Problem is that we don't build the damn things anymore, so each one is bespoke and expensive. Ideally we'd keep building them and develop the expertise and make it a more repeatable scalable process.
I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".
Both Ukraine and the Red Sea collapsing has produced ads for uranium mining in Saskatchewan, Canada. These kinds of ads don't run without government support; since public opinion is often extremely uninformed, I expect the pivot to nuclear to happen with or without pundits vocalizing their views.
To be specific it's airplane engines, 5th gen turbofan engines. China started building COMAC airplanes too, probably with questionable maintenance and serviceability story, that they can push with govt airlines. They are still having trouble with modern turbofan engines though.
"Machinery" (not including airplanes) is still one of the largest exports of the US. The list [1] of exports by size is:
Mineral fuels including oil: US$378.6 billion
Machinery including computers: $229.6 billion
Electrical machinery, equipment: $197.7 billion
Vehicles: $134.9 billion
Aircraft, spacecraft: $102.8 billion
Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $99.1 billion
Gems, precious metals: $92.5 billion
Pharmaceuticals: $83.5 billion
So the top 3 "non-aircraft" machinery categories are still exported at 5x the amount of aerospace. It seems like people [2] are still interested in the stuff the US manufactures.
Yes but Asia dominates the "building" category overall by a massive margin.
It's just true.
Pharmaceuticals, medical and gems are off topic.
I'm sure there's other small niches the US dominates in. But overall what I said is the objective truth no matter how much you desire it to be not true.
If Asia doesn't dominate a niche yet they are aggressively on track to dominate in the near future.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term. If you mean building infrastructure, that's true, but also partly because the US invested heavily in the same type of infrastructure a generation or two prior. I would disagree with the pharmaceuticals because that is a manufacturing-intensive industry.
Throwing out gems (because that probably isn't a good case, like you said), it still amounts to over $1.2 trillion in exports. I'm sure other countries would love that kind of "niche" business.
Gems isn't good also because it's mostly aesthetic. No intrinsic utility other then being rare and pretty. You won't actually "improve" society with gems. It's hard to distill this in technical terms but I hope you're able to understand without the need to get pedantic.
Gemstones therefore are more of a reflection of countries with the ability to purchase the gemstones as an import and less of a reflection of the country actually exporting the gemstones. Right? If a country exports a huge amount of gemstones it means a lot of external countries have an abundance of economic output such that they can purchase frivolous goods that ultimately don't contribute much to the economy. North Korea doesn't purchase gemstones but maybe a rich country would. And the place where diamonds are mined are mostly from some poor countries in Africa.
>Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term.
Manufacturing and infrastructure I believe are the two words that cover it best off the top of my head but it's unnecessary to specify this to the level of pedantic detail you're going for here. I think those two terms are clear enough.
I think we both know, in general the direction China/Asia is going and where they're completely dominating the US. It's at a general tipping point now. Where one can say they're better than the US overall in the general area of infrastructure/manufacturing. Manufacturing is pretty broad and general and that's the right word to use because broadly and generally Asia is just ahead of the US in this matter.
The problem with these things is that even though it's obvious people still like to debate pedantic details in some vain attempt to use the pedantic details to obscure the obvious truth or even shift the advantage in the favor of the US. Why else would you bring up gemstones and pharmaceuticals?
I don't think I need to elaborate as you requested. You know what I'm talking about and deep down you most likely agree. The trouble here is less about getting at the most accurate truth and more about the inability to accept the truth.
I know what you mean but it's not that clear cut. Rockets? USA. Phones? Assembled in Asia but running iOS or Android. Electric cars? Tesla's still ahead. A lot of the move to China was a choice to have them do the work because they quoted cheaper, which is not irreversible.
It is clear. First of all you brought up Elon. That guy is an anomaly. If it wasn't for him both industries he's responsible for pushing forward would have been viciously surpassed ages ago.
Additionally byd will be surpassing Tesla soon. It's projected to in less than a year.
As for phones, the entire stack is owned by Asia. Software is the only thing we have left and most of it is open source.
Pretty clear cut from your examples. But also clear cut from common sense.
I suggest you find other examples to help detract from the obvious generality. Look into Tiny niches like precision and highly advanced bespoke manufacturing where the US still holds a shakey lead. These areas may help you construct an argument that looks effective but obviously isn't.
