It's crazy to me that policy makers insist that electricity generation has to be profitable. Just nationalize it. We could have a surplus of greenhouse gas free thermal power not only for electricity, but for heating and steel, fertilizer, and vehicle fuel production for years by now. Instead we have to wait to figure out how to satisfy investors and keep electricity just scarce enough.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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This is not how you get a surplus. This is how you get unreliable grid that's too expensive to operate and impossible to fix.
People might not know, but Chernobyl was never actually shutdown. The reactor that blew up was obviously shutdown, but the entire plant kept operating for decades after the disaster.
Chernobyls relevance to tmi of course superficial.
I only knew this because the Russians seized it for a time when they invaded.
They'll do just anything to avoid implementing the obvious and proven solution.
Obviously they are in the pockets of big data.
What is the obvious and proven solution?
Renewables, of course.
I thought that nuclear was largely considered to be green energy?
Not by people who actually know what they're talking about.
Can you educate me? My father was a nuclear engineer so I have a bias.
The waste problem, which is usually handwaved away, is not just not solved, but there's no solution in sight in any place but Finland. And even there the delays keep piling up.
Nuclear reactors depend on uranium mining. Uranium is a finite resource and mining it is particularly dirty business. All the technologies that are touted for creating a sustainable fuel cycle either aren't commercially viable or don't exist at all like Thorium.
Then there's the commercial angle. All current nuclear projects in Western countries are wildly over budget and face huge delays. At the same time renewables are getting ever cheaper. Any nuclear reactor built today will never be profitable.
Finally there's proliferation. Countries like Pakistan, Iran or North Korea having nukes is enough to give anyone nightmares. The more nuclear reactors there are, the more difficult it becomes to keep track of the stuff. How many more North Koreas do we want?
This is just a quick top of my head summary. There's so much more.