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We have spent decades and hundreds of billions chasing a particularly poor form of nuclear because of the US and Russian military industrial complexes. Dismiss
by nazgulnarsil 13y ago
We have spent decades and hundreds of billions chasing a particularly poor form of nuclear because of the US and Russian military industrial complexes. Dismissing nuclear because of horrible past decisions seems unwise.
- api 13y agoPerhaps so, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if the point is moot. Solar is experience Moore's Law type effects in terms of cost per kW of installed capacity, and there is now immense R&D muscle behind energy storage due in part to the electronics industry. The awesome power of exponential tipping points is not to be underestimated. When the cost/kWh curves intersect, it could happen fast. Look at the adoption of the Internet and smart phones for examples. Solar could go from <1% of our energy to >25% in 5-10 years. That might be conservative. I'm seeing nuclear as a niche technology. In a post-fossil world I can see it for radionucleotide production (e.g. for nuclear medicine and space probes), maybe for a few really heavy industrial needs, and for some locations with very poor local renewable energy availability. But for the most part I see it as obsolescent. I do think it might find its killer app somewhere else though: Mars. There are many reasons it would make more sense there.
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoChina has 28 new reactors in the pipeline for a reason. Solar is nowhere near ready.
- api 13y agoI don't see the actions of a huge, lumbering bureaucracy as a good predictor of the future.
- moheeb 13y agoGuyana has zero, if that makes you feel better.
- jasonwatkinspdx 13y agoYou should study post revolution Chinese history a bit more, or at least click around on gapminder a bit. The idea that they're a lumbering ineffective bureaucracy is too simplistic to be useful. Two examples: First, China doubled its life expectancy in a single decade, moving from one of the lowest to being at parity with the developed world. Second, in the early 1980s China implemented policies that moved them from having stagnant GDP per capita to steadily doubling it per decade, a pace it remains on since. In fact, you could blame some of post revolutionary China's most disasterous events on the lack of bureaucratic inertia. The great leap forward was disasterous not just because the details of the plan were mistaken, but also because it was implemented so instantly and completely. Anyhow, if you look at the data instead of repeating narratives that personify organizations, you'll see it's not quite so simple as saying that all Chinese economic decision-making can be summarily rejected as lumbering bureaucracy.
- muyuu 13y agoSun radiation is limited. You get ~1.4 kW/m2 at 100% efficiency. You need enormous plots of land to get anywhere close to what a small nuclear plant can produce. Renewables will only get so far if we don't stop increasing our energy demands exponentially every year. Since that seems unlikely, we will produce every single way we can.
- SuperChihuahua 13y agoThat Elon Musk guy argued that if we installed solar panels all over the safety zones around a nuclear reactor, then those panels would generate more energy than the power plant.
- muyuu 13y agoIf that's a profitable investment I'm sure it will be done.
- marze 13y agoElectric demand has been dropping for the last five or so years in the US. Not increasing exponentially. You could cover 1/4 of the roof area in the US with solar panels and have enough power to close all other power plants. Add panels over parking lots and you get exponential demand back.
- digikata 13y agoConveniently enough, the land for solar interception can be dual use with structures we already use and will build.
- x0x0 13y agocan't wait to find out what new failure modes your new "but it's really safe guys... this time I promise!" reactors have
- qu4z-2 13y agoHonestly, if the failures are on par with or better than Fukushima I'm really not worried.