It's really quite unfortunate that the promise was not delivered, mostly for political reasons. I hope that a new wave of reactors and the dire need for clean energy restarts the nuclear race.
The economics are not there. Solar + batteries are much cheaper per watt today and still improving. Even better, the solar can come online instantly and expand while US nuclear takes twenty years to start generating any energy.
I'm a huge solar fan, but I don't see energy transition happening as quickly as I'd hoped 10 years ago, and what seems apparent now is that it will only happen when energy storage gets 10x cheaper, which is why companies like Form Energy developing iron-air batteries might be the catalyst. You also need grid-forming inverters that balance the loads since relying on hundreds of thousands of residences for grid-tie is a real engineering challenge.
abirch · · focus · HN ↗
"It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,..." Lewis Strauss
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter#Origins" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter#Origins
Oddly enough my power bill was metered and big.
etatester · · focus · HN ↗
0cf8612b2e1e · · focus · HN ↗
initramfs · · focus · HN ↗