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by hefferbub 1201 days ago
13 years is immediate?

Let’s please not have our future depend on building giant, fragile things that are obsolete technologically and financially before they are even completed.

Wind and PV have some challenges, but they get online fast. Plus they are both riding down a steep cost S-curve, so (for the foreseeable future) the more you build, the cheaper the next one gets.

No one could say that about Nuclear with a straight face…

2 comments

>13 years is immediate?

Yes. Please tell me the alternative solar or wind solution which can provide us with a carbon free grid in 13 years. There is none. You have to hand wave and pretend that maybe the next 13 years of battery technology will be fundamentally different than the past 30 years since the invention of the Lithium ion battery. Even if we had the battery solution today we don't have the global manufacturing capacity.

Solar and wind go online fast and turn stable grids into pricy unstable ones as you increase their share of production. Meanwhile Nuclear is ready, today. And if you cut down on some of the regulatory burden it could be built sooner.

You are comparing apples to oranges. We don't have the global industrial capacity to deploy nuclear at scale either. And the intrinsic technology challenge is more difficult with nuclear.
> the more you build, the cheaper the next one gets

Same as for Nuclear, but not building any new ones for decades and then only 2 reactors will not help.