this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
932 points (86.2% liked)

Science Memes

11081 readers
2762 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Hugohase@startrek.website 11 points 1 day ago (93 children)

Slow, expensive, riddeled with corruption, long ago surpassed by renewables. Why should we use it?

[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago (33 children)

only antimatter could provide more energy density, it's insanely powerful.

produces amounts of waste orders of magnitude lower than any other means of energy production

reliable when done well

it shouldn't be replaced with renewables, but work with them

[–] whome@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 1 day ago (7 children)

But it's not done well. Just look at the new built plants, which are way over budget and take way longer to build then expected. Like the two units in Georgia that went from estimated 14bn to finally 34bn $. In France who are really experienced with nuclear, they began building their latest plant in 2007 and it's still not operational, also it went from 3.3bn to 13.2bn €. Or look at the way Hinkley Point C in the UK is getting developed. What a shit show: from estimated 18bn£ to now 47bn£ and a day where it starts producing energy not in sight.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do you know WHY they went over budget?

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

That's for the nuclear industry to figure out. But the fact that companies from different companies originating in entirely different countries suggest that it's a problem with the tech itself.

The hard truth many just don't want to admit is that there are some technologies that simply aren't practical, regardless of how objectively cool they might be. The truth is that the nuclear industry just has a very poor track record with being financially viable. It's only ever really been scaled through massive state-run enterprises that can operate unprofitably. Before solar and wind really took off, the case could be made that we should switch to fission, even if it is more expensive, due to climate concerns. But now that solar + batteries are massively cheaper than nuclear? It's ridiculous to spend state money building these giant white elephants when we could just slap up some more solar panels instead. We ain't running out of space to put them any time soon.

[–] whome@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago

Sometimes it's documented but often I'd say it's a selling technique that works for any big infrastructure project. You give a rather low first cost projection, governments decide let's do this and after a while you correct the price up. First, people say: well that is to be expected the project shouldn't fail because of a little price hike. Then the price gets corrected again and then the sunken cost fallacy kicks in. now we are to deep in and we have to pull through. And so on. And you probably can't get price guarantees for such big projects cause no one would make a bid. It's a very flawed system. I'd like to know how often solar or windpark projects get price adjusted?

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (29 replies)
load more comments (88 replies)