• wewbull@feddit.uk
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    4 hours ago

    Falling back to the level they were before the 2008 financial crisis isn’t indicative of the technology advancing and a general downward trend. It’s just the market normalising.

    If we had been not investing in nuclear plants only whilst costs were sky high I’d think you’d have an argument, but we’ve been avoiding nuclear investments for a lot longer than that.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      There have been a lot of technological advances, though. Maybe you just never noticed, but we’ve had advances in fuel assembly and coolants that allow operation at lower temperature ranges and smaller reactors.

      In the future, potential new Thorium Reactors, almost all of which currently operational are for research purposes, could provide another huge leap forward as they produce less plutonium than other standard Uranium isotopes.

      Plus, our technology for containing and handling plasma has grown in leaps and bounds, although most of that technology seems to be closely guarded in China so I don’t have high hopes for it.