US Environmental Lead Says Advanced Nuclear Technology Critical to Decarbonize US and Japan (apnews.com) 265
A surprise from the Associated Press. The head of America's Environment Protection Agency "said Friday that advanced nuclear technology will be 'critical' for both the United States and Japan as they step up cooperation to meet decarbonization goals."
Michael Regan, after holding talks with his Japanese counterpart Akihiro Nishimura in Tokyo, told a joint news conference that nuclear energy in their countries plays a role... "I think the science tells us that we have to respond to the climate crisis with a sense of urgency and nuclear energy and nuclear technology has and can have a role in continuing with a zero emissions contribution to the climate," he said, showing support for Japan's recent shift toward returning to nuclear energy.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said last week he instructed his government to consider developing safer, smaller nuclear reactors, in a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy years after many of the country's plants were shut down. Kishida said Japan needs to consider all options of energy mix, including nuclear, to bolster its "green transformation" effort to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and to secure stable energy supply. Japan has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.... While maintaining a 20%-22% target for nuclear energy as part of its energy mix for 2030, Japan's government had previously insisted it was not considering building new plants or replacing aged reactors, apparently to avoid stoking criticism from a wary public. Kishida's recent comment represents a sharp change from that stance.
Kishida asked a government panel to decide by the end of the year on its proposal for the development and construction of "new innovative reactors," such as small modular reactors, while also considering extending operational lifespan of aging reactors.
President Joe Biden also believes that it is an "all hands on deck approach," Regan said, adding that investments in nuclear technology and carbon capture will complement the big potential for renewable energy.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said last week he instructed his government to consider developing safer, smaller nuclear reactors, in a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy years after many of the country's plants were shut down. Kishida said Japan needs to consider all options of energy mix, including nuclear, to bolster its "green transformation" effort to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and to secure stable energy supply. Japan has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.... While maintaining a 20%-22% target for nuclear energy as part of its energy mix for 2030, Japan's government had previously insisted it was not considering building new plants or replacing aged reactors, apparently to avoid stoking criticism from a wary public. Kishida's recent comment represents a sharp change from that stance.
Kishida asked a government panel to decide by the end of the year on its proposal for the development and construction of "new innovative reactors," such as small modular reactors, while also considering extending operational lifespan of aging reactors.
President Joe Biden also believes that it is an "all hands on deck approach," Regan said, adding that investments in nuclear technology and carbon capture will complement the big potential for renewable energy.
I hope he's wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
He better be wrong because we can't wait decades for that stuff to become available, and can't afford it either.
Both Japan and the US have excellent renewable resources just waiting to be tapped. More delay is the last thing we need.
Re:I hope he's wrong (Score:5, Informative)
We don't have storage systems to match the gigawatts of green power needed and the only projects I've heard of getting serious backing are in the megawatts of power range anyway (e.g. Biden's offshore wind) and without storage.
Without storage we don't have base load power.
Nuclear plants can provide base load power.
By all means solve the storage problem but at present none of the means look that great. Un-recyclable batteries full of toxic metals ainn't the way. And no, Tesla has subcontracted the recycling problem out, they aren't doing it. The subcontractors are trying to come up with a way to do it while taking investor money. It's absolutely an unsolved problem.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your idiotic drivel does reveal one thing, the US needs to make the need for nuclear energy a state of emergency and suspend all delaying tactics from Greenpeace and other propaganda groups in order to build out enough nuclear power to avoid partial collapse of our civilization
Quick question, if Greenpeace, et al have been right all along, then why do they want a partial collapse of civilization?
Re: (Score:2)
I see, your level of reading comprehension hasn't improved. Let's assume that you need to build 1TW of energy capacity. Building a single new nuclear power plant will cost 6 billion USD per GW of capacity and take at least 10 years to complete. That's based on the Hinkelpoint-C numbers and there is little reason to assume the situation will be fundamentally different in the USA compared to the UK, simply because all current construction project for new nuclear plants share similar characteristics.
