What Is the Right Long-term Energy Source?

Eric Betzig says the right long-term answer on energy is nuclear, and he has no doubt about it. Nuclear will be scalable. Done right, it is by far the cheapest method, because the costs come down to energy density. Energy density is materials, and materials are cost. The energy density of nuclear is orders of magnitude better than hydrocarbons, which are orders of magnitude better than wind and solar. Anybody who expects wind and solar to replace hydrocarbons is, he says, completely delusional.

In the pandemic, when it was difficult to do much, Eric Betzig went down two rabbit holes. One was nuclear space propulsion. Musk had talked about Mars, and he looked at using Starships for people while moving cargo some other way. Based on orbital mechanics, he decided Starship is probably the best solution. The other rabbit hole was the energy economy. He read How the World Really Works and went deep on the mix of fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, and wind before landing on nuclear.