This anti-nuclear piece should be an embarrassment to the publication.
[Update Sunday morning]
I would appreciate it if people could somehow refrain from calling others “liars” in the comments section. Please keep it civil.
83 thoughts on “Popular Mechanics”
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Another converged publication, gutted. All that is left is the skin, worn by pagans (or cockroaches, your pick).
Notice they don’t allow comments anymore.
Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Popular Science all converged and now, finally Popular Mechanics. The most annoying to me, was IEEE Spectrum. During the “Peace Dividend” layoffs of 650,000 aerospace and defense workers in the early to mid 90s, they either ignored the layoffs or wrote articles about how it was a good thing because laying off white males opened up opportunities for women and minorities. When you’re sitting at home wondering how you’re going to support your wife and kids that sort of thing gets your goat.
The simplest explanation for all these publications disagreeing with your worldview is that your worldview is wrong.
The simplest explanation is these publications were co-opted by antagonistic forces.
Ah, the seductive pull of conspiracy theoretic thinking. It enables you to explain away so much troublesome contrary evidence.
These publications are just pointing out facts you find painful. May I suggest you man up and admit you could very well be wrong? To do otherwise is to risk a downward spiral of stuck-on-stupid.
Sometimes, the herd is wrong.
Especially when the herd lives in an echo chamber.
Epistemic closure isn’t just a thing that can exist on the Right.
Richard M.:
One must always try to verify claims to try to detect which ones are coming from echo chambers and which are more grounded.
When I do that, the pro-nuclear side comes up short. You see that here in this thread.
I think it’s a common dynamic in failing social groups. The clueful bail out, leaving behind those who aren’t as devoted to accuracy. Eventually the group boils down to a residuum of cranks.
@Paul D.
So Edward Snowden is a conspiracy theorist?
XH: you’re giving me non sequitur whiplash, man.
@Paul D.
You dismissed another commentator as a conspiracy theorist instead of debating whether or not there are organizations bent on infiltrating other organizations.
Xopher: Snowden was revealing documentary inside information he had access to. Absent that sort of inside information about the publications — which I’d be happy to hear about — what the poster I was responding to was doing was indeed facile conspiracy theorizing (of a sort used to dismiss facts a conspiracy theorist doesn’t like.)
To be clear: there was little in that article being criticized that is actually wrong. It’s telling that its individual points are being not being rebutted, but the respondents are resorting to ad hominem. If the article was factually flawed one should be able to point that out.
“These publications are just pointing out facts you find painful.”
Indeed, they are painful. Basically, they are saying that nuclear can’t compete on an even playing field with cheap fossil fuels. The red tape is particularly debilitating. But, that’s hardly news. Solar and wind cannot compete on an even playing field with fossil fuels, either, and the hysteria surrounding any application of nuclear physics is legion.
After decades of the industrialized world rushing to wind and solar, they still provide only a tiny percentage of overall power consumed. Meanwhile, they require inefficient fossil fuel backup, wind slaughters rare and ecologically critical species while creating toxic runoff from the rare earth mines, and solar has poisoned whole regions of China with silicon tetrachloride and other nasty potions used in manufacture.
The storage problem is not going to be solved, for the simple reason that any technology capable of rapid storage of huge amounts of energy is also capable of rapid release of the energy, and boom! Any widescale application of locally dense high energy storage is inevitably going to result in a catastrophe at some point.
Then, there are the extensive tracts of land needed for siting, and the accompanying destruction of massive swaths of habitat. If humans of the past have been responsible for massive species extinction, they were just pikers compared to the wildlife holocaust some want to unleash in the name of “green” energy.
Wind and solar are a pipe dream for gauzy eyed technological naifs, and shifty-eyed grifters who want to make a fortune off of them.
To be clear: there was little in that article being criticized that is actually wrong.
