Georgia nuclear plant begins splitting atoms

Imagine mentioning climate change and then discussing building massive infrastructure that only ADDS to climate change. How in the world do you think that stuff gets built? (hint: massive amounts of fossil fuels)

Anyone "serious" about climate change realizes that it's a very slow moving thing that's not going to result in some sort of Hollywood Dante's Peak type scenario. Anyone "serious" about climate change also realizes it's neither fair nor realistic to expect up and coming continents like Africa to continue burning dung for heat while western nations get to reap the benefits of a century plus of fossil fuels turning them into superpowers.

Right now fossil fuels are still the best energy source you're going to get and still the best way of bringing nations to an industrialized point where they can actually consider "green energy".

Additionally, you seem to not understand that America has vast areas of emptiness and any federal plan for mass infra (especially transportation) is a massive waste of materials, taxes, and possibly incredibly destructive to certain eco-systems. Even my Dutch friends think it would be stupid to build mass transit on a European scale here. Our population is too spread out.

Lastly, stop thinking everything is a political issue. If you haven't figured it out by now... big government moves like a snail and will NEVER be the quickest or most efficient way to get anything done. If all this stuff is as good as you think it is, people will embrace it on their own without the need of any political battle.

Absolutely not. You might want to look up where that cobalt for batteries comes from as well and how much recycling actually gets done.

LiFePO4 batteries need no cobalt. You do not need fancy batteries for stationary services. Grid-scale storage batteries can be as big, heavy, dumb, and cheap as you like. You don't even need lithium really.

A lot of it seems to come down to very, very agreesive regulation. Eg, plant designs got approved, work started, then the regulators came back and said "actually, you need to make some major changes to the design", so everything paused and some completed work was torn up, new designs were made, approved (slowly), and then work restarted from scratch. Then it happened again. And again.

The changes weren't bad per se; in one case the regulators decided that the plant needed to be resistant to aircraft impacts; in another that it needed to be more resistant to tornados. But when you have a fantastically complex and expensive engineering project, going back and requiring retroactive changes after approval and after bg has already started is going to blow the budget to hell. And it did.

From the Federal Register notice for the aircraft impact change:

> In making these additions, the NRC is making it clear that the requirements are not meant to apply to current or future operating license applications for which construction permits were issued before the effective date of this final rule. This is because existing construction permits are likely to involve designs which are essentially complete and may involve sites where construction has already taken place. Applying the final rule to operating license applications for which there are existing construction permits could result in an unwarranted financial burden to change a design for a plant that is partially constructed. Such a financial burden is not justifiable in light of the fact that the NRC considers the events to which the aircraft impact rule is directed to be beyond-design-basis events and compliance with the rule is not needed for adequate protection to public health and safety or common defense and security.

That sounds pretty reasonable. As the US government said, applying this rule where existing construction permists exist could result in "unwarranted financial burden" which is "not justifiable" and because the rule is "not needed for adequate protection". It's just a "hey, if you haven't started building yet, why not make it extra super duper safe?" rule. And why not!

But the Georgia plant, at this point, didn't technically have "construction permits", but it did have certified designs, and signed firm contracts for engineering, procurement, and construction, had already submitted its certified costs and schedules to state regulators, and begun manufacturing long lead time components. The cost impact was enormous, but they were still required to go through it.

This regulatory environment is excellent for ensuring that nothing dangerous gets built, because nothing will get built. Is that wise? I suspect not.

See:

https://www.ans.org/news/article-1646/root-cause-of-vogtle-a...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-westin...

https://atomicinsights.com/nrcs-imposition-of-aircraft-impac...

You have fallen into a trap. You are informed enough to be concern-trolled by fossil fuel propaganda, but not well-enough informed to realize it. Many battery technologies need no fancy metals. Even lithium is optional. But lithium, even if we have to get it, has an environmental footprint far smaller than fossil fuels production. Other things that have dramatically larger environmental footprints than lithium include soap and table salt.