RE: Shutting down fossil fuel electric plants
October 21, 2018 at 6:53 pm
(This post was last modified: October 21, 2018 at 7:55 pm by Anomalocaris.)
The safety of emergent nuclear technology is in many cases bought at the expense of thermal dynamic inefficiency and extreme demand on material science. If these issues can in theory be overcome they still require a critical scale of deploymemt to achieve anything close to a viable level of economy.
The possibility of assembling a critical scale of deployment depends on public tolerance. Perception matter more than reality amongst those who needs to be convinced. Without assembling critical scale of deployment quickly, the theoretical economic performance of emergent technology will evaporate, and the technology will be set up to fail. Having any track record of economic failure will make progress much more difficult still.
The reality is those who would otherwise be most interested in the role nuclear power can play in carbon emission reduction also by and large are those who are ideologically opposed to nuclear power and irreconcilably distrustful of the nuclear industry.
The possibility of assembling a critical scale of deployment depends on public tolerance. Perception matter more than reality amongst those who needs to be convinced. Without assembling critical scale of deployment quickly, the theoretical economic performance of emergent technology will evaporate, and the technology will be set up to fail. Having any track record of economic failure will make progress much more difficult still.
The reality is those who would otherwise be most interested in the role nuclear power can play in carbon emission reduction also by and large are those who are ideologically opposed to nuclear power and irreconcilably distrustful of the nuclear industry.
