4 ms·

> All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades. So, like storage f

> All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades. So, like storage for renewables? Seems to me, we're not concerned on R&D budgets, so we should pursue all relevant methods of decarbonisation, of which nuclear is a very promising one.

drclau 5y ago
> we're not concerned on R&D budgets Just curious, why do you think so? I do think this should be the case, but I just don't see it happening.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Mistyped, should have said "constrained". In the planetary scale, paying a few $10bns or $100bns is nothing, especially against the backdrop of global warming damage. I don't think we should skimp on researching nuclear in this context, "because renewables are cooler". I think we need a new "nuclear Trinity project" (only this time for energy generation!) or a SpaceX-type enterprise. Iterate, build a simple, single, safe design, and deploy it widely. Or fail, but not without trying.
cedilla 5y ago
We are concerned on R&D budgets. Costs matter because costs represents material and personnel that needs to be devoted. We are also tight on time. Nuclear reactors take at least a decade to build. Oh, and while we have lots and lots of people and know-how in renewables, battery tech and transmission technology. We don't have that many people who can build reactors, due to the anti-nuclear trend of the last three decades. You can bemoan that, and maybe building up nuclear during that time would have been a solution to climate change, but that doesn't change the fact that even if we wanted to build hundreds of nukes today, we would lack the specialists.
- p_l 5y ago
  We also have a) existing working designs for nuclear power b) existing paper designs for improved nuclear power. Meanwhile c) we are working on getting paper designs for storage that might or might not work to get renewables good enough. The starting point is vastly different.
ben_w 5y ago
While I’m fine with making as much nuclear as is economical because it’s cheaper than batteries right now, we have had storage for renewables since at least the Hoover Dam (if not before), and electrification of cars alone (which we have to do anyway) is a larger scale of battery use than we need for meeting the needs of the electricity grid.

drclau 5y ago

> we're not concerned on R&D budgets Just curious, why do you think so? I do think this should be the case, but I just don't see it happening.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Mistyped, should have said "constrained". In the planetary scale, paying a few $10bns or $100bns is nothing, especially against the backdrop of global warming damage. I don't think we should skimp on researching nuclear in this context, "because renewables are cooler". I think we need a new "nuclear Trinity project" (only this time for energy generation!) or a SpaceX-type enterprise. Iterate, build a simple, single, safe design, and deploy it widely. Or fail, but not without trying.

cedilla 5y ago

We are concerned on R&D budgets. Costs matter because costs represents material and personnel that needs to be devoted. We are also tight on time. Nuclear reactors take at least a decade to build. Oh, and while we have lots and lots of people and know-how in renewables, battery tech and transmission technology. We don't have that many people who can build reactors, due to the anti-nuclear trend of the last three decades. You can bemoan that, and maybe building up nuclear during that time would have been a solution to climate change, but that doesn't change the fact that even if we wanted to build hundreds of nukes today, we would lack the specialists.

p_l 5y ago
We also have a) existing working designs for nuclear power b) existing paper designs for improved nuclear power. Meanwhile c) we are working on getting paper designs for storage that might or might not work to get renewables good enough. The starting point is vastly different.

ben_w 5y ago

While I’m fine with making as much nuclear as is economical because it’s cheaper than batteries right now, we have had storage for renewables since at least the Hoover Dam (if not before), and electrification of cars alone (which we have to do anyway) is a larger scale of battery use than we need for meeting the needs of the electricity grid.