I’m shocked that what everyone said would happen is happening. It’s insane that we aren’t shifting to EVs (which transmit energy by power line vs oil pipelines). It was one thing when we didn’t have the technology, but now we have the tech and the capital markets to make it a reality.
It is. Even if it was exactly the same amount of CO2 (it’s not) it would eliminate much of the air pollution where people actually live. It gives you an handful of places to apply additional carbon capture versus trying to address it individually across millions of vehicles. And the grid is getting more and more renewables added to it every year so the coal that is used to power these vehicles is shrinking all the time.
Let me know when you find someone to pay for it. Energy companies take one look at the ROI for nuclear and run the other way. What for-profit company is going to look at a multi-billion dollar capex project which will take at least a decade and may never be completed that will take another couple decades to recoup the cost and say "This looks like a smart investment!"? Wind turbines and grid scale solar are only controversial to weird fringe groups and have a safe ROI.
I suppose you could look at the list of nuke plant operators [0] who do not run the other way and instead choose to keep operating. Many of these are for profit.
This is easy to look up. Duke Energy is one of the biggest companies in the world and definitely for profit. What makes you think they don’t want to invest in new plants?
Whenever I make the mistake of discussing anything political on Hacker News, I remind myself after that I appreciate HN for its purely technical discussions.
