US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

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.

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