When asked about the federal government’s role, 41% of Americans say it should encourage the production of nuclear power.

Let’s get those new construction contracts signed!

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t mind more nuclear if it’s done in a modern and safe fashion. The US has a tendency to build old fashioned water cooled reactors that output nuclear waste that we have to find a place for. And we do stupid things like building them on fault lines and flood zones.

    Why not build a pebble reactor? Or molten salt?

    • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      The current gen nuclear reactors are the only ones that have a chance of being built with all the known drawbacks. And even if we started building them like crazy, it would still not be enough to meaningfully contribute to mitigating climate change. All the other designs, like Thorium or SMRs are just pure science fiction and at best decades away from being viable.

    • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      If this magical reliable, cheap, abundant, fast to deploy molten salt handling technology existed, the people with it would be dominating the storage industry with carnot batteries on every abandoned (and active) coal plant as well as the solar industry with 2c/kWh CSP.

    • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The reason not to build those things is we don’t know how yet? Not well, for power production.

      There is a clear path forward. The only place where nuclear fits in the puzzle is specific locations where wind and solar are non-viable.