this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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I saw an economist recently speak and he touched on the topic of oil. Beyond using it for power, it is deeply rooted in everything we do by way of plastic (in your car, on your TV, fast food containers, Barbie boxes, coffee makers, and so on). Practically speaking, giving up oil will take a while, so we should start the process sooner rather than later. Super interesting presentation.
Agreed, and on the topic of nuclear energy generation, it takes 10-20 years to build a decent plant. Combined cycle natural gas plants take less than 2 years from breaking ground to synchronizing with the grid. It's no wonder these types of power plant have been sprouting up everywhere. If we wanted to be positioned to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, we should've been building nuclear plants at some point in the past 40 years to handle base loads while we replace coal and gas plants with wind, solar, and hydro. Because of plastics, I don't see us completely off oil products any time soon, but there's no good reason for us to still be burning fossils fuels for electricity. And this is coming from a combined cycle gas plant operator. We are doing everything we can to be as green as feasible, but we still release significant greenhouse gases while nuclear plants don't. America will be far behind if we continue on this path while other world leaders invest in modern nuclear tech. There will be a profitable, commercial fusion reactor somewhere in the world within 20 years, and maybe we will have built an experimental net-zero fusion reactor by then.