The conclusion of the NS Savannah was that it would have been economical after the oil crisis of the 1970s caused a price spike in fuel costs. Ports also need facilities and training to handle nuclear fuel. Once you have that, it’s perfectly viable.
Unlike energy generation on land, there isn’t a lot of alternatives for decarbonizing marine transport.
Medical isotopes don’t necessarily need to be created in power reactors.
High-latitudes is a very limited application. Very few people live in areas where solar isn’t viable. They also tend to have a lot of space for wind power and some potential geothermal. Long distance HVDC lines shouldn’t be discounted, either.
Marine power is where I hope SMRs actually work out.
Yeah, even before the techbros showed up, there was this industry push to try to convince people that regulation was the problem. If we loosened the bolts just 10%, everything would work out, they think. Attacking the “linear no threshold model” seems to be the latest strategy.
It’s almost like there’s a reflexive need to blame government regulation on all the problems.
Even ignoring AI datacenter builds, we still need clean energy. I would be all for nuclear fission if it were at all economically viable. It just isn’t.
It’s not even trying to solve the right problem. In the US, the NRC has given out licenses for new reactors. They’re sitting there without the funding needed to go forward.
I have no doubt that licensing is a long process. It should be. That’s how we keep fission power safe. But the more fundamental reason they’re not getting built is because they reliably blow their budget and schedule.
So they spend $3k to get on the chart. Presumably, the business model of the scam (even scams need a business model) is to get noticed by clueless music journalists, and the articles then drive actual traffic to the scammer. They need >3k downloads of $1 each to make a profit.
Are there a before and after results breakdown that show if they’re actually making a profit or not? If not, the problem should take care of itself. If they are, well, someone finally found a business model where AI is profitable.
Tech bros are just the loudest, most financially successful branch of US geeks. Most of the geeks I know think GDPR is largely a good thing.
The biggest issue is that when launched, GDPR was taken up by a bunch of consulting companies who told you x, y, and z changes were necessary. Maybe half their advice was correct, but they made a whole lot of money telling you about it.
Repeat this story for SOX and PCI compliance. Both good things (although PCI compliance could mostly go away with some architectural changes to US payment processing), but some very undeserving contractors made bank off them.
China has built a couple of reactors recently. They also went overbudget and overschedule.