[alwa]

Why? Using power meaningfully improves people’s lives, and many billions of people are still on the end of the spectrum where “improving lives” involves improvements like “not starving” and “having safe water”.

The benefits of making power available are extremely (!) robust and well-understood, as are the health and safety benefits of switching from combustion-based power to non-combustion-based power.

I have yet to hear skeptics raise specific nuclear concerns that are real, consequential, and also unmanaged. For all its cost and red tape, the past 60 years’ regulatory posture of “you must identify and mitigate every risk to the absolute maximum degree physically possible, damn the cost” seems to have resulted in a system where, well… they have.

[ok_dad]

Using power meaningfully, sure, but Bitcoin and AI are not meaningful. Using power to make steel or to use tools to make lives easier IS meaningful.

Red tape in nuclear is there for a reason. I don’t trust anyone to do nuclear without tons of red tape. The only reason it’s safe is the red tape. Take red tape away from industries that aren’t inherently unsafe, fine, but not nuclear power.