Summary
China is rapidly surpassing the U.S. in nuclear energy, building more reactors at a faster pace and developing advanced technologies like small modular reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled units.
The U.S. struggles with costly, delayed projects, while China benefits from state-backed financing and streamlined construction.
This shift could make China the leading nuclear power producer within a decade, impacting global energy and geopolitical influence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. seeks to revive its nuclear industry, but trade restrictions and outdated infrastructure hinder progress.
You’re missing the thrust of my comment. The potential damage of a nuclear reactor is orders of magnitude higher than the potential of a coal fire plant. You are strictly measuring deaths that have happened, which is a valid metric for a lot of the discussions and why I largely agree with building more nuclear reactors. In fact I fully agree with building them, to be clear, in case that wasn’t in my previous comment. But I am not talking about number of deaths per [energy] created or something. This is way bigger than that.
You’re focusing on minutia when you need to be zooming out. True or false: a nuclear reactor failing, for any number of reasons, can do a lot more damage than a coal plant or any of the processes to gather coal can.
The answer is unequivocally yes. I do not think that we should not build them as a result, but we have to engage this question or we are ignoring reality.
By that same logic, we should dismantle all our cities, since a natural catastrophe can wipe out so much more people if they are clustered up. Or drive instead of flying, because one airplane crashing is worse than one car crashing.
Nuclear reactors failing make for better headlines. You would literally have to build a reactor design that was not safe even back then - they built it to prioritize weapons grade material refinement - and would have to mismanage it systematically for decades in order to get at 5-10% of the death toll coal generation will do 100% in that timeframe.
The big picture is, if every reactor was Chernobyl, was built like Chernobyl, was operated like Chernobyl and would fail like Chernobyl, that would still cause less deaths than the equivalent coal generation. That’s the big picture. Fixating on one accident that can provably never happen again is the minutia.
It’s clear you’re not willing to engage this in good faith. You’re just going to take the least charitable interpretation of my ideas and twist them into things I am not saying or implying. The simple fact of the matter is a coal plant (which I am against and want all 100% gone) is not going to render hundreds if not thousands of miles inhospitable to human life under any conditions. Nuclear can do that. We have to consider those possibilities because they are very real, as Chernobyl showed us. We were on the brink and narrowly avoided a global catastrophe.
Have a good one dude. I’m done.
Brother, after reading this thread, you’re the one that’s intentionally missing the point and failing to engage in good faith.
Your opinion is noted? What do you want here?