US AI Action Plan

The US has long since exhausted it's "easy" oil/gas reserves. Yes, there's tons more down there, but it's increasingly hard to get to. Lots of extraction methods only make sense when the price for oil is above some amount.

If the rest of the world standardizes on solar+battery, demand for oil goes down, and so will the price. Which in turn makes US-produced oil not cost effective to extract, and domestic energy production collapses in favor of cheap foreign imports.

And then we're worse off in several different ways.

Ice caps? Try human beings.

Increased Mortality: Projections indicate an additional 14.5 million deaths by 2050 due to climate-related impacts like floods, droughts, heatwaves, and climate-sensitive diseases (e.g., malaria and dengue).

Economic Losses: Global economic losses are predicted to reach $12.5 trillion by 2050, with an additional $1.1 trillion burden on healthcare systems due to climate-induced impacts. One study estimates that climate change will cost the global economy $38 trillion a year within the next 25 years.

Displacement and Migration: Over 200 million people may be displaced by climate change by 2050, with an estimated 21.5 million displaced annually since 2008 by weather-related events. In a worst-case scenario, the World Bank suggests this figure could reach 216 million people moving internally due to water scarcity and threats to agricultural livelihoods. Some researchers predict that 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050 in the worst-case scenario due to natural disasters and other ecological threats.

Food and Water Insecurity: Climate change exacerbates food and water insecurity, leading to malnutrition and increased disease burden, especially in vulnerable populations. For example, a significant increase in drought in certain regions could cause 3.2 million deaths from malnutrition by 2050. An estimated 183 million additional people could go hungry by 2050, even if warming is held below 1.6°C.

Mental Health Impacts: Climate change contributes to mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and PTSD, particularly in vulnerable populations and those experiencing climate disasters or chronic changes like drought. Extreme heat has been linked to increased aggression and suicide risk. Studies also indicate that children born today will experience a significantly higher number of climate extremes than previous generations, potentially impacting their mental well-being and sense of future security.

Inequality and Vulnerability: Climate change disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, including low-income individuals, people of color, outdoor workers, and those with existing health conditions, worsening existing health inequities and hindering poverty reduction efforts.

I specifically refer to the question of who will own the IP and economic might to lead in the clean energy market. Who will innovate? Who will build industrial capacity and know how, etc. It seems we’ve ceded the field

Not just strict energy production. Especially when it comes from sources of energy increasingly infeasible and unpopular.

Nuclear is clean, but has other drawbacks. "Solar+Storage is so much farther along than you think": https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon...

Everything I've read recently has emphasized that new nuclear installations will have difficulty competing with solar and storage.

Having a non-emitting form of base load is important, and nuclear has a place there, but it many applications it's just not cost competitive with renewables.

Nuclear power plants certainly have their place, but this is overstating things. If you take the total costs involved in building and operating a nuclear power plant over its lifetime and divide it by the energy produced, you still end up spending a decent chunk of change.

Nuclear takes 20 years to build and plants cost $10B.

Rooftop solar starts paying back instantly and can be deployed in $20k tranches. It also requires no additional grid infrastructure and decreases demand on non generating grid infrastructure.

Pretty sure it’s rooftop solar that wins the future.

Nuclear fission is more expensive per kilowatt than solar and forces you to go through a lot more trouble to contain risk.

Maybe if fusion was viable, that'll change, but until then nuclear just doesn't make any sense.

I really don't understand HN's love affair with nuclear.

Uranium mining produces significant toxic waste (tailings and raffinates). Fuel processing produces toxic waste, typically UF6. There is some processing of UF6 to UF4 but that doesn't solve the problem and it's not economic anyway. Fuel usage produces even more waste that typically needs to be actively cooled for years or decades before it can be forgotten about in a cave (as nuclear advocates argue).

And then who is going to operate the plant? This administration in particular is pushing for further nuclear deregulation, which is terrifying. You want to see what happens without regulation? Elon Musk's gas turbines in South Memphis with no Clean Air permits that are spewing pollution [1].

That's terrifying because the failure modes for a single nuclear incident are orders of magnitude worse than any other form of power plant. The cleanup from Fukushima requires technologies that don't exist yet, will take decades or centuries and will likely cost ~$1 trillion once its over, if it ever is [2].

And who's going to pay for that? It's not going to be the private operator. In fact, in the US there's laws that limit liability for nuclear accidents. The industry's self-insurance fund would be exhausted many times over by a single Fukushima incident.

And then we get to the hand waving about Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mise Island. "Those are old designs", "the new designs are immune to catastrophic failure" or, my favorite, "Chernobyl was because of mismanagement in the USSR" like there wouldn't be corner-cutting by any private operator in the US.

And let's just gloss over the fact that we've built fewer than 700 nuclear power plants, yet had 3 major incidents, 2 of them (Chernobyl and Fukushima) have had massive negative impacts. The Chernobyl absolute exclusion zone is still 1000 square miles. But anything negative is an outlier that should be ignored, apparently.

And then we get to the impact of carbon emissions in climate change but now we're comparing the entire fossil fuel power industry vs one nuclear plant. It's also a false dichotomy. The future is hydro and solar.

and then we get to the massive boondoggle of nuclear fusion, which I'm not convinced will ever be commercially viable. Energy loss and container destruction from fast neutrons is a fundamental problem that stars don't have because they have gravity and are incredibly large.

I have no idea where this blind faith in nuclear comes from.

[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

[2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-...

You obviously have no idea how much destruction it causes to the environment to get the uranium out of the earth. Maybe educate yourself before putting such nonsense into the world.

A certain group of people keep saying that. But that particular idea of "clean" nuclear does not price in the 10.000 years of safe storage of nuclear waste materials (for the most dangerous HLW materials this number can go up to 100.000 years). Do you and your 3500 generations of ancestors volunteer to do this? Then it is cheap and clean. Otherwise it is yet another instance of "privatize the gains and socialize the externalities".

(And let's ignore the fact that humanity barely managed to organize anything that held even a mere 1000 years)