Why on earth would anyone extrapolate based on a single rather infamous plant when there is much broader statistical data readily available?
Re:I hope he's wrong (Score:4, Informative)
In the same time frame, you can steadily build thousands of new wind turbines at a cost of 0.5 to 1 billion USD per GW of capacity.
You also neglect the billions of dollars in transmission line upgrades needed to get from where the renewables are generated to where people actually live. That capacity factor of 20% still needs transmission capability for the entire 100%, because you never know where that 20% is coming from.
It doesn't matter if you need backup power for three days of the year when there is a large scale Dunkelflaute event as it will still be a much better situation than the status quo.
It does matter because nobody is going to build (or maintain an existing) base load plant to run 3 days a year.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Do they turn the wind off at night?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they do. Wind drops off around midnight and starts up again, maybe, around 10 am.
See the green line.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the place.
Germany has no place where wind would stop at mid night.
And I really doubt you have one :D
Looking at your green line, the wind "stoped" - once. And was a bit low end of August.
And that is not the wind curve anyway: that is the curve of power provided by wind, facepalm.
Strange that the wind power fed in was pretty high two times at midnight. Odd behaviour for stopped wind, if you asked me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You must be living at an odd place.
Germany does not need storage at night, nor does UK, or Denmark.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What? Do you even know what capacity factor means? that means there is time, usually less than half the time, when you are getting zero from your green energy. Without storage we can't be providing base load power.
Wind turbines out where it's extremely windy have capacity factor of 0.52, that means half the time the wind isn't blowing there. Here around Chicago area, the 'windy city', it's only 0.30
Ditto for the Sun, capacity factor is 0.10 to 0.30 in various parts of the USA.
You need storage
Re: (Score:2)
That's a myth [skepticalscience.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If you will it hard enough, maybe it will become true! Good luck!
Re: (Score:2)
If that's true then find me a licensed engineer who's on the record saying that renewables cannot provide baseload power.
Your reading comprehension needs work. The article only suggests renewable storage as one way to achieve reliable power. If it didn't, you'd be complaining that the article isn't complete without mentioning storage
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wind turbines out where it's extremely windy have capacity factor of 0.52, that means half the time the wind isn't blowing there.
No, that is not what it means.
I suggest to look the term up.
Re: (Score:2)
"Seriously, it's a red herring."
Your mistaking the big red "WARNING" light flashing in your face as a fish.
You need storage. Enough to provide for peak needs without wind or solar for a significant amount of time. We're way near that.
Re: (Score:2)
Gr... "you're".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your argument is dependent on a continent-wide power grid, that does not exist
look it up
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, the US power grid is made up of 8 separate grids with three considered as interconnections [wikipedia.org]
It is a misconception that they are really interconnected, as their 60Hz operating frequencies are not synchronized
There has been a lot of talk about superconducting DC "corridors" and some sort of super connector in New Mexico, but it has all been talk since Congress has failed to fund it and the technology behind the superconducting DC corridors is still in the experimental stage.
We are tens of billions of dollar
Re:I hope he's wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no global off switch for wind.
Let's assume there are wind turbines distributed over most of the USA. Let's also assume that from wether data we know that the worst case factor between predicted energy production and momentary production is 30%, i.e. only 30% of what would normally be produced by wind turbines is actually produced.
There are very much systemic effects in space and time including time of day, seasonality, storms and high pressure systems with massive implications for grids dominated by wind in terms of over provisioning and energy storage schemes.
The easiest approach is (1). Natural gas engines are fast to start and low maintenance. Given the environment models we have, we could cut the fossil fuel emissions by at least 95% using this option alone.
Not even close. Even if you were able to build out 100% wind capacity (~10x present day total wind install base) and magically snap your fingers upgrading transmission systems to handle huge long haul energy flows then only 30% of annually averaged electrical power would be provided by wind. The rest would have to come from somewhere else. There is no universe in which this translates to a 95% cut of fossil fuel emissions.
