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Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standard, White House says

(arstechnica.com)
425 points nixass | 3 comments | 02 Apr 21 18:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.876s | source
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2OEH8eoCRo0 ◴[02 Apr 21 18:34 UTC] No.26674386[source]▶
Why is fusion ignored?
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sand500 ◴[02 Apr 21 18:38 UTC] No.26674424[source]▶
Because it is always 50 years out.
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drran ◴[02 Apr 21 18:50 UTC] No.26674597[source]▶
Why is the LENR ignored then?
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cthalupa ◴[02 Apr 21 18:56 UTC] No.26674690[source]▶
Because at least regular fusion has significant and universally accepted empirical evidence of it even being fundamentally possible.

LENR has had to have a name change because the primary connotation with cold fusion is a bunch of psuedoscience and bullshit.

Yes, some real scientists have published some results that make continued study worthwhile, but if regular fusion is 50 years off, our indication is that LENR, if it's even possible, is 100.

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drran ◴[02 Apr 21 19:12 UTC] No.26674862[source]▶
Why 100? I see no barrier to adopt the LENR worldwide in a short period of time, when the effect will be well understood and easy to reproduce.
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1. the8472 ◴[02 Apr 21 20:34 UTC] No.26675677[source]▶
If all you want is fusion instead of energy production then just put a fusor[0] in your garage.

Lab results that show some evidence for trace amounts of fusion reactions do not imply net energy production. E.g. one of the recently announced results needed a powerful xray beamline to get some tiny results, which consumed more energy than the fusion reactions ever released.

This is comparable to the ancient greeks inventing a "steam engine"[1] that does no meaningful work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

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2. drran ◴[02 Apr 21 21:25 UTC] No.26676174[source]▶
Unlike fission and like thermal pump, this energy can be used to heat buildings, so even if nuclear reaction can produce just 100-200% of additional energy, which is enough for about 30-60% of electricity spent, the device still can perform at 200-300% efficiency when used as a home heater.
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3. the8472 ◴[02 Apr 21 22:46 UTC] No.26676738[source]▶
In that case it would compete with a heat pump. And unlike that one it can't double as AC.

And that's not exactly baseline power production. Shifting goalposts?