3 ms·
Renewables failing to pan out could have seemed plausible in 1997. Nuclear as a reaction to an oil shock had already panned out two decades earlier.
by naniwaduni 4y ago
Renewables failing to pan out could have seemed plausible in 1997. Nuclear as a reaction to an oil shock had already panned out two decades earlier.
- pfdietz 4y agoWhat? The nuclear buildout in the US that started in the 1960s collapsed in the 1970s. The oil shock and energy crisis led to changes, like reduction in growth in electricity demand and widespread introduction of cogeneration (due to PURPA) that ruined the market for nuclear power plants here. It didn't help that the costs in that first buildout had been way over what was promised.
- fsckboy 4y agoFrance never wavered on building nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
- pfdietz 4y agoJust outright cancelling their breeder program sure sounds like wavering to me. What that action implies is that France doesn't consider it likely that nuclear will grow enough soon to require breeder reactors to be built, which means they think that nuclear is not going to be what solves the CO2 problem (which would globally require so many reactors that burner reactors alone would exhaust economically available uranium in less than a decade.)
- dv_dt 4y agoIt’s odd to say never when you can see on the chart there was a twenty five year break in any new capacity. Their new reactor designs have been going over budget and having startup problems like many other modern nuclear builds.