[nixos]

> Cheap (and preferably clean) energy

This is the difficulty.

Right now, the only cheap and clean energy somewhat on the horizon is fusion, which is 50 years in the future for the past 50 years.

[atemerev]

Nuclear is clean. Cleaner than solar, at least.

[ljf]

The waste is not simply the spent nuclear fuel, but much of the machinery and systems around it, plus the discarded items used daily in the management of a plant (clothes etc). This low level nuclear waste while 'only' dangerous for 100 to 500 years, is huge - vastly bigger than the 76000 metric tons of spent fuel: http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/On-Si.... I don't have the tonnage of the low level waste to hand, but it is certainly much larger than the high level waste.

[__jal]

It normally is! But. It has catastrophic failure modes. (Yes, pebble beds. Let's talk about realities, not if-onlys.)

Because of those catastrophic failure modes, nobody except governments want to assume the risk. And governments only do it because they have sovereign immunity from those whose interests they're supposedly representing.

I firmly believe that any interested parties who want to go nuclear, should, and reap those rewards. If you can't find an insurer, go find wealthy people who believe in your design to indemnify you.

Just don't pick my pocket to build it and then poison me.

[legulere]

Nuclear is not cheap.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_p...

[ch4s3]

clarify please. Are you referring to construction, mining, installation, storage, or just trolling?

[legulere]

There is no reason to believe fusion will be cheap. It has the same problem of nuclear power plants that building things is expensive.

[pitaj]

Haha what? It doesn't have nearly the same issues. Building a nuke plant is easy, it's the safety measures that make it expensive.

[AnimalMuppet]

You're talking about Arizona. Hello, solar...