baadermeinhof [he/him]

I didn't really dig deep into alternative generators so I'm not sure where the commercialization process of that is (though it's pretty cool). Most of my nuke knowledge is from some really in depth state of the industry reports I worked on and is fairly domain specific and linked to it's viability as a climate change friendly source of generation.

There's a lot of new smaller reactor gen III+ designs that are interesting and hopefully able to be commercialized as well as some distant gen IV stuff, but everything is decades out from commercialization (LFTR among those). The nut will be cracked I'm positive, but it will be too little too late for our current climate predicament (same with fusion or other exotic generation tech).

France decommissioned theirs in 2010 after finding they were just way too expensive to run. Currently Russia and India still have units (India is building another that should come online this year). Japan did recently as well but it was decommissioned in 2017.

Which plants? Astravets (Belarus) was started planning in 2006 and won't be live until 2021 (hopefully). Shidao Bay (China) has been in construction for a decade with the full plan being 20 years (China's largest nuke plant in progress). Kakrapar (India) is on a ~10 year construction cycle for most of their units. Mochovce (Slovakia) is at like 14 years in their construction schedule. Barakah (UAE) is at 8 years and counting in just construction.

Fuqing (China) and Shin Hanul (Korea) are closest and took 5-6 years per additional unit counting just construction and not planning. The new Shin-Hanuls (3&4) were scheduled for 4 year constructions but I think both are indefinitely suspended and Shin Hanul 2 is still being loaded 7 years after groundbreaking. These figures don't include the initial infrastructure building which would add 1-2 years (adding new units is much faster and also saves planning time).

Modern cycled natural gas plants output the almost exactly the same lifetime co2 as nuclear plants when you account for construction, decommissioning, and dismantling because of the huge amount of concrete these plants require. Though to be fair, this does ignore methane leaks from gas wells, so you win some and you lose some I guess.

Also because material science hasn't cracked the brittleness problem at commercial scale without just replacing all the tubing every couple years which obviously doesn't make sense. There are several private companies and nation states trying to solve this problem at this very second.

Depends where you are. If you're in a state that will definitely go red or blue, then vote third party as a protest act. If you're in a swing state, it's probably good harm reduction to vote biden at least in the short term. The risk is long term we get ineffectual nothing with a biden pres for 8 years and then it's too late to impact actual change for the climate apocalypse rapidly approaching. Of course I think it's unlikely he's alive or at the very least lucid that long, but then that means we get Cop in Chief who is also relatively uninterested in doing anything in this area for 8 years.

If it helps, I'm a well known doomer living in a blue state and will vote third party here, but I'd probably vote D in a swing. Of course I'd do penance for that sin by working in my community to prepare and organize for the catastrophes the dems and republicans are ignoring or actively creating.

Thanks for the tip! Never would've seen it and now my whole crew is picking it up.