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Can somebody please explain why the world hasn't gone nuclear yet? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I mean im guessing its because it may not be as profitable, or atleast at first, boycotts or directly just capitalism fucking everything up? i legit always imagine aliens seeing us still use coal while having DISCOVERED IN 1932

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

But when you have a place that needs huge amounts of batteries to try and compensate for inconsistent wind/solar that’s where you should build nuclear.

With High Voltage transmission lines, it's possible to send excess energy hundreds to thousands of miles away with relatively little loss. I believe Germany sends solar power north where it's more cloudy, and wind power south.

China also went this route, sending solar energy across the country thanks to that infrastructure.

There's nothing technological stopping the EU or the US from doing the same, only politics.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

There are still losses in those lines that can be around 10%, high voltage transmission lines use a lot of copper and can have high cost, they can be a point of failure, they can start forest fires, and if we actually build full scale nuclear system their price will drop down extensively. An MIT study estimated $66/MWh is achievable with a full build out which is already cheaper than solar plus storage, So when you factor in the additional cost of transmission lines nuclear just makes more sense.

But for places like LA that see huge electricity transients during the day as peak sun correlates to peak AC nothing is better than solar and while I haven’t done extensive research on off shore wind everything I have heard about it is incredible where it works.

Nuclear is for places like Seattle that for large chunks of the year gets negligible sun so the amount of storage you need to maintain full power is impracticable and the losses for sending electricity there from sunny places is unsustainable

I definitely don’t think nuclear should be our first or even second choice but it should be an option that fits its niche because our number one priority needs to be reducing our fossil fuel usage and wasting a bunch of material in places that aren’t a good fit is irresponsible