A Nuclear Comeback: Are New Reactors the Answer?
The a16z Show
a16z
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2024
⏱️ 48 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | They recognize we have the sensational need for energy. We're not going backwards in our energy consumption. So if we're going to have new energy |
| 0:06.8 | generation has to be clean energy. |
| 0:08.7 | Delivery of fuel are a clear vulnerability. Natural gas obviously can hold an entire nation hostage. |
| 0:17.0 | The typical construction timeline is really like 6 to 15 years on the big reactors right now. |
| 0:23.0 | Maybe nuclear energy is a lot safer than we actually originally realized. |
| 0:26.0 | The radiation exposure from living next to a coal plant is higher than the radiation exposure from living next to a nuclear power plant. We can reduce the radiation. |
| 0:35.0 | the radiation. The really exciting thing for me is that really far into the scale of |
| 0:38.0 | the portal micro reactors, we haven't really achieved that yet. |
| 0:40.0 | And you could actually produce these in a factory because they're portable |
| 0:43.7 | you can do mass production. 10 or 15 years from now the idea that we can't just |
| 0:47.9 | immediately turn on a reliable and enduring power source for a community it's gonna be |
| 0:52.4 | unimaginable if it will going to be unimaginable. |
| 0:53.1 | It will be a solved problem. |
| 0:55.9 | What might surprise some people to learn |
| 0:57.9 | is that nuclear energy accounts for 20% |
| 1:00.6 | of the electricity in the United States. But what I think will surprise very few people |
| 1:06.3 | it's to learn that this carbon-free energy source has quite the storied history. |
| 1:10.8 | Over the last few decades decades resulting in new reactors slowing almost entirely to a halt. |
| 1:17.5 | However, the past few years have been what some people might call a comeback story. In 2023, we saw America's first newly built |
| 1:26.3 | reactor come online in over three decades. But we're also seeing startups build |
| 1:31.6 | entirely new types of reactors, public discourse shifting, |
| 1:35.4 | and even the US government itself recently announcing its intent to triple nuclear power production by 2050. |
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