Ultimately, we will end up with a mix of all three factors short term.
More like forever. The most credible solution to support energy mixes dominated by intermittent renewables requires long haul transmission, storage, over provision and something like nuclear. These issues are full of non-obvious non-linear relationships.
The right balance between (2) and (3) will depend on questions of intelligent load management and raw price.
Nonsense.
But it is also way more important to accept that just building renewable capacity at this point is much more important than worrying about storage capacity as we are nowhere near 100% realistic production capacity yet.
Even with relatively small overall contribution wind and solar are already triggering stability problems in the real world. This will only grow as proportion of intermittent contributions increase without storage.
So any discussion of "we need storage" is a distraction from the necessary way.
It cannot be ignored.
Nuclear also has the very same problems from the other direction: because nuclear plants do not like reducing the load, mechanisms for smoothing out the peak energy use apply just as well to them.
Without ~20% nuclear people are still likely to keep burning boatloads of hydrocarbons so everyone should make up their mind what they care about more.
The reason for this are the concurrent effects of diminishing value of over production and *exponentially* diminishing effect of storage. Here normal present day price tags measured in terms of LCOE are worthless.
Perhaps it can be avoided thru technology who knows fusion, economies of scale, unexpected advancements, increased capacity factor thru increased hub height, airborne wind systems, magical flow batteries or some shit. Who knows but right now nuclear is required and wind is a fairly mature technology.
Re: (Score:2)
Storage isn't critical path, but for continental-scale wind to have 99.99% availability you would be looking at capacity factors around 10% best-case. That makes the $50/MWh electricity suddenly $500/MWh just in terms of turbines, and then you need to significantly expand trans-continental transmission to harness the energy.
Nuclear is likely cost-competitive at anything over $120/MWh, maybe even as low as $100/MWh.
(For solar to have comparable availability you would be looking at a capacity factor of about
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
for continental-scale wind to have 99.99% availability you would be looking at capacity factors around 10% best-case
How are you calculating this?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
https://financialpost.com/comm... [financialpost.com]
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2... [lasvegassun.com]
https://globalnews.ca/news/610... [globalnews.ca]
https://www.pennlive.com/news/... [pennlive.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Impractical. How many do you need operating at capacity to achieve 1TW? What do you do when they're not at capacity? What do you do when it's not even windy? What's a "solid base capacity?" Does it meet our needs or not? How many birds are you chopping up, and how much waste are all of those going to cause?
Nuclear is a known quantity, practical and reliable. Large wind farms are fantasyland.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need storage systems for a long time. Seriously, it's a red herring.
Wind and solar cost a fraction of what new nuclear power plants cost and can be constructed in a fraction of the time as well. Get to 80% of energy production using renewables first before worrying about storage requirements to get to 100%.
It doesn't matter if it is 30% capacity factor or just 20% - even at 20% it will be more cost-efficient than going with new nuclear plants. There is no need to aim for perfect right now, building out the grid and covering the good spots is good enough to solve a huge part of the problem and reducing the actual cost of energy at the same time.
These are quite extraordinary claims. Did you do the analysis yourself or are you relying on existing studies? If so care to cite any?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For which part? For the cost of different energy sources: Lazard, Levelized Cost of Energy V15, 2021. Capacity factor of wind energy is more complicated and regional, for Germany the utility companies publish factors between 25% and 30% depending on the area and average age of the wind turbines with newly installed turbines pushing the 30%. There are some studies analyzing the impact of the variability of solar and wind on the grid scale, but I don't have a current one at hand right now.
This part...
"Get to 80% of energy production using renewables first before worrying about storage requirements to get to 100%."
"It doesn't matter if it is 30% capacity factor or just 20% - even at 20% it will be more cost-efficient than going with new nuclear plants."
