this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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In the past, even recently, I was an advocate for nuclear. I still would suggest any plants still operating continue to do so for as long as possible, and any plants already under construction should be completed.
But at some point, the evidence in favor of overbuild with solar and wind became too much to ignore. Your link about over-runs, which I'd never seen before, only adds to that body of evidence. Solar and Wind's over-runs are a fraction of Nuclear's.
Solar and wind have simply become so cheap, and nuclear so difficult due to the required generational knowledge being lost, that by the time you trained up enough people to relearn what the old builders knew, and built a sizeable amount of them, it's simply too likely that we could've built double the generational capacity with solar in the same amount of time with far less cost.
A major blocker of solar going even faster (In the us) is simply politics; how slow and understaffed the queue is to become connected with the grid, how terrible the system of who pays to expand the grid's carrying capacity is (the project that pushes it over the edge into needing an upgrade foots the bill, which often makes the project unprofitable, which makes them give up and not build), and how private power companies themselves push back due to a perceived loss of profit potential. But compared to Nuclear's hurdles, those seem relatively easy to overcome.
Maybe someday some company will figure out a way to make modular reactors affordable and quick to build, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
My dear Froggie (and silence!) I don't know who is downvoting you, but they can fuck right off.
You make great points. I particularly like this one:
I'm not a staunch nuclear advocate by any stretch. I want green power however we can get it, provided the environmental costs aren't abhorrent. You're very right about the brain drain part, too.
There's mining involved in any energy transition. One part that I like about the Nuclear option, however, is that the deposits are generally high grade (v.s. copper, and rare earth) which result in less surface disturbances. For instance, Cameco (northern Saskatchewan) has uranium ore deposits that are ~20% w/w. Their deposits are so rich, that they have to dilute them with inert waste rock before running through the mill. These deposits are just sitting there, ready to be used for green energy, but as you point out, there's too many hurdles.
Solar and wind seem like they're really picking up speed, and that is wonderful. I know there's still some issues to iron out about excess generation/power storage/power fluctuation. I could see small batch reactors helping with that potentially. I don't think an energy transition is going to be a one size fits all thing. It's going to be based regionally, on what makes sense.