Slashdot Mirror
Peter Thiel: We Need a New Atomic Age
HughPickens.com writes: Peter Thiel writes in the NYT that what's especially strange about the failed push for renewables is that we already had a practical plan back in the 1960s to become fully carbon-free without any need of wind or solar: nuclear power. "But after years of cost overruns, technical challenges and the bizarre coincidence of an accident at Three Mile Island and the 1979 release of the Hollywood horror movie "The China Syndrome," about a hundred proposed reactors were canceled," says Thiel. "If we had kept building, our power grid could have been carbon-free years ago. Instead, we went in reverse."
According to Thiel, a new generation of American nuclear scientists has produced designs for better reactors. Crucially, these new designs may finally overcome the most fundamental obstacle to the success of nuclear power: high cost. Designs using molten salt, alternative fuels and small modular reactors have all attracted interest not just from academics but also from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists like me ready to put money behind nuclear power. However, none of these new designs can benefit the real world without a path to regulatory approval, and today's regulations are tailored for traditional reactors, making it almost impossible to commercialize new ones. "Both the right's fear of government and the left's fear of technology have jointly stunted our nuclear energy policy," concludes Thiel. "supporting nuclear power with more than words is the litmus test for seriousness about climate change. Like Nixon's going to China, this is something only Mr. Obama can do. If this president clears the path for a new atomic age, American scientists are ready to build it."
According to Thiel, a new generation of American nuclear scientists has produced designs for better reactors. Crucially, these new designs may finally overcome the most fundamental obstacle to the success of nuclear power: high cost. Designs using molten salt, alternative fuels and small modular reactors have all attracted interest not just from academics but also from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists like me ready to put money behind nuclear power. However, none of these new designs can benefit the real world without a path to regulatory approval, and today's regulations are tailored for traditional reactors, making it almost impossible to commercialize new ones. "Both the right's fear of government and the left's fear of technology have jointly stunted our nuclear energy policy," concludes Thiel. "supporting nuclear power with more than words is the litmus test for seriousness about climate change. Like Nixon's going to China, this is something only Mr. Obama can do. If this president clears the path for a new atomic age, American scientists are ready to build it."
[citation needed]
This guy is an idiot. Renewables haven't failed, they are rapidly improving and winning against everything else on economic grounds. Nuclear isn't failing because of fear, it's because it isn't economically viable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fast reactors.
The problem isn't the stuff that lasts 200,000 years. That is pretty low level. Its also not the highly radioactive stuff since it decays quickly. It's the stuff that lasts hundreds of years that is trouble. Luckily we are getting better at nuclear chemistry and our ability to separate the bad from the not bad, or even useful stuff is improving. If we hadn't had such a short sighted policy we would have moved even further.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I don't usually flatly agree w/ something Thiel says (he never has grown out of his Ayn Rand phase), but this time I do.
Wind, solar, all the others...they are awesome and let's keep dumping cash into R&D for those...all of it.
But also do nuclear.
We have a long, long way to go before we can power our cities with renewables 100%. Nuclear has been retarded by 4 decades of fear-mongering...nuclear is safe when done correctly. The 3 Mile Island disaster killed no one and displaced only a small ammount of people...it wasn't anything like Chyrnoble.
It's 40 years later and we can make reactors that are safer by orders of magnitude than the 100s we've been using for decades that have been working perfectly.
Thank you Dave Raggett
This solar panel meme is repeated over and over again by the rabbit anti-technologists but no evidence agrees with their position.
I think I see what the problem is. You should be getting your technology advice from people, not rabbits.
Fine; you've loaded the cost onto the ratepayers, which is just about everyone, so that's not unreasonable, but you have also made some low-life parasitic scum in an insurance company rich as lords, which there is no need or excuse to do.
Let the society as a whole "insure" the plant owners against catastrophes, as they largely do now. Then it's still the same "everyone" paying the cost, but you've eliminated the parasites.
But I would complete the rationalization. I would make society as a whole the builders and operators of the plants. Then you've eliminated more parasites, and profit motives would never intrude into the operation and create lackadaisical, corner-cutting practices.
Tell me this hasn't worked wonders for France.