> Funny, much of the ignorance I see is on the pro-nuclear side. Like claims nuclear is the cheapest source of energy, when the facts are painfully otherwise.
And what "facts" would those be, exactly...?
Let's start with the incentive to mess with nuclear at all, beginning with the cost of fuel.
>> A modern American light-water reactor has a fuel burnup in the neighborhood of 45 GWd / MTU (45 billion watt-days per metric ton uranium).
So, a metric ton of uranium produces 4.5 billion Watt-days, or 108 GWH.
By contrast, a metric ton of natural gas produces 15.2 million Watt-hours, or 0.0152 GWH.
That means a ton of uranium produces 7,105 times the energy of a ton of natural gas. A ton of uranium costs about $1,400. A ton of natural gas costs about $150. That means the natural gas equivalent of a ton of uranium would cost $150 x 7,105, or about $1,070,000.
That looks like a pretty big incentive. The other is the zero CO2 issue, with nuclear being the only, sole, solitary, single, scalable, existing reliable source of zero CO2 energy. I hope I don't need to explain why that's relevant.
> SpaceX operates by testing a lot and blowing things up.
SpaceX has an exemplerary safety record. More misinformation...
> You're not getting that with nuclear. The SMR makers have not delivered much; the closest to delivery, NuScale, is not giving cost improvements that will be sufficient to turn nuclear's ebbing tide.
ThorCon is estimating to-the-plug electricty costs of three to five cents per KWH. That's vastly cheaper than any "green" electricity source, and better than any alternative in most locations.
Nuclear done sanely is at least competitive with fossil fuels, and is the only scalable, reliable source of zero-CO2 electricity. Having enough grid storage to (usually) make it through low output periods for wind and solar is nothing beyond wildest fantasy at this point.
Nuclear power is a necessity if a very low CO2 trajectory is required.