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Kaleberg's avatar

It's interesting to contrast the history of wind and nuclear power. Wind power scaled well. Larger wind turbines were cheaper per unit of power, more reliable and more efficient. Nuclear power scaled poorly. Larger plants were much more expensive to build as they grew larger and made it harder to control the damage of a catastrophic failure. We seem to have roughly topped out on wind turbine size, at least for land based turbines, with limits on construction and transportation of components. Meanwhile, we're seeing a next generation of smaller, modular nuclear plants that might make it easier to control costs and deal with failures.

Engineering is fascinating.

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Andrew L Sullivan's avatar

They don't fit the grid and they still kill off large birds, (unlike cats)

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