It's a little strange that you dug your heels in on the gemstones because I was trying to be gracious and steelmanning your point by conceding that portion. But since you brought it up again, I'll explain why I think it's wrong. Gems are not just "mostly aesthetic". 80% or so of diamonds are used in industrial purposes, ie manufacturing. So if you concede that manufacturing is a good measure, by extension so are gems. The same holds for many other gems. E.g., rubies are used in lasers, continuous measuring machines (which are heavily used in aerospace) etc. Even if that wasn't the case, your take is overly utilitarian IMO. Under your logic, any type of art (movies, music, visual art) are worthless as exports because they are more aesthetic than functional. I don't think I want to live in a society that de-prioritizes art to that degree.
The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point. Asking for clarification is not being pedantic any more than hiding behind ambiguous terms makes for a convincing argument. I'm not, for one, saying the US manufactures more than Asia. But I'm also not in agreement that it's languishing, save for a single industry like aerospace. If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy. You wrote a lot of words but didn't contribute much to the argument other than another vague diatribe when asked for a finer point, and that's often indicative of not having a thorough understanding.
>It's a little strange that you dug your heels in on the gemstones because I was trying to be gracious and steelmanning your point by conceding that portion.
It's False gracious-ism lol. You obviously believe you can win the argument without that so you gave it up. It was a deceptive gesture. Anyway. I'm not in this to win. I'm in it because I, in totality believe I'm right. So what does it matter if I use gemstones given that you already conceded that point? And like I said it was a false concession. You pretended to concede that point and I correctly responded as if you didn't concede.
>The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point.
I can't adequately illuminate my point. I concede to that. The statement "Asia is superior to the US in manufacturing and infrastructure" is a statement with so many fuzzy words I can't satisfy your pedantry. What is "manufacturing"? What is "superiority"? What is "Asia"? Am I referring to North Korea?
There is no study, no science on the face of this earth that can prove either side of this debate correct.
The most we can do is throw a bunch of random facts and tidbits at each other and never ultimately agree. Take your side foray into gemstones... Does diamonds represent all of gemstones? Also what about the proportional value of artificial diamonds vs. Mined diamonds? What about the amount of value involved in beauty vs. Manufacturing? You failed to acknowledge here that diamonds used in manufacturing are mostly manufactured themselves. How much of manufacturing does gemstones represent? We could dive deep into this useless pedantic branch of the debate and ultimately go nowhere.
But despite all of this, we both know what gemstones usually refers to a mined rock for beauty purposes. That was the industry referred to through the colloquial usage of the term gemstones. But there's an underlying strategy here where you can subtly switch definitions and use the pedantic definition without the other party realizing it. Anyway let's move off of gemstones like you originally conceded.
I value the human ability to know things and communicate vague and general concepts and things without fuzzy boundaries without the need to reference data or research. If you don't have the intellectual ability to do this then the only logical conclusion for you is to not even engage in this debate or any debate for that matter because no definitive conclusion is possible for most things of this nature.
I also concede that despite all of this fuzziness you are smart enough to know what I'm talking about and deep down you know I'm right.
Call it diatribe or whatever you want. The outcome of this conversation had a predictable end of going to a pedantic nowhere. I just took it to a different end here.
>If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy.
So? You can make this statement and the following can still be true: Asia is far superior to the US when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure.
Additionally the following statement can still be true: the past several decades American manufacturing and infrastructure has been in decline.
And this as well: America does not have the will or the manufacturing capability to replace it's energy infrastructure with nuclear.
Do we need to get into a overly detailed debate about this or is it just self evident that these statements are true? I think it's self evident. Again it's not really matter of truth, but more about accepting the truth.
China is a paper tiger. It is amazing the credit the media gives them, but no surprise given the medias purpose is to create narratives rather than put light on truth. If China were as dominant as the media alleges Taiwan would have been invaded decades ago. The reality is big mighty China has one aircraft carrier that entered service just 5 years ago, and another one that is a renovated old soviet carrier. The vast bulk of their air force is a half century behind ours. Most other industries are similarly toothless when you dig into how they are actually comprised beyond their raw numbers.
I'm not talking about China alone. I'm talking about Asia. Which is China + Taiwan + Korea + Japan + Singapore, plus every major asian country.
Additionally the rivalry between the US and China is off topic I'm not talking about that.
My statement is, Asia is superior to the US in terms of Manufacturing/infrastructure. I can add more to that as well. In terms of ICs, Asia also dominates. The US is behind Asia on all three of these fronts. As a general statement this is still true. You didn't invalidate anything with your off topic comment here.
That being said, the united states is the dominant spender in terms of defense. They are number one on this front and in terms of technology. I don't think the world has ever seen a military industrial complex as massive and as advanced as the one the US has built. What you say here is true and it's major. It's not included in "manufacturing" but it's intimately connected and thus worth mentioning.
