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DisjointedHunt

The economic benefits from having a "fuck you" amount of energy ready to go at any point cannot be overstated.

Fresh water shortage due to drought? Desalinate ocean water.

Heat/cold wave? Announce that all electricity bills will be waived for the month. See popularity skyrocket.

Provide near unlimited compute budgets to universities etc on older hardware for their research and other work.

When shackles are taken off, innovation kicks off.

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A huge amount of additional energy seems like an overoptimistic take on the impact of this.

See eg this article telling how 14 (smaller, admittedly) reactors are due to decommission in the same timeframe. https://apnews.com/article/9db52eeef7ea47a76f64653c2a854b17

I'd say it's the reversal of the trend that excites me more than the single instance of the announcement itself.

For decades, Europe (and admittedly the US) has sat back and moaned against using the single most powerful energy source known to man (measured in energy density). Germany actually proclaimed in 2011 that they would be turning away completely from nuclear energy.

This is a start, executed well . . it lays the foundation for a generational shift.

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