I am pro-nuclear, and I think it would be a mistake to assume this article is also pro-nuclear. Heck, the very first six words ("U.S. fusion scientists, notorious for squabbling") prime a reader to see those hardworking people as bickering nerds working on fleeting, individual, theoretical interests.
I sincerely doubt we will see any uranium-based energy technology ascend to dominance/ubiquity while over half of Earth's known uranium deposits are in the Afghanistan/Kazakhstan/Ukraine region alone. Nobody would want to buy crude (priced exclusively in USD in most markets) if nuclear were widespread. We might have to lay off a few Stuxnet malware developers then too. Takin' their jobs :p
Yep, and it is not just feasible but easy to build fission plants right now and stop using greenhouse-gas emitters entirely, but we won't, because Reasons. Our collective focus is being distracted from that working, clean, but politically-disadvantageous tech to this non-functional speculative future-tech that the author simultaneously insults.
People love to post comments like this on every thread where nuclear comes up, but it really distorts the reality of the situation.
Investment in nuclear has essentially evaporated. This is because fission plants take billions of dollars and around a decade to stand up. If you go through the numbers the ROI looks pretty ugly. Meanwhile you can look at the trend over time in levelized energy costs and storage costs, and can see that we're very near the thresholds for simply doing it all with renewables plus storage. All together this makes it clear to any investor doing the most basic of diligence that fission is a risky bet. Even if you waved a magic wand and eliminated any form of political opposition, that doesn't change this less than favorable cost picture.
No, it is not. It's intrinsic to the technology. You see the exact same unpleasant numbers in entirely state funded fission, including everything China is currently building. CCP certainly isn't paying the same costs out of "politics."
I want to be clear: I'm generally pro nuclear. I'm just exhausted by the smug "scared idiots and politics ruins fission" when the situation is considerably more complex.
I sincerely doubt we will see any uranium-based energy technology ascend to dominance/ubiquity while over half of Earth's known uranium deposits are in the Afghanistan/Kazakhstan/Ukraine region alone. Nobody would want to buy crude (priced exclusively in USD in most markets) if nuclear were widespread. We might have to lay off a few Stuxnet malware developers then too. Takin' their jobs :p
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...