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Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

> Society can't function without cheap energy.

> stuck on 1800s energy technology instead of moving to nuclear.

I really feel like your first paragraph refutes your second. Nuclear is a lot of things, but cheap is not one of them. Possibly because nuclear production is forced to account for externalities while fossil fuels aren’t, but it’s not cheap.

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You seem to know the answer to your question already

What question was that?

That like-for-like, accounting for negative externalities in all alternatives, nuclear isn't that much more expensive.

Nah, wind and solar are much cheaper, they just aren’t great for providing base load, without some other storage. Nuclear is very good at base load but makes a bad peaker (and is expensive). Gas is also “cheaper” when you ignore externalities, which most places do.

Well, sure, oranges are cheaper than apples, but that doesn't help me much when I want to make apple pie.

I strongly advise against putting fissible materials in your apple pie.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

Digressing... sometimes when people talk that way about solar, it sounds as if I couldn't read outdoors on an overcast day.

Strange. I have looked the sentences preceding/surrounding every question mark in the thread now, and don't see a question matching that description.

Not every question has a question mark, does it.

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