• keepthepace@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    10 months ago

    and we even have cheap solar and wind, which today beats nuclear in cost.

    About that in particular: this is true but mostly because we poured tons of R&D into renewables and we let out skills in nuclear energy slowly decay. Had we invested as much as we should have in the 90s, I am sure nuclear would be much cheaper nowadays. But that point is relatively moot now, I just remain pro-nuclear as in “Don’t close our currently built nuclear power plant prematurely! We need them for the transition out of fossil fuels!” more than “build a lot more and quicker!” I think that ship has sailed. That was something to do in the 90-2000 but now we can and probably should switch to renewables for new plants. I am just bitter that we wasted 3 decades and burnt fossil fuel along the way.

      • keepthepace@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Lumping together fission (the kind we use today to produce energy) and fusion (a kind we have never made a power plant of but have high hopes in the future) is questionable.

        You source says in 2022, fission + fusion totaled 4.94 billion in R&D funding. This source says that in 2022, increases in fusion investment raised of more than 2.8 billions. I am willing to bet that the huge majority of these 4.9B of R&D investments are in fusion.

        • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          You could say the same about renewables. Solar and wind are very different technologies. At the same time there are a lot of renewables, which have failed so far. I am thinking wave power, concentrated solar, geothermal and I am propably missing a lot of others. We did spend a lot of money at those as well.

          Point is we have spend more money on fission R&D then we spend on either solar or wind. If anything we spend too much on it and should have spend more on solar and wind in the 90s.