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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#3
I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others):

- To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas.

- There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#4
I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually built, while the fission projects never make progress. Fission's purported resurgence is a press release blitz being coordinated by defense contractor grifters who have no higher ambitions than raking a few tens of billions of dollars in consulting fees out of government budgets.

1: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#5

I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

* No paths to nighttime clean energy without nuclear power

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#6

I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

How many GW of wind, solar, and nuclear can we bring online in the next 28 years?

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#7
post #4

I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually…

Are there any Y Combinator companies who are invested in the advance of nuclear power?

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#8
post #7
post #4

I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually…

Are there any Y Combinator companies who are invested in the advance of nuclear power?

they are mostly sticking to web3 I think

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#9
I would love to see nuclear be far more of the base-load production in the US, but rather than large gigawatt-scale reactors I think it would benefit everyone more if we moved to using SMRs (small modular reactors). Not only could manufacturing economies of scale be realized but SMRs can passively cool themselves in the event they need to scram or shut down. The scenario that concerns me the most is a terrorist attack on our grid and externally on a nuclear power station: if a plant can be scrammed AND the backup diesels sabotaged then pretty much all nuclear plants in the US would be looking at a Fukushima-like event once the batteries to the primary cooling loop ran out.

Nuclear is definitely a good idea for the future, but only if SMRs are the basis of moving forward.

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