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Infernalism t1_ja7opfb wrote

>This month, Los Alamos and other local utilities across the West were facing a weighty decision: whether to pull the plug on their nuclear dream. NuScale had informed members of the group, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS, that the estimated costs of building the six 77-MW reactors had risen by more than 50 percent to $9.3 billion. For Garcia, that translated into a jump in the cost of energy from $58 to $89 per megawatt-hour.

Gasp! A nuclear project with sudden and totally unexpected time/cost overruns?! Who could possibly have seen this coming?

Imagine how much solar/wind/battery tech could have been built and improved with all those billions and the last 6 years.

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BurningPenguin t1_ja7q2zl wrote

Ah, prepare yourself for the "what if there's no sun or wind" brigade.

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Infernalism t1_ja7qqkv wrote

This is why I included the 'battery' part in there.

But, yes, they're going to pretend like battery tech isn't increasingly viable.

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bitfriend6 t1_ja904l3 wrote

That is actually a problem 12 hours a day, when there isn't sun and wind farms tend to harm birds which is why they are banned in areas with strict enviomental laws, such as California. Altamont Pass still gets lawsuits despite being one of the US's most pioneering wind projects, and it has noticably hurt the bird population. Granted birds aren't people but they might as well be in the context of enviomental litigation.

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BurningPenguin t1_ja94im3 wrote

The bird thing is such a dumb argument. There are ways to lower the impact those wind farms have. Which btw is quite low compared to other causes of dead birds.

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gerkletoss t1_jab3mio wrote

>Imagine how much solar/wind/battery tech could have been built and improved with all those billions and the last 6 years.

Looking at the subsidies, I'd say less than what happened in our timeline.

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Kreebish t1_ja7vqqd wrote

Most of these cost overruns are not caused by inflation but corporate greed just like how the price went up on eggland's Best eggs even though they did not have to do any culling.

fortunately these are all estimated costs and have not actually spent the money and so we can still spend on a solar, wind and battery but I have to say the main benefit is developing this new technology so that we can use it in our colonies off world that we must have as survival of the species requirement. At this point there is no one doing the damage and the Cascade is inevitable. I sincerely hope I'm wrong but that would require the science of climate change to also be and it just doesn't look like it is. We are in the middle of an Extinction event and this planet will likely be a corpse within the next hundreds of years

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Alimbiquated t1_ja8u46p wrote

In other words, there is no current need or use for this technology.

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