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Activists opposed and nixed Nixons plan to build 1000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. If one allegedly cares about carbon emissions that would have a gam
by notlukesky 4y ago
Activists opposed and nixed Nixons plan to build 1000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. If one allegedly cares about carbon emissions that would have a game-changer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Independence
- Arnt 4y agoWow, 1000. Awesome. The only plant I've read about recently is supposed to cost about 1% of the current US federal budget. Assuming that the cost increases for that kind of construction have kept pace with that budget, a thousand plants would be about a third of the entire federal budget in the period from when Nixon announced that until the year 2000. Even if you assume that Nixon planned to user other people's money that's a big plan. Not even the Chinese have gone through with plans on that scale, AFAICT.
- mpweiher 4y agoHmm...economies of scale? Also, we could just have slightly less ridiculous legislation that would allow standardisation.
- Arnt 4y agoThe legislation is mostly about issues described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32613470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32613470 Nuclear stuff has amazingly dangerous worst-case accidents. Depending on the country, a single transport of new fuel or reactor waste can contain enough poison to kill everyone in country it happens in. A traffic accident isn't going to cause all of the materials to leak out into the air, though, because the "rediculous" legislation mandates not-at-all-ridiculous safety measures.