

17·
7 days agoHad quite a few arguments with climate change trivialising friends/relatives. The classic “the climate is always changing” and “earth has been warmer”… The one point that seems to stop at least some in their tracks was this:
You know I studied geosciences? Do you know what we call the periods in earths history where climate was changing as fast as it currently does? We call them global catastrophes and extinction events!
Considering the current political climate I don’t think the world would look at Germany building breeder reactors (thats what these are, even if they desperately try to avoid that term) and just say “Great idea!” ;).
Jokes aside, breeders need at least one more generation of research/demo plants to be really commercially viable. Afaik all breeders so far had less than 50% uptime and none could avoid sodium fires. They would solve quite a few fuel problems tho conisering you can “burn” recycled U238 in them.
Personally I would prefer Thorium cycle plants, but those are even further off.
For Germany right now I don’t see much sense in building new current tech reactors. For the same tax money we would need to subsidize these plants, we could build so much more renewable (and storage) capacity which would result in a faster reduction of ghg emissions.