Why do you compare an entire continent to one country and also not count one of that country’s largest manufacturing cost centers as part of its manufacturing? Seems like cherry-picking.
Because at one point in time the US played the dominant role here, with output comparable to entire continents. Now with globalization that dominance has shifted to Asia.
So in essence if there is a place that will convert to majority nuclear power it's most likely going to be Asia that still has the capability to do this. I don't think it's likely for the US.
US still has the capability for sure. Look at this environment in this country. Most every consumer good produced imported here without having to bear the externalities of local manufacturing or resource extraction like localized pollution and diminished health outcomes. Most money is kept or invested here. Most of the world is trying to immigrate here. Realistically if push came to shove this is exactly where you’d expect a massive buildout to occur. Supply of materials is solved with massive globalized trade networks oriented towards ports in NY and CA. Supply of money is solved from both private investors and also the strings the federal reserve can uniquely pull. Supply of labor is also solved considering how much low skilled labor is available in central and south America that is able to be drawn upon in probably a years time or much less if such job opportunities present themselves. There is also a lot of low skilled labor in this country already kept idle, working service jobs like cashiers in towns that have little other work but such service jobs, in effect the town exists and demands labor yet produces nothing, and these sorts of places were ripe for building out defense industries in record time in the 1940s. We import skilled labor and knowledge workers from most other countries who struggle to offer them lifelong work locally.
I sometimes imagine how cool it would be if some of the worlds biggest billionaires got together and just did some crazy mega project and didn't care about profits.
This nuclear plant cost ~$34 billion USD. What if Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and a few others just got together and built 10 or so nuclear power plants? I wonder if that could actually bring down the price to build them.
Money, at that scale at least, is pretty good at calculating business cases. And the money is on renewables, especially solar. And the solar Wp cost for modules is, with some special cause exceptions, following Moores law. Nuclear not so much, all those plants have is delays and cost over-runs.
The Money can see where renewables and storage are likely to be when any nuclear plant that could start to be built today would become available.
Nuclear plants have only ever been built where the customers can be forced to buy the power. No merchant nuclear plant, selling into a competitive market, has ever been built anywhere.
It's a pity -- if we had kept up the pace, we'd already have completely decarbonized our grid, but instead we are barely starting. Ah well. At least solar and wind finally became economical. Any path forward is a good path, even if it's 50 years late.
At the moment, coal and probably gas is more expensive than solar, purely due to the turbines and generators.
Nuclear relies on the same subsystems, and it’s unlikely they’ll get significantly cheaper any time soon.
Having said that, I think nuclear could be made cost-competitive with coal and natural gas, at least in theory. Also, it’s unclear that we’ll be able to build a reliable, net carbon negative power grid without a large number of nuclear plants.
Perhaps they were in France, where the plants are neither bespoke nor expensive.
They reuse blueprints, and make use of interchangeable parts, unlike the US nuclear. As a bonus, they can train people once, then transfer them between identical nuclear plants. Also, if there is a near miss at one plant, they apply the safety upgrades to the whole fleet.
How much did they cost in France? How much do they cost?
> They reuse blueprints, and make use of interchangeable parts, unlike the US nuclear. As a bonus, they can train people once, then transfer them between identical nuclear plants. Also, if there is a near miss at one plant, they apply the safety upgrades to the whole fleet.
That all sounds good as a first impression, but I've learned to ask: Are those the primary bottlenecks and costs?
I had a professor in an facilities course mention the improved level of industrialization of nuclear plant construction as a big reason why France managed to be successful with nuclear energy in a way that other countries have not. If so, is this one of those dreaded examples of the free market failing our actual best interests?
The French government, through the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, played a key role in standardization of civilian nuclear plants and, to my knowledge, the United States had no true parallel and instead relied on private companies to figure that amongst themselves. We all know how that tends to turn out.
I actually thought nothing and was curious enough to ask for clarity, as clearly demonstrated. But if you're the type to read into the question what you want just so you can call me an "idiot", that makes you a pretty special type of asshole there buddy.
Your question was full of self righteous snark and your response to my question was as well. Trying to tell me you were just "curious" and "asking for clarity" is 100% bullshit and you know it. If you want to actually engage in a conversation, drop the snark and I'll be happy to have a pleasant conversation with you. Otherwise, I guess we'll both have to be assholes.
I still don't see you making any constructive comment. If you're going to, make it your next one please. If you want an answer to your original rhetorical-looking question. The answer is no.
I heard or read somewhere that in China they had the same issue - like in every mega project, there are deadlines and ... well it doesn't really fare well. So the issue is real.
