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> How do you ground a fleet of nuclear reactors? It's not like having a fridge or hot water is a luxury that we can just do without for a few months while the p

• manicdee 6y ago
  The aim of small nuclear reactors is to be "safe" and "reliable" so the chances are the states that switch their electricity supply to small reactors aren't going to have lots of backup power. We don't have significant backup power as it is, because we're not expecting all our power plants to fail on the same day. On the other hand states that use nuclear to supplement a "hydrogen economy" powered mostly by renewables (typical plan is 500% over-production with surplus converted to ammonia for shipping) will already have heaps of backup power and the nuclear plants would be redundant anyway. So either you only have nuclear, and most of it will be the same thing because that's how it got cheap enough to use, and when the fleet is grounded you're screwed — or you have enough "backup" power that you never needed the nuclear reactors anyway and the government of the day takes the opportunity to shut down your white elephant project which was only ever intended to funnel public funds into your colleague's pockets anyway. I don't honestly believe there is a middle ground where nuclear is selected as a supplement to renewables by a government that isn't corrupted.