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Comment by cedilla | Hacker News Reader

We'd need a time machine to start building reactors a few decades ago. And why, just to build more of the most expensive energy source ever conceived with the potential to make large portions of Europe uninhabitable?

Nuclear is expensive, it's unsafe, there's the proliferation risk, and only very few countries figured out how to store spent fuel. Promises of safe and cheap tech to solve these problems are common but still unfulfilled.

Solar and wind energy on the other hand is so cheap to build up and don't need decade long mega projects. We can have a better, cheaper energy source right now. Nuclear has nothing to offer.

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Because people want heat and electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing enough (or at all) which happens pretty regularly

If you haven't won the geographic lottery then...

You can burn coal like there is no tomorrow (see Poland)

Or gas (see Germany, and most of Europe for heating), and enable Russia and other undesirables

Or nuclear and have energy security without directly and indirectly causing death and suffering for millions

Except - I guess - CO2 free energy when it's dark and windless. Like in a typical November night <hen you like having your home heated to acceptable levels.

Doesn't need to be November

Germany is dark and windless plenty of the time during summer: ~8 hours a day

I frequently saw our solar and wind usage below even 5% of their respective capacities

>Nuclear is expensive, it's unsafe

Both are true because "spent" fuel isn't reprocessed because mumble mumble nonproliferation, yes?

In the mean time, obscene amounts are being spent on fusion, which will never even compete with fission on any metric.

Solar and wind have been the future for my whole life. Now we have an energy crisis. An artificial one for sure - we could open the pipes to Russia and they'd sell probably sell gas again - but a crisis nonetheless. The claim renewables are better was never true and the price of not stopping that deception is that now we face darkness.

As for nuclear, step one is certainly to stop listening to arguments like "it's too late, it would take too long to build":

https://twitter.com/mlanetrain/status/1556381583585804291

"This is some grim real life dramatic irony: Nick Clegg opposing nuclear power in 2010 because it would only come on-stream by 2021 or 2022."

anything that means people living near a thousand open or semi-open fires is vastly more unsafe.

wood in particular is the worst offender.

plus logging and transportation both are very unsafe industries.

spent fuel storage is a complete non-issue. even bringing it up shows the ridiculousness of the anti-nuclear lobby.

the only real risk is proliferation. which fortunately is again a non-issue in Europe, because the counties in question already have nuclear capabilities.

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