Notices by Mathemagician (mithrandir@pl.wizards.zone)
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Mathemagician (mithrandir@pl.wizards.zone)'s status on Saturday, 20-Mar-2021 08:06:38 JST 
Mathemagician
@cjd @kravietz I'm not convinced that it is bad to invest in nuclear power research. We're getting to the point now where thorium-based liquid salt reactors will be commercially available in 5-10 years. Many new thorium-based MSR designs would obviate concerns about traditional uranium-based nuclear power, in particular the risk of explosion from a meltdown would be nearly nil since they can be operated at 1 atmosphere of pressure, and their fuel would mostly be stuff that is considered a hazardus byproduct of rare-earth mining (which, coincidentally, is necessary to construct high-efficiency rechargable batteries) -
Mathemagician (mithrandir@pl.wizards.zone)'s status on Saturday, 20-Mar-2021 08:06:36 JST
Mathemagician
@cjd @kravietz I think they would be useful in different situations -- solar and wind can provide surge power, nuclear can provide a baseline. -
Mathemagician (mithrandir@pl.wizards.zone)'s status on Saturday, 20-Mar-2021 08:06:35 JST
Mathemagician
@cjd @kravietz (helps also to reduce the storage problem for renewable energy) -
Mathemagician (mithrandir@pl.wizards.zone)'s status on Saturday, 20-Mar-2021 08:06:34 JST
Mathemagician
@cjd @kravietz >New solar deployment is up within a year.Indeed, it is quicker to build the plant, but the plant also takes up more space (with exceptions -- those towers outside Vegas are wonderfully compact, idk how much power they put out though), and you have to build it somewhere where you get sunlight/wind reliably enough that the plant is worth building. For a lot of cities that means the plant has to be far away, which leads to high line loss.OTOH solar and wind are eminently the best strategy for power in rural and low-density urban areas, where the cost of land is cheaper and also it makes more sense to spread out power production. A small town would probably be better served by nearby solar and wind farms than a faraway nuclear plant.The article you linked seems to be making an argument that *nothing* besides wind, solar, and waves should be invested in. That just seems shortsighted to me, especially when so many proposed power sources are still in their infancy.>Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper.Huh? You mean that it's easy to mass produce them, right? There is not an infinite supply of silicon, and the fixed marginal cost of the production process remains the same until you change the production process.
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