this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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The nuclear lobby kids never seem to accept going renewable over nuclear as a possible reality. They refused to acknowledge it in the online circles of the mid to late 90s on News Groups, early 00s on Slashdot, didn't want to see it in the 00s on Digg, attacked any questioning nuclear the 10s and early 20s on reddit. It has been a consistent online turf protection war in comment sections for decades.
Every nuclear post turns into a circle jerk and a handful of people trying to 'in before renewables' to make sure to drown out anything that isn't waving the nuclear flag with little reservation.
We need both in some respects to maintain current electrical needs, but money and time to deploy is quantifiably much more efficient with renewables in practice vs nuclear on paper. Having a much larger renewable system spread all across the country would be of a greater short and long term benefit. Solar on every home, a small solar cell on every light pole along with low wattage monitoring systems for power distribution optimization, large desert solar installations, agrivoltaic farming (if it's not just bullshit), wind farms in strategic areas with low impact to birds, etc.
Doing all those things would cost hundreds of times what it costs to build a reactor. There are reactors already engineered and that exist elsewhere in the world capable of powering entire cities for over a hundred years that are easily decomissionable unlike the older 1970s reactors that we have. Also renewables are unable to produce power on demand when load demands spike suddenly. U need fossil fuel for that currently. Not to mention the process of creating solar panels is one of the most environmentally damaging manufacture processes and the only country that possesses the materials to make them is China.... Oil receives metric assloads of government subsidy. Why should nuclear not get the same? Nuclear power is the only thing we know of that has rhw ability to fill all of the functions that fossil fuel power plants have.Idf theres actually other options then cool but iv looked at every alternate energy source and rhw big thing that sticks out is a couple things. If the weather gets too cold, or too hot, theres a natural disaster or other condition that necessitates a very sudden and high increase in kilowatt hour demand renewable energy sources buckle. And then your left having to fire coal to meet the energy need.