>>14415971Anon, new fission reactor designs take a VERY LONG time to get approved by the NRC. This is getting better, new fission reactor designs are getting built for the first time in a long time(in the US), but it takes a while. Fusion doesn't have this problem and some new fusion reactor designs are relatively cheap to test. In addition, fusion can be useful for space travel. Fusion rockets do not need to have a gain more than 1 or even generate power as they can act like a slightly better ion engine. Fusion rockets do not need to have a positive tritium economy, they can consume it. We'll probably get fusion rockets before fusion power.
>>14416118anon, solar energy could get to 2 cents/kwh at really good solar sites. That may allow for cheap chemical fuel to be made. Batteries keep getting better too. Flow batteries are pretty interesting, big tanks of cheap chemicals could be used to make fucking huge batteries. That being said, we could go all solar/batteries to fight climate change, but it's been shown that if you add nuclear to the mix the price of fighting climate change goes down by a half.(source, saw this in a chart at a talk, I don't feel like looking it up right now) So it really fucking helps to have nuclear. But hey, in the US, it's still hard to get nuclear built at all! This isn't just for political reasons. The US just isn't good at doing big projects anymore.
