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> "Solar panels produce ~300x more waste than nuclear reactors when providing the same amount of energy." Didn't know it was so much better. That's awesome. I'm happy to read recent developments in the approval for small nuclear reactors. Hope to see this stuff become more popular.
> "Solar panels produce ~300x more waste than nuclear reactors when providing the same amount of energy." Didn't know it was so much better. That's awesome. I'm happy to read recent developments in the approval for small nuclear reactors. Hope to see this stuff become more popular.
It seems plausible that governments will continue to fund research into fusion power but I am doubtful that much more money could be raised than was raised for ITER, especially as the results from ITER will not be particularly exciting. Therefore I don’t think fusion would be cost effective with ITER level technology (the way to make fusion generate power more efficiently without changing the underlying technology is to make it bigger which makes it much more expensive (I think cost scales roughly as the fourth power of the diameter)). Therefore improvements in technology would be required. A fundamental technology in this case is the quality of the superconductors (one aspect in particular is that some superconductors become less effective in high magnetic fields but the whole reason they are used is to generate very strong magnetic fields).
Perhaps if more funding had gone into fusion over time, it would have gone into the more fundamental research into things like new superconductors specific for fusion (ie focusing on things like achieving high field strength more than cost). Fortunately other funding has gone into superconductor research and cheaper superconductors mean fusion research may also become cheaper (and better superconductors mean smaller reactors which are much cheaper).
It still feels like more funding would be better: projects could complete faster and iterate more, but it doesn’t feel absolutely hopeless to me. If all our hopes rested on ITER, I think it would be time for despair.
Despite the slow progress on fusion it still feels more likely to me than the green new deal.
I agree, but why set up a false dichotomy? Nuclear energy should be part of a "Green New Deal", which shouldn't just be about energy, but pragmatic environmentalism in all fields.
> "Solar panels produce ~300x more waste than nuclear reactors when providing the same amount of energy." Didn't know it was so much better. That's awesome. I'm happy to read recent developments in the approval for small nuclear reactors. Hope to see this stuff become more popular.
Would you think that the waste type from solar panels is comparable to the waste type from nuclear?
Strongly behind this for the merits of the technology which are just unquestionably better results for the costs and risks. I’d also really favor making nuclear energy an era-defining technology, like IT was for the 80s-20s. I think it’s wise to have big technological ideas drive progress, and as much as I care about “green,” it’s an uninspiring concept compared to nuclear.
I don't see what you base your claims of unquestionably better results for the costs and risks on? Current nuclear energy production is quite expensive, it's on par with the costs for offshore wind iirc. The risks, well... Privately insuring a nuclear power plant is pretty much impossible from a cost perspective. That's why governments, the tax payers in other words, have to assume the full risk in case something goe…
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm...
I think there are also some incredible synergies that can emerge with electric cars and batteries. Just a little bit of distributed storage (e.g. Tesla car in your garage back-feeding your home periodically) could potentially obviate the need for peak generation capacity altogether. What little we do need could simply be spinning reserve w/ nuclear generation providers where it's required the most.
In the areas where nuclear is not feasible, we obviously would continue to burn the most appropriate fuels. That said, one big area that could definitely use some attention would be international shipping. Perhaps as reactor costs come down, boats that are bigger than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier could be justified in having nuclear power too.