AHC Answer: More Nuclear Power

kernals12

Banned
There are lots of threads here about how (insert country here, usually the US) can have a French level of nuclear power. The answer is simple: just slap fees on the many pollutants caused by coal.

If this is done around 1970, then nuclear is the only feasible thing to replace all the coal fired power, since the energy crisis made fuel oil and natural gas prohibitively expensive (a situation that ended after 1986).
 
Simple. Execute all the leftists green types.
If thats too extreme, then you need some other POD where there is a hell let loss hysteria about radiation and Governments are not mandating rules and regulations in the name of "safety" which do jack ad far as safety is concerned, but do make the whole thing more complicated and expenses.
 

kernals12

Banned
Simple. Execute all the leftists green types.
If thats too extreme, then you need some other POD where there is a hell let loss hysteria about radiation and Governments are not mandating rules and regulations in the name of "safety" which do jack ad far as safety is concerned, but do make the whole thing more complicated and expenses.
nuclear reactor construction starts.jpeg

It's pretty clear here that nuclear reactor construction has no correlation with any prominent accidents, except for maybe Fukushima.
 
The first answer nailed it. Nuclear power is pretty expensive once you stop subsidizing it. And it is heavily subsidized.

So only if you make other means of electricity generation more expensive it will work long term.
 

kernals12

Banned
The first answer nailed it. Nuclear power is pretty expensive once you stop subsidizing it. And it is heavily subsidized.

So only if you make other means of electricity generation more expensive it will work long term.
I prefer to think of this as internalizing the costs that coal imposes on everyone else.
 
The first answer nailed it. Nuclear power is pretty expensive once you stop subsidizing it. And it is heavily subsidized.

So only if you make other means of electricity generation more expensive it will work long term.
While I'm not sure if it's still true, into the 21st century coal was the cheapest form of power. Nuclear power's advantage is that the mining takes place far from civilisation (unlike solar panels which need an industrial base to produce) and the plants can be built close by major urban areas unlike solar or wind farms which require certain conditions for maximum efficiency. Hydro dams are still better since there's already plenty of precedent for relocating people affected by the time nuclear power is a thing, although from a yellow environmentalist perspective nuclear energy is better since you don't need to create artificial lakes or relocate anyone for a nuclear plant.

I prefer to think of this as internalizing the costs that coal imposes on everyone else.
No one likes the occasional ash spill from a coal plant, least of all the fish and other wildlife killed by it.
 

kernals12

Banned
While I'm not sure if it's still true, into the 21st century coal was the cheapest form of power. Nuclear power's advantage is that the mining takes place far from civilisation (unlike solar panels which need an industrial base to produce) and the plants can be built close by major urban areas unlike solar or wind farms which require certain conditions for maximum efficiency. Hydro dams are still better since there's already plenty of precedent for relocating people affected by the time nuclear power is a thing, although from a yellow environmentalist perspective nuclear energy is better since you don't need to create artificial lakes or relocate anyone for a nuclear plant.


No one likes the occasional ash spill from a coal plant, least of all the fish and other wildlife killed by it.
Solar power is now cheaper and even the possibility of a carbon tax completely wrecks the present value of new coal plants. Also, the cost of coal power depends on location. Coal is very expensive to transport. Coal plants on the East Coast will pay more for shipping coal from Wyoming than the coal itself costs.
 
Solar power is now cheaper and even the possibility of a carbon tax completely wrecks the present value of new coal plants. Also, the cost of coal power depends on location. Coal is very expensive to transport. Coal plants on the East Coast will pay more for shipping coal from Wyoming than the coal itself costs.
The coal mined in Tennessee and much of Kentucky and West Virginia in at least the past decade is exported (mostly to China IIRC) and not used locally, since it's too low quality to meet US standards. There's still a lot of coal available in Appalachia if we totally ignore environmental regulations and the human cost of coal mining (although the closure of the coal mines has been very damaging in Appalachia). It's interesting for the sake of this topic that Roane County, Tennessee (site of Oak Ridge), had a major coal ash spill a decade ago yet was also the site of a cancelled breeder reactor project.