MIT found that reusing a design made plants more expensive to build, not less, because of costly on-site last minute design changes.
Taking your point more charitably, it is indeed the lack of a sustainable nuclear energy industry that routinely builds plants that causes costs to skyrocket. There is a chicken and egg situation: nuclear projects don’t get funded because they’re too expensive, so there is no chance to develop expertise in how to build them cheaply, which causes the few that get greenlit to be built by rookie teams that make rookie mistakes that cause costs to skyrocket.
I clicked through to the actual study ( https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r... ) and I couldn't find a single sentence mentioning on-site last-minute design changes. I searched for "change" and tabbed through all of the results. The closest thing was mention of Westinghouse changing construction standards halfway through an ongoing project, which required many changes to the project design. But, that's one project.
So my question is: Is it possible that the MIT News Office can't understand MIT journal articles?
From the article's own summary: Our results point to a gap between expected and realized costs stemming from low resilience to time- and site-dependent construction conditions.
Guess that's where they took it from.
Skimming the paper it seems a large part of the issue is that it's difficult to mass produce something which needs to be integrated into a variable environment, and attempting to do so is detrimental compared to custom solutions.
This seems to mirror what I've found in the software world, where a custom integration is often much cheaper and easier to maintain than trying to manhandle some generic library/software to do what's needed.
There's got to be some middle ground between every reactor in the country being absolutely bespoke and on the other hand trying to build them in a factory like modular housing.
IIRC one of the big differences/problems is that every one of them have completely different control rooms and control systems. To the point that you cannot train on one reactor and walk into another and operate it. If we at least standardized that side of things, the cost of operations would surely come down
I also question (and happy to be enlightened about) how much the local project needs some massive change. That a pipe might need to be a few hundred yards longer to reach the river surely isn't so consequential that you can't reuse designs
These things are built on huge sites that could be completely leveled and turned into identical square clean pieces of dirt with massive empty land around them How much variation can there possibly be that can't be handled outside of the critical reactor design area
Yeah, I can't shake the feeling it should be possible to mass produce most of the difficult bits, and then have a per-site specific foundation of sorts.
Then again, perhaps it is one of those things where you actually need to make a few of 'em to gain experience.
How many hundreds of billions in subsidies would be required to once again, for the nth time since the 1950s prove that nuclear is truly dead outside of luxury niche applications like submarines?
Today renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels which in turn are cheaper than than nuclear. Through pure economic terms the world is steaming towards a new cheaper energy equilibrium based on renewable energy.
We are currently in the chaotic transitioning phase but that will of course shake out. Sprinkling some luxury nuclear in top will have miniscule effect.
Its pretty clear whats going to happen. Energy companies will provide the absolute minimum redundancies and will make formidable profits most years. Every 10-15 years there will be some catastrophic blackout due to unlikely weather events and everybody will scream murder. The energy companies will swear to do better and maybe some toothless regulations will be legislated. The politicians will be happy to be bought off by those companies since the next event will be most likely after they have left office, so its free money.
In countries with private energy generation perhaps. Energy production is at least partially nationalised (or at least heavily regulated) in a lot of the world, which puts those places in a much stronger position to plan for such events.
The nice thing about nationalized companies is that they're happy to spend your money on things you don't want! Given the choice, folks would rather pay $0.18/kWh for energy production (the average US rate) with 99.9% uptime than $0.30-0.40/kWh (the average Western European rate), even if that came with 99.99% uptime.
Nationalized industries are great for like 5-10 years, after which it becomes clear they have no ability to make effective plans or react to a changing market.
The Goverment power company here (bc Canada) is one of the best run in the world, with some of the cheapest rates (10c cad) and has been a public utility for over 60 years despite a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift
Norway also does great with its nationalized O&G
Nationalize industries can be fantastic with the public benefiting directly rather then a few select individuals.
Fix your public institutions instead of privatization
Pointing to the best run government power company says nothing about the average government run power company. And I don't know why you think cheap rates for a government power company are particularly special. The rates are subsidized by your taxes. What's the real cost? I bet its hard to even find out.
> a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift
Oh really? A government run monopoly being involved in grift? How surprising. Guess what? That's what happens with government run companies. You can't simply wish away the opposing party. And I bet the party you like best also does awful crap you conveniently ignore.