LCOE only says what the cost of production today is. It does not speak to the VALUE of energy to the grid nor even what LCOE would become in alternate realities where intermittent oversupply of renewables exist. It is not possible to draw str
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but why? Is this some bizarre death-cult that actually wants to end the human race?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
Wind might cover the evenings, sometimes.
The temperature inversions typical of the winter lead to no wind and 7% of peak ratings for PV for a week or better. And wintertime days are 8.5 hours.
The house (all-electric with a heat pump) takes 60 kw-h per day, You can do the math. I back of the enveloped it at 280 300 w PV panels not including losses at the inverter or battery. In the summer of course I would have power out the wazoo. 15.5 hours of daylight, panels at 95% rated
Re: (Score:2)
We don't have storage systems to match the gigawatts of green power needed ...
...yet.
How about we take 10% of the military budget and work on that problem?
Re: (Score:2)
Storage is usually not used for base load, but for balancing power. I suggest to look up the term "base load".
Re:I hope he's wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not appear to be correct:
https://ourworldindata.org/saf... [ourworldindata.org]
Nuclear is only the safest if you ignore society (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
In reality, nuclear power has proven dangerous when unwise experiments are performed (Chernobyl) or change-adverse boards of directors ignore their own engineers (Fukushima)
Otherwise, nuclear power has proven to be safe and beneficial
Re: (Score:2)
In reality, nuclear power has proven dangerous when unwise experiments are performed (Chernobyl) or change-adverse boards of directors ignore their own engineers (Fukushima)
That's like saying coal-power is only dangerous when people breath air. :-)
Even with those human failings, nuclear remains far safer than fossil fuels, from pollution alone, not even counting global warming.
Without Chernobyl, which had known design flaws not seen outside the SU, nuclear has a better safety record per TWh than rooftop solar or hydroelectricity.
(Solar is safer in big farms, but has the obvious storage problem. )
You're really stretching for it aren't you? (Score:2, Interesting)
And the best part is they got away with it. The public literally blamed the engineers who stayed behind soaking up rads trying to stop the disaster from happening. Look it up. Not a single one of the CEOs suffered any consequences whatsoever. And the actual h
Re:You're really stretching for it aren't you? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Fukushima disaster was largely a cultural issue with the Japanese, at least that is what the Japanese say
“What must be admitted — very painfully — is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan,’ ” investigation chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa wrote in the introduction to the report. “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
I'll tell you what, I was involved in the disaster planning for the Palo Verde nuclear plant and I still live downwind from it and feel full confidence in its continued operation
Re: (Score:2)
Otherwise, nuclear power has proven to be safe and beneficial
...
As long as they are offline.
As 50% of France nukes are, because of: safety upgrades
Ironic, isn't it?
Now they need safety upgrades, only gods know what could have happened the recent 70 years with them.
Re: (Score:2)
In reality, nuclear power has proven dangerous when unwise experiments are performed (Chernobyl) or change-adverse boards of directors ignore their own engineers (Fukushima)
I mostly support nuclear, but these factors are not going to disappear. Humans making stupid mistakes will always be a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Coal kills people in their 60s and '70s (Score:2)
If you want nuclear power fix the social problems we have. Forgive up on nuclear power and find another solution
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand a nuclear reactor meltdown will make everybody in the city homeless instantaneously and in a country where we do not treat the homeless well.
Well that is not true. Not true by far.
We do have a bad homeless situation though. Funny thing about that. Nuclear energy is one of the best tools we have to reduce poverty.
Re: (Score:3)
The worst accident in US history(TMI) could not have hurt you if you were in the reactor building. So stop with the fear mongering. The fact that you bring up katrina(not nuclear energy) is evidence that you have your head up your own ass.
And fossil fuels are poisoning my town right now.
And nuclear absolutely reduces poverty. In fact it is the best tool we have.
Re: (Score:3)
Before 2005, RVs used metal or fiberglass roofing, and didn't have the leak problems.
