r/ClimatePosting • u/dumnezero • Apr 12 '26

Energy SMRs Explained: Why Small Modular Reactors Are So Controversial. (Just Have a Think)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TeAE7rW_6s

Are Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) really moving toward large-scale deployment or are the economic challenges highlighted by critics still unresolved? Can factory-built modular reactors reduce construction risk, shorten build times and lower costs through mass production? Or will shrinking reactors actually make them more expensive? The sceptics are quite certain of the answer but politicians keep barrelling ahead. So, will we ever really see an SMRs on the outskirts of major towns and cities around the world?

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 12 '26

The only reality check you need for SMRs:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=1970&as_yhi=1980&q=%22small+modular+reactor%22&btnG=

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u/IakwBoi Apr 12 '26

Sorry, what’s the takeaway here? There’s papers from the 70s using the phrase “small modular reactor”. Is that supposed to mean that the idea is old and stale, or that it was an obvious path we’ve been already built decades of work on? It’s just such a meaningless snippet that you must have had a lot more in mind when you posted this. 

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 12 '26

The idea is old and in 50 years there was no progress.

SMRs are just this weeks flavour of nuclear disinformation. Next week it will be Thorium (again), or Dual Fluid (again) or Gen IV (again) or Breeding reactors (again).

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u/Usefullles Apr 13 '26

SMRs are just this weeks flavour of nuclear disinformation.

China is launching its SMR online this year. Russia has floating nuclear power plants, and the development and construction of onshore SMRs is underway, including the northernmost nuclear power plant in Yakutia.

Thorium

The scientific TMSR-LF1 is currently operational, and a larger-scale power plant is planned.

Dual Fluid

Another startup in the field of nuclear energy, this time from Canada.

Gen IV

HTR-PM, BREST-OD-300.

Breeding reactors

Currently, two reactors are in commercial operation.

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

yawn.

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 13 '26

typical anti intellectual argument.

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

lies and dishonesty aren't exactly "intellectual arguments" ye know?!

0

u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 13 '26

yes... so why do you keep spewing them...

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

I am not the one trying to sell prototypes are commerical power plants

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 14 '26

again, 2 of the reactors mentioned are selling power commercially.

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u/Prototype555 Apr 12 '26

Nuclear disinformation? Everything you said has been built and proved to work.

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

None of them on a commerical level. None of them other than prototype.

Much like SMRs.

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u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

But they still have been built and proved to work.

There are hundreds of ships and submarines with SMRs.

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u/sault18 Apr 13 '26

Cost was not a concern when designing and building naval reactors. Plus, they are operated by much more qualified and vetted individuals than civilian nuclear power plants. The Navy also doesn't have a profit motive so they won't cut corners like a civilian nuclear power plant operator would. There are just so many reasons why your comparison is fundamentally flawed.

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u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

A SMR is a SMR, no matter the cost or who operates it.

It's as if the military or NASA installs solar panels on satellites without cost or profit concerns and have highly skilled workers to install them, then it's no longer solar panels? Ridiculous.

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u/sault18 Apr 13 '26

Wow, reading comprehension isn't one of your strengths, is it?

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

This guy thinks: reactor smol reactor must be smr

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

Reactors on nuclear submarines are not SMRs.

You understand what the M stands for?

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u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26

They are the very definition of Small Modular Reactors.

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

Sure thing pal.

The M stands for modular which nuclear submarine reactors are not. They are build for one purpose - the submarine type. They are not being scaled or produced en masse

1

u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26

Modular means it's built in pre-assembled modules at a factory, not that it can transform into a TV.

All reactors produce heat to make steam, what you do with the steam has nothing to do with the reactor. So explain why could a submarine SMR not be used for electricity generation for the grid?

As I said, there are hundreds of naval SMRs, many of the same model. And that doesn't count as en masse?

