US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by ncmncm on Saturday July 30, 2022 @07:30PM (#32291428)

Solar efficiency and cost would have been where they are today by 1990, and we would not now be facing imminent, impending Climatic Catastrophe. Energy during ie past 30 years would have been radically cheaper. Coal plants and nuke plants alike would have been shuttered as unsustainable, not for their CO2 but just because they cost too damn much.

But here we are, instead. Thank Reagan. And Bush. And Bush, again.

US spent $5T trashing Iraq and Afghanistan. That would have paid for completely switching over to renewables, several time over.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by pyrale on Sunday July 31, 2022 @08:01AM (#32294972)

> Solar efficiency and cost would have been where they are today by 1990

This seems to be implying that basically all the research was done between the 2000's and now, and that scientists had been twiddling their thumbs between 1970 and 2000. Actually, scientific advances between 1970 and 2000 were critical to enable the renewables boom that we experienced since 2000.

Could it have gone faster if more funds had been made available? Maybe. But claiming that we "lost" 30 years in research on that topic simply shows ignorance about the way research works.

> US spent $5T trashing Iraq and Afghanistan. That would have paid for completely switching over to renewables, several time over.

Yeah, and if the Romans hadn't spent so much time fighting with their neighbours, we would all be eating free lunches now.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by ZeroGravitas on Sunday July 31, 2022 @08:28AM (#32295055)

Simply not subsidizing polluting fossil fuels would have been a major boon to solar, wind, nuclear, energy efficiency, economic growth.

There's reports around about what actually drove the price drops in renewable, and while research plays it's part, market support and scale are big factors, we definately squandered multiple opportunities to nip climate change in the bud.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by thrown_22 on Saturday July 30, 2022 @08:19PM (#32291749)

So you're argument is that in an alternative timeline where we'd invested more money we would have invented technology in the 1980s that still doesn't exist in the 2020s?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by spopejoy on Saturday July 30, 2022 @09:38PM (#32292315)

Uhh, renewables are here today. The parent was refuting that "solar wasn't ready" by making the point that the progress in renewables is attributable to increased industrial activity and funding.

Reagan took the solar panels off the White House for a reason, so his buddy James Watt could kill off any alternatives to fossil energy. That regime lasted until the 90s and by then any memory of the oil crises in the 70s was long gone.

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Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by opo on Sunday July 31, 2022 @03:08AM (#32293843)

>Reagan took the solar panels off the White House for a reason, so his buddy James Watt could kill off any alternatives to fossil energy.

The panels installed on the White House were not photovoltaic solar panels - they were solar water heater panels. (After they damaged the roof, they weren't replaced after the repairs were done.) It wouldn't have been possible to run the economy on solar water heater panels.

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Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by pfdietz on Sunday July 31, 2022 @10:02AM (#32295529)

And traditional solar hot water is today obsolete. It's cheaper to use PV and a heat pump water heater.

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Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by runarberg on Saturday July 30, 2022 @11:16PM (#32292822)

Not OP, but yes! I believe the argument is that in an alternative timeline where the US government invested in renewables, they would be both more technologically advanced and more commercially feasible today.

I’m not the biggest fan of arguing about alternate history, but this thread originally spun out after an ancestor poster claimed we would have a rosy present if only we had invested more in nuclear energy. I claim I find way more wishful then claiming the same about renewables.

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Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by thrown_22 on Saturday July 30, 2022 @11:31PM (#32292885)

So on the one hand we have a technology that existed since the 1960s and would have solved global warming if we'd merely spent money building it out.

On the other we have a technology that still doesn't exist in the 2020s and would also need to be build out.

Cockroach archeologists will be puzzled why we chose to go extinct.

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Re:US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor de... by kelnos on Saturday July 30, 2022 @11:54PM (#32293015)

> On the other we have a technology that still doesn't exist in the 2020s

You keep saying this, but I'm not sure where it's coming from. Reading upthread, my interpretation is that we are specifically talking about the technology that exists today, in 2022.

I think it's entirely reasonable that, if investments into renewables were made in the 70s and 80s at a level comparable to investments in fossil fuels or nuclear, we would have seen, in the 90s, renewables technology comparable to what we have today. No, it wouldn't be the same technology, but I could see efficiency numbers being similar, though perhaps at a bit higher cost.

[ Parent | on HN ]