A new report has assessed the feasibility of deploying small modular nuclear reactors to meet increasing energy demands around the world. The findings don't look so good for this particular form of energy production.

[T]he report’s executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.

“The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.”

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caEnglish
    124·
    6 months ago

    Most countries have unlimited finances. They only have limited real resources like labor, concrete, copper, glass, etc. The fact that we still don’t understand this and behave as if the metadata of the economy accurately describes reality puts artificial brakes on the solutions of many problems, climate being one of them.

    • hannes3120@feddit.deEnglish
      56·
      6 months ago

      The problem is that if a country treats money as unlimited and without a cost then inflation will mirror that and people in that country will lose their savings, their job will not pay for their bills anymore and so on

      It’s not as simple as “just spend more”…

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caEnglish
        52·
        6 months ago

        Inflation is a symptom of the lack of some real resource. There are many parts of the economies of many countries where there’s unused production capacity which simply “turns more natural resources into more stuff” if more money enters that part of the economy, without producing inflation. It’s not “just spend more”, it’s “spend as much as you can on things that you want done, which aren’t limited by real resources.”

        I found Randall Wray’s lectures on the topic to be eye-opening. If what I wrote sounds strange, and it might, I highly recommend watching some of them. There are a few recordings on YouTube.