Little?? So you’d be able to point it out then? I mean, if you know it’s “little” you must have some idea of what might be problematic in it. Maybe this:
Can we transition to 100 percent renewable electricity in a decade like the Green New Deal calls for? It’s tough to say.
I’m guessing you don’t think it’s hard to say at all. But you haven’t actually said it. Come on, take a deep breath and say it.
I see your point. Here’s a pic of someone who, based on your criteria is also suffering from a mistaken worldview.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/august-landmesser-1936/
Curt: I don’t think we’ll transition to 100% renewable in a decade. But that doesn’t save nuclear.
Bart:
“Solar and wind cannot compete on an even playing field with fossil fuels, either”
They are much better positioned to do so than nuclear is.
“After decades of the industrialized world rushing to wind and solar, they still provide only a tiny percentage of overall power consumed. ”
It’s the nature of exponential growth that a technology goes from negligible to dominant in just a few doubling times, so this is not any sort of good argument against renewables. It would be a good argument if the cost of wind and solar were not rapidly declining. Oh wait, that’s nuclear.
Solar does not require fossil fuel backup. It requires backup, which is currently fossil, but the “fossil” part of that is optional. Nuclear also requires backup, since nuclear plants operated at low capacity factor are themselves hideously uneconomic, more so even than baseload nuclear.
There is nothing about wind or solar that requires pollution to occur. In particular, SiCl4 can be converted to innocuous chemicals rather easily.
“The storage problem is not going to be solved, for the simple reason that any technology capable of rapid storage of huge amounts of energy is also capable of rapid release of the energy, and boom! ”
This is obviously nonsensical fearmongering. For one thing, there are already large scale energy storage systems that do not explode. They are not designed to be able to charge in less than hours. For long term storage, generation and storage of (for example) hydrogen is mostly a matter of moderate scaling. We already make millions of tons of hydrogen per year, some of transported many miles by pipeline, without devastating the countryside.
“Then, there are the extensive tracts of land needed for siting,”
Calculable and affordable.
“If humans of the past have been responsible for massive species extinction, they were just pikers compared to the wildlife holocaust some want to unleash in the name of “green” energy.”
The land area required to power the US with green energy is small compared to that already used for agriculture. So, obviously you are wrong.
“Wind and solar are a pipe dream for gauzy eyed technological naifs, and shifty-eyed grifters who want to make a fortune off of them.”
Please come up with less pathetically wrong arguments if you want to conclude with this sort of ad hominem bullshit.
This is a mass of mealy mouthed garbage.
Your response is insubstantial.
The comments at the Popular Science web site went away when they could stand the Religion of Global Warming being questioned. I recall it being somewhat of a big deal at the time and a symptom of how non-progressives were ruining discourse on the Internet.
could = couldn’t
In the immortal words of Sylvester Stalone, “you’re an ox, *and* a moron!”
(Obviously I’m talking to the writer of that execrable PM piece, not Our Gracious Host.)
It’s fascinating that said ox-moron mentions that nuclear is prohibitively expensive to build, but utterly neglects to mention how much of that is from NIMBYs and BANANAs.
A substantial fraction of US nuclear powerplants have been running at a loss, even ignoring their construction costs. They aren’t even making back their operating costs. Given the current state of the market in the US, it would not be economical to have built those Westinghouse reactors even if they could have avoided cost overruns.
A substantial fraction of US nuclear powerplants have been running at a loss, even ignoring their construction costs.
Trying to rationally argue with a statement as profoundly idiotic as that is an exercise that only a fool would engage in.
I’m astounded you think I was saying something that was incorrect. Many operating reactors in the US are experiencing economic distress.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44715.html
And like every other progressive out there, you lie by twisting statistics, shifting the window and ignoring the reasons behind the problem.
This is not the place to act the fool.
Eric: you have given no argument of substance there that I can respond to.
Artificially imposed expenses. Kind a like how the SLS is super expensive due to artificial expense.
Just compare the SLS development with the development of Starship/Superheavy.