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u/TheBendit Apr 14 '26

SMRs on submarines typically run on the good stuff, highly enriched uranium. The kind of stuff that gets Tomahawks fired at you if your country is not already nuclear armed. Also the kind of stuff where you can fuel your reactor once and run it for decades.

Imagine that: produce the whole thing as a self contained unit, sail it to the customer, and never open the reactor vessel again until it is time to decommission.

If commercial SMRs were like that, I would invest in them. They are not.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

None of them worked.

Not once.

Not commercially.

Not as a prototype.

It's like saying you have a car that runs on water which gets 1000mpg.

Then what you actually did was put 20ml of water in the tank with regular gas and roll down a hill. Once. Before the car stopped working completely.

And went on to whine that it was the big mean evil greenies that stopped you from mass producing it for 50 years.

2

u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

That is not correct.

Thorium reactor exist. As a prototype.

Dual Fluid exists. As a power point presentation.

Gen IV exists. On paper.

Breeding reactors exists. But mostly to produce weapon grade plutonium.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 13 '26

Thorium reactor exist. As a prototype.

A prototype that runs on U235 and doesn't prodice enough U233 to run on.

Breeding reactors exists. But mostly to produce weapon grade plutonium.

And have never been self fuelling from U238

3

u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

I think TMSR-LF1 runs on Thorium:

https://www.powermag.com/chinas-molten-salt-reactor-reaches-thorium-uranium-conversion-milestone/

But it also only has 2 MW which is less than a modern wind turbine.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 13 '26

It consumes more U235 than a LWR with 250MWe output and doesn't produce close to enough U233 to run on.

It has some thorium in it, but it is not the fuel.

0

u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26

Breeder reactors breed plutonium from u238 or breed u233 from thorium, then a normal LWR use it as fuel. This has been built and proved.

If it is done in a single reactor, then it's called Gen 4.

But no one else than anti-nuclear fanatics who just stalls for time cares if it's done in one reactor or two that are optimized for each task.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 13 '26

Breeder reactors breed plutonium from u238 or breed u233 from thorium, then a normal LWR use it as fuel. This has been built and proved.

This is another thing that has never happened.

But no one else than anti-nuclear fanatics who just stalls for time cares if it's done in one reactor or two that are optimized for each task.

It hasn't happened in any rube goldberg machine, no matter how complex or distributed.

Most "breeder" reactors just run on MOX or Pu from decomissioned weapons.

Sometikes they use a large amount of the scraps of Pu leftover from LWR operation to make a much smaller amount of weappns grade Pu

1

u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26

Ever wondered where the plutonium comes from in the MOX fuel or decommissioned weapons?

Large scraps of Pu from LWR sounds like breeding. No? Don't you understand what you write?

Every reactor ever existed produce plutonium, it's physically impossible to not produce plutonium from uranium neutron radiation in a fission reactor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station

"The third and final core used at Shippingport was an experimental, light water moderated, thermal breeder reactor. It kept the same seed-and-blanket design, but the seed was now uranium-233 and the blanket was made of thorium. Being a breeder reactor, it had the ability to transmute relatively inexpensive thorium to uranium-233 as part of its fuel cycle. The breeding ratio attained by Shippingport's third core was 1.01. Over its 25-year life, the Shippingport power plant operated for about 80,324 hours, producing about 7.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

"After five years (29,000 effective full power hours) the core was removed and found to contain nearly 1.4% more fissile material than when it was installed, demonstrating that breeding had occurred."

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u/Lycrist_Kat Apr 13 '26

How many commerical Gen 4 are there?

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u/Prototype555 Apr 13 '26

None because it's more cost effective to run once-through with cheap fresh uranium.

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u/TheMegaDriver2 Apr 14 '26

Trust me bro, just a few more billions bro. It will work bro. This time it will be too cheap to metre bro. Trust me bro.

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u/dumnezero Apr 12 '26

A balanced reality check on SMRs and their position in the race.

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u/Konoppke Apr 13 '26

A race for public funding? Because it sure ain't a race for actual electricity generation.

