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Gen 4 plants are being actively pursued, eg Terrestrial energy (I only pick this one because its closeish to home), I'd say we will see working 4th gen in less than 5 years, whether that's here or in China/Korea depends on the willingness of the population. Your economic argument would make more sense backwards, give then questionable price of utility scale wind and solar its not an immediate or even desirable solution. Look at Germany , expecting to spend somewhere to the tune of 1.4 to 2.1 trillion Euro to get 100GW of renewable electricity, that's 2-3 times the annual US defense budget to get a meager 100GW for 1% of the worlds population, renewables will bankrupt us. Thats $15-20/W, advanced nuclear (in Asia) is about 1/10th of that!Tghu Verd said:Given we don't have working Gen IV plants, are not likely to for a decade, and the economics of such are questionable given the price trend of utility scale wind and PV, it's not an immediate or arguably even a desirable solution.
But this is off topic somewhat... lol
Tghu Verd said:No, just tons of highly toxic, long-lived radioactive waste!
On topic through is the miss conception of waste streams... Our current nuclear waste stock pile is technically fuel for 4th gen, so adopting more nuclear power would hilariously reduce our total amount of nuke waste.
Battery electric on the other hand, given that we don't have a good way to recycle Li ion batteries (too many different chemistries, mechanical form factors etc etc), bat electric planes and cars will produce literal mountains of highly toxic waste and unless we find an economical way of getting that lithium back, its a one way trip for a quite limited resource, not quite as sustainable as people think.
But don't take my word on it:
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-11-uk-electric-vehicle-battery-mountain.html