ddrcrono t1_is87zk6 wrote
My general understanding of why nuclear, despite looking so good has been basically ignored is that countries that have it have a wink wink nudge nudge agreement not to let it proliferate any further because of concerns about nuclear arms proliferation and not for any of the overtly stated reasons.
Thinking about it that way, and looking at how sketchy some of the global state actors are, I'm not sure this is, despite how inefficient it is energy-wise, the worst decision.
jbr945 t1_is8ubw8 wrote
Why would you describe it as energy inefficient? Heat conversion efficiency is just as good as any other thermal electric generator. With higher temperature reactors newer Brayton cycle could be used for 60%+ heat conversion efficiency. As far as mass to energy produced, there's nothing that even comes close, it's in a class all by itself with a 2 million to one mass/unit advantage over fossil fuels.
ddrcrono t1_is8vqma wrote
When I say energy inefficient, I mean that choosing not to pursue nuclear is an inefficient energy policy.
jbr945 t1_is8vyz4 wrote
Gotcha. Some would argue the contrary insofar as deployment time and ease. New nuclear has been taking some time, except in China.
ddrcrono t1_is8zmp9 wrote
There are certainly more upfront costs/pain but I suspect it's actually not the main reason we don't see more of it. It would also kind of explain why they aren't as upfront with the public about it / the reasons we're given don't seem logical, because avoiding nuclear war is a pretty decent reason all things considered.
jbr945 t1_is94vr8 wrote
Right, but there's also a reasonable burden for those who pollute the most to do the most with the best tools. I remember looking at the stats for the top 20 coal polluting nations and only about 3 (Poland, Indonesia, Australia) don't already have nuclear energy. Australia outlawed it, but given their development index, small population, existing uranium mines, and vast coastline - they are the perfect mix of a would be nuclear success story. Both Poland and Indonesia are working on development of nuclear programs. If these nations built a supply chain and cooperative nuclear development consortium, we could knock out the worst of the coal burning in just a few decades. But we have yet to see anything close to a concerted effort like this, which makes me believe mother nature will inevitable "win" the climate change struggle.
ddrcrono t1_is9y2t5 wrote
I'm still assuming that there is an implicit or explicit but not known agreement between a number of developed countries not to pursue nuclear energy programs further.
ex: If we all solve all our energy problems with nuclear it makes it look like "Why don't we give it to the little guys," / makes it indefensible not to / still talk about climate change. But we don't want to because giving every country in the world (or even a lot of them) the ability to make nuclear weapons means that you have even more chances for "something to go wrong," which can mean the end of the world.
So basically that's why most countries won't do it even though they could if they wanted to. The possibility of the world more or less ending outweighs the less concrete on the horizon maybe we can deal with another way threats of climate change.
ddrcrono t1_is9y5w1 wrote
The main exception to this would be if there was nuclear technology that was useless for weapons production. (Ex: I've heard a lot speculated about Thorium fitting this but I'm not well-versed in nuclear tech enough to comment on the weapons side of things).
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