Or compare the cost of wrist surgery ($40,000 with no prices advertised) versus eye surgery ($220-$2,085 with prices shown). Most healthcare costs are artificially expensive, eye surgery is outside the medical cartel, therefore it’s price reflects the real market price.
https://offers.lasikvisioninstitute.com/mobile-beta/?venid=Google&subid=VGEN&did=&pid=8662254071&trans=&listid=&lang=en
So “Xopher”, how exactly are you going to determine which regulations are “artificial” and which are necessary?
The only way I can see to do that is the way they did it with aircraft: have many thousands of them crash to figure out, in practice, what’s likely to cause aircraft to fail. And I don’t see that being acceptable to the public.
@Paul D.
Making a mistake with eye surgery is much more consequential than wrist surgery, yet wrist surgery is twenty times more expensive. You just ignore evidence presented, as I expected you would.
I cancelled my PM subscription today, and told them why on Twitter.
Well. See. I expected people to pile on the shitfest that has been the reactor construction at Vogtle and the cancellation at Summer.
I told ya so.
Of course no one will ever notice that besides the corruption the fact is that the project cost and timescale were inflated because the US hasn’t built a new reactor in decades. A lot of suppliers simply don’t exist anymore. That is something which would sort itself out in due time if more reactors were built. But I don’t expect it to happen. Even the project at Vogtle is under a lot of pressure.
Meanwhile the Chinese built their same model reactors just fine. Like I said before. And the “retarted” Russian economy manages to export their reactor technology and built it on time and budget. They agreed a couple years back to build reactors on Turkey with the provision that the Turks will pay for electricity generated. They don’t even need to finance it or anything. Try getting a deal like that with a Western company. Is it a surprise that the French who won the deal to make that nuclear power plant subcontracted the work to the Chinese? Not really.
The US civilian nuclear sector for the last two decades has been mostly a history of failure. Even their own designs have a better chance of getting running abroad than at home.
Is it a surprise that the French who won the deal to make that nuclear power plant subcontracted the work to the Chinese?
Is it a surprise that the French who won the deal to make that nuclear power plant in the UK subcontracted the work to the Chinese?
Fixed that.
It’s not just publications that the comments here are objecting to that are piling on. Consider the president of Exelon, a utility that operates 23 nuclear powerplants in the US. He’s not some anti-nuclear zealot. He recently stated that for new nuclear to compete with natural gas in the US, the effective CO2 tax would have to be $300-400/ton. That’s very high. All sorts of other options would be cheaper per ton of CO2 abatement, probably even direct air capture.
Civilian nuclear is like the manned space program in being a testament to how government controlled economic activities can fail. It was pushed by Big Daddy government (receiving, over time and adjusted for inflation, much more spending that renewables ever did); it was adopted by government-mandated monopoly utilities who had motivation to maximize capital spending. The technology chosen (LWRs) had serious flaws. And the market, when operating more freely and given a choice, largely rejected it.
The market is now delivering an unambiguous verdict on nuclear. It is a failed technology. Listen to the market. Nuclear’s only chance now, long term, is radical new technology that can greatly simplify it and reduce costs. Even then, it will be a long shot.
And the market, when operating more freely and given a choice, largely rejected it.
Unlike “renewables”. Now there’s a “market” that is operating “freely”.
You are a profoundly unserious individual.
When people building powerplants in the US are risking their own money, or building plants to sell into competitive markets, they never choose nuclear. The recent builds have only been in regulated markets where the risk/cost could be offloaded to others. And even there interest has dried up. 100% federal loan guarantees didn’t even move the needle much.
The reason for this is simple. Current new nuclear in the US is a loser technology, grossly uncompetitive with available alternatives. Anyone who didn’t know this basic bit of information could properly be called “profoundly unserious” on energy issues.
@Paul D.
But solar and wind is totally competitive with fossil fuels, I’m super serial…
Xopher: they are much more competitive than nuclear. In some places, they are already cheaper than gas.
