- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
When asked about the federal government’s role, 41% of Americans say it should encourage the production of nuclear power.
Let’s get those new construction contracts signed!
Nuclear is great and the best path forward at this time is a mix of both nuclear and renewables. We don’t have to choose one over the other, both have advantages.
I have no idea about the US power grid, so your comment may still apply there - though I guess also not for much longer.
The new problem is that in Europe we now occasionally get more than 100% of power needed generated by renewables, so we’d either need storage or fast reacting power plants to compensate for spikes and drops in the renewable supply. We’re at a point where we no longer really need new nuclear plants for some ‘base load’ - which is something they’d be good for. But as cost for operating a nuclear plant is pretty much fixed independent of power output they’re very expensive when used for compensating spikes, something Finland just learned the hard way this year.
Nope, almost nowhere in US has anywhere near that high a portion of renewable energy. Storage is just so people use as an excuse to stop building out renewables. “It’s impossible to have more than 10% renewables”. “The grid will collapse if we have 20% renewables”. Etc
“Fast reacting plants” means natural gas to those in the business ;)
i prefer having both as well. a good mix of industrial renewables with most if not every home having solar and batteries would be a very robust system with nuclear powering heavy applications and as a backup renewables.
also i greatly prefer building new nuclear power plants with the learning we have had since 3 mile island, chernobyl, and fukushima and other incidents along with other advances in tech.