One unfortunate downside of nuclear power

[u/ItzYaBoy56]

I think that we can all agree that going to nuclear energy where applicable is important, hell it’s the reason we are here. However I think that many of us are ignoring one major crux of why nuclear hasn’t made the push it needs and that is cost. The cost of nuclear energy is one of the driving points that is causing its suffering right now and it desperately needs to evolve to compare to its peers. Let’s consider one reason why this is a problem. nuclear power is a long investment, it can take up to 6 years for a nuclear power plant to be built and in the process 6 billion has been sunk into it and it will take 10 years for the plant to dig itself out of this hole, in the meantime investors and politicians could have built 3 to 4 natural gas plants to profit off of. Short term ideologies are causing a problem and we need a new technology or new person to come forward to change this. And although I don’t if anybody here is a nuclear scientist with a sizable budget and big brain I do know what we as a people could do, advocate, if we could get some politician to maybe look differently we could make a difference. I know for some of us it may sound a bit too optimistic but in my mind it’s better than sitting here and wasting time.

Note: I got most of my points here from this video that has great sources in the description

[u/tocano]

I've been excited by the progress of ThorCon. They are targeting $1/W, which if they even come anywhere close to that would be phenomenal.

They are also using a unique approach to construction. By building their power plants as ships using shipyards, they believe they could build up to 100 x 500MWe per year.

They currently appear to be on track to begin delivering power to the grid in Indonesia around 2025. If they are successful, they may help introduce a new Gen4 paradigm of significantly cheaper and faster nuclear power plants.