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Alright I want to talk about nuclear.
Ever since I studied it in high school I've been into nuclear, and shocked as to why we don't build more of it. Trump and Elon discussed nuclear energy in their discussion, and JD Vance apparently endorsed it during the VP debate.
Let's say Trump wins the election - what are the odds his administration actually gets some new reactors built, or at least started? I'd like to say I'm optimistic, but given the US track record for building things it's hard to believe it could actually happen.
People who are more familiar with the process of building these things, please let me know - what chances do we have?
Everyone else - how do you feel about nuclear energy? Are you surprised it's finally a CW topic?
EDIT: as a commenter mentioned, this discussion is happening in Europe as well.
Skibboleth alluded to this point below: the time to build nuclear was 30-40 years ago when the cost/benefit made sense. In the intervening decades, money has poured into solar, wind, and more niche renewables, such that they are now well ahead in terms of marginal cost per unit of energy, even taking into account the intermittency downsides.
There's probably a ton of room for research into fission to produce similar advances, but the question you have to ask now is why? Renewables are already there. Other than an aesthetic preference for major engineering projects or a desire to poke greens in the eye, the only benefit is just to cover intermittency, but there are plenty of alternatives for that as well
The best time was 30-40 years ago. The second best time is now.
"Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?"
There's also the land use issue. A 1.21 GW nuclear plant takes up a lot less land than 1.21 GW of solar farms or wind turbines.
Unfortunately, the numbers don't add up for any of them.
Yes, but at least for solar that's not that big a deal. There's a lot of big, empty, sunny land in the US. Thing is, environmentalists don't like building on it; I used to joke they'd complain about changing the albedo of the planet, but it turns out they actually do complain about that, along with the fragile desert ecosystems. And of course they don't like transmission lines either, which are kinda necessary to get the power to where you need it. And if you could get around the environmentalists, why would you bother with renewables? They're the ones blocking everything else, too.
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