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Comment by burnt-resistor

5 months ago

I was involved in the nuclear industry in the 90's.

Why impose externalities on others when solar and wind are so cheap and less risky? It seems like proponents fall for technological aspirationalism without considering pragmatic consequences and risks of shoveling enormous sums of money for unnecessary risks and inefficient allocations of capital because it's seems just barely unobtainable or blocked by "them" when it's simply economically unviable.

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burnt-resistor

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pfdietz  5 months ago

And it's selective technological aspirationalism. Why is unbounded optimism appropriate for nuclear but not for renewables? The engineering principle of KISS says renewables should be much more improvable, as indeed the data indicates they are.

  • mpweiher  5 months ago

    It's the other way around.

    Nuclear works now. We just have to build it.

    Intermittent renewables supplying an industrial society does not. And there is no way to get from here to there except a lot of handwaving and "magic happens here".

    https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20100608webcontentchicagosli...

    • pfdietz  5 months ago

      PV has improved in cost/W by nearly three orders of magnitude since it was introduced, and by an order of magnitude since 2010.

      Nuclear fans could only dream of this rate of improvement.

      Nuclear doesn't work in the sense of being competitive. It's behind and falling farther behind with each passing day.

      The best time to have given up on nuclear was decades ago. The second best time is now.

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