Rendered at 06:55:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
riffraff 1 hours ago [-]
Seems there's no mention of Russia in the article, but they seem to have a rich tradition of small reactors[0].
My understanding is there's still ongoing research/commercialization work but the fabled "many and cheap" production state hasn't been reached there either
Look, I prefer nuclear over fossil fuel every day of the week. It's the great hope of the non-carbon electricity sources.
In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. And that's before we add the risk of meltdowns.
Economically it makes no sense, not at the returns level, not at the timescale level, and certainly not at the political level. (If a US president can shutter an offshore wind farm unilaterally, imagine the risk to a nuclear plant that is 50% complete, and not yet fueled.)
There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Govts are the only providers who don't have a money motive.
Personally I think research into storage, coupled with "wider" grids geographically, make solar and wind far more financially attractive.
Private capital has no appetite for nuclear, and few govts are left with both financial ability, and political will, for 30 year projects.
And if you think fission is expensive, wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...
ggm 2 hours ago [-]
... cracks .... cracking ... cracked .. cracks..
there's a remarkable similarity to the life of these units.
They worked, until they didn't.
"ah, but we're much wiser now" is of course in this too.
My understanding is there's still ongoing research/commercialization work but the fabled "many and cheap" production state hasn't been reached there either
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_small_nuclear_...
In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. And that's before we add the risk of meltdowns.
Economically it makes no sense, not at the returns level, not at the timescale level, and certainly not at the political level. (If a US president can shutter an offshore wind farm unilaterally, imagine the risk to a nuclear plant that is 50% complete, and not yet fueled.)
There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Govts are the only providers who don't have a money motive.
Personally I think research into storage, coupled with "wider" grids geographically, make solar and wind far more financially attractive.
Private capital has no appetite for nuclear, and few govts are left with both financial ability, and political will, for 30 year projects.
And if you think fission is expensive, wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...
there's a remarkable similarity to the life of these units.
They worked, until they didn't.
"ah, but we're much wiser now" is of course in this too.