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Author has good intentions, but absolutist and dangerous thoughts here. For example: "In order for this to work in the United States, the federal government cou
by hairytrog 6y ago
Author has good intentions, but absolutist and dangerous thoughts here. For example: "In order for this to work in the United States, the federal government could consolidate the nuclear arms of General Atomics, General Electric, Westinghouse, and others into a single public corporation. This federal entity would be mandated to decarbonize the American electricity grid."
They suggest making a monopoly for nuclear? Are you kidding me? That is a recipe for bad technology choices and taking advantage of customers. Let the market figure it out, with dozens of designs and vendors and demonstrations. It's already an oligopoly with maybe 2 or 3 incumbents in the US. And it's been that way since the 60s when the government created that market power for military and international nuclear export reasons. Essentially they picked water cooled technologies because they made sense for the Navy, and picked just two companies to export them internationally, subsidized, etc for civilian use. We need more companies not less. And we need the government to stay out of it. The only thing federal government should do is help lower licensing costs and timelines and establish locations for rapid and responsible demonstration of advanced nuclear projects. The only way to do this is smaller reactors that take less money and time to demonstrate and verify. Think small not big. The DOE might be doing this with the Advanced Reactor Demonstration, but it seems they may be in the business of monopoly creation with just two companies out of 20 or more selected to demonstrate billion dollar mega projects.
Whatever we do, we should not deploy more water cooled technologies just to decarbonize. Yes, they work; yes they have not caused damage human life the US. But the GE designed Fukushima reactors and the RMBK water reactors are astonishingly close to catastrophe. People don't understand how much effort goes into avoiding meltdowns. We need new meltdown proof designs that don't need active cooling to keep the reactor at safe temperatures.
TO THE FEDS: prevent monopolies - make demonstrating new nuclear technologies easier