> We are probably AT LEAST 50 years away from a near 100% non-nuclear "renewable" world.
For electricity (which is the only energy category where nuclear makes sense) I see no reason to be this pessimistic (of course, depending on your definition of near 100%, but let's say 95%). Solar and Wind have strong growth prospects and are very economical, with reason to believe in further price reductions (especially for solar). As we've seen at COP, a lot of countries are planning to strongly build out renewables (a simple tripling, disregarding a lot of factors, leading to 45% share of renewables by 2030) and only a few are planning a much slower expansion of nuclear.
Storage shows a lot of promise and very successful initial deployments for short duration storage and I see no reason to be more (or even as) optimistic about future development of nuclear & fusion reactors than chemical energy storage.
> It's almost as if all the people working on these projects and funding them aren't complete morons, and the world quite so reductive, like half of hacker news seems to smugly dismiss EVERY time any fusion article is posted.
Or there's a reason why this is mostly funded by governments as a foundational work, presumably with hopes that fusion will be largely viable in the long term. If governments funding this work were hopeful that fusion would be economically viable within 15 years, you'd expect very large funding increases (especially from the private sector) and a reduction in investment for transforming the electricity grid away from big central power producers to more geographically diverse renewable supply.
For electricity (which is the only energy category where nuclear makes sense) I see no reason to be this pessimistic (of course, depending on your definition of near 100%, but let's say 95%). Solar and Wind have strong growth prospects and are very economical, with reason to believe in further price reductions (especially for solar). As we've seen at COP, a lot of countries are planning to strongly build out renewables (a simple tripling, disregarding a lot of factors, leading to 45% share of renewables by 2030) and only a few are planning a much slower expansion of nuclear.
Storage shows a lot of promise and very successful initial deployments for short duration storage and I see no reason to be more (or even as) optimistic about future development of nuclear & fusion reactors than chemical energy storage.
> It's almost as if all the people working on these projects and funding them aren't complete morons, and the world quite so reductive, like half of hacker news seems to smugly dismiss EVERY time any fusion article is posted.
Or there's a reason why this is mostly funded by governments as a foundational work, presumably with hopes that fusion will be largely viable in the long term. If governments funding this work were hopeful that fusion would be economically viable within 15 years, you'd expect very large funding increases (especially from the private sector) and a reduction in investment for transforming the electricity grid away from big central power producers to more geographically diverse renewable supply.