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Given $2 trillion, is it a better idea to spend it on developing nuclear energy, or to grow a bunch of plants to then be dehydrated and wrapped in plastic?
by ravenstine 4y ago
Given $2 trillion, is it a better idea to spend it on developing nuclear energy, or to grow a bunch of plants to then be dehydrated and wrapped in plastic?
- kmeisthax 4y agoBoth. They do different things. Nuclear provides non-carbon-emitting base load for situations where we don't have enough batteries to ride out dunkelflaute[0] and we haven't hit peak uranium yet. Biomass carbon sequestration buries carbon that we liberated into the air back into the ground. In order to deal with the problems we caused, we both need to stop causing the problem and fix the damage we did. [0] German word for "dark wind lull", i.e. no sun and the wind ain't blowing.
- Maursault 4y agoNo. We've already been developing nuclear energy for 72 years. We know everything there is to know about it, and more development is unlikely to yield anything new, which is why nuclear development effectively stopped well over a decade ago. What is maddening is that had we spent a tenth of that investment towards solar development, we wouldn't even be talking about nuclear anymore, and the only reason we didn't was because some military wonk vastly overestimated the need for fuel for bombs. But the bottom line is until someone somehow makes nuclear energy profitable, there's no point in talking about it.