this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Trump Orders Faster Build-Out of Nuclear Power Plants | Among a flurry of executive actions, Mr. Trump directed the nation’s nuclear safety regulator to speed up approvals for new reactors. (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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It's worth noting that he also fired many of the staff who know how to ensure that they're actually safe, as well as the staff who would approve financing.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What prevents the approval of the reactors, is it bad designs or just a case of planning permission delays because people don't want a nuclear reactor built. Surprised to see Trump being in favour as nuclear as he normally seems to favour the oil industry.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)
  • they are really expensive
  • have a history of costing far more than promised
  • nuclear executives have a history of dishonesty, so you need to check absolutely every detail
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

they are really expensive have a history of costing far more than promised

Because every plant is essentially a unique prototype in a field with very few experienced experts. Building nuclear plants makes building future nuclear plants cheaper and increases the pool of nuclear experts in the country.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. Let's build one. Oh it's costing more than expected because no one here knows what they are doing. But they are trained up now so the next one will be cheaper. Ah, contract cancelled so that training will die out by the time another reactor build is agreed on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Sure, that's what has been happening due to the high regulatory hurdle for getting a plant cleared. Compared to other countries, it takes a lot longer in the US to get through the regulatory hurdles.

I think that, because of events like Three Mile Island and the influence of fossil fuel competitors, politicians have been using overregulation as a way of limiting the deployment of nuclear power generation and not simply as a means of making it more safe.

Having an administration that is pro-nuclear would probably help the skill decay issue, if we're starting new plants more often then there will be less time for the knowledge to die out so future plants can be built faster, cheaper and safer.

Of course, this is the Trump administration so how much of this is performative and how much is substantial change has yet to be seen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

The learning-by-doing cycle happened in other areas, but plateaued with nuclear quite a while back.