Regardless of solar power now, it was not cheaper or better 20 years ago. It still comes with an environmental impact in the production of solar panels, and there's still the issue that the most energy demanding areas aren't in the places best suited for solar power, hence why Russia is making bank on sending natural gas to Western Europe as nuclear plants are decomissioned.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Simple. Execute all the leftists green types.
If thats too extreme, then you need some other POD where there is a hell let loss hysteria about radiation and Governments are not mandating rules and regulations in the name of "safety" which do jack ad far as safety is concerned, but do make the whole thing more complicated and expenses.
You've been here long enough to know that this sort of crap is NOT acceptable.

DO NOT repeat.
 
Mike McCormack is able to win re-election in 1980 and solidify the Pro-Fusion lobbying force in Congress he was in the process of building IOTL that had already been able to pass the Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act of 1980. With a strong force to push for Fusion, it's likely you'd see the Center for Fusion Engineering be created while projects like Princeton’s Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s Mirror Fusion Test Reactor get a chance to actually operate, instead of shut down on the day they were supposed in the example of the latter. Others, like Oak Ridge's Elmo Bumpy Torus preliminary design for a 1200 MW magnetic fusion power plant would actually get built, same for Princeton's Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT). It's important to note that the Reagan Administration wasn't opposed at all to Nuclear Fusion, indeed setting high funding for it during the first term, but said funding began to languish without a unified bloc in Congress to support the costs and especially so with declining oil prices in the second half of the decade. if McCormack had been able to stay and continue his work, combined with the openness of Reagan to said work, I think there would've been more than sufficient political will to see support for the costs continue and thus keep the United States on track for a working reactor by 2000. Such was stipulated by the previously mentioned legislation, which used 1976 projections by the ERDA to establish its time frame. By ATL 2019, Nuclear Fusion would likely be entering commercialization if not already a few years into such, if the timeline presented by ITER is anything to go by.

Another way to help would be to screw over oil. Have Saddam be successfully assassinate at Dujail in 1982 by Kurdish fighters. In the event of his death, given the purges he had previously conducted, it's likely Ad-Douri or Khairallah Talfah would take power. Both have their issues, but both would definitely being more willing to let the Iraqi Army engage in offensives and counter-offensives against the Iranians. Saddam IOTL was pretty reluctant for many years to allow such, resulting in the relatively static war that dominated much of that conflict. With a more aggressive Iraqi leadership from 1982, it's possible the conflict could end much sooner; let's say 1985 and with the Iraqis getting a minor victory of securing the Shatt Al-Arab fully for themselves. With the war at a close, the Gulf states would scale back the amount of their production as opposed to going full blast to help keep the Iraqis funded as in OTL. Thus, the 1980s glut would be avoided or at least seriously mitigated, further bringing about more support for Nuclear Fusion in the United States.
 
WI no one develops nuclear weapons and all the nuclear research in Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, USA and USSR focuses on electric power generation?
 
WI no one develops nuclear weapons and all the nuclear research in Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, USA and USSR focuses on electric power generation?
The only way i see that happening is well if they think it can’t be done or the war ends quick enough too make the manhattan project pointless but you then also need the Americans to think that the soviets aren’t a threat even then they might still develop it so this while it would be amazing is very unlikely.
 
Fusion power has a funny consistency. It has always been two reactor types, 20 years and just a couple of billion dollars into the future.

Especially the 20 years has been the same since the early 80‘s.
 
View attachment 475687
It's pretty clear here that nuclear reactor construction has no correlation with any prominent accidents, except for maybe Fukushima.
Note the massive building of plants in the 70’s and early 80’s.
Chernobyl was in ‘86. A major drop off occurs in the mid 1990’s, ie when those 70’ era reactors were to have been replaced.
Same post Fukushima.
 
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