Solar power expected to dominate electricity generation by 2050—even without more ambitious climate policies::In pursuit of the ambitious goal of reaching net-zero emissions, nations worldwide must expand their use of clean energy sources. In the case of solar energy, this change may already be upon us.
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Yup. The pro-nuclear lot have gotten stuck with talking points that were valid against Greenpeace in the 90s. I argued the same way for many years. However, I also saw how the numbers have changed over the decades. There’s a reason nobody with money to invest in the energy sector wants to bother with nuclear at all; the US government has been willing to sign off on new nuclear plants, but nobody is trying. Nor is there any reason to subsidize it when those same subsidies could go towards storage for solar and wind.
The places we maybe want to subsidze it is in non-traditional places (ships) and reusing our old nuclear waste. Not the grid as a whole, though. The opportunity cost would be terrible.
Really?
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If you put economics before the environment then sure, nuclear’s not viable, never was.
And oil’s only viable because of mass subsidies and tax exemptions.
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Those molten salt reactors can run on what the current reactors create as nuclear waste. They actually help with the cleanup process by breaking the radioactive waste down to a few very short lived ions that cease to be radioactive quite quickly. The other nice part about them is that you can’t make weapons with them.
I’m in favor of subsidizing nuclear reactors that can reuse waste. That’s a better idea than the current strategy of letting it sit around, or the potential future of burying it and hoping nobody digs it up again millennia from now.
There is little other reason to bother with nuclear anymore.
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Is it though? I rather would have renewables. But if you look at the LCOE then it isn’t that bad at all