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Startups are also working on nuclear fusion. Carbon capture represents a potential solution, but a solution that doesn't currently exist. Sure if that potential
by Manfredo_1 6y ago
Startups are also working on nuclear fusion. Carbon capture represents a potential solution, but a solution that doesn't currently exist. Sure if that potential is realized, it'd be great. But if we want to decarbonize the economy in the next several decades, we need solution that currently exist not solutions which may exist.
- epistasis 6y agoUnlike SMR fission and fusion startups, direct air capture is being used in practice, and has captured CO2. They will be able to start iterating right now. The technology is far more real, understood, and far more developed than SME fission, much less fusion. I would say that direct air capture of CO2 is about 2x as likely to be economically efficient and a significant part of the economy than SMR fission. And fusion is only at pie-in-the-sky stage, the level of materials development that would need to happen is practically unimaginable. We have no idea that it would ever be cheaper than fission, for example.
- manfredo 6y agoRight, and while this technology is set to start iterating, fission has been iterating for more than half a century. France generates the majority of it's power from fission since the 1980s, recently joined in this achievement by Belgium. If this start-up's promises come to fruition then that's a new option. But it's still a question of if.