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> I don't know how or why it happened, but solar/wind has become the most prominent notion of sustainable power generation. Clueless environmentalists demonsta
by petre 8y ago
> I don't know how or why it happened, but solar/wind has become the most prominent notion of sustainable power generation.
Clueless environmentalists demonstating, skyrocketing costs for construction of new reactors, overregulation, fear of nuclear proliferation.
Nuclear is not the only path forward, there's also geothermal power where it's available. Nuclear can be nearly renewable if we reprocess and recycle nuclear "waste" and further burn it in fast breeder reactors. Unfortunately those are prohibitively expensive.
- avmich 8y agoWhat are testable data points which lead to preferring nuclear over solar/wind?
- petre 8y agoBase load power and high capacity factor. It's not preferring it to solar/wind but using it as base load and supplementing with solar, wind, hydro and gas peaker plants when there's availability or demand. Modular nuclear reactors could also very useful and they're quite safe since they're derived from naval PWRs which have an excellent track record. So far only the Russians have two naval reactors on a barge called Akademik Lomonosov. The rest of them are in various stages of design or regulatory review. There's hope NuScale will be comercially available around 2025.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago>Clueless environmentalists demonstating, skyrocketing costs for construction of new reactors, overregulation, fear of nuclear proliferation. No shortage there. Last week I just saw a bunch of kids camp out at our city hall to protest and demand the “New Green Deal” which proposed to eliminate plane travel and retrofit all buildings in the USA with renewable energy... Good luck nuclear... uphill battle there.