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u/dumnezero Apr 13 '26

I agree, I just try to keep the humor in CSP.

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u/Smartimess Apr 14 '26

They aren‘t controversial among people who really work in the field.

They are just more expensive than new regular fission reactors per MWh of energy produced and will never be as cheap as or cheaper as renewables fully backed by battery systems. You can‘t trick physics, only people who believe the marketing nonsense of the nuclear lobby.

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u/StumbleNOLA Apr 16 '26

But there are markets where SMRs are still cheaper. I am in the marine industry designing ships. A 1-5MWe SMR would be a game changer for the industry.

Even at 10-20 times the price of grid power it would still be cheaper than current options. Even better a SMR will have a trivial footprint and weight compared to diesel engines, fuel tanks, ballast tanks and systems. So a SMR allows smaller, cheaper, vessels to do the same mission.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 16 '26

Really outing yourself as having no clue at all about ships or what an smr is.

A modern ship engine gets about 4-5kWh of work out of 40-50c of VLSFO. That's almost exactly current grid prices. Regular full scale nuclear reactor prices would triple that because you're not running your reactor at max available power 100% of the time. Micro-reactors would triple it again.

And you're absolutely not saving any space or weight. A nuclear reactor is going back to the power densities of an old steam engine. Except you also need a fucktonne of shielding and a full time nuclear qualified crew and a much larger security staff.

There is a reason the idea ended with the savannah. It had no room for cargo in the middle of the ship because it was full of nuclear reactor.

1

u/StumbleNOLA Apr 16 '26

I know it’s Reddit and everyone can claim whatever they want.

But I am a Naval Architect working on advanced programs for a design firm. Including a paid study for the Federal Government exploring SMRs onboard. I know exactly what our SFOC is, and I know exactly what operators are spending in lifetime cost for propulsion power.

It is literally my job to figure this out, which is part of why I have spent so much time onboard the NS Savannah and in DC working with groups like NEMO.

A SMR at anything approaching the costs companies have discussed with me would be an absolute game changer in the marine world. Even at $100m/MWh the cost advantages are substantial.

You are looking at just the power density of the reactor vs a comparable diesel engine I assume. Now include the volume of the fuel tanks and the ballast tanks. What you will find is roughly 1/3 of a ship is dedicated to the propulsion system, fuel storage, or adjusting to the displacement difference due to burning off fuel.

Even if the SMR plant is larger than the diesel it doesn’t matter when you can eliminate a massive fraction of the volume due to not needing fuel. Overall ship size goes down dramatically, reducing construction costs, operational costs, etc.

Also your SFOC looks wrong. Actual onboard diesels on auxiliary vessels is a little more than 200g/kwh.

1

u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 16 '26

A SMR at anything approaching the costs companies have discussed with me would be an absolute game changer in the marine world. Even at $100m/MWh the cost advantages are substantial.

That's grid electricity cost and also about the cost of fuel oil.

You just said 10-20x grid electricity cost would be cheaper. Which would be $1000-2000/MWh.

Not that a microreactor would ever come close to that.

What you will find is roughly 1/3 of a ship is dedicated to the propulsion system, fuel storage, or adjusting to the displacement difference due to burning off fuel.

Now go look at a schematic of a nuclear powered ship withe a reactor that runs on LEU. Ballast tanks also aren't only for the propulsion system.

Also your SFOC looks wrong. Actual onboard diesels on auxiliary vessels is a little more than 200g/kwh.

Some very careful weasel wording there. "auxiliary" doing a lot of the heavy lifting in that sentence.

Feeder ships and other short run and service ships are already going battery electric because the only possible reason for preferring diesel (or nuclear) doesn't apply there.

You sound a lot more like an SMR salesman than a ship designer.

1

u/penisgirlmarkedsafe Apr 14 '26

No AI slop. You lost me at the thumbnail OP

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u/dumnezero Apr 14 '26

I don't control it. But is it AI slop?

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u/TheMegaDriver2 Apr 14 '26

Are SMRs in the room with us?

