[matt4077]

Yeah, and fusion is just around the corner...

I wonder why the tech community has this infatuation with nuclear power. Ever since I registered my three-digit slashdot account, I've been reading exactly this post, just that the type of reactor people dream of seems to change every five years or so. Good to know it's "Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders", right now.

Meanwhile, solar power has lowered prices by a factor of 10 or so and is on a clear trajectory to beat fossile fuels on costs, without subsidies.

I'm suspecting there is something cultural going on here–maybe some instinct to seek out what others perceive as dangerous? Beats me...

[mikeash]

Solar and wind weren't all that practical until relatively recently (the past five years or so?). If you've been following this stuff a long time, nuclear really was the one hope for getting away from fossil fuels. It takes a long time for people's thinking to readjust once something like that changes.

[epistasis]

I've noticed that too, and though I think there's maybe a tiny bit of wanting to counteract the public perception of nuclear as more dangerous than other sources, I think that it probably has other tech related ambitions.

Science fiction commonly has nuclear reactors at the core of energy for space travel. For extremely long hauls it's compact in terms of volume and weight. As far as I can tell.

So nuclear has a history of being the "future." So tech-related people like it for that reason. We're not going to get personal jet-cars for transit either, most likely. But there's that hint of a dream in tech culture.

Any reasonable carbon-neutral energy plan that I've seen uses at least a bit of nuclear. It won't be the backbone, and it's unlikely that its performance characteristics or cost will change much, but the rest of the century will likely see a consistent amount of nuclear energy, given the longevity of existing reactors.

[Turing_Machine]

"I wonder why the tech community has this infatuation with nuclear power."

Because it works.

[dragonwriter]

> Because it works.

Not cost effectively, which is why even with existing protections from generally-applicable liability standaeds the industry demands greater direct subsidies and/or liability shields and without them has no interest in building new plants.

[Turing_Machine]

"industry demands greater direct subsidies"

Can you provide some examples of grid-scale solar or wind projects that don't get massive government subsidies?

[Turing_Machine]

Apparently the answer is no.

[crdoconnor]

"Yeah, and fusion is just around the corner..."

Fusion probably would have been if funding for nuclear fusion research had been kept at the same level as it was in the 70s. It took a deep dive after that though for reasons which most people can probably guess.

[_0w8t]

Fusion hit a technological barrier that only until recently meant extremely huge hard to build plants to have any hope of positive energy return. Those required many billions of investments just to study physics before any considerations of practical power plants.

Fortunately recent progress allowed newer designs that are much cheaper [1]. That is the reason that we got startups investing in fusion. It is still not pocket money, but at least the scale of investments is 1e8 USD, not 1e10 as before.

[1] https://www.google.no/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/...

[erikpukinskis]

A new generation of students who grow up doing math in VR will solve the plasma containment geometry problem, which is one of the major fusion hurdles.

[gph]

Just like a new generation of engineers doing math on computers would give us flying cars?

[erikpukinskis]

No, we don't need flying cars so that won't happen.

[ska]

"If wishes were horses we beggars would ride."

[erikpukinskis]

It's not a wish it's a prediction.