My impression is that this is a PR push, designed to avoid having to invest in renewables, and let them keep on burning gas and coal, rather than something likely to come to fruition.

  • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Mostly:

    • New nuclear is really expensive
    • It also takes a long time to deliver
    • The new reactor examples in here consist of reactors from suppliers who haven’t done that before

    So it has the feel of a plan to promise to spend a lot of money several years from now, and get a lot of PR points today, and quietly cancel the project later.

      • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        22 hours ago

        They’re talking about 5+ years on the new nuclear in these. And they haven’t done it before, so a 30% deadline slip is realistic.

        You can put up a lot of wind and solar in that time.

        • 0x0@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          22 hours ago

          You can put up a lot of wind and solar in that time.

          Which needs a stable baseline to counteract lack of supply and/or a lot of lithium. And space.

          • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            18 hours ago

            The existing large-scale batteries are largely lithium. There are a bunch of iron-chemistry ones and sodium-ion ones which have been deployed over the past year, with factories going up to scale them up. I’m not expecting to be limited by lithium availability for stationary batteries.

    • Bizzle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      Well that is, indeed, wack. I appreciate your perspective, I can’t believe I missed the “corporations lying for money” angle. I’m usually on top of it.