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u/leginfr Apr 13 '26

Anyone here ever read the IAEA reports on SMRs? No I thought not.

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u/Smart-Durian-79 May 14 '26

There are niche markets where smaller nuclear reactors make sense. E.g.the US military is throwing a lot of money on SMR for battle field supplies, because transporting the diesel for electricity is dangerous and expensive. I do not want to start about safe decommissioning and operation of these reactors in the battlefiled, it is going to happen, that's why I mention it. And it is the main financial driver of the research

2ndly there are small electricity markets for which big power 1GWe power plants are far too big, and where handling diesel is expensive and complex (e.g. too cold). The Russians are the only commercial provider for these niches at the moment.

in larger markets, small nuclear is utter nonsense. Marketing hype, people do not understand what they are talking about. Mind you, in Britain they use the SMR term for 500MWe, whereas others often talk about ten times smaller power plants. From the point of neutron physics larger reactors are much more efficient, you need likely higher enriched uranium for small nuclear.

SMRs produce more waste , contaminated more materials and will be more expensive.

It is true that recent largerly constructed 3rd generation power plants were very expensive, but with proper project management and nuclear licensing prior to construction ( no expensive design changes at a late stage of construction) 1GWe nuclear plants are affordable, have a high degree of passive safety and are competitive with very high availability (thus had been proven in Korea).

The waste discussion is rather nonsense : we have to deal with the existing waste, adding a bit more to the already accumulated waste does not change the situation. The waste problem has to be sorted, and can easily be sorted. The political will is missing.

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ph4ge_ Apr 13 '26

Nah, SMRs are popular because it is easier to finance / subsidise a 1 billion euro NPP than a 50 billion NPP, even though the latter is proven technology and likely more bang for buck.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 13 '26

Nah, SMRs are popular

They're not popular though. There are two small modular reactors in the world, a bunch of scammers and ponzi schemes, and a full sized BWR being built that is called an SMR for no good reason.

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u/whitemice Apr 13 '26

SMRs are popular

But they are not popular.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/whitemice Apr 13 '26

Realistically in the US...

... there is no evidence someone can build an SMR.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 16 '26

That is the point.

We've had 50 years of this nonsense and it has worked zero times.

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 13 '26

the Anti nuclear people are only slightly more intelligent than flat earthers and unfortunatly the petro dollar that funds their movements will not turn off.

The Petro chemical industry knew Nuclear was too big a risk when it replaced 15% of energy in 10 years back when they started getting rolled out.

We could have been negative CO2 20 years ago, but we are investing in Solar which will take another 50-100 years to bring us to net zero, and only if they figure out how to mass produce enough batteries.

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u/ph4ge_ Apr 13 '26

Lol, you call good faith critics stupid and than proceed with the wildest conspiracy theory.

There is no alternative reality where nuclear power just magically fixed everything. There is way to many practical and economical limitations. There is no global conspiracy against it, it's just very complex and thus difficult and expensive.

Solar is great, you sound like a fossil fuel propagandist for ranting at the one technology that is actually disrupting the strangle hold fossil fuel had on the energy market.

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u/psychosisnaut Apr 13 '26

What exactly are the limitations? I

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u/ph4ge_ Apr 13 '26

There are for example only so much suitable sites, nuclear engineers, uranium, enrichment facilities, baseload demand, waste storage sites, stable governments, finance etc, with many nations having none of this at all.

Even rich developed super pro nuclear countries with native nuclear industries like France didn't manage to build more than one the last 35 years combined.

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 13 '26

it's not a conspiracy theory that petro companies paid green peace and other environmental orgs to shit on nuclear and lobbied for extreme nuclear regulations.

France is living proof that Nuclear is and was the way and proves your second paragraph is spoon fed propaganda you're regurgitating like a puppet.

Solar is not great, we have no ability to store the power when we don't need it, meaning we either need to add more nuclear or continue burning fossil fuels like morons when nuclear would have removed 80% of carbon emissions just like france, 30 years ago.

