this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Coal plants put out more radioactive material than even the bomb factories they call nuclear power plants. Newer plant designs are FAR more fail safe too, and some can actually 'eat' the waste from older plants.
New nuclear is right up there with renewables, with the added bonus of being great for baseloads. The only problem is we needed to be building it 20 years ago, since it takes a long time to design, permit and build them properly. If we try to rely on them now, it will be too late.
That's been rigged by design due to... interests... it doesn't take that long to build one.
Fully agreed, though it's also something you really don't want done on too much of an accelerated timeline. Rushing the construction, when the fail-safes rely on it, and it will be an absolute bitch to fix later, is a poor plan.
Unfortunately the red tape has become far too risk adverse. E.g. the reactors china is now building were designed in the UK. The UK government killed 5 attempts to get them built through red tape and time killing. Eventually a Chinese scientist found out about the plans. (With permission) he contacted the Chinese government. Sufficient to say, those plans formed the basis for the newer Chinese reactors they are building out now. They are also exporting the expertise, since most western countries have had their skilled engineers reach retirement, before passing on their skills and knowledge.
In practice, you are looking at 5-10 years minimum, from site selection to power on.
True
Still beats 20.
Very true. It unfortunately doesn't include the delays from bureaucracies throwing excessive red tape at the project, with the goal of, if not killing it, kicking the decision down the road till it's someone else's problem. The UK government has been problematic on that front.
I might be an optimistic pessimist.
Class A whataboutism. Both are dirty, neither is clean.
It's relative harm. New nuclear is far cleaner than coal, and can slot into it's place in the grid. We should have done this decades ago, but the plans languished till china found out about them. (Much to the designers joy)
It's also not an either/or situation. As china is demonstrating, there is a limit to how quickly you can roll out renewables. Doing other, pollution reduction in parallel makes sense.
Taking nuclear off the table was the biggest win the oil barrons pulled off.
On a plus side, we will finally find out if fusion is viable in the next 5-10 years. The first over-unity test reactors, designed for sustained operation are being built.
Renewables are cheaper than building new reactors. Fusion is always viable in 10 years.
Fusion has been 10 years away, with proper funding. It never got that funding. It struggled to maintain the break even funding to keep skilled people employed, and the lights on.
The difference is that over unity has been achieved, in a normally sustainable manner. The funding is such that it's 5-10 years at current funding. Most of that is building the actual test plants.
I fully agree that renewables are currently the best cost option. The catch is that they are not viable everywhere. They are also inherently low density, so can get expensive in certain areas.
Basically, we want a mix of options, to fit local requirements. Nuclear (and later fusion) should be part of the plan.
In practice, I'm of the take what we can get. We need to crash CO2 output, and we need to do it yesterday. Anything speeding that up is a win, as far as I'm concerned.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Nuclear isn't good.
Fully clean technologies exist already.