All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected
I am a fan of nuclear energy for various reasons, and it&#x27;s obvious that the safety and waste problems can be solved with new technology like small modular reactors with inherently safe designs.<p>However, even I realize that nuclear energy is not viable to significantly combat climate change due to the following reasons:<p>* The technology is not there yet. There are a lot of promising companies that are trying to solve the safety problem, and there is a lot of research on how to better deal with the waste, but due to the inherent dangers it will take decades to prove these designs are safe, work as intended and can be produced at a significant scale at the promised cost. Sadly, we don&#x27;t have decades, we need to start replacing coal right now.<p>* nuclear energy is way to expensive. Wind and solar are much cheaper. current numbers are roughly 50% cheaper for renewables, and while lots of companies promise cheaper nuclear design, these claims are unproven and the renewables are also still significantly improving in cost. The nuclear cost models I&#x27;ve seen also ignore most of the storage and security cost for handling the waste for millenia. There are cheaper alternatives with existing and proven technology. Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. which funny enough corresponds to its cost advantage over nuclear. simply building a lot more wind and solar capacity and using power to gas to fill existing gas storage systems with excess energy from renewables has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the safety and proliferation headache, and the added advantage of long term storage.<p>* proliferation. even if we could solve the problem of safeguarding thousands of SMR in developed countries, you can&#x27;t just export them to every country on earth. however, that&#x27;s a requirement for replacing coal, as those countries need to reduce emissions, too.<p>So yeah, I&#x27;d love molten salt SMR to be a thing, and they probably will be in some applications in developed countries in 10-20 years, but the value of this to combat climate change is minimal and people who think otherwise are ignoring the previously mentioned facts.