this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Yeah you gotta love the "wind and solar is all we need crowd" claiming there's no downsides like having to invent solutions for the issue of production hours versus time of max useage. Pumped hydro, among others like heat energy storage.
Nuclear is the only reliable form of energy for humanity's inevitable outward expansion. I don't believe space exploration and colonization is inherently at odds with repairing the planet. Rocket travel is a drop in the bucket compared to manufacturing, airline, and automotive pollution, and if materials science can find something mass producible that can be used for a space elevator we dont even need to use chem/nuclear to escape our own gravity well.
We need to solve the problem of energy in a way that can be scaled and taken with us to places that don't have wind or geothermal, or are too environmentally unsuitable for solar for whatever reason.
Calling nuclear wealthy is hilarious, neither group has oil & gas beat, and wind/solar have both surpassed nuclear in overall business infrastructure. The reason we haven't invented a fusion plant that can pass the Q limit is because fusion never got funded for shit, we've been at "fusion never" levels of funding since we began.
Compared to nuclear? Yes, no downsides. In general? It’s not perfect of course but the best option we have.
That’s like saying “nuclear has to invent solutions for the issues of meltdowns, and getting nuclear fuel, and dealing with waste material, and dealing with extremely high risk targets, and risks of earthquakes, and risks of flooding, and the need to have extremely highly qualified operators, and extreme building costs”…. I could go on.
Ah yes, because nuclear fissile material is more ubiquitous in the galaxy than light.
Absolute nonsense, you just made that up completely. Post a source.
“Calling a billionaire wealthy is hilarious, that’s not even in the top 500 richest people”
The nuclear industry is massively overfunded, they’ve consistently received billions in public money for years, and there’s basically nothing to show for it. It’s the carbon capture of electricity generation: cute idea, let’s keep researching it in hopes of a breakthrough, but in practice just a total waste of money at our current level of tech.