Re:Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
by Retric on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @12:45PM
(#29894838)
Renewables are already moving the needle quite rapidly. Take China for example, from 17.74% in 2009 to 29.09% in 2020. Meanwhile coal dropped from 79% in 2009, to 62% in 2019.
Nuclear is going to stick around, but at best we can start building today’s designs and have them finished in a few years. It’s simply to late for any significant R&D effort to pay off, we needed better designs a decade ago for them to be proven reliable today and then ramp up production for 3-5 years from now. It’s not even just building nuclear stuff that’s slow, the Navy has a solid track record and trains people quickly but even that takes time.
Nuclear is going to stick around, but at best we can start building today’s designs and have them finished in a few years. It’s simply to late for any significant R&D effort to pay off, we needed better designs a decade ago for them to be proven reliable today and then ramp up production for 3-5 years from now. It’s not even just building nuclear stuff that’s slow, the Navy has a solid track record and trains people quickly but even that takes time.