Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Robert Hargraves's avatar

Nuclear power has the potential to provide inexpensive, reliable energy, but all the subsidies and tax incentives mean nothing if EPA and NRC regulators cling to false narratives that radiation is so dangerous it must be regulated to near-infinitesimal levels, the driven downward by the as low as reasonably achieveable (ALARA) rules. We are impeded not just by their dose/response error, but by all the consequent regulations that help populate the NRC library of 50 million documents. Job security means saying "no". NRC ignored the 2019 acts of Congress to create Part 53 rules. NRC now says the 2024 ADVANCE act can't undo their self-proclaimed role as protectorate by considering benefits.

Expand full comment
Jim Fitzgerald's avatar

I don't know where to begin. First, the Orwellian IRA is actually causing inflation. Second, far too much of the $ went to newly minted NGOs staffed by Democrats without guardrails. Even the government org distributing the IRA $ doesn't know how to manage it - it has never been done before.

That little detail aside, new energy sources and infrastructure seem to largely mean wind, solar, batteries, and cross country power lines, all of which are thermodynamic losers hated by everyone but the elite. They all increase the cost of electricity and disproportionately hurt working class, non-college educated (I have a humble BA in math) people - you know, the folks that just the elite in the latest repudiation (election). Everywhere these "solutions" have been implemented, like California, the cost of electricity is punishing to the majority of residents. The elites driving subsidized Teslas charged by subsidized Power Walls charged by subsidized solar panels on the roof of their 3000 sq ft well insulated homes love solar. Having worked in high tech for a couple of decades these people are well represented among my Facebook friends. I love vicariously enjoying their exotic family trips to Europe etc. No worries about CO2 - they have solar.

If the goal is to reduce CO2 then we should go on a campaign to build existing lower CO2 technologies we know work - natural gas and nuclear. Ironically, that will happen anyway because so called "renewables" (they aren't) require a duplication of the grid to survive.

Note that Bill Gates, the smartest man in the world 🙄, isn't planning to build a wind-solar-battery power source next to his future AI server farm - he is paying $$$ for nuclear in a 20 (?) year contract.

Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

Ok, I gotta go do chores before the 4-9 pm jump in the rate for electricity here in CA. You know, because renewables.

Sometimes it makes more sense to go for a game winning single than to swing for the fences and strike out.

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts