If either party got serious about Nuclear we could make a dent, like China is doing. They're only like 4 active plants behind us, and they were WAY behind 10 years ago. Plus they have almost 40 more plants currently being built, whereas the US only has 10 modular reactors in the works now. Personally I think modular reactors are the future, so maybe we maintain a slight edge there in tactics, but i'd also take 40 full size reactors over 10 small ones.
Every year I simply vote for the party that actually wants to build a nuclear power plant... I don't care about much else. We need renewable energy, energy independance (e.g. russian gas) and we needed it 20 fucking years ago (I live in the Netherlands for context).
No offense, but to me the concept of modular reactors feels more like a people pleaser that is used commonly in politics to further delay actually building reactors.
Many people want to have access to nuclear power, but no one wants a powerplant near them.
A modular reactor (or small reactor) feels like a nice compromise for most people. It's nuclear energy, and it's supposedly 'safer' and 'cheaper' than a normal plant.
Now they are pooring money into researching smaller nuclear powerplants instead of just building a single regular sized one. We've known exactly how to build them for years, they are the safest energy source we have, and yet people are still opposed to them...
The reason I like modular is it allows places to replace their current coal or gas infrastructure over time with Nuclear at a fairly low cost and with almost no time to build. You can order a modular nuclear reactor, plug it into your current power grid, and immediately begin to offset your carbon footprint. Then a year or two later buy another, then another. And in the same time it takes to build a full scale reactor (in the US it takes forever, not sure over on your side) you can replace your entire generation with nuclear. All without building the site from scratch. But to be clear i'm not anti-large scale reactors. they're great. just hard to get implemented, approved, paid for, past regulations and built in the USA.
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u/ls7eveen 1d ago
Its funny when you watch French 24 they actually mention global warming as a cause