Via Dr. Jonathan Foley on Twitter, a recent opinion piece in the NYT argues that despite it remaining popular amongst some advocates, “Nuclear power still doesn’t make much sense”.
The problem with nuclear is that we’ve been having the same conversation for 20 years or more. In the absence of heavy government subsidy, no one has built much. And we seem no closer to working out how to build nuclear plants more quickly and cheaply.
Is an alternative reality where massive oil & gas subsidies were shifted to nuclear in the 1990s and 2000s one where we’d be in a better climate & emissions situation? Maybe. However, the need in that parallel universe to overcome strong environmental & petrobusiness headwinds seem to make it a rather unlikely counterfactual.
In our actual reality, as the NYT piece argues, other solutions have now emerged with compelling speed and cost advantages, and less environmental baggage – however unfair you think the latter is. And because we’ve left our response so late, speed matters most of all.
[collated from this Twitter thread]
Nice plan for content warnings on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Now you need a Mastodon/Fediverse button on this blog.