• Hellgruen@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    There is no nuclear Power plant in the whole world, that’s entirely run by a private corporation. They are all heavily subsidized by the states. And all of those states either have nuclear warheads or want to build some. Nuclear is just too expensive.

    • mirshafie@europe.pub
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      1 month ago

      Completely false. Many countries have nuclear power with no nuclear weapons. Most of Europe, much of Asia. Africa is about to build many nuclear power plants too.

    • Photonic@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      There are plenty of countries that have nuclear power plants but no nuclear warheads or intention to get them. Like Japan and many European nations.

      Nuclear is costly, but its the only green form of electricity production that is both feasible everywhere and can provide baseload power. As of yet, an energy transition towards renewables does not seem feasible without it. On top of that, SMR and MSR technologies will greatly reduce costs.

      • Hellgruen@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        I concede the nuclear warheads part. Still true fir a lot of countries tho.

        The fun thing about smr is that investors are fleeing and the start ups are going bancrupt. Additionally when the nuclear power plants were initially developed they had to upscale the to high size because the big overhead of maintenance, safety measures and poor yield from heat power coupling only gives a small net power output. So to make it work they had to make it big. Now they try to make it small again. Apart from some niche use they won’t make a big difference.

        • Photonic@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          You’re comparing technology of the 1980s to today’s technology. Nuclear power research has come a long way since then.

          Part of the reason NPPs (as in, conventional PWRs, as we use in the west) had to be so big is the giant containment structure to keep pressurised water inside the reactor. Molten salt does not need to be pressurised and is much more efficient because it runs at much higher temperatures than water does. So these two technologies combined definitely have the ability to reduce the size of NPPs.

    • Elting@piefed.social
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, also you have to keep mining and enriching uranium or thorium to keep them running. At least with renewables most of the materials are recyclable so you only have to mine once. Nuclear would have made a great stop gap between fossil fuels and renewables though.

      • Nora (She/Her)@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        Yeah unfortunately nuclear doesn’t make any sense anymore today. It’s way too expensive and its not nearly as renewable as you’d think. 20-50 years ago? It should have been something huge.

        At this point solar is so cheap and easy almost everything else looks silly in comparison.