The minute someone builds one and has the receipts and waste disposal set up, I am all ears. Really.
But every generation of nuclear plant has promised "power too cheap to meter". The last 3 generations all failed to deliver (and have been ruinously expensive). Gen 4 isn't expected to start commercial operations until 2035 I think?
This is my key objection to nuclear: I feel it cannot even be assessed because people insist on talking in theory. And with tech as complex and power dense etc as this tech, theory is never even close to reality.
I am open to some of the SME concepts (mass manufacturing, large numbers of small units) because they seem to deal with at least some of the economic issues nuclear has.
But I cant help feeling nuclear fission is as far from an economically viable, reproducible, sustainable product as fusion is.
I actually think that being small, simple, short term, politically unimportant with commodity parts is to other renewables (wind, solar etc) what reliability is for nuclear.
> The minute someone builds one and has the receipts and waste disposal set up, I am all ears. Really.
> This is my key objection to nuclear: I feel it cannot even be assessed because people insist on talking in theory. And with tech as complex and power dense etc as this tech, theory is never even close to reality.
> But I cant help feeling nuclear fission is as far from an economically viable, reproducible, sustainable product as fusion is.
I don't think we're operating from the same base set of facts. Fission is a reality now. Entire countries rely on it for their entire grid, safely and reliably. TFA was just saying everyone could, and I agree. It's not a transition of kind, but of degree, which is much easier.
This is not to say solar and wind have to place (which triggers a different kind of antibodies), just that fission does too.
That there exist countries with lots of fission does not mean there's a place for construction of new fission power plants. Existing capital can continue to be operated long after it no longer makes sense to replace it, due to sunk costs.
You're right in principle, but I disagree on the particulars. Not to attempt to convince you, just to explain my rationale: we have proven it works. It is carbon zero (ish). It slots into the grid. The fuel source is not a problem. The byproducts are containable. It can serve as baseload for distributed solar and I guess wind (though wind is a capital disaster for other reasons). And nuclear waste is ugly for 500 years, but can serve other uses in that time, and is not large, in that it could be geographically localized. There are risks to all technology transitions, but the logistics of nuclear seem as easy as or easier than the logistics of massive solar and battery storage. And neither have the potentially catastrophic side effects of climate change so it's a necessity to choose one, the other, or a mix of both. Just let fission play.
I can stipulate all your claims there and still argue that it doesn't make sense to build more nuclear power plants. You have not made the case for that.
Just pointing out that your rationale is not something that should have convinced even you. So ask yourself: if you cannot construct an argument that can convince someone else of your position, did you really arrive at that position by rational means?
You're arguing from a non-foundation, just a quip against my comments, but I wish to politely decline further discussion. My point in commenting was to point out that the comment further up the chain was ... quite against the evidence at hand.
> That there exist countries with lots of fission does not mean there's a place for construction of new fission power plants. Existing capital can continue to be operated long after it no longer makes sense to replace it, due to sunk costs.
I guess this is an assumption that they have outlived their usefulness and soldier on like zombies? There's no evidence given there, so it doesn't matter.
If you are in fact a policy maker giving me the exclusive chance to redirect funding and regulations to support nuclear energy as outlined in this article, then please let me know and I'll compile a survey and fully justify my opinion.
