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[–] 10 points 10 months ago (1 child)

Economics. Fission build out sucks ass. This is the one and only reason there aren't any new reactors coming online in the US. The NRC is giving out new licenses, but nobody wants to fund that shit because it's been a black hole of money.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    True, but I would argue that this isn’t an issue with fission power so much as an argument that it should be handled, either in part or in whole, by the government rather than the market. All kinds of things exist which are necessary for a populace which are not economically viable for private operators (fire departments, postal services, public transit, etc.), and typically the role of government in that scenario would be to step in and either make it viable through subsidy or just pay the cost outright and personally operate it (indeed, this is part of a larger argument that public utilities like power probably shouldn’t be privately owned in the first place). Nonetheless, if we’re being realistic, that is unlikely to change anytime soon, particularly in the US, so I can see the value in assessing from a perspective of optimizing for raw economic pressure, as that is likely the only way we’ll be able to get the people and organizations with significant capital on hand to align with the goal of renewable energy.

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