Do you own any General Electric stock? If so, you’d know what I was talking about there. GE is in trouble because the market for combustion turbines is collapsing. That’s not because people are buying nuclear plants instead, it’s because renewables are starting to eat into the market.
@Paul D.
Why aren’t flyover America (before Trump) benefiting from this? Answer is simple, you’re lying.
In some places, they are already cheaper than gas.
Renewables are great last mile solutions. Sure, sending compressed LNG everywhere is expensive. But using LNG to power a town or city is far cheaper than renewable. So much so, that it is silly to suggest renewables as a cheaper solution for large scale operations.
It’s just not a high-speed rail line. America apparently cannot put on an entertaining Super Bowl half-time show.
https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/super-bowl-half-time-show-social-justice/
“The market is now delivering an unambiguous verdict on nuclear.”
‘The market’ where governments impose massive regulation and require a decade or more of ‘studies’ before a reactor can be built?
That ‘market’?
I’m not convinced nuclear has much of a future (once we’re off Earth, solar will likely be much easier to build from local materials than finding fissionable fuel and building reactors), but claiming ‘the market’ doesn’t want it is simply ludicrous. Nuclear power has been under attack by Marxists for fifty years or more, precisely because it can provide reliable and relatively cheap power.
A high speed train line can’t get built in the U.S. either, and not for lack of trying.
I am pro nuclear power but it is really hard to be so when Western countries continuously trip all over themselves in the sector.
It is like that joke about how the Chinese can build multiple tracks of high speed rail and nuclear power plants while the US, supposedly the greatest economic power in the world, can’t even get high speed rail in California. Despite a really high population concentrated over much shorter distances than Shanghai-Beijing. Pathetic really. Continue talking about how the Chinese economy is retarded.
I had the opportunity to watch the BART blow up a circuit breaker and see smoke all over the station when I was in San Francisco while people ran out of the carriages. That was the first time I’ve seen something like that in any public transit system and I have been in some pretty shitty ones in my life.
In a lot of cases the USA looks kind of more like a developing than a developed country. It is sad really. The airports are also a disgrace.
Trump claimed he would invest in infrastructure in the USA and get the troops out of useless wars. Well he’s in the middle of his term and he still has done none of those things. Then again what to expect from the guy who pushed Atlantic City as a major casino hub?
The West needs to get its act straight or it will get owned. Repeating the same shit which has proven not to work over the last two or three decades won’t work.
High-speed rail is a huge boondoggle which achieves little other than to funnel taxpayers’ money to high-paid union workers. Maybe it makes some sense in a country like China that’s still industrializing, but in America it’s just a vain attempt to apply a 19th century solution to 21st century problems.
And utterly pointless, because by the time such a railway could fight its way past vast piles of regulations and actually get built, people aren’t going to be moving their bodies around the world any more.
Well the thing with high-speed rail is that it is electric. Which means you do not need to import as much oil to transport a lot of people. The Chinese government is smart enough to see that. It is not like modern China has a lack of either automobiles or highways. For much the same reason the Chinese are building subways on all their major cities. To reduce their oil dependence.
Also to decrease city air pollution.
For that same reason the Chinese have been subsidizing electric vehicles for a long time. But even those are not as quick or efficient as high speed rail.
The comment that a high-speed train is a 19th century solution… Well you know a French military engineer built a steam powered carriage in the 18th century. You could argue that was an automobile.
Modern high-speed rail is nothing like 19th century trains. It requires the use of materials which were not commonly available back then and techniques which were not available either. You could not manufacture continuous welded track with those tolerances nor the low-weight carriages with built-in motive power. It is a uniquely 20th century technology. Or in the case of Maglev even later 20th or 21st century technology since the latest Maglevs like the Japanese SCMaglev require superconductors to operate.
