
It isn’t that simple. Solar power wasn’t economical until China made a push to manufacture at scale.
Wind power received that push in Europe. Then China and India have joined in.
Not buying the massive nuclear reactors and buying smaller units could be possible. They exist. Alternative technologies also exist.
But nuclear generates heat, which we use to heat water into steam. Which drives a turbine to produce AC electricity.
Massive steam turbines are massive because they are efficient. Multistage turbines range from near 70% efficient for massive ones to 25% efficient for the smallest ones in serious use.
NTAC-TE is a technology that converts the radiation into electric current. Like solar panels converting the sun’s radiation into electric current.
NASA uses it in space craft.
If we can get that working at an efficient rate smaller radioactive units will produce power without the efficiency loss of small steam generators. Then we can talk about small modular nuclear energy.
Unfortunately every pro nuclear person parrots the same gumf about nuclear being good, therefore we need to build the massive nuclear reactors.
They only consider talking about any other technology to try and defend nuclear when you point out why they shouldn’t be built anymore.
So in 20 years, if we stop building massive nuclear reactors with the money, we might be able to complete some research and start building the correct nuclear technology at scale.
But that 20 years is vital and we need to spend that on carbon reduction now. That’s reducing usage through insulation. That’s renewables being added to the supply directly now. That’s grid level storage to allow us to stop relying on massive steam turbines to hold a steady grid load.
In 20 years we can talk about nuclear again. Add an additional time for every wasted effort on a reactor like Hinckley C or Olkiluoto 3. Starting out as a thin justification and just economically viable.
But then spending 400% of their budget meaning carbon reduction would have been much higher investing elsewhere.
You could afford a house and got a free or cheap education
The state has sold off everything in your lifetime to keep your taxes low, including housing. Which you bought and now own.
Millennials are generation rent with a government renting back what it sold as taxes rise.
And the cold war is still going on, what is it about Gen X that makes them think it stopped. Putin is at war in Europe right now. The cold war only ever paused.
Proxy wars didn’t stop with Vietnam, the cold war didn’t stop with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
You get to experience the events of the world while being comparatively rich.
You got to experience the only decade or so without a cold war threat while millennials experience the threat of Russia and an increasing threat from China.
And millennials were told as children the world would burn if we did nothing. Gen X and the Boomers did nothing.
Yes it sucks.
But you had it good, and politically you’ve fucked us recently. After being previously politically apathetic.
We’ve got a world to repair and it remains to be seen if Millennials will actually move past apathy into fixing it with Gen Z or continuing to fuck it up like Gen Z.