[ncmncm]

We will need hundreds of GW-scale ammonia synthesis plants. Thousands, maybe. Fortunately, there are no impediments to operating them at any required scale. You just add on more units.

Nuclear reactors have very difficult engineering problems unknown in most other technologies. For a nuke, you might actually need to build a GW-scale pilot plant to discover the failure modes that show up there. Not so, most things. A bigger dam just needs more turbines. A bigger wind farm just needs more wind turbines. A bigger solar farm just needs more panels. A bigger ammonia plant just needs more catalyzer units. You can start it running after the first one, and add more at leisure.

That is a thing that makes renewables + storage so much more attractive than nukes: You are guaranteed no unpleasant surprises, and no existential disasters. That it is also radically cheaper, and starts working immediately, is icing on a very nice cake.

[Retric]

Everything you mentioned ran into new issues at scale.

Scale always brings new problems. The difference between hosting a website from your personal internet connection and building TickTock’s infrastructure isn’t simply writing a bigger check to someone.

How many people know how to build X. Where do you get the raw materials or parts etc, all to often the answer is you build a factory or a mine. Many basic assumptions break down with scale. You don’t use even close to the same equipment to connect your houses solar panels to the grid as you would a 1GW solar farm.