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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   2863 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Seems to reinforce my impression that people who insist in this are either acting in bad faith, or echoing those who are.

I'm out for the serious actors who defend expanding nuclear programs, have palpable knowledge, and concern for climate change - if there is anyone who fits this description.

I'm not sure it's all bad faith and malice. I don't want to downplay the amount of uncertainty with the geopolitics and economics of renewables and storage, and the facts still change quickly.

For one, the vast majority of production capabilities (solar, wind, batteries) is in China, of course. (Trade) war would put all developer timelines in peril. Also, it's not so sure how energy pricing on a grid heavy on renewables and storage will shake out. Sweden stopped building several large wind projects because of their economics: if it's windy, all the wind parks ruin the spot market for each other and don't make money. Is it's not windy, they don't make money. Storage could change that, but of course installing to much storage to quickly could result in the same thing...

So in a way, nuclear is a classic conservative position. We know almost everything about how a nuke-heavy grid would look like. The geopolitics are far safer. We know exactly how much over budget each rector would land.

And I also believe it's important to dream big. Maybe the trump admin deregulates nuclear in a big way. Maybe some republican states move in concert, and also deregulate and unify their remaining regulations. Maybe there's a subsidies project on the scale of what other countries have been pumping into renewables. Maybe there's a Manhattan project 2.

And while I'm a firm believer in solar+batteries, I would welcome it. We really could use all hands on deck when we Electrify Everything^TM...

I don't know any highly technical pro-nuke experts, but construction physics has the analysis on the regulatory landscape

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