I think the problems with nuclear are fairly artificial:
- Very hard regulations
- Each nuclear power plant was so good, that there wasn't enough economic pressure to stop special-snowflaking them, simply because they were built only one at a time.
It's a lot like NASA rockets getting more and more expensive, because no one wants to crank out single-use rockets. Reusable rockets is the analog to smaller nuclear reactors, which allows one to refine the production process through repetition without loosing tons of money.
To be fair, I do expect storage and solar panels to get cheaper and cheaper too. But the energy density challenges for storage are still really hard! With "electrify everything", we will need a hell of a lot of electricity. Solar and storage feels like energy austerity regardless of the price because the shear physical challenges of what's needed.
And then there are the grid coordination issues. America seems too decrepit to run such a fancy grid, I do not trust it to pull that off at scale without a huge culture shift. Decentralization here is more problems, not fewer.
Simply put, I am bullish on everything getting cheaper but am bearish on solar and storage getting better. Nuclear is already good enough! Just need to get rid of the price bullshitary.
- Very hard regulations
- Each nuclear power plant was so good, that there wasn't enough economic pressure to stop special-snowflaking them, simply because they were built only one at a time.
It's a lot like NASA rockets getting more and more expensive, because no one wants to crank out single-use rockets. Reusable rockets is the analog to smaller nuclear reactors, which allows one to refine the production process through repetition without loosing tons of money.
To be fair, I do expect storage and solar panels to get cheaper and cheaper too. But the energy density challenges for storage are still really hard! With "electrify everything", we will need a hell of a lot of electricity. Solar and storage feels like energy austerity regardless of the price because the shear physical challenges of what's needed.
And then there are the grid coordination issues. America seems too decrepit to run such a fancy grid, I do not trust it to pull that off at scale without a huge culture shift. Decentralization here is more problems, not fewer.
Simply put, I am bullish on everything getting cheaper but am bearish on solar and storage getting better. Nuclear is already good enough! Just need to get rid of the price bullshitary.