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Nuclear is difficult due to political issues and the poor state of the US industry, but it's not a physical impossibility. China is building quite a lot of nucl
by DennisP 5y ago
Nuclear is difficult due to political issues and the poor state of the US industry, but it's not a physical impossibility. China is building quite a lot of nuclear power, including a GenIV plant that just went on the grid.
- epistasis 5y agoPolitical issues are not impeding France, Finland, the UK, or even the US's two sites. This is a misconception. The underlying Gen3 (or whatever the AP1000 and EPR would be called), is fundamentally incompatible with our construction and logistics capabilities. China probably can't help us fix our processes, and I'm not sure we would trust them. Same goes for Rosatom, who is also building. Even under the best of economic conditions, however, nuclear is not very favorable. Even China, with its unparalleled construction capability, is only planning a tiny tiny slice of its future energy capacity as nuclear, with much larger generation in wind and solar. And a lot of the planned nuclear will never be built, because renewables and storage are changing the economic case for nuclear.