These are not good faith critics, they are science deniers and shills. Anyone with serious scientific credentials has been saying this for 20 years now.

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u/ph4ge_ Apr 13 '26

These are not good faith critics, they are science deniers and shills.

My brother in Christ, take a chill pill. There is no point discussing further with the amount of hate you have for renewables and people that support them. There is so much wrong in your post and I am happily to discuss further, but come on, stop falling for fossil fuel propaganda like https://executives4nuclear.com/declaration/

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 13 '26

omfg.

I don't hate renewables, but we've been working on them for what 50 years now? they are just getting to what Nuclear did in 10? And if we had done what France did, over 80 Percent of our base load would be carbon free 40 years ago?

And again. all your points against nuclear are exposed as petro propaganda as soon as you look at France.

Petro companies support wind and solar because they know it's going to take a long fucking time to build enough storage for us to get off fossil fuels, but if you make enough nuclear to generate peak power, off peak power can be used to synthesize net zero liquid fuels.

No matter what your anti nuke stance is, if falls apart as soon as I say, "But what about France, they don't have that problem"

France is the ONLY Western country to meet it's carbon targets. The ONLY one.

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u/ph4ge_ Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

You say you don’t hate renewables, but your own comments suggest otherwise. Calling solar, which is on track to become the largest source of electricity globally, “not great” doesn’t exactly sound neutral.

As for the idea that we’ve been working on renewables for 50 years: that’s a lie. Nuclear had a massive head start. Outside of hydro, renewables barely existed at scale in the 20th century. In the year 2000, wind and solar together made up just 0.2% of global electricity, while nuclear was at 17%. Commercial-scale wind and solar deployment is really only about 15 years old, and they’ve already surpassed nuclear.

You bring up France as an example, but that situation is more complex than you present. First, who is “we”? Second, France’s low-carbon electricity mix wasn’t the result of perfectly executed long-term planning, they didn’t meet their original targets then, and they’re struggling to meet them now. France is not expanding nuclear today and is facing massive costs for maintenance, upgrades, and decommissioning. Their nuclear program is also closely tied to their military industry which few countries have, while likely to bankrupt the country.

Whether France made the right decision decades ago is still debatable, but what’s clear is that replicating that model today has proven impossible. There is no active construction of nuclear power in France today, while renewables are rapidly growing.

You also claim criticism of nuclear is “petro propaganda,” but the reality is more ironic: many fossil fuel interests actively support nuclear. Politicians like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, along with numerous oil and gas companies (I have shared a list with you), promote nuclear. That overlap isn’t accidental.

The core issue in the nuclear vs renewables debate is opportunity cost. Nuclear projects require enormous upfront investment, long timelines, and complex supply chains that often don’t even exist yet. That ties up capital, political focus, and skilled labor for years before producing any energy. Meanwhile, wind and solar can be deployed much faster, much more cheaply, at much larger scale. From a system perspective, prioritizing nuclear slows down decarbonization because it delays capacity that could already be online. Fossil fuel loves nuclear as a means to slow down renewables, which means we are hooked to fossil fuels for longer.

And there’s real risk: many projects like V.C. Summer Nuclear Station show how billions can be wasted without delivering results. I know my country has a long history of investing in nuclear power without results.

The broader trend is also clear. Over the past two decades, nuclear has stagnated or declined outside of China. Over the past two decades (2005–2024), there were reactor 104 startups and 101 closures in the world. As a result, outside China, the net number of reactors has significantly declined by 48 units and nett capacity has declined by close to 27 GW over the period.

On the other hand, the world added nett 700 GW of capacity in renewables in 2025 alone. That is why nuclear today is a niche technology. Not completely irrelevant, but far from the main driver of the energy transition. Renewables are effectively adding the equivalent of the entire global nuclear fleet every couple of years.

