I don’t get it. Current nuclear power solutions take longer to set up, have an effectively permanently harmful byproduct, have the (relatively small) potential to catastrophically fail, almost always depend on an abundant supply of fresh water, and are really expensive to build, maintain and decommission.

If someone ever comes up with a functional fusion reactor, I could see the allure; in all other cases, a mix of wind, wave, geothermal, hydro and solar, alongside energy storage solutions, will continually outperform fission.

I suspect that the reason some countries like nuclear energy is that it also puts them in a position of nuclear power on the political stage.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

certainly not saying you’re wrong, but the base load problem is still a problem afaik… storage solves some of it, but i think storage isn’t a full solution - we’d still need some other 24/7 generation capacity

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Agreed; and it will become more of a problem as water becomes less predictable. Problem is, for most atomic generators, that also holds true.

Investment in research is definitely needed, but building existing systems isn’t going to solve the issues either.

[–] horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago

Thorium Salt reactors can recycle their water source and also use water from waste treatment or even sea water as they're not high pressure water reactors.

When you don't need the result of power generation to be fissionable material for warheads there are a lot more options available to you, such as using the waste from older reactors to generate energy and output much less reactive material.

Nuclear missiles are an albatross around the neck of nuclear power.

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