A huge part of global CO2 emissions come from various industries, so they certainly have a lot to improve. We should definitely start with that instead of blaming regular consumers of everything.
Switching to completely renewable energy sources requires grid energy storage, which we don’t really have at the moment. While we’re building renewable energy plants and the facilities to balance out the mismatching nature of energy production and demand, we’re still going to need some sort of energy during the transition period, and that’s when nuclear energy comes in handy. The way I see it, it’s not a long term solution for everything, but a temporary tool for managing the transition period, which is apparently going to take decades.
The private sector does what’s economically attractive and viable, but policies dictate what makes economic sense and what doesn’t. Therefore, I think we should all vote for the local politicians who support renewable energy and grid energy storage.
Building large reactors isn’t economically attractive, so maybe SMRs could help with that. Time will tell. Or maybe we need to make it more expensive to build and run fossil fuel plants, and politics would be the right tool for that.
Building large reactors isn’t economically attractive, so maybe SMRs could help with that.
It looks like this is not the case, at least by reading the following:
Some advocates misleadingly claim that SMRs are more efficient than large ones because they use less fuel. In terms of the amount of heat generated, the amount of uranium fuel that must undergo nuclear fission is the same whether a reactor is large or small. And although reactors that use coolants other than water typically operate at higher temperatures, which can increase the efficiency of conversion of heat to electricity, this is not a big enough effect to outweigh other factors that decrease efficiency of fuel use.
A huge part of global CO2 emissions come from various industries, so they certainly have a lot to improve. We should definitely start with that instead of blaming regular consumers of everything.
Switching to completely renewable energy sources requires grid energy storage, which we don’t really have at the moment. While we’re building renewable energy plants and the facilities to balance out the mismatching nature of energy production and demand, we’re still going to need some sort of energy during the transition period, and that’s when nuclear energy comes in handy. The way I see it, it’s not a long term solution for everything, but a temporary tool for managing the transition period, which is apparently going to take decades.
The private sector does what’s economically attractive and viable, but policies dictate what makes economic sense and what doesn’t. Therefore, I think we should all vote for the local politicians who support renewable energy and grid energy storage.
Building large reactors isn’t economically attractive, so maybe SMRs could help with that. Time will tell. Or maybe we need to make it more expensive to build and run fossil fuel plants, and politics would be the right tool for that.
It looks like this is not the case, at least by reading the following:
From Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors
If you have a source that claims otherwise, please share.