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First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia::ATLANTA — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It should be nuclear AND renewables.

It really shouldn't be. Nuclear plants don't emit co2, that's right and that's nice. However, they have so many disadvantages that I can't wrap my head around how they could be considered a viable alternative to renewables.

They are not economical. Full stop. Building and running them is expensive as fuck, like an order of magnitude over renewables.
They're risky. People usually argue that this point would be fearmongering, but there's a simple solution for that: get insurance. That's impossible though, no company wants to offer an insurance for nuke plants. Gee, I wonder why? This point adds to the economical issues - if the risk was properly calculated and the according price added to every watt, they would be even more expensive. The only solution here is to socialise the losses and risks - if one of them should ever blow up, society just has to eat it. There's no other way to ruin these things.
They need to be cooled. With the climate crisis just getting started, this is hard to calculate, but it's already showing. France, with their 80-something percentage of nuclear power, has constant issues to power the country in summer when the rivers get too warm to efficiently cool the reactors. And god forbid one of those larger rivers ever running dry.
The fuel is hard to get. Most countries need to import the fuel from countries you don't want to depend on, like Russia. It's also limited.
It's a very centralised solution. That means you'll probably have to rely on corporate solutions, with community-run or private projects being essentially ruled out. That means, power will remain in corporate, for-profit hands. This is also the reason why I think a lot of astroturfing is taking place. Of all the carbon-neutral methods to generate electricity, this is the only one that is almost guaranteed to remain in the hands of the largest corporations. I also predict that any reactor that is at least said to be runnable by smaller communities won't deliver on that promise for whatever reasons, probably safety and security.
It's not available. A new plant takes decades to build. Any of the new designs that are at least said to offer a solution to one or two of all those issues are not yet tested and will take even longer to be built in larger quantities. We need, however, to ramp up carbon neutral energy production now, not in ten years.

There's my unpopular opinion.