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U.S. Pledge To Triple Global Nuclear Energy By 2050
(www.huffpost.com)
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Hi, pro-nuclear here,
That's the eventual ideal, but energy storage technology isn't there yet. The biggest issue facing renewables currently is the ability to maintain a base load demand that is increasing faster and faster each year.
Currently, the cheapest way we have to store energy is to store it chemically, in the form of coal, petroleum, or fissle fuel. Of these, the fissle option is by far the best. It's by far the most energy-dense, doesn't release any carbon into the atmosphere when used, and the amount of waste it produces is dangerous, but miniscule in comparison. All the high level waste ever produced since the late 50s could fit in a single building.
It's not realistic to fully replace everything with renewables until some very difficult engineering problems are solved. So our choices right now are:
Pros: getting cheaper and more efficient but worse than current tech, no carbon pollution
Cons: experience more power failures as it cannot meet current energy demands
Pros: very cheap and very efficient
Cons: accelerate climate change, increase pollution
Pros: can easily meet base load demands, very efficient, no carbon pollution
Cons: expensive, special waste management is required.
As things stand now, I would like to replace aging petroleum power plants with nuclear while continuing to build more and more renewables. Then, once we've either found a way to reduce energy demand or improve storage, start to phase out the nuclear plants
One big con often goes unmentioned: nuclear reactors take at least a decade to construct, often longer and they are really expensive along the way.
We don't really have time for that. We could do it in parallel to spamming as much solar and wind as we can, but in reality, more nuclear plants sadly mean less solar and wind.
Doing both sounds like a great way to finally put the reserve bank into action