Oh, my sweet, summer child. I have worked on every generation of RV since the fifties, and they all had leak problems. You haven't known hell until you've tried to solve systemic leak problems in an Airstream or similar. There's literally no way to do it right without disassembling the entire outer skin. That means drilling out thousands of rivets, perfectly leveling the frame, clecoing all the panels back into place, putting expensive and fiddly olympic pop rivets into all the holes, and then shaving all o
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear becomes very unsafe when greedy businessmen start cutting corners and manufacturing and maintenance.
You make this same argument every time nuclear is brought up. Once again, I'll challenge you to demonstrate the historical precedent that would lead one to make this assumption.
Even if we did start cutting corners and we had major accidents, nuclear would still be less dangerous than coal.
Jesus Christ Fukushima (Score:2)
Re:I hope he's wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you really miss the part where Nuclear power has a death per Terawatt hour of 0.03 while everything else (except solar) has higher rates?
Brown coal 32.72
Coal 24.62
Oil 18.43
Biomass 4.63
Gas 2.82
Hydropower 1.3
Wind 0.04
It was in direct response to the GPs claim, do you have a reading comprehension problem?
Re: I hope he's wrong (Score:2)
We can afford to build it, and we probably cannot afford not to build it.
Re: (Score:3)
He better be wrong because we can't wait decades for that stuff to become available, and can't afford it either.
It's just a specious headline, they're actually talking about the Japanese short-term plan, and all he said is that nuclear will continue to "play a role."
He doesn't need to "be wrong," you just need to listen more carefully to what people actually say.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is I don't know how to convince Americans that just because I want to take away $119 billion of Jeff bezos's $120 billion doesn't mean I'm going to steal their cars and their hamburgers.
Re: (Score:2)
Once you're okay with stealing, the rest is a matter of degree.
Re: (Score:2)
Taxation is only stealing if the wealthy can exist without the entirety if their civilization enabling them
Send them all to Somalia and see how long they can support their own military, infrastructure, social security, school systems, etc...
Oh wait, is that the sound of another libertarian dream land collapsing? [vice.com]
Re: (Score:2)
He better be wrong because we can't wait decades for that stuff to become available, and can't afford it either.
Both Japan and the US have excellent renewable resources just waiting to be tapped. More delay is the last thing we need.
He isn't wrong. This is just like that piece of code in your sig. I think you put it there because you think it is wrong. It isn't. It is 1 in a fixed point representation with 16 bits of precision (to the right of the decimal point). That name accurately describes what it is. Zero would still be 0 in a 16-bit fixed point representation. It would have been better to do it in hex (0x0100) as that's easier to understand but it is completely correct. BTW, two would be 0x0200 and 1.5 would be 0x0180.
And hon
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, against all rationality and despite the urgency of the problem, the nuclear fanatics seem to be among those trying to profiteer from the crisis, no matter what. This is what got us into the problem in the first place.
Re:I hope he's wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite simply NO, the nuclear power industry is NOT what got us into this problem int he first place
The PROBLEM is that Greenpeace (in US, Green Party in Europe) created a propaganda industry against nuclear power by equating it with nuclear weapons and scaring he public away from it with a sea of lies.
This manipulated public opinion is what got President Carter to make coal the centerpiece of US power generation (similar effect in Germany). The fossil fuel industries jumped on the bandwagon, even funding environmental groups to go against nuclear power.
And here we are fifty years down the road ,and it is finally clear the Greenpeace policies have played a major role in current exploded CO2 levels, however ... rather than admit their mistakes, they just double down on their lies and try to claim that it is all nuclear energy's fault
what a bunch of lying prats
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone has at least one option to store nuclear waste: bury it into the ground. It works. It's safe.
One of the good things with nuclear energy is that it deals with very little amounts of matter, so the nuclear waste are really not that much. Even considering all of France nuclear power generated over the years. Not even considering the fact that newer nuclear plants produce an order of magnitude less waste than the "old" ones running in France.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I see you are preparing a "Big Lie" to deflect being identified as one of those responsible for the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I hope he's jim nitti (poperatzo) (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not a surprise at all (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have been paying any attention to the way energy is produced, to the materials needed to make new solar panels and windmills, to the supply of all forms of energy now and going forward... the only conclusion you can reach is we need a lot more nuclear plants, as quickly as possible.
