derek
@derek
Why is nuclear becoming the energy darling when solar is so clearly better? Solar is already proven to work at a variety of scales, has little-to-no downside, and needs to only become more efficient and ubiquitous.
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Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
Base load. Batteries not there yet to solve for intermittency.
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derek
@derek
Right but that’s in the bucket of “efficiency”. Seems much easier to solve for than the problems of other energy sources. And there’s already a track record. Battery tech has exponentially improved over the decades.
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Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
Not really, it’s literally not economically feasible to build enough battery storage to replace base load from nat gas or nuclear without some massive subsidy from the government.
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derek
@derek
That’s true - we agree on the problem set. I’m saying it’s solvable, scalable, and better than alternatives. And worth the investment and effort. Also: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t invest in nuclear, hydro, etc, but that I don’t understand the current infatuation.
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will
@w
define “current infatuation”? nuclear is talked about more in a certain sub pop sure, but solar and batteries get FAR more global investment and it’s not even close
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derek
@derek
Hard to define for obvious reasons but in the VC thought leadership / zeitgeist, people seemed to have just discovered that nuclear is a thing.
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will
@w
i think just momentum from some recent big publicity wins (microsoft reviving three mile amongst others), driven by AI data center demand for steady clean power (i don’t know enough to know if the timeline for nuclear is meaningfully different from solar/batteries for this particular use case, but it might be! or they might just be hedging appropriately, which makes plenty of sense at their scale)
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derek
@derek
Yeah agreed that’s probably the root cause of what I’m noticing. Also akin to what @dwr.eth mentioned.
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