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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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ISTR that hydro is pretty tapped out, in the First World. It's such a great energy source in so many ways that we quickly put up dams everywhere that made sense, and so least in North America and Europe we started running out of places that made sense 50 years ago. It's still growing strong in the developing world, though, which takes a little pressure off the growing demand for power there.

Tidal isn't tapped out, but it has a relatively low cap.

Solar could cover a huge chunk of energy needs if only it could be paired with cheap energy storage and transmission. Fission and coal are practically meant for base load, but solar gets at least twice as expensive if you have to rely on it in less sunny places and less sunny times. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of battery chemistry breakthrough handle the "less sunny times" part of that, though. We've been optimizing high power and low density for years, but "big heavy cheap batteries" are now becoming a design target for just this reason.

Boring old uranium nuclear won't be hitting fuel limitations for centuries. Thorium might have other advantages, but the big disadvantages of nuclear right now are "would-be plant operators don't trust the government and public to not quintuple the price with regulatory costs" and "the government and public don't trust would-be plant operators to maintain safety and handle waste with any lower regulatory costs". Thorium doesn't really help there, and fusion will only be a little help.

Boring old uranium nuclear won't be hitting fuel limitations for centuries.

Yes, nuclear power really is the silver bullet solution to energy insufficiency. So far we're largely keeping that bullet chambered, but start enormous electricity price increases or widespread shortages, and you'll see how quickly opinion turns.

Right now new nuclear plants take several years to complete. Opinion might turn quickly but that doesn't turn the lights back on quickly.

Hopefully mass production of microreactors will change this situation before the change becomes necessary.

There are also the issues with inertial response that might mean that we want to keep some traditional non-neglible baseload around even if batteries got cheap and possible to scale.