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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Other way round: since it takes 5-20 years to get a nuclear plant built, the rollout of renewables needs to happen as fast as possible, and maybe the nuclear industry can catch up.

If nuclear made economic sense it would get VC funding.

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> If nuclear made economic sense it would get VC funding.

This isn't the next unicorn startup, we're talking about energy sovereignty and the future of humanity. If the only thing we care about is the economy we'll never get out of this....

Well 20% of US uranium production capacity was sold for charitable donations to the benefit of a certain former Secretary of State. I’m not sure how much has been plundered during more recent administrations, but I wouldn’t count on anybody with real authority to do the right thing. Time to join team Visigoth.

More accurately a sale was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), chaired by the Secretary of Treasury and requiring the signatures of the Secretaries of Defense, Commerce, State, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, as well as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and Office of Science & Technology Policy. All signatures being equal. It is impossible for any Secretary of State to approve of a sale like that alone.

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/the-co...

> If nuclear made economic sense it would get VC funding.

Of course it wouldn't, VCs only care about things that have a potential for rapid growth. A nuclear plant doesn't (and neither do most businesses that provide value in a sustainable way).

A nuclear plant can grow rapidly, but when they do it tends to make a lot of people very angry and is regarded as a bad move.

Right? strange to assume nuclear power plants could be built over night! while discrediting that renewable on components production levels could be easily scaled.

No, correct way around. Rollout of renewables to the scale that nuclear can achieve in 5-20 years is practically impossible.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

> the scale that nuclear can achieve in 5-20 years

This is just fantasy. "Can" is a very long way away from "will". And almost all of the reactor projects currently under construction have time and cost overruns.

The best case for the UK in five years is that we manage to finish constructing one (1) reactor that is currently under construction.

Worse yet, it is the only one of eight plants announced by the government in 2010 to have actually begun construction (which started at the end of 2018). And 2010 wasn’t even the first government announcement about wanting a new reactor.

“Can” is a very long way from “will”. But “impossible” is even further. That’s my point.

Wind and PV grew by roughly 200-240 gigawatts in 2020. Total current worldwide civilian nuclear reactor electrical capacity is about 400 gigawatts, with another 60 GW under construction and about 100 GW planned.

Even if renewables stop their current exponential growth and only grow linearly, even assuming a mere 25% capacity factor for renewables and 100% for nuclear (neither of which is true), even assuming all currently planned and under construction reactors are completed and no existing reactors are turned off, renewables still exceed nuclear by about 2028. I’m expecting it to be a lot sooner than that because I expect the two (different) exponential trends in PV and wind to continue for at least another doubling period.

I’m still in favour of expanding nuclear power: it’s much safer than generally believed, it saves on storage requirements and intercontinental HVDC (we might get enough battery factories or extra copper/aluminium mines in time but I don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched), and while it’s expensive it is (currently) still cheaper than batteries.

But I’m not expecting nuclear to be a big player, I just like diversity of supply for its own sake.

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