alt Hacker NewsIt is a shame that nuclear power has stagnated - we could have been moving towards fossil fuel free grid half a century ago. We've lost decades of progress there. But it's a good thing that solar power is coming into its own more and more.
Late is better than never.
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pfdietz • today at 10:08 PM
It's not a shame it stagnated. It's good that it stagnated, since it wasn't competitive.
It's a shame it wasn't competitive.
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dyauspitr • today at 4:39 PM
Yeah, nuclear is fine. It just at this point it can’t really compete with solar+battery for how quickly you can bring things online. The 10 or 15 years required to build a nuclear plant is pretty devastating for it when you can build up solar in 1-2 years instead.
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Where we lost decades of progress was governments pouring enormous amounts of R&D money into nuclear instead of renewables. We got a nuclear a head start that turned out to be a dead end. We could have gotten solar, wind and storage cost competitive with fossils decades earlier. And as a side effect kept the west competitive in energy tech.