Firstly I am pro nuclear power fission (and fusion when it hopefully comes on line in the not-to-distant-future). Having said that the article makes a point; given the almost certain massive public resistance to building more nuclear power plants (safe or not) is it really worth the effort to try at this point? Unless some kind of a equally massive pro-nuclear movement successfully takes hold to convince the public that nuclear powers’ merits out weigh the perceived risks?
Fusion is not going to come online in the near future, and quite possibly ever. There are fundamental engineering obstacles for it to be competitive, even if it can be made to “work” from a physics perspective. For example, there is no material yet known that would be adequate for building a DT reactor. In any other area of technology (well, except maybe building orbital elevators) lack of suitable material is not something to be handwaved away.
Of the fusion startups, there is only one I haven’t yet decided has essentially no chance of commercial success, and even on that one I have reasons to be skeptical.
Do these startup companies know this? I mean, if they knew YOU had decided they had no chance, I am sure they would stop wasting their money.
I don’t have any great insight into their thoughts, but at least one was told 20 years ago, repeatedly, by various people, why their idea would not work.
More generally, I suspect they didn’t anticipate the overall evolution of energy markets. 10 or 20 years ago, being competitive with fission may have been a reasonable goal.
I can into more detail on what I think of various startups if you like. The one exception I mentioned there is Helion.
Paul D. Says nuclear can’t be made cheaper than natural gas, but the Green New Deal gets rid of natural gas. So his statement is a pointless smokescreen. The real question is, can nuclear be made cheaper than wind and solar? And the answer is obviously yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
You lack of logic is sad. Saying nuclear is being beaten by gas is not to say nuclear can be beaten ONLY by gas, or that other sources would not beat gas more cheaply than nuclear would. The $300+/ton CO2 tax needed for new nuclear to work is very high, much higher than would be needed for other sources to displace gas.
And no, intermittency of other sources cannot save nuclear.
It can if you are going to take coal and gas out of the equation.
As renewables build out, they ruin the economic case for nuclear, even before they displace gas.
Nuclear is a baseload source. This is not a compliment. It means nuclear’s economic case depends on selling its power most of the time, at a good price averaged over that time.
But renewables corrupt this business model. When the sun is shining, or the wind is blowing, or when they are doing so a few states over, or (soon enough) when they were doing so a few hours ago to charge batteries, then the price nuclear can get collapses.
The more renewables and short term storage build out, the worse it becomes for nuclear, and the more it has to charge to stay solvent, and the more competition opens up against nuclear in those remaining shrinking time slices. Such currently outre possibilities like peaking turbines using natural gas + direct air CO2 capture, or combustion of hydrogen produced at high renewable output times, become possibilities. Nuclear operating with an effective capacity factor of 20% (say) would be in dire shape economically.
As renewables build out, they ruin the economic case for nuclear
Ahh, so that’s what all the subsidies are for. We just need to finish this “build-out”, then we won’t need to confiscate money from taxpayers any more, renewables will all-of-a-sudden be competitive. Got it, thanks.
But renewables corrupt this business model.
What “business model” are you referring to? How exactly is subsidizing wind turbines and solar panels to make them appear competitive, when they absolutely are not, considered a “business model”. And what business school did you attend? I need to make sure my nephew never attends any “school” in that zip code.
The subsidies serve a couple of purposes. They help drive technologies down experience curves (Germany’s did this splendidly with solar). They also serve as ramshackle partial alternative to Pigouvian taxes on CO2 (recent nuclear subsidies were justifiex with that reasoning). But new nuclearis not close to competitive with renewables even without subsidies for the latter.
The “business model” of nuclear I was referring to was producing a steady output of power and selling it, to get enough income to pay for the cost of financing, building, and operating the reactor. The markets value dispatchability of power now, not inflexible baseload sources.
Underpants Gnome logic. Wishful thinking. The storage issues kills the economics of renewables.
You have to overbuild renewables by a factor of twenty to get them to work. At that point, they are economic garbage.
