I mean im guessing its because it may not be as profitable, or atleast at first, boycotts or directly just capitalism fucking everything up? i legit always imagine aliens seeing us still use coal while having DISCOVERED IN 1932
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
21 points (64.4% liked)
Green Energy
3046 readers
91 users here now
Everything about energy production and storage.
Related communities:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Initially, world was very nuclear-positive. Engineers envisioned nuclear power being the holy grail of energy technology and a foundation for our future. Extreme energy density and low price-per-watt of nuclear fuel promised an energy revolution - and for a while, it actually began.
Added to expand: add to this the boost of military. The Cold War required many countries to build up nuclear arsenal, and to make weapon-grade plutonium, you need to conduct uranium cycle - one that conveniently produces a lot of energy and can be used to generate power.
Then, Idaho, Chernobyl and much later Fukushima happened, slowly turning the world against nuclear as a dangerous energy production option. Association with nuclear weapons and Cold War didn't help, either.
In the meanwhile, renewables like solar and wind, which were initially prohibitively expensive, got more traction and investment, and as a result of new developments and economies of scale, they eventually managed to become cheaper than nuclear in most areas of the world, rendering nuclear power financially inefficient and thus largely obsolete.
This was always propaganda to butter over the fact that the investments into nuclear power only made sense as a basis for a nuclear weapons program. Without that (or the ambition for one) nuclear power has always been an economic black hole and with renewables becoming so cheap it is even harder to argue for it.
i can speak to this very directly. my uncle thought he was working on making nuclear power more renewable. but what was really happening is that depleted fuel rods are the magic sauce that makes thermonuclear devices (hydrogen bombs) work. even now, i do not truly believe the nuclear powered ai centers are about the progress of man, but rather an excuse to set up extraction economies stripping the earth of her natural resources to then be turned against the working poor who mined the wealth for their overlords in the form of weapons of instantaneous genocide. the only arguments i'm willing to hear in favor of nuclear are to decommission old petrochemical plants, but none of the nuclear plans being presented now have these provisions. the capital hoarders do not propose to sunset any coal, and accuse you of being a pro-petrochemical luddite when you stand in the way of their nuclear proposals.