this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2026
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Nuclear plants - with high start-up costs, national security risks and high output - will always require concentrating large amounts of power in few hands.
Solar has much greater potential for decentralization.
Greater inequality results in a worse society in just about every imaginable way. And nuclear will always encourage that more than solar.
Yeah, damn governments holding all the uranium for themselves. It's just not fair.
My son would argue that governments should have invested heavily in thorium reactor technology instead.
That is remains a cool potential technology, but why spend billions of dollars trying to develop a worse technology when solar already exists and for much cheaper? It’s just being sidetracked while letting investors enrich themselves on government research money
Plus it harkens back to the old adage about base power. No, we don’t need base power when we have large scale grid storage. Thats just coal propaganda
This was the exact same argument made against solar. We should research and improve energy technologies. I doubt Thorium is the solution, but we've discovered a lot of our technology by researching something else and then discovering an interesting function or byproduct unrelated to the original goals.
Plus space exploration will need to be nuclear.
LOL
Why bring Space Nuttery into this?
Nuttery?
Every dollar spent at NASA has returned so much more. They develop things for space travel that have uses far beyond space. We wouldn't even have satellites and GPS if we didn't venture into space.
Space has a lot for us to explore and a ton of resources we can use. Why strip mine the Earth when we could just take it from the asteroid belt?
You really need to disconnect space exploration from the likes of Musk or Bezos. We've been advancing humanity through space exploration before those two assholes were born
NASA has nothing to do with nuclear research. The world would benefit from nuclear research more than sending another group for a lap around the moon.
Very narrow-minded view, it's not like they're going up there just for fun
They absolutely do, though? Off the top of my head, Curiosity and Perseverance are both powered by a NASA-developed nuclear reactor.
Nuclear power is a very important technology for space vehicles, probes and bases. There's proven potential for greatly improved propulsion systems as well.
You can't just hear the word space and declare it "nuttery", that's just ignoring whole industries and areas of active research and engineering.
Space Nuttery is thinking it's somehow important or relevant for humanity going forward.
A power source for a floating camera to go take pictures of dead rocks and frozen chemicals is a niche interest. No one has a RTG powered city.
"You can’t just hear the word space and declare it “nuttery”,"
You can't just hear "Space Nuttery" and talk about space. Space is a mostly empty sucking vacuum hostile to all life and a radiation-blasted hell.
Space Nuttery is living in a fantasy world where we'll just somehow go space mining and colonizing Mars with water from Saturn's rings like it's just a question of a longer trip to Home Depot.
It's an intellectual dead end.
Username does NOT check out.
That is some seriously dumb trolling.
Your response is exactly Space Nuttery. Dream-like nerd fantasies.
Calling yourself a nerd while you limit yours and others' inquisitiveness, passion, and imagination. Pretty pathetic to be honest.
Oh and the best argument is not responding. Which I know, ironic. But let's see you ignore this and not give some trite, trolling response. Chances of that are pretty low.
Let's move to Mars! Let's mine the Moon or an asteroid! Let's give Musk another $100 billion!
We were doing worthwhile exploration well before Musk was born. It has and can be done in a way that doesn't need to be tied to him.
Also wouldn't mining a moon or asteroid belt be preferable to mining the Earth? Like we can keep our water and environment cleaner and still get the resources we need
Musk doesn't own space, but you're implicitly giving it to him right there.
I seriously doubt there’s any useful overlap between nuclear for space and for terrestrial power generation. Even if there were, we’ve spent close to a century proving that nuclear is expensive and time consuming to run and thorium’s theoretical advantages re mostly only in comparison to existing nuclear technology. Research is always good, but that really looks like a dead end, especially in comparison to something that is cheap and ubiquitous, and entirely ready, just needs scale out. Even that is already happening
In some countries nuclear is cheap and ubiquitous. The key is simple standardization.
In France for instance, nuclear accounts for about 70% of their power. They operate 57 nuclear reactors, all of which are one of 4 reactor designs. By having standardized designs these reactors are cheaper to maintain, parts and equipment are more available. The engineers that run the facilities are more familiar with every aspect of the plant, operating procedures are better understood. It's easier to find qualified engineers and technicians. Accidents are uncommon (I believe they've never had any kind of major accident).
The price French households pay for power is comparable to what we pay in the US and they generate significantly less CO2 per capita. They also have less reliance on oil states.
We could have that too if we were motivated to make it happen.
And trains!
And yet even in this ideal case where France built out a full country of standardized nuclear power half a century ago ….. a quick online search shows me they still have double the cost/KWH compared to solar
I think thorium reactors are more complicated though. You have to achieve very high pressure or they don't work. They just hasn't really been an impetus to develop the technology.
Thorium has been imminent for the last 40 years, like fusion.
I know right. How can I become a super hero from exposure if I can't get some uranium.
Just use urinium.
Not when we buy all our panels from China.
You buy the panels, and they last for 25+ years though.
In those 25+ years, there's time to develop your own domestic supply chain.
You only buy them once though.
This is why SMRs are a thing, and may still take off.
So far, they are not a thing though.
Sure they are, they're just relegated to government use atm.
Too expensive
Depends on the location. In some places space is the commodity.
Like on the north pole maybe, but otherwise it's just a massive loss of economy of scale.
Uhh any major metropolitan area without US large area infrastructure? Also, underwater.
Cheaper to drag a cable there.
I.. don't think you are thinking this through.
That's how it's done all over the place though. Sure, you can probably find some niche but in general I bet electric transport is better.
The entire global military aparatas, from mobile headquarters, in-country bases, and submarines, is hardly a niche. And no, that's also not how it's done all over the world, that's how it's done in modern western countries. SMRs would work very well in rocky or rainforest regions, or areas where speed of deployment is more important (kick starting a region pre-solar, or brownout coverage, for instance).
Dont get me wrong, I'm making this point because SMRs have a place. I do believe solar should be the vast, vast majority of global energy production until something better comes along.
Well, the military have already figured it out it seems. And compared to the rest of the world it's niche IMO.
For "poor countries", solar + batteries is better than classic nuclear, so why build SMRs that are just much more expensive and take ages to build compared to solar (except in some niche places)?
We know how to do solar, transporting electricity etc. SMRs not so much, and they will be more expensive too. I just see absolutely no positive side for it for regular use. The nightmare having nuclear stuff all over the place is just an extra horror.