We should be basically outlawing the shutdown of any nuclear reactors, for a start, as the replacement of them is a massive amount of extra CO2.
But more importantly we should be fast-tracking new nuclear technology, and the production of other well-known designs immediately, in every country. It means cutting through regulation that would slow construction, and immediately saying anywhere that is a coal power plant now should be turned into a new site for a nuclear plant ASAP. That way you are eliminating pollution, while providing for the people who have kept power going for decades now by bringing them new jobs in construction and plant management.
If you are not in support of that you really are not supporting any movement forward on CO2 reduction. There is no other path possible, so the only other position is outright failure.
Re: (Score:2)
And... this is the uncomfortable moment when I agree with SK (although their past climate change denialism does seem to have evaporated)
I honestly believe it is possible for widespread bipartisan support for nuclear energy if the fossil fuel and enviro-propaganda industries keep their dirty fingers out of the pie
Re: Just don't like pollution (Score:2)
If sea level rise was really a threat you would not see trillions in new investments planned for the coast without risk notices being posted for those investors. Do you see those? What does that mean for the rest of this?
Re: Yep hear ya (Score:2)
Either that or the rich don't care because they will have made their profit and won't have to face consequences. I wonder which one it is.
"The wary public" (Score:2)
... is usually at most a handful of extremists who happen to shout the loudest. We need nuclear. Full stop.
Re: (Score:2)
Pushing for nuclear now is a sure way into disaster. Period.
Re: (Score:2)
Pushing for nuclear now is a sure way into disaster. Period.
The opposite is true.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Taking full advantage of home based solar panels and your own local battery will be the only way to avoid public transportation in the very near future
In other words (Score:2, Insightful)
The US government is realizing that renewables will fail after seeing the boondoggle in the EU
Re: (Score:2)
Renewables are what keeps the lights on in EU. See the boondoggle in France with nuclear, which is now an importer of electricity because of the reliability problems with nuclear. Germany still produced 338 TWh this year so far with 50% from renewables. From this is net-exported 18 TWh.
France had to import 11 TWh this year because about half its nuclear plants are offline.
Re: (Score:3)
Makes no sense. The EU is still in the early stages of ramping up renewables. The end result will be a couple of orders of magnitude more renewable energy than it has now.
And in any case, the issue in the EU is the scarcity of gas, not electricity. Electricity prices on rose because some of it is generated by gas, which is just more incentive to move away from fossil fuels. Also most heating is gas, which again creates an incentive to move to electric heat pumps instead.
Renewable double whammy (Score:2)
Oh! (Score:2)
Guten Morgen!
US Environmental Lead (Score:2)
Having lead in the environment is not a good idea/
One thing we should do is replace the lead pipes in cities water supply.
The lead can be recycled into lead acid batteries and used for electricity storage. You don't need lithium for batteries that aren't moving.
Re: (Score:2)
I have also wondered how viable lead acid batteries would be for power storage. I don't have the skill to calculate it, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately aging Gen-Xers are proving to be as mentally inflexible as Boomers
They hugged the anti-nuclear ideology in the murky path and cannot find it in themselves to admit they were wrong
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many civilizations have hit a crisis point when their past practices are in conflict with a developing situation
Most have let the inertia of their own behavior push them off the cliff into collapse [effectivealtruism.org]
We have the unique opportunity to confront and change our current trajectory, although we are half a step behind due to the fossil fuel industries lying to the public about the reality of the approaching change
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the existing nuclear power plants need replacement, not life extension and definitely not re-activation. They need cooling systems that aren't reliant on fresh water evaporation or heat sinks, they need modern inherent safety systems, and several other things that will address the challenges nuclear power has had over the past 5-7 decades.