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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33388 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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I would need to see a safety argument that addresses the disaster possibilities both accidental and intentional.

I think the main rebuttal against all of the arguments against nuclear is that it would most likely be an intermediate step which allows bootstrapping to other methods of power generation. So we'd only be 'exposed' to the tail risks for like maybe a century at most before we have e.g. fusion energy (a guy can dream), orbital solar collection, some really ambitious geothermal energy projects, or if we're really lucky we jump towards becoming Kardashev II.

We need a surplus and absolute abundance of cheap energy to get other methods of energy production off the ground and towards the scale necessary to replace ALL of the messy, less efficient sources we've relied on and built infrastructure around.

There's no version of this where we get to decent outgrowth of renewables without burning FUCKTONS of fossil fuels or have abundant nuclear.

Nuclear is currently our only attainable way to get such an abundance.

Perhaps the bigger risk to consider is how having more nuclear reactors around starts to increase the chances someone intentionally sabotages one in a way that can't be easily undone.

I don't even have a solid answer, because we can secure these things heavily but the more they proliferate the greater an 'attack surface' they present.

Why do you dream of fusion? My understanding is that it has similar characteristics to fission as an energy source - high capex, low fuel costs.

It's not quite proven that we can sustain a fusion reaction AND get net-positive energy out of it.

I mean, I think we'll crack it, that's why I dream of it, but until then we're stuck with what we have.

I'm saying, even if we get fusion working, my understanding is that it won't have any major advantages over the kinds of fission reactors we have today already.

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