[votepaunchy]

> embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure

Our children’s generation will never forgive us for abandoning nuclear energy abundance. Truly a crime against humanity.

[golem14]

I used to be a true believe in nuclear (in the 80s, 90s). Recently, I thought (with good justification) that it's a folly to build out nuclear if renewables' economics continue on the current path.

Recently, I wonder if a nuclear winter (I mean this in the cold war context) is likely enough to make renewables massively less efficient. If the current administration were more competent, I'd assume that they are pushing non-renewables for that reason.

But then again, after a nuclear winter, our energy consumption will probably drop to near zero (the population being near zero), so it probably wouldn't matter either way.

[chrneu]

I was pretty into nuclear as well but it's pretty obvious that solar/wind with battery storage is the future. For the price of a single reactor you can build out like 5x the capacity with other renewables. That's also accounting for the down periods.

It's kinda fitting that NOW trump jumps on board with nuclear, once the data says it isn't really necessary anymore. It's possible we can maybe build some useful small reactors for some stuff, but yeah.

[Spooky23]

Nuclear doesn’t work in a market based electricity market. The capital costs are high and it’s difficult to make money if you aren’t paying down those expenses.

IMO, the old style regulated public utilities were cheaper and more reliable.

[kulahan]

Nuclear is a renewable, and of course it still makes sense to build it out. In what world do you think our energy needs plateau? I'm always so surprised to see this 1970s hippie attitude making a comeback, especially since it makes less sense today than ever before.

[rtpg]

There was still a perfectly nice window of opportunity even scratching nuclear from the list.

My other glib thing about nuclear is that France, a much denser nation than the US (though of course density is a local property...), has a bunch of nuclear, but even with "full" buy-in it's hard to make the whole thing profitable, and a lot of the nuclear reactors are running at like 80% capacity.

Electricity is pretty fungible at smaller scales but when you start building reactors you need water and you need consumers of a lot of electricity to be close by, and that does cause its own sets of constraints.

Would still be better if the US had built a bunch more nuclear reactors, but my assumption has often been that there are limits to how much it could be expanded in the US given those constraints.

[xethos]

> a lot of the nuclear reactors are running at like 80% capacity.

This is presumably intentional. Beyond longevity, being able to shift one plant to 0 and take up the load across other plants allows for continued uptime even with a plant down (or just below capacity).

> it's hard to make the whole thing profitable

Considering France had the second-cheapest electicity for industrial use in the EU (in 2015, the most recent date from Wikipedia), this feels more regulatory-bassed than a properly fair shot at "Look how expensive nuclear is"

[PeaceTed]

That will be one of many things they will not forgive us for. Alas most of us in developed countries have treated the world as a dumping ground for our excess.

[kulahan]

This is the worst part. Wind and solar don't come within a thousand miles of being sufficient unless we massively improve our generation density, invent new magical batteries that aren't even on the horizon yet, and build out hundreds of thousands of square miles of solar panels and windmills.