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If not for environmental reasons, how about energy security reasons?

• SllX 5y ago
  Living and human civilization are high energy activities, and becoming higher energy over time. Just the number of electronics I employ in my day-to-day life has made electricity alone more central to my life than it maybe was 20 years ago even. So plants and energy transmission lines and such are going to be built, especially as more battery-electric vehicles become available in more model lines and at more varied price points for people to buy. If I had a personal preference, I would prefer that electricity to be coming from nuclear and solar plants, but I’m not willing to condemn the poor to raise prices and make those the only options. What gets built will be what makes sense according to the knowledge and expertise of people who build plants, i.e. what is economical in the context of the market which is just trillions of accumulative transactions happening across society made by people; and we’ll make decisions about where to import/export energy from in geopolitical and military contexts where those decisions rightfully belong which can and does inform markets. The harder we make it to build nuclear though, the less likely nuclear will be chosen. In California for example there is a flat prohibition on new construction, so we’re going to keep building gas-fired plants alongside whatever renewables because that is what we have chosen to do, until we make a different choice.