Puckett, please don’t lie so outrageously. Renewables do not have to be overbuilt by a factor of 20. A moment’s thought about how one might engineer an all-renewable system eould have told you that.
Paul D. is super serial you guys. He actually thinks solar and wind can beat nuclear (or other concentrated power sources). The West already tried replacing fossil fuels with solar/wind and all that resulted in was screwing working class whites over with rolling blackouts and high fuel prices (see: Gilets Juanes). Which is the real motive behind GND.
Really closer to 11 times yes. There is a study out there on Finnish nuclear power using Howard T. Odum’s environmental accounting methodology showing a transformity value of slightly greater than eleven for an integrated construction, operating, and decommissioning strategy. Hydro’s transformity is the best of all energy production methods but is limited by geology and transmission distances. Wind barely breaks even depending on the study, biomass and PV tend to be negative transformity values (net loss). It’s the very good transformity characteristics and negligible carbon output of nuclear that encourages environmental supporters like Third Way.
Hydro’s transformity is the best of all energy production methods but is limited by geology and transmission distances.
Unfortunately it’s limited by more than just geology and distance. You almost always need to build a dam. And if there are salamanders around, you’re in trouble.
The Endangered Species Act is another tool of selective lawfare. When one group of individuals goes against it they are evil incarnate. When the Glorious O Leader de-lists more species than any other Administration, you hear the sound of common (as opposed to endangered) crickets.
The purpose of the Endangered Species Act was to screw over flyover America.
Craptastic article by someone not taking the time to delve into the history, engineering technicalities, or bureaucratic red tape to effectively educate their readership. Ms. Roofer had a good article a few years back in Phyics Today.
You might want to look at the article in the Dec 2018 issue.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088
Read it when it came out and well as the UCS report the month before, and industry comments on UCS over at Power Magazine.
Want nuclear power? Ask Kirk Sorensen how it should be done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azJGB4LHZMs
I would go with Moltex’s SSR rather than homogeneous molten salt reactors. These would be the kind of radical rethink nuclear needs to survive long term. Even so, I still rate the odds as unlikely (but likely enough to justify some government R&D money.)
“embarrass this publication”
Marxists don’t care about being embarrassed they only care about power and force.
I’m reminded of that Ars comment from a few days ago:
The nuclear industry has itself to blame. They haven’t delivered on time or on budget in the west for decades. Nuclear is a shitty bet if you actually want to deliver power.
See, they do it so much better in the East. Russia and China, man, if we could just learn from them, we’d be in great shape. “Containment structures? Bah. Waste of money. WE know how to deliver on time and on budget.”
I can’t tell if the anti-nukes are individually pathetic morons or are getting central commands from a mothership. With a crack-head issuing the commands.
If you have to put words into someone’s mouth in order to argue with them, I suggest you reevaluate your position.
Well, if you look at the latest Generation III+ Russian reactors, the VVER-1200, they are supposedly meltdown proof because they have a core catcher. While the Chinese plan to build the APR1400 which is a scaled up AP1000 reactor designed by Westinghouse, which is a Generation III reactor with passive safety systems.
Nuclear (electrical-power) was ill-served by scaling up Naval designs. But this is all in the past. Yes new designs would work far better at lower cost. Had a single design been standardized as in France it might have had lower construction cost through amortization, and that could still be true for new designs, but its too late for the old plants. Cost of operation also has to do with plant design (see first sentence).
Moving on from nuclear, so another form of “renewable” 24/7 power that isn’t talked about much is geothermal. We have a great deal of experience drilling deep wells. I think this is a vastly untapped and under-researched area.
I am convinced that wind and solar won’t hack it. You can’t contaminate the country-side with enough windmills to keep cities going and there are not well understood or researched environmental consequences of screwing with wind currents.