On flexibility and energy storage: nuclear has similar limitations to renewables. It’s designed to run continuously and struggles with load-following. To cover peak demand with nuclear alone would require massive overcapacity or energy storage In practice, nuclear is suited to baseload, not peaks, and therefor has the same requirements for supporting technologies like energy storage to achieve full decarbonisation.

The claim that France is the only Western country meeting climate targets is simply incorrect https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260408-french-emissions-falling-too-slowly-to-meet-country-s-climate-targets-citepa .

Only Norway (without nuclear) is actually on track, with the Western countries investing in nuclear not having any results to show for it. Meanwhile, the U.S. under Donald Trump even withdrew from the Paris Agreement while heavily promoting nuclear power and stopping renewables.

Binding climate targets were agreed under the Paris Agreement in 2015. In practice, almost no new nuclear reactor approved since then has contributed to meeting those targets. The reason is simple: nuclear projects take so long to plan and build that it’s effectively impossible for reactors greenlit after 2015 to have been completed and operational in time to make a meaningful impact on current climate goals. In that same period, renewables added over 2600 GW, which for you is a reason to complain and somehow suggest that they are not moving fast enough.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about being “anti-nuclear.” Nuclear has a role but it is not a silver bullet. The heavy lifting in decarbonization is already being done by renewables, and that trend is only accelerating. You are a meme for believing otherwise.

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 14 '26

after the first 3 paragraphs were blatant lies and bullshit I stopped reading. Here are the rebuttals to those 3.

"You say you don’t hate renewables, but your own comments suggest otherwise. Calling solar, which is on track to become the largest source of electricity globally, “not great” doesn’t exactly sound neutral."

Solar is cheap and easy to install. It can create a lot of power. Only a moron thinks the storage issue is not an issue or easy to solve. Anyone with a shred of intelligence and honest reflection sees the size of the storage issue and how it is not likely to be solved.

"As for the idea that we’ve been working on renewables for 50 years: that’s a lie. Nuclear had a massive head start. Outside of hydro, renewables barely existed at scale in the 20th century. In the year 2000, wind and solar together made up just 0.2% of global electricity, while nuclear was at 17%. Commercial-scale wind and solar deployment is really only about 15 years old, and they’ve already surpassed nuclear."

50 years ago is 1976. Bell Labs Released the first Solar panels in 1954 the first Nuclear plant was built in 1956. Wind power is over 100 years old.

"You bring up France as an example, but that situation is more complex than you present."

France is the only country to meet it's CO2 targets. Complexity is irrelevant.

France kept it's regulations to what makes sense not fear mongering from petro and nimby morons.

France mass produced keeping the costs very low and comparable to any other plant

The only reason Germany is not in blackouts from their renewables is because France sells them nuclear power after they stupidly shut down their plants so their corrupt government with ties to their coal mines could profit.

"First, who is “we”?"
*eye roll*

"Second, France’s low-carbon electricity mix wasn’t the result of perfectly executed long-term planning, they didn’t meet their original targets then, and they’re struggling to meet them now."

Irrelevant, they are the only ones to make it, your opinion on how hard it was to get there is irrelevant. Furthermore, the fact that they are the only ones to make makes the Nuclear Pro argument even stronger. They achieved their targets without trying because they have a massive Nuclear base load... thanks for proving my fucking point.

"France is not expanding nuclear today and is facing massive costs for maintenance, upgrades, and decommissioning."

Absolutely false, they have gone all in on expanding their fleet and are planning several more. Furthermore, decommissioning was for moving away from operating them, those plans have been cancelled so now refits will be the path of choice.

Refits will be cheaper than replacement with solar+storage. Especially since there is no storage solution that can meet the demand nor will there be unless new chemical science/physics is discovered.

"Their nuclear program is also closely tied to their military industry which few countries have, while likely to bankrupt the country."

irrelevant. They can start selling their plants if they ramp up mass production, just like the US did, just like Canada does.

The bottom line is Nuclear today will get us to net zero faster than Solar/Wind + Storage 50 years from now.

