like it or not, wind and solar are at the mercy of the environment. there is no such thing as 'permanent power'. with high reliance on renewables, what happens when night comes and the wind stops blowing? grid collapse is what. another reason for storage. that whole cascading thing. we will come back to that.
i'm actually not against this in theory, but the inherent instability in wind/solar must be dealt with. cost must be considered. like it or not, solar panels everywhere is not cheap. who pays that bill? if you want to examine a world recognized clean grid, look north to ontario. ontario doesn't use coal and hasn't for many years. natural gas is used but only for peaking power. base load is provided by a strong fleet of hydroelectric and nuclear reactors. wind and solar were tried...and bailed out. they got far too expensive and it wasn't enough to make enough of a difference. the unstable nature of it is problematic. not to say that wind and solar aren't used. don't believe me, see for yourself:
https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply
take a look through the data and note how incredibly unstable wind is despite having a good capacity. now compare to hydro and nuclear. solar is far less capacity available due to cost per MW at time of construction but it also suffers the same problem. Furthermore, solar panels are not always efficient depending on the time of year. they're heavily affected by temperature and tend to be most efficient in the spring time when it's not cold but not hot either - precisely the time that we don't need all that power.
Thorium is not the savior that it is made out to be. I blame media for this, we never discuss the downsides. Thorium is not widely used not due to politics but due to technical issues that we still haven't figured out. sure it's a great nuclear fuel. cheap, abundant and puts out more energy. It still requires a neutron source so there would be waste from traditional uranium fuel but far less. the spent fuel from thorium doesn't stay active for nearly so long and i do in fact believe that we will one day be using thorium in addition to uranium.
There is currently no good approved design that can use thorium effectively. yes the CANDU can technically burn thorium in a canflex bundle. doesn't make it ideal despite what everyone thinks. i'll come back to that as to why in a sec. the SMR/molten salt designs are interesting, but are not yet ready for construction. maybe close, we shall see. there's a huge technological hurdle here though - how do you maintain the equipment? in a molten salt design the fuel is dissolved in the liquid so there's no way to remove all the fuel from inside say a pump or a valve. work crew opens that up and is greeted with a rather dangerous radiation hazard.
that brings me to my next point. uranium 232. thorium itself is not a fissile fuel. instead, with a neutron source (such as U235) it will transmute into U233 and U232. great nuclear fuel, short lived, very energetic. U232 in particular throws out a stupid amount of gamma radiation! there's no plastic suit or otherwise to protect you from gamma, it goes through everything. lead blankets reduce it but do not stop it completely. it's enough of a hazard that the way we currently build nuclear is not ideal for this. it would be unsafe for the workers, especially when opening equipment for maintenance. this is also why the CANDU isn't ideal for thorium, the fueling equipment is designed for uranium. it's not as simple as add more shielding.
last point is you seem to want to use nuclear for backup power. this doesn't work, at least until we get fast fission figured out better. we run nuclear plants at full power all the time for good reason. reactor physics is the barrier due to production of xenon. iodine-131 is a normal byproduct and it readily decays into xenon. that xenon is a neutron absorber and must be taken into account or the reactor just shuts down. you can read all about that with the X-10 plutonium production reactor during the manhattan project. short explanation is extra power is required to overcome the xenon. since there's a lag, it has to reach equilibrium. when running up a reactor and putting the generator on the grid, there are planned holds for physics. they can't simply go to 100% or the reactor would shut down. same goes for reducing power output, you'd take away the needed neutron flux to overcome the backlog of xenon.
you are correct with everything except the expense. the expense would be very large when you consider grid upgrades required. larger transmission lines, stepped up voltage, new towers and transformer to support. it's actually extremely expensive. going back up north to ontario again, one solution to rising demand was to import power from quebec. they have a lot of hydroelectric that could be tapped. there is some lines already there for that, easy right? no. the upgrades required for that amount of power over that long a distance was obscenely expensive. so much so that ontario has opted to build more nuclear.
cost of solar panels is another problem. according to google, expect to pay $12,000 to $17,500 per home. who's paying that? maybe government grants could sweeten the pot, etc. but then who maintains it? still a consideration when cost of living is a concern.
yes we can do it. energy density is also relatively low, but rooftop offsets this to a point. would love to know what the plan is when the sun goes down!
to say that the current grid is inefficient or failure prone is a yes and no. since the great blackout of 2002, there have been a lot of changes to prevent that from happening again. citing texas as an example isn't really accurate either since texas has their own isolated grid for the most part. look at the continent as a whole. as far as being 'weak and failure prone' the same argument can be made for solar with no storage for backup. raw MW output isn't really enough because you're only considering residential. it's great to power a home (at least when the sun is shining), not a factory. the load demands are much higher and different too. residential tends to have resistive demands while many factories are capacitive. reactive power is also a concern there, not something solar is good at.
this is dead wrong. the source absolutely does matter for grid stability. we can't make the sun shine nor can we make the wind blow. we can, however, fire up a gas turbine in no time. we can reroute power. that's great you can track the demand but it doesn't mean jack shit if you have nothing to supply it with. the result is the 2002 blackout.
constant generators such as hydroelectric, coal, natural gas and nuclear in particular are incredibly stable with a constant 60 Hz output (depending on where you live in the world, frequency can vary). they are constant suppliers with constant load and voltage capabilities. wind and solar cannot claim this in any way - and that's why we need storage. think of it as a large capacitor.
not true. spain is quite connected to other countries in europe such as france.
here's what really happened, and no it wasn't due to wind and solar:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-21/what-caused-spain-blackout/105228732
but it does paint an interesting picture. this was a human problem where the plants ignored requests from grid control for whatever reason. keep in mind that wind and solar don't listen to grid control ever...again, need for storage.
as discussed, that interconnectivity is great but comes with a high price tag. the infrastructure that is currently in place is not capable of handling the kind of load you're suggesting. this doesn't make it a bad idea, it has been done elsewhere in the world! now it becomes a political issue. correct that solar cannot be the only source, there's good reason for a diverse supply. cost and effectiveness must be evaluated carefully and a country must make their own decisions based on what their economy can tolerate.
another thing i'd like you to consider is waste from solar. those panels wear out and cannot simply be repaired. do you have any idea how highly polluting manufacturing of those panels is? its awful, the chemical waste is insane. the panels themselves are hazardous waste too, very nasty stuff inside them if they are broken open which is pretty well a guarantee at some point. maybe we can recycle them far more effectively one day, that is not today.
thorium reactors like what you're thinking do not exist at this time. it is being worked on, that much is true. i believe we will get there one day.
wind and geothermal where it makes sense i can completely agree with. problem with geothermal is we're not very good at drilling deep enough to build that in most places. very few locations is it feasible.
offshore wind is a nice idea, it has the same issues as land wind plus a few others. supply is more stable but not 100% by far. maintenance is an utter pig as is transmission. i too would like to get rid of polluting plants worldwide but at some point we have to consider the cost.
very little concept for the size of the numbers.