Solar has more of a chance if you are willing to give up significant land fractions of the desert SW, as long as you have sufficient battery backup. At city scales I don’t think we have this problem solved. I won’t get into the environmental consequences of manufacture and disposal.
That leaves hydro and geothermal. Both have the nice feature of reliability (24/7) and geothermal only requires drilling deep wells and not flooding major land areas.
Fracking by Big Oil generates earthquakes – progressive issue for environmental equality. Geothermal power production generates earthquakes – no manufactured outrage. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/1003?rss=1
“The combination of data from a local seismometer network, well logs, satellite observations, teleseismic waveform analysis, and stress modeling leads to the assessment that the earthquake was probably or almost certainly anthropogenically induced.”
Obviously the method you use to drill a well matters. Fracking can definitely induce earthquakes because if its nature. Injecting high pressure fluids deep underground to fissure (fracture, the ‘frack’ in fracking) rock to allow natural gas to seep. That really isn’t necessary for geothermal. You are drilling deep but don’t need to fracture because you are aiming for a temperature differential which you get simply by depth. I don’t know why they were drilling the way they were in South Korea. But I am unconvinced it can’t be done without inducing quakes.
As per the OP. Yes it is. But it is popular. The clue is in the name….
Want to see what large amounts of wind do to electricity prices? Move to South Australia and get the world’s most expensive domestic electrical energy. Wonderfully intermittent too.
The only reason they keep the lights on is because of rapid response gas (not great thermal efficiency) and interconnectors which ultimately are powered by Queensland black coal. Queensland being the only state in Australia that consistently generates more electricity than it uses. I’m for cutting the interconnectors and letting the dumbass South Australians go without aircon, heating, lighting and household power.
The Victorians are next up as they shut down a large brown coal generator and the communist-in-chief in Brisbane is promising 50% renewables by 2030.
Australia has a remarkable ability to take really dumb ideas seriously, prove they don’t work and then do them harder.
US nuclear power plants produce about 1/4 of the total world electrical power from nuclear energy.
Using nuclear power rather other energy sources, has reduced global CO2 emission.
No governmental has reduced CO2 in any significant amount as compared the use of nuclear power to make electrical power.
Nor will any future plans to reduce CO2 do as much as nuclear power will do in the future.
Solar doesn’t work very well at the individual level. You need a lot of solar to run a house that that is home to a family. Anyone who disagrees, should go watch RV and tiny house channels on YouTube. You will notice people with the view that the impediments are a worthy sacrifice for their ideals or are an imposition worth the lifestyle.
And contrary to what Eric Berger thinks, they don’t work well in winter. Technically, solar panels will still function but that is a far cry from being able to meet the electrical needs of a house that doesn’t view resource starvation a virtue.
Nuclear has a lot of problems too, quite a few are imposed on the industry but while some are from anti-nuclear activists, others are based in the dangers of providing nuclear power. Everyone likes to point to some different form of nuclear power generation, some look very promising, but there are also a lot of concerns that are held by people who aren’t just knee jerk Luddite misanthropes.
In US nuclear energy has safer than compared to all other means of providing electrical power.
But it seems to me that nuclear energy should only provide a portion of total electrical needs- perhaps somewhere around 1/3.
And it seems nuclear energy has potential of being even more safe- or seems it has the inherent capability of being safer.
But also it seems having them managed by governmental personnel does add some risks.
Why only 1/3? France was doing well with 70+% nukes, before the green whack jobs took over.
France is in a European market. So it is similar to a state in US having a lot of nuclear power. Or a lot of hydro power, etc.
Or Germany has not completely destroyed their economy, because other European countries are not as insane.
I’m in favor of large scale PV solar installations because I can get a crew of Mexicans to steal solar panels in the middle of the night and then resell them to affluent home owners.
I can’t do that with nuclear.
The only way solar power will compete with baseload nuclear or coal is if it is collected in orbit and beamed as microwaves to receivers on the ground. Coyote Smith had a whole blog about this idea.