Crazy how quickly we’ve gone from “Nuclear is a dead technology, it can’t work and its simply too expensive to build more of. Y’all have to use fossil fuels instead” to “We’re building nuclear plants as quickly as our contractors can draft them, but only for doing experiments in high end algorithmic brute-forcing”.
Would be nice if some of that dirt-cheap, low-emission, industrial capacity electricity was available for the rest of us.
Fun Times! Because everyone pays for the waste and when something goes wrong.
Privatizing Profits while Socializing Losses.
The core motor of capitalism.
The cleanup for fossil fuels is an order of magnitude more expensive, and an order of magnitude more difficult. It also impacts so many things that its true cost is impossible to calculate.
I’m aware of the issues with nuclear, but for a lot of places it’s the only low/zero emission tech we can do until we have a serious improvement in batteries.
Very few countries can have a large stable base load of renewable energy. Not every country has the geography for dams (which have their own massive ecological and environmental impacts) or geothermal energy.
Seriously, we need to cut emissions now. So what’s the option that anti-nuclear people want? Continue to use fossil fuels and hope battery tech gets good enough, then expand renewables? That will take decades.
We’re talking 11 years for 7 “small” reactors. The first decade just to establish a business, but no real difference in the overall picture. How many years, decades after that to make a noticeable difference?
Meanwhile we’re building out more power generation in renewables every year. Renewables are already well developed, can be deployed quickly, and are already scaling up, renewables make a difference NOW.
It’s almost like the brand spanking new tech to make small nuclear reactors are extremely cost prohibitive and risky, and to lower the cost someone needs to spend money to increase supply.
Plus time. My perspective was that building a new nuclear power industry and any significant number of reactors would take too long: we need to have fixed climate change in less time.
So seven “small” reactors over the next eleven years …… faster than I expected but still takes decades to make a noticeable difference.
I don’t think they’re even building many. The article uses the word “adopt” because they’re kinda reviving old power plants. Three Mile Island being one of them.
Crazy how quickly we’ve gone from “Nuclear is a dead technology, it can’t work and its simply too expensive to build more of. Y’all have to use fossil fuels instead” to “We’re building nuclear plants as quickly as our contractors can draft them, but only for doing experiments in high end algorithmic brute-forcing”.
Would be nice if some of that dirt-cheap, low-emission, industrial capacity electricity was available for the rest of us.
Fun Times! Because everyone pays for the waste and when something goes wrong. Privatizing Profits while Socializing Losses. The core motor of capitalism.
Everyone pays for not using nuclear too, a thousand fold more so.
The cleanup for fossil fuels is an order of magnitude more expensive, and an order of magnitude more difficult. It also impacts so many things that its true cost is impossible to calculate.
I’m aware of the issues with nuclear, but for a lot of places it’s the only low/zero emission tech we can do until we have a serious improvement in batteries.
Very few countries can have a large stable base load of renewable energy. Not every country has the geography for dams (which have their own massive ecological and environmental impacts) or geothermal energy.
Seriously, we need to cut emissions now. So what’s the option that anti-nuclear people want? Continue to use fossil fuels and hope battery tech gets good enough, then expand renewables? That will take decades.
We’re talking 11 years for 7 “small” reactors. The first decade just to establish a business, but no real difference in the overall picture. How many years, decades after that to make a noticeable difference?
Meanwhile we’re building out more power generation in renewables every year. Renewables are already well developed, can be deployed quickly, and are already scaling up, renewables make a difference NOW.
It’s almost like the brand spanking new tech to make small nuclear reactors are extremely cost prohibitive and risky, and to lower the cost someone needs to spend money to increase supply.
To be fair here, no one’s certain this will be cost-effective either. The new techs make it worth trying though.
Plus time. My perspective was that building a new nuclear power industry and any significant number of reactors would take too long: we need to have fixed climate change in less time.
So seven “small” reactors over the next eleven years …… faster than I expected but still takes decades to make a noticeable difference.
I don’t think they’re even building many. The article uses the word “adopt” because they’re kinda reviving old power plants. Three Mile Island being one of them.
You might want to read the article.