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by actually_a_dog 1806 days ago
The problem with nuclear power right now is that we can't build enough of it for it to matter in time. Even if we cut away half the regulatory burden, a plant that's started today would only come online at the end of the decade.

In [0], they give a figure of 5-6 years for actual construction. Add in a year or 2 for regulatory and other delays, and we're looking at 2027-2029-ish before we see a single megawatt of electricity out of them. What's more, there is probably only enough uranium to last about 5 years, if we could wave a magic wand and replace all existing power plants with nuclear [1]. Moreover, the plants themselves also have a finite lifetime of 40-60 years [ibid].

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...

https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm...

1 comments

I have a hard time understanding the reasoning why we don't have time to build nuclear plants, but we do have time to build new fossil fueled power plants in order to stabilize the power grid.

What if every time a country decided to build a new fossil fueled power plants, a rule went in to build a new nuclear power plant instead. In terms of climate goals, at worst we prevent the construction of new fossil fueled power plants. At best we arrive in the future with fossil fueled power plants replaced by an alternative that isn't cooking the planet.