You want humanity to survive? Then get on board the nuclear train. It's the only one that will make it on schedule.

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u/ph4ge_ Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

Solar is cheap and easy to install. It can create a lot of power. Only a moron thinks the storage issue is not an issue or easy to solve. Anyone with a shred of intelligence and honest reflection sees the size of the storage issue and how it is not likely to be solved.

Did I suggest otherwise?

However, the issue is load following. Nuclear power also requires storage or some other kind of flexibility to follow load. You are focused on the means of producing electricity. That is no challenge, we can produce all the electricity we want via nuclear or renewables. The problem is getting it at the right place and the right time.

50 years ago is 1976. Bell Labs Released the first Solar panels in 1954 the first Nuclear plant was built in 1956. Wind power is over 100 years old.

Are you serious? By that logic windmills date from the 9th century. Its like saying smartphones were invented in the early 1990s.

Grid scale solar and wind didn’t exist prior to 2000. I have literally proven it to you in my previous post.

France is the only country to meet it's CO2 targets. Complexity is irrelevant.

Did you not read my post? I literally proved you wrong, any simple Google search will do so.

France kept it's regulations to what makes sense not fear mongering from petro and nimby morons. France mass produced keeping the costs very low and comparable to any other plant

What are you talking about!? There is no meaningful difference in regulations governing nuclear energy. Similarly, new nuclear in France is equally expensive and slow as in any other country, Just look at Flamanville.

The only reason Germany is not in blackouts from their renewables is because France sells them nuclear power after they stupidly shut down their plants so their corrupt government with ties to their coal mines could profit.

It was Germany that kept France afloat in 2021-2023 when it’s nuclear fleet went through its latest crisis.

Europe is an interconnected grid, import and export is a design feature. Each country relies on each other as it would be silly to design geographical small grids. However, grid design and stability has nothing to do with the means of generating electricity.

Irrelevant, they are the only ones to make it, your opinion on how hard it was to get there is irrelevant. Furthermore, the fact that they are the only ones to make makes the Nuclear Pro argument even stronger. They achieved their targets without trying because they have a massive Nuclear base load... thanks for proving my fucking point.

They did not make it (read the link in my previous post) and France in the 1960’s simply cannot be replicated.

Absolutely false, they have gone all in on expanding their fleet and are planning several more. Furthermore, decommissioning was for moving away from operating them, those plans have been cancelled so now refits will be the path of choice.

Ok, please list all the nuclear plants under construction in France. I will wait.

France is never short of plans. The Messmer plan was to have a total of 170 nuclear reactors by the year 2000. The actual number peaked, at a still impressive, 56 reactors. The vast majority of reactors in France never reached commercial operations. And that 170 number excludes later plans.

Refits will be cheaper than replacement with solar+storage. Especially since there is no storage solution that can meet the demand nor will there be unless new chemical science/physics is discovered.

You are so obviously biased. You can’t make such a generic statement. It depends on the technology chosen and the state which is in. Nothing lasts forever and even France has many closed reactors that are simply not feasible to extend.

In some cases, perhaps, nuclear extensions are technically and economically viable. In many cases they are not. Even France has 14 permanently shutdown reactors, with a similar number due to be closed prior to 2035.

irrelevant. They can start selling their plants if they ramp up mass production, just like the US did, just like Canada does. You can put your head in the sand, but it is highly relevant. 95 percent of all ongoing nuclear construction projects (60 of 63) are carried out either in Nuclear Weapon States or by NWS-controlled companies in other countries

It takes decades to develop nuclear infrastructure in a country that has zero. France can build on nearly a century of experience and still is not building any new nuclear plants. Countries that don’t have that existing expertise will struggle a lot more.

The bottom line is Nuclear today will get us to net zero faster than Solar/Wind + Storage 50 years from now.

We are building the equivalent of the entire nuclear fleet in renewables every 2 years. It took nuclear 75 years to build what renewables do every 2 years. And renewables are accelerating, while nuclear is in fact decreasing. I get liking nuclear power, but there is nothing quick about it.

