The first Gen III+ Nuclear plant begins fuel loading

Re:The first Gen III+ Nuclear plant begins fuel loading by inglor_cz on Saturday October 15, 2022 @12:44PM (#33216299)

It is well possible, but there are factors other than price in play. Fracking seems to be fairly dangerous for the environment, and current methods of lithium production have this problem as well (a lot of water is consumed in dry Bolivia to produce lithium).

In the future, we might be able to mine lithium from some sources that are now useless, but the environmental cost might be enormous.

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Re:The first Gen III+ Nuclear plant begins fuel loading by runarberg on Saturday October 15, 2022 @01:33PM (#33216786)

This is a good point. I certainly hope this history doesn’t repeat. However if we keep our current economic incentives, it probably will.

In an ideal world we would innovate with better chemistries which would render the need for lithium obsolete before we cause more damage. I know the technology exists (particularly for grid scale storage), but knowing humans, we will probably ruin more environments (and foreign economies) before such technologies will be meaningfully explored.

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