[zaq_xsw]

You're getting downvoted, but I understand the sentiment. It's amazing to me that people talk about nuclear power as if it's something that we'd ideally be able to avoid outright. Nuclear is getting safer every year (and it's already safer than everything else we're currently using in terms of deaths caused and environmental damage per unit of energy, at least[1]), and people want to just shut it down? I can at least understand a sort of "nuclear isn't ready yet" stance, but I'm baffled by the idea that the end goal is to just not utilise this whole area of physics for energy production at all. You can understand the opposition in the 1970s/80s and even 90s when things were still being ironed out, but at this point, in 2019, it does seem like it's creeping towards anti-vax levels of science-denial.

[1] Kharecha Pushker A (2013)

[mimixco]

How is nuclear getting safer when nearly all plants are at or past their design lifetimes? Seems to me like that would mean it's getting unsafer.

[zaq_xsw]

You're anti-old-nuclear. It's like being anti-old-aeroplanes, which isn't an interesting position. The article is about depoyment of new plants. You've replied to a bunch of different threads with empty comments like this. You shouldn't do that.

[pfdietz]

Reactors are wonderful when they're still in the CAD database. They become progressively less so as they encounter the real world.

[pfdietz]

The problem is that nuclear has become a loser technology. It's not failing because of the public thinks it's unsafe, it's failing because internally they can't compete (and excuses about regulation are just that, excuses.)

If nuclear were 1/3 its current cost we'd be building nuclear power plants left and right, protests be damned. But it's not, and we aren't, and we won't be. Deal.