Technology

The one I’m interested in is the “mini” reactors. They can build them in a fraction of the time. And from what I’ve read they appear to generally be “safer”, but it’s always hard to tell with all the bullshit we all get peddled.

I’m all for renewables and had hoped they’d have been more implemented by now, but here we are…

From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it's actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they're circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we're going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren't available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that's going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.

A lot of that is because a) protests, formalities, FUD and b) lack of scale (each plant is built as one of a kind). Same for price.

With a bigger scale the construction and prices would lower significantly (as with anything done at scale), but for that we have too much populism, fear and emotional driven propaganda and gullible voters. Nuclear power always had the potential to fix the humanity energy needs relatively simply, it's sad how we got to this point.

"Sure we destroyed the planet as we knew it, but for a brief moment in time, we increased value for shareholders!"

Given that most countries have a capitalistic, private energy sector, profit may not be the best metric but it's the only one that matters.

The nuclear bros never seem to understand this though. If nuclear energy made any sense from a financial standpoint, we'd be building a ton of reactors but it doesn't. With renewables and storage getting cheaper and new nuclear getting even more expensive, we're not going to see much more new nuclear.