Comment on UK and US line up string of deals to build modular nuclear reactors in Britain
DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
“…and fast-tracking safety standards”
Huge contracts with billionaire corporations for extremely expensive nuclear power, while ignoring all of the cheap solar and wind options. Oh, while skipping all safety checks, because “why not? I guess that’s what we do with nuclear power plants now!”
Fuck everything about this.
echodot@feddit.uk 8 hours ago
I agree with you about the problems of them wanting to skip safety standards, but you can’t just power the entire country with wind and solar, that doesn’t work because they are unreliable intermittent power supplies. You need something to cover the gaps. So either you have massive batteries that store power, and there are huge problems with that, or you have to build some other power generating system. All the other options are awful and carbon producing.
So we do need nuclear power stations. In the future maybe they would be fusion power stations but for now with the technology we have, nuclear power stations are the only viable.
luisgutz@feddit.uk 1 hour ago
The problem with my nuclear when mixed with renewables is that they take too long to turn on and off (think 12-24h), so they are not great complement solar and wind.
They are also very expensive, and take years to build, and decades to recoup the investment. Renewables are a lot cheaper, and can be built straight away, making their investments a lot less risky. They are also evolving faster than nuclear, snd becoming cheaper.
They are, S of today the cheaper power source in most of planet. It is expected that in a couple of years they won’t just be the cheapest, but they will be so cheap it will make economic sense to dismantle other powers plants and build solar/wind+ battery than to keep gas running.