[henry2023]

To this day I think that nuclear is the best way to produce clean and abundant energy. There only one problem. Only governments build nuclear reactors and if you want to innovate in this space you need to deal with these institutions which adds a lot of complexity.

Solar on the other hand appeals to the public and can be deployed in large scale facilities. Large scale economics apply directly and we can see that by looking at the historic price per kW[1].

Finally, me as a nuclear advocate own 14x550w panels + a 20 kWh battery. I’m off grid > 95% of the year. Solar is unstoppable now.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

[janalsncm]

Aside from the complexity, part of the issue when comparing nuclear and solar is this: In the US we like to externalize our environmental damage as much as possible, which was one of the “benefits” of moving manufacturing to China. This has been one of the main effects of the environmental movement in the US, simply making a lot of things infeasible. As long as the US environment is clean, damage elsewhere is tolerated. (Maybe that wasn’t the intention, but it is the result.)

With solar we can externalize the environmental damage almost 100% if the panels are manufactured somewhere else. We would install them somewhere else if we could, too. With nuclear there is always some underlying amortized risk of problems, and this perceived risk is impossible to externalize. Again, what is important is the perception of damage rather than actual damage.

Of course I’m also not quantifying the actual damage from either one. I’m not sure which one is worse in terms of raw material extraction or CO2 emissions per lifetime KWh produced. I checked and it seems solar might be higher for CO2. But that difference isn’t going to matter if nuclear doesn’t get built.

[sottol]

Imo it just all stems from seeking maximum profits - externalizing environmental damage is just one facet of it. If China enacted strict penalties for environmental damage and it'd be cheaper to manufacture panels in Texas while polluting there, I don't have a doubt we'd build all of our panels in Texas.

[PaulKeeble]

Lets say I had the knowledge and engineering to make a home scale (say 0.5-1.0 KW) reactor RTG or similar that could be sold as a sealed box you attach to a wall has sensors for various safety measures and just chucks out AC power all day long. At the cost of $5-10k that makes decent economic sense if it would keep going for about 25 year life time. I think that is potentially doable fairly safely with fuels other than Uranium 235.

You can vaguely do this DIY today using the long life radioactive glow sticks and some solar panels and get a constant power device but its very inefficient and too expensive for the power it produces and its half life is too short.

There is I think no viable way to make that business reality. The government intervention would be absurdly high and it would never make it to market even if the cost of the device was economically competitive with a Solar or Wind setup. This is one of the ways Solar and Wind became dominate, they scale really well from the small to the large, especially solar which the panels on the roof of a house are the same in a multiple MW power station.

[opmac]

There's a lot of inconvenient truths one needs to accept if they want to advocate for widespread nuclear energy. Specifically, there are very real nuclear proliferation concerns which cannot be ignored. Alternative clean energy sources, which are safe on the global scale, can made widely available with proper investment. That should be the future.

[roenxi]

> Specifically, there are very real nuclear proliferation concerns which cannot be ignored.

The countries with the #1 and #2 sized nuclear arsenals are currently at war. A war that, as far as I can tell, is continuing to escalate.

The countries ranked #2 and #3 (China has been busy building them) are preparing for war with each other.

We're seeing ongoing evidence around the world that nuclear weapons are the only thing that can deter a big player from launching an invasion of a country.

We could plausibly be looking at the opening stages of WWIII and while there is a lot of concern it isn't enough to jolt people out of their normal routines and the political impacts have been relatively muted. The situation is so bad right now I'm not sure what the proliferation concerns are supposed to be. It is already just a matter of time until something goes terribly wrong. How much is prosperity energy generation supposed to make the situation? If anything it might stabilise the military situation.