Comment by MisterMower
6 hours ago
It did catch on, and then it was regulated beyond the point of profitability, and nuclear plants stopped being built. The points you make are only true because of the unique regulatory regime that nuclear plants exist under.
We tolerate all kinds of externalities from fossil fuel energy production and environmental degradation due to rare earth mining required to produce solar panels and wind turbines.
Nuclear energy is the only industry required to mitigate all possible externalities, and for that reason it is very expensive.
It’s disingenuous to claim nuclear power is a failure because it’s expensive to build without examining the reasons why that might be.
For proof it can work and is both safe and economical, witness the Chinese currently building 40 new nuclear plants. We could do that here, but choose not to. The only missing ingredient is political will, and resistance from ill-informed people such as yourself.
> Nuclear energy is the only industry required to mitigate all possible externalities, and for that reason it is very expensive.
Is there a plant where the enviromental costs of building and decomissioning a plant and of extracting and enriching the fuel are completely mitigated?
> ... regulated beyond the point of profitability
I love this argument because it's never qualified. What regulations exactly make nuclear unaffordable? How many of them are safety related? Is safety not necessary?
It's just a hand-wavy argument for nebulous deregulation when all the evidence suggests that no industry is capable of self-regulation.
> ... rare earth mining required to produce solar panels ...
Solar panels don't require rare earths.
> Nuclear energy is the only industry required to mitigate all possible externalities
This is just objectively false. Fuel processing, spent fuel processing and storage and failure modes are absolutely not completely mitigated or even solved problems.
> For proof it can work and is both safe and economical, witness the Chinese currently building 40 new nuclear plants.
Well if 40 power plants are being built, you can't really say that their operational record is that they're "safe and economical" because they have no operational record, right? Now China has other nuclear power plants but you're not arguing with those.
China has several advantages no Western country has:
1. A standardized design so economies of scales with components;
2. State subsidies such as ultra-cheap finance; and
3. If people who manage and oversee such plants skimp on such maintenance they'll likely be executed.