this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Oh wow really? Hope it kicks off some good news for other plants in the future.
The good news - it's online, generating clean power, and hopefully demonstrating the safety and benefits of modern nuclear plants.
The bad news - it's $17B over budget (+120%) and 7 years behind schedule (+100%). Those kind of overages aren't super promising for investors, but perhaps there are enough lessons learned on this one that will help the next one sail a little smoother.
Either way, good to see it can still be done in the US.
I wouldn't call it "clean power". We still don't have a good solution for the nuclear waste.
Edit: Downvotes because I am not religiously defending a technology and pointing out that there are downsides (EVERYTHING HAS DOWNSIDES!). Too many people from reddit here already.
Nuclear power plant waste doesn't significantly contribute to climate change or pollution? So it's "clean" by most metrics.
Nuclear waste can generally be stored on-site without issue. Reprocessing would be nice, but not even necessary. Just because you don't understand the problem, doesn't mean others are "religiously defending a technology."
Coal was also considered clean in the beginning because they didn't have to sacrifice forests anymore.
We may not consider the waste a problem now, but that may very well look differently in 50 or 100 years.
Again: I am completely fine considering nuclear power as one of the best options we have. I am not so fine pretending it's without tradeoffs, because that would ignore how any other form of energy generation in the past/ever finally turned out.
False analogy fallacy
Argument from ignorance fallacy
No one is saying it's free energy or perfect energy. I myself would argue it's clean and solves some of our current energy problems, while renewables still can't. Unfortunately it suffers from a bad reputation and misinformation.