I’m pro nuclear energy and think that people who are against are just unknowingly helping the fossil fuel industry.

  • ElHexo [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Wind and solar are cheap, quick, can benefit from economies of scale and are available now.

    Nuclear is expensive, takes a decade to build and doesn’t benefit from economies of scale.

    Only ten years ago did wind and solar reach cost parity with fossil fuels and many people have adjusted to how mins boggingly cheap and quick they can be deployed.

    Pumped hydro can effectively provide long term storage and there are innumerable sites to build them.

    In a centrally planned or mixed economy like China, nuclear has it’s place and investment in fusion and SMRs should continue.

    Of course, if the world has a centrally planned economy the most obvious answer is investment in wind and solar, and the development of hemisphere spanning ultrahigh voltage grids as proposed by Xi Jinping in 2015 that reduce the amount of energy storage required.

    • doesn’t benefit from economies of scale.

      China has gotten construction costs and build time for 1TW reactors down to <3B and <8 years.

      Costs go down when you’ve got enough heavy forging capacity to make the reactor vessel in 1 piece.

      • ElHexo [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Do you mean 1GW reactors? There’s lots of factors that affect the price of nuclear builds (and ongoing costs) and I haven’t seen any robust costing of it.

        They’re certainly leading the field across nuclear, wind and solar.