alt Hacker NewsI do think the Iran crisis should continue to push countries towards nuclear + solar. Like Ukraine helped shift some in Europe back to supporting nuclear after foolishly shutting down reactors.
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This administration has killed dozens of solar + wind projects. Don't get your hopes up, the US is run by people that only want to profit off of natural gas and nothing else matters.
nuclear is not useful today. It is too slow to change output as load changes. We need to focus on storage for all the excess power renewables give at the best case, shifting that to worst case-
It's definitely a bit ironic that a war for oil drives the last push for getting rid of it, but I'll take that as well, if logic and sanity didn't help ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Most uranium mining is from Russia/CIS and those African counties that have experienced the recent wave of Wagner-assisted coups. The West needs to be energy independent, not just swap who it is dependent upon?
Poland was ~80% coal before Ukraine. It wasnt energy independence which got them interested in nuclear power it was the idea that they might one day want a nuclear bomb (in case the current nuclear umbrella goes away).
It's never an economic decision to build nuclear power stations. They're 5x the cost of solar and wind.
> foolishly shutting down reactors.
Ahem, have I missed something? Do you know more then the rest of us? I mean, has the nuclear waste problem actually been solved?
The flush of $$ to North American oil companies will unfortunately lead to a pile of investment in more oil and gas exploration, refining, and transport.
Seeing that already here in Canada. All parties (except one) seem united in their newfound aspiration to just mine and ship more of the stuff.
Talking about transition is politically toxic here right now.
The wars in Ukraine and irán have also highlighted what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic. The idea that such will never happen is as silly as the idea that there will never be an accident or a tsunami. But passive safety won't stop a missile.