Comment by pfdietz
2 hours ago
It's not a shame it stagnated. It's good that it stagnated, since it wasn't competitive.
It's a shame it wasn't competitive.
2 hours ago
It's not a shame it stagnated. It's good that it stagnated, since it wasn't competitive.
It's a shame it wasn't competitive.
What do you think I mean by "stagnated"?
Nuclear isn't uncompetitive due to some inherent technological reason. It's uncompetitive due to overregulation and gold plating.
Solar used to be completely uncompetitive, but improvements in technology and increases in scale made the economics work. Nuclear got kneecapped before that could have a chance of happening.
> It's uncompetitive due to overregulation and gold plating
Is there a study that identifies which regulations are unnecessary and how much removing them would save?
> It's uncompetitive due to overregulation and gold plating.
This is an oft repeated point by pro nuclear folk, but it’s not true. There are many regulatory regimes all over the world, and new nuclear is competitive in effectively none of them. Even in single party state china with few regulations , nukes are a declining share of total power every year.
They’re just giant big complex pieces of machinery. With huge ongoing security, insurance and deferred decommissioning costs.
Compare the average specific carbon emissions and price per kWh between Germany and France and tell me nuclear is not competitive.
Nuclear is so competitive that they had to ban it in Germany to get rid of it.
You're reading from the playbook of bad nuclear bro arguments.
The implication you're trying to draw there is a non sequitur. That situation doesn't contradict what I said. Moreover, France is going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the renewable age because they can't afford to subsidize nuclear builds enough to make a nuclear approach work.