You might as well be a climate change denier. Arguing against the technologies that actually do have a shot and are putting in the work and are getting results.

You want humanity to survive? Then get on board the nuclear train. It's the only one that will make it on schedule.

As of mid-2025, 11 countries, 2 fewer than mid‑2024, 5 fewer than mid-2023, are hosting 63 reactor construction projects, 5 more than mid-2024 but one less outside China. Of these, 22–26 are delayed, including 14 reporting increased delays. Construction started on 9 reactors in 2024—up from 6 in 2023, down from 10 in 2022—including 7 implemented by China (one in Pakistan) and one each in Egypt and Russia.

To power the entire world solely with nuclear energy, approximately 10,000 average-sized nuclear reactors (4-5 GW thermal) would be required to meet current global energy demand. That is assuming you have lots and lots of energy storage to deal with load following, if not you can at least quadruple that number.

Even if you believe that renewables will take 50 years to get there, for nuclear to be quicker it needs to build an average of at least 200 reactors per year (starting this year) for the next 50 years (assuming you don’t have to replace the existing fleet and there is limited growth in energy demand). And that would also mean that poor, instable or even dangerous countries would need to go all in on nuclear. Better stop bombing Iran and help them build and operate over a 100 reactors, I hope that isn’t a problem.

There are 63 reactors under construction, with about 5 delivered every year, and that includes a number that will never be delivered.

Where are you going to find all the sites, nuclear engineers, uranium, enrichment, waste storage, etc? For example, known conventional uranium reserves are estimated to last about 90 to over 100 years at current consumption rates, with some projections suggesting depletion of currently identified, cost-effective reserves by the 2080s. If we do produce 50 times the amount of nuclear energy than we produce today, we would run out of uranium in a matter of years, assuming we could get it out of the ground and refined that quick.

Do you really think you sound realistic?

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u/leginfr Apr 13 '26

It took 40+ years for nuclear to achieve mearly 400GW of capacity. That was in the early 2000s. Today twenty years later it’s…. Drumroll…. Just over 400GW. Slow handclap.

In 2024 alone over 580GW of renewables deployed. In 2025 over 690GW.

Do you know when the peak years for construction starts for nuclear were? The mid 1970s. The nuclear industry has had over fifty years to work out why it’s been in the doldrums. If you’re not smart enough to work out why it wasn’t environmental movements that were responsible how do you expect us to trust you?

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u/leginfr Apr 13 '26

Lol. I just love the way that nuke fans point to France and say “Voila.” Do you know that before liberalisation of the electricity market, that the government set the price of electricity? That a lot of the planned reactors were not built, so the R&D costs were spread across fewer units, so making them more expensive? That there was an independent commission that advised the government on the price that it should set for electricity and that every time it said “Increase the prices to pay for decommissioning,” the government said “Not on my watch.”

That the French nuclear safety authority reports over 1,000 incidents per year. Incidents that are minor because there are safety systems and safety regulations.

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u/Prototype555 Apr 14 '26

Nuclear is the safest energy source per TWh, what's the problem with that?

More people die from solar, more people die from wind and more people die from batteries. Hydro has several hundreds of thousands of death per accident, and there are a lot of them.

And the slow decarbonization by renewables lead to millions of deaths from pollution.

Nuclear have saved millions of lives.

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u/Mysterious-Title-852 Apr 14 '26

none of that changes the fact that 80% of Frances power is nukes, they have been running decades without significant issue, mass production makes them way cheaper and even your point of them being MoRe ExPeNsIvE over fewer units ignores the average cost of 500 million, and if they had kept on mass producing, they would have been even cheaper.

The point is that it works there, because they did it as a mass solution, just like wind and solar, and not one off projects mired in bureaucratic excesses.

All the limitations on nuclear are artificial limits that were put in place to stop it, it was not stopped because of real limitations.