Comment by adrianmonk
1 day ago
The other advantage is political feasibility. Rational or not, people freak out the moment they hear the word "nuclear". Whether people should be this way is irrelevant if your goal is to have a project that succeeds. What's relevant is that they are.
That doesn't seem to describe the trajectory of the Carbon Free Power Project. It appears to have foundered due to economics, not the public "freaking out". The local small utilities, who presumably would be closer to the public, really tried to make it work, but without large utility interest it didn't hit subscriber targets.
Nuclear fans have a blindness to this situation, which occurs all the time with nuclear ideas. They get proposed, people run the numbers, and the project stalls. This appears to be happening with SMRs in Canada, for example.
I'm not a hard core nuclear fan but this Fervo project is coming in at about FOAK nuclear projects in terms of project costs per power output. It hasn't had to go to the public either for the cost of its power given the commercial off takers. I think people seem to think that enhanced geothermal is going to be cheaper than nuclear but many geothermal projects are signing contracts for $100+ MW/h power costs. EGS has the potential to be a considerable water consumer (non-potable) if field leak off rates are high and that sets up for potential public pushback given the arid farming/ranching environments these plants will be situated in the great basin. Like any technology there are advantages and tradeoffs, I see both technologies struggling without additional policy support.
> at about FOAK nuclear projects
Not any recent ones in the west. Claimed FOAK costs on slides are not to be trusted.