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Isn't there some newish varieties of nuclear plant designs that consume nuclear waste from other older designs? I heard about it on the radio, so I may be reme

• pfdietz 7y ago
  Nuclear waste isn't what's killing nuclear power; cost is (and the cost is not caused by the existence of nuclear waste.)
  • ThomPete 7y ago
    Bureaucrazy is though.
    • pfdietz 7y ago
      Well, what's the alternative? Things like wind and solar advance quickly not because there's a bit less regulation, but because there's massively less. Turbine and module designs don't have to be approved by a controlling bureaucracy. And they can get away with empirical, field-testing-based improvement because the consequences of field failures are manageable. Nuclear is not like that. Learning-by-meltdown would be completely unacceptable. It's not even acceptable in non-democracies. And even aside from that, proliferation concerns would guarantee a controlling bureaucracy exists.
      • ThomPete 7y ago
        They don't advance quickly. They are less then 1% of the worlds energy usage and are only projected to be around 3-4% in 2040. They advance because of the political tailwind they have not because they are actual solutions. Again you can't have energy based on solar and wind alone. You need backup energy. That means oil, gas, coal and nuclear. Nuclear powerplants don't meltdown today and fewer people died from nuclear in all its time than from what nature alone kills in a year by a factor.
        • pfdietz 7y ago
          > They don't advance quickly. They are less then 1% of the worlds energy usage and are only projected to be around 3-4% in 2040. Sigh. I thought I already beat you about the head over this nonsense. Look at the percentage improvement per time. It's massively better than anything nuclear has ever been able to achieve. > They advance because of the political tailwind they have not because they are actual solutions. Yeah, the factor of 200-300x improvement in the cost of solar since its invention is just "politics". The many billions of dollars being invested around the world is just "politics". The failure of nuclear to get the same result, even with 100% loan guarantees, must be because of a nefarious conspiracy. Or maybe solar and wind are just winner technologies and nuclear is a loser technology. Have you considered not backing the loser?
          • ThomPete 7y ago
            I have considered a lot of things. Percentage improvement over time means nothing when you have so far to go as wind and solar has. I am not backing anything. I am simply stating the facts which are that wind and solar will never be able to be winner technologies since their density is extremely low, they aren't scalable, their capacity factor is low, they are intermittent, requires extreme amounts of space and arent very flexible. Thinking you can build a future society on them is as backwards as can be. That's the reality we are dealing with. And yes it is just politics. The Windmill "revolution" was started by Denmark the solar panel "revolution" was started by Germany. Who are their customers? Other countries. Yet none of those countries are even close to supplying their own countries with enough energy through those means. So sigh away that doesn't make your claims truer today than they were when you last made them.
            • pfdietz 7y ago
              > I have considered a lot of things. Percentage improvement over time means nothing when you have so far to go as wind and solar has. That's simply ridiculous. Any rapidly improving technology will go through a period when it's at 1% market penetration. This cannot be used as an argument that it won't go further. It's as if you cannot wrap your head around exponential growth.