[andrewjl]

> The focus on renewables is depressing, and the memes around the solution to climate change to be "use less, consume less, focus on more clean energy" are equally so, since they creates a cynical belief there is a tradeoff between energy use and conservatism. We can have both.

Many climate change activists aren't even countenancing nuclear power, known to be sustainable as well as much safer now than even in the recent past. I strongly agree that we can have both, we just need to build it.

[bee_rider]

When considering paths forward for climate change, there always seems to be the caveat "great idea, if we went whole-hog on that 20 years ago." This is doubly true, though, for nuclear plants -- just physically building the things takes a while, even if you ignore the problems around getting a massive pile of startup cash for an investment whose payoff hinges on energy prices 20 years out.

These aren't insurmountable problems, but they are pretty big. With solar, a person can stick it on their house. A grid-level installation can be built over time and starts paying for itself as soon as the things are plugged in.

Our current plans are targeting 2030 for massive carbon reductions, right? I don't see how starting a bunch of nuclear plants now really helps there. The most enthusiastic proponents of preventing global warming have always wanted to target 10-15 years out, so the energy isn't there for nuclear. Unfortunately. It would have been nice if we'd built a bunch of nuclear reactors 30 years ago.

[andrewjl]

Government borrowing costs, even for terms as long as 30 years, are at the lowest they've ever been. We don't necessarily need private startup capital if we agree that this is an important problem to solve. And unlike much of other such expenditure, these plants can be privatized to enthusiastic infra investors at a later date for a return likely well above the borrowing costs. Not to mention the ancillary benefits of stable energy for economic growth & probability.

As for time, the majority of this 20-30 years estimate consists of inertia and bureaucracy. As a country, we've built far more complicated (Apollo Project) and high-risk (Manhattan Project) things in the past in a compressed time frame, we had no choice then because we've faced clear existential risks. Our inability to countenance all this today says more about us as a society, than it does about the do-ability (within say a decade) of the task at hand.

I guess I can agree with you, but only as pessimist, which is a darn shame really.

[tlb]

It's true that at micro scale, consumers can buy panels and install them. But what matters at the macro scale is PV manufacturing rate. Installation rate can't exceed manufacturing rate.

PV manufacturing is complex and expensive. Most of the cost of PV is in the manufacturing machinery, since the raw materials are cheap. Adding new manufacturing capacity takes time.

It may be that PV can be ramped up faster than nuclear, but some of the new nuclear designs (NuScale and Oklo) could be cranked out pretty fast also.

[gfodor]

Nuclear being slow is not an inherent property of the technology.