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We're not talking about building _new_ plants here. We're talking about maintaining the current fleet. Is this expensive? Yes. But what's the alternative? Burni
by Karrot_Kream 5y ago
We're not talking about building _new_ plants here. We're talking about maintaining the current fleet. Is this expensive? Yes. But what's the alternative? Burning coal and importing gas? This should simply be the cost of transitioning off fossil fuels. Once renewables are scalable and reliable, there will be no reason to build nuclear plants. Progress over perfection.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago> But what's the alternative? Burning coal and importing gas? Energy storage. See my last paragraph. It's where a considerable amount of research and capital investment has been going and there are already numerous systems in use. Tesla's grid-scale batteries, pumped hydro around the world in numerous locations including the US, UK, Australia, and Europe. Iron chemistry liquid batteries are in private commercial and grid use right now, likely to see widespread adoption in the coming years. It's cheap to manufacture, nontoxic, easily serviced, easily scaled. Also, you can phone up your local solar installer today and get a battery storage system for your house or business. Some require a grid, others have transfer switches and will happily run off-grid. This has been the case for a number of years now.