Comment on Texas becomes leading test ground for small nuclear reactors
user28282912@piefed.social 5 days ago
Is it easier to secure, monitor fewer, bigger reactors or thousands or small ones? Accidents are still going to happen and I know which scenario makes more sense to me. Especially in light of Trump recent push to deregulate nuclear energy, the EPA, pretty much any kind of sensible management of technology that is great until something goes wrong then it is multi-generational clusterfuck.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 days ago
A moot point when we don’t build new ones anymore.
But the big appeal of the molten salt reactor is that it doesn’t require continuous manual interventions.
Sure. Obviously.
But that’s WOKE, so we hate it.
Nuclear definitely has a role to play. Integrating SMRs into our global shipping fleet would eliminate the enormous waste and emissions of bunker fuel, for instance.
And areas that don’t have reliable sunlight or wind (far north/south regions) or that require high steady output in confined areas (large factories, urban centers, major metro arteries, etc) can see real benefits, relative to gas or coal power.
It’s a technology we should have invested more heavily in 60 years ago. Obviously, Texas will fuck it up. But that’s not an indictment of the technology, just the capitalist dipshits that run the state.