Yeah, I was thinking that too. But some of the busiest airports are Atlanta, Dallas

The very next day, Trump officials announced that they would cut 10% of air traffic at 40 of the country's busiest airports to force *Democrats* to end the shutdown. How does that work exactly?

Right now, governments put a high priority on parking infrastructure in many cities (minimum parking requirements), which has the unintended consequence of preventing new housing, reducing density, and driving up housing costs. That's an example where this technocratic thinking leads you astray

It's more a question of how governments prioritize investments in mobility infrastructure, what's the best use of land, dollars, energy to move people and goods. What's the most accessible and equitable use of resources?

These new nuclear projects are often the first to be built in a country in 30 or 40 years, very different technology, but also no domestic experience, no local workforce, no supply chain. It is like start everything over from scratch

Those are incremental innovations (wind and solar), coming from existing fabrication facilities or existing firms. Commercial SMRs have never been built before, and each of these countries is developing tech in isolation. Countries that build continuous nuclear *do* see cost declines

SMR developers looking at shipyard construction (in Korea, for example), where ships this size and complexity are churned out one per week. But in the U.S., we see much smaller designs, like 1MW to 10MW, that would fit in a single shipping container, which is much smaller than a turbine blade

Sorry, seemed like you were citing it as an example of loosening safety standards.

Even if the land used to produce a ton of metals is a lot more than a ton of fuels, you will need a lot more fuel over the lifetime of a wind turbine or solar panel. They might still be more land-intensive, but you have to do a full lifecycle analysis. And yes, studies have included upstream land

Did you actually read this article? 😂 They are arguing that the safety standards for nuclear waste (not power) should be loosened a bit, because currently they have to emit less radiation than your average household basement (due to naturally occurring radon). Doesn't that seem absurd to you, too?

I don't think safety standards should be reduced. The goal of advanced nuclear technologies (mostly not water-cooled), is that they are safer *and* cheaper because they really on intrinsic safety through physical processes rather than engineered systems

Yes, we started with small reactors, but not modular or factory-fabricate. Solar PV started over $100,000/kW in the 1970s, and now it's down under $1,000/kW in many places. Plenty of big things are also made on assembly lines like widebody aircraft, gas turbines in the 100s of MWs

Isn’t this the case for all first-of-a-kind projects? Think of the first offshore wind projects or solar CSP

Energy for Growth Hub has done great work on this. We need to move beyond the basic idea of "energy access" for low-income countries energyforgrowth.org/article/mode...

If wealthy nations want to use less, they are welcome to. But electricity consumption is strongly tied to economic development. There has been much written about the connection between the Human Development Index and electricity consumption. There are no wealthy low-energy countries.

Great point!