Our biggest challenge? Lack of imagination.

Matador said:

In fact, IEEE has been saturated with papers coming out of China showing that over the last 5 years, they've driven down the LCOE (Levelized cost of energy, which includes installation and future maintenence) by over 60% just due to scaling up production (subsidized, of course).  I can't see nuclear keeping pace with that trajectory, regardless of the size of the reactors.

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I mentioned the department of energy of the US, not a valid source for you? fair enough, I did a quick google survey, there is a lot of information on SMR and they all seem to concur, however I am guilty of not being thorough enough, I will grant you that, if I had to do that with everything I read that would be a fulltime job. First you asked for a primary source to back up my arguments, then you 'rephrased' by saying that you want non speculative, backedup (basically peer reviewed) sources, and used it as an excuse to prove your point, that is very different, and BTW what exactly is your point? do you seriously expect me to go to high impact peer reviewed nuclear science journals, read the literature and report back? this is the Brewery, I am not doing a dissertation to convince you, this is not a final doctoral examination.

Either way, i fail to see what you are trying to achieve or your contribution to the thread, are you pro/against SMR's? what is your objection to SMR's? on what do you base it? what do you propose? Are you talking about the green earth thing? climate change? what? I seriously don't know, so long it just seems that all you want is to win an argument and feel good with yourself when you said "it appears I have my answer", whatever that answer is. Fine, if you have your answer and you don't have anything important to contribute, then why are you still arguing? Do you want to engage in a debate? what? I don't know.

I did say science, scientists and predictions are usually wrong, but you are taking me out of context, you are cherry picking just like the press does when they 'ommit' certain parts of an interview, why not place the paragraph I wrote before that phrase? give it some context, I was addressing Kelvin's statement that the world will run out of oxigen in 400 years, which is wrong, I was refering it as an analogy that predicting 50 or 100 years into the future of climate change might be wrong, climate is not even an exact science per se. That is completely different from the SMRs, SMRs are not a theory or an abstraction like a physics particle that hasn't been found, some are operating today, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor I know you might not be fond of Wikipedia but at the end there is a list of some current reactors, which are either operating, designed, conceptualized, under construction or licencing, that is very, very different from making a prediction 100 or 400 years into the future, which was my point, and now you just seem to be looking for things I've said to support your point, whatever that might be.

user 37518 said:

Not as clean why? you could argue a nuclear disaster but [...]

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No 'but'. Looking at nuclear without also looking at at least three major disasters is a distortion. Much more important though are uncountable minor accidents all around the globe (some of which it tunred out we had not even been told about). There is no 'but'. -- This does not necessarily make nuclear worse than other conventional energy sources, but also not much better.

As I said before, anybody should have understood by now that nuclear sure is 'fast' -- and it's very good at that, the best we have. As for 'clean' and 'cheap' -- let's just bury these myths.

If you take into account the amount of Megawatts produced VS investment, I would say it is the cheapest of ttem all.

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Sure, no doubt about that. It's highly lucrative in terms of ROI for operators, I repeat, for operators. However, we all know that they kick cans down the lane -- and with that also dirt and cost -- and, more importantly, tend to be the first to leave the room when it comes to accountability concerning almost all side effects (which would be very bad for ROI). This has been tolerated by many governments -- and probably for overall good reasons cos they have to look at the bigger picture. However, I for my part would not fully trust a government source when it comes to scientific insights -- the ongoing pandemic is a prime example of that. Governments don't deal in science, they deal in politics.

I am optimistic that they will somehow find a solution for all the nuclear waste before half-life (hopefully even a profitable one), but right now I find it more uplifting to see that energy companies have started to jump the green train -- and that is a huge market with very good ROI too.

That being said, Japan, which used to be the country with the highest density of reactors, absolutely wants to put the finishing touches on the country's biggest and long-planned new-type nuclear reactor -- and the government might be right, despite all circumstances, cos it's also a reprocessing plant.

All of this has not that much to do with the OP, which was about reducing poverty in select areas by re-greening and making otherwise lost land habitable again. And that alone is worth pursuing, I'd think. Comparatively cheap labour by farmers hoping to reap the fruits of their labour again. Not everybody can, should or wants to live in the city.

Leaves a middle-way compromise: We deploy technicians to build state-of-the-art new-type reactors and reprocessing plants in deserts and send the re-greening engineers with them. Vegetation, population and wealth-creation should sure all follow suit.

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BTW, -- Japan's cherry blossom 'earliest peak since 812' -- Beautiful  8 )
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56574142
Looking forward to the summer. It looks set for a new heat record yet again (a series of yearly records over the last couple of years with 42+ Celcius in the shade in 2020), most likely to be followed later by massive taifuns and large-scale, devastating river floodings as did happen twice in 2019. I'd be fine with just the heat...