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From what I hear the US can barely maintain its roads, let alone build nuclear power plants, but why the gloom? We did it before, this time it really matters, s
by lokimedes 7y ago
From what I hear the US can barely maintain its roads, let alone build nuclear power plants, but why the gloom? We did it before, this time it really matters, so let’s put some money into saving the planet and get that x1e6 energy density going.
- epistasis 7y agoMaintaining roads is pretty trivial compared to building more nuclear, and we are very good at that as long as there's money allocated. When money is allocated for nuclear, we are not good at building, just as we are bad at nearly all massive multi-billion dollar builds. We no longer have the project management skills and construction skills we had 50 years ago. If you look back at the pre-Three Mike Island track record for construction, it isn't much better than our current, and fairly disastrous construction record from the past decade. There is a survivor bias when we look around at the currently running and constructed nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, there's a route that requires far more scalable expansion, our current path of wind, water, solar and storage.
- greglindahl 7y agoThe US seems to be OK at building wind farms and solar farms.
- pfdietz 7y agoScrew up 1% of the modules in a solar farm and output is down 1%. Screw up 1% of the concrete pours for a nuclear power plant and it's a disaster. The distributed nature of wind and solar makes building them, and training the workforce to build them, easier.