it’s not econonically viable anymore, or even if it is it’s just not profitable enough.
That’s just an issue with capitalism, not with nuclear energy itself. Placing solar panels everywhere may be easier and cheaper short-term, but it’s far from optimal. Ideally we’d like to have a bit of both.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
You’d have similar problems doing this under communism tbf. It’s expensive under any economic system. Solar at least has the advantage that any Joe Shmoe can put it on their roof and produce their own power, not being dependent on big energy corpos.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
China seems to be proving this false. They are building the molten salt reactors that we designed in the '60s and never tested. Two major bonuses of molten salt reactors are that they are physicsly impossible to melt down, and they don’t really create nuclear waste. In fact China will probably start selling us nuclear waste disposal contracts since those reactors can use our waste as fuel.
They do create some waste, but the half-life of said waste is like 6 week/months, so it is safe after a few years.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
China is investing more in solar. But China is also very power-hungry, so any energy they produce will get sold to the market, so their market looks significantly different. Their economy is different and so is their power usage.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
True, that advantage of solar is very beneficial and I think it’s great because of it. Independence is worth a lot.
Though the point about nuclear doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, it’d be just as expensive regardless of the economic system in place. The problem here is, capitalist economies often focus on short-term profits instead of investing into long-term infrastructure. Which can be seen in thorium reactors research.
At this point, it’s practically confirmed that thorium power plants will meet our expectations. China already has one operational (though it’s a relatively small one) and several under construction. No western country invested any significant resources into this research, because it didn’t align with quick and easy gains that capitalists love. This is the problem.