For every great nationalized business you can point out, I could point out 100 that are awful wastes of money.
lol no. BC Hydro is profitable and is not subsidized by taxes, usually turning a profit for the province. it did this for decades until the previous government decided to privatize power production and surprise surprise that saddled the crown corp with a ton of extra costs where if it had built out the capacity itself and not funnelled money to private companies who were doners.
in canada every province with private electricity company is being reamed with high energy prices. every province with a government run power company is not. the same seems to apply in the EU/UK.
nationalized companies run from amazing too crap but every time infrastructure or natural monopolies is privatized the consumer/citizen looses out. EVERY TIME. from parking in Chicago to PG&E in cali to the 409 in ontario - privatization never works out and to prevent abuse regulation is always imposed.
turns out when you grant a for profit company a monoply they take advantage. every time without fail.
so we have on one hand nationalized companies ranging from bad to great for society to private companies always being bad doing everything possible to extract money.
Turns out somethings will always be a monopoly - you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home. Somethings are natural monopolies and turns out in those cases it’s better to have a Goverment provider a service with the objective or serving community/people then a company who’s only goal is maximizing profit.
Also turns out that competition doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for a society see healthcare in America vs the rest of the world or that we are speed running the world into a climate disaster
No it doesn't "turn out" that way. It is a self fullfilling prophesy where a government either grants a monopoly to a private company or to itself. There is almost nothing that would actually be a monopoly without government protection.
> you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home
Why the fuck not? You are asserting things that you clearly haven't thought much about. But I don't have time to try and change your mind. Your biases are clearly too ingrained.
It’s funny you talking about “bias” when you simply refuse to acknowledge natural monopolies which are a real thing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly and just presume they have to be “granted by the Goverment”
“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor.
The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh.
And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs.
And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned).
Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant.
> I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor.
Who cares? That putative issue would be beating a dead horse. If it didn't make sense economically anyway, why worry about that?
> The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts.
Oil isn't in the picture (it's not used for any baseload power generation in the US, and precious little peaking). But gas is certainly an issue. There have been existing plants (not all of them, of course) that shut down because they could not make even an operating profit. TMI's other reactor was cash flow negative for six years before it was shut down, for example.
In any environment where existing plants are troubled, building new NPPs is obviously completely off the table economically. V. C. Summer was so out of the running it was better to write off the $9B spent so far on it than to complete it.
I'm ignoring your fantasizing, your wishful woulda-coulda-shoulda, and instead paying attention to what things actually cost. So, yes, the conversation is over.
The value proposition for renewables left nukes far behind a long time ago. Nukes have no prospect of narrowing the gap even if they could be built and operated more cheaply, of which in any case no plausible signs are evident.
I.e., with massive government subsidy, hidden behind opaque accounting.
China has constructed more solar and wind generating capacity in the past year than its entire fleet of nukes will produce after they have finished building them. China is less interested in power production from their nukes than strategic isotopes.
Solar and wind are now much cheaper than alternatives, even without subsidies. E.g. it is cheaper to build a new solar farm and switch over to it than to continue using an existing coal plant.
The only reason massive subsidies for renewables continue is to accelerate build-out to address the looming climate catastrophe. We need to ramp up to building out a TW of new renewable capacity every year.
In France this is false: nuclear always obtained heavily (albeit indirectly) subsidies: the R&D was public, it was built by a public monopoly using public money and money borrowed thanks to the state vouching for it...
No one was talking about France. angiosperm snarkily implied that Nuclear only works if its subsidized. He's clearly wrong. The fact that France does subsidize it isn't relevant. Nuclear in the US is not subsidized and yet is massively more cost effective than fossil fuel power plants.
The civilian nuclear industry stemmed from massive military investments, which were a way to subsidize it. "In the United States, the federal government has paid US$145 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($85 billion) and fossil fuels ($60 billion) from 1950 to 2016" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United...)
Cost effectiveness will be established after the last hot waste of the last decommissioned plant will be cold. In the meantime any serious accident or waste particle wandering around may induce costs.
Was the basic research funded by governments? Yes. Is subsidization necessary or even done for nuclear powerplants to be built and profitably run given that basic research as an already-existing stepping stone? No.
Thanks for the info. I did some more research and found out that Nuclear Power was indeed not subsidized from 1985 to 2000, but after 2000 some nuclear subsidies seem to have been created. However, while over 20% of the electricity in the US is produced by nuclear plants, only 1% of energy subsidies goes to nuclear, which looks like is approximately on par with subsidies for fossil fuel power.
I don't think we should be subsidizing power (or most things) but it seems disingenuous for an article to claim that nuclear power isn't viable because it gets subsidies, even tho fossil fuel gets at least as much subsidies per mwh as nuclear.
Nuclear power is not viable for a reason other than than it depends on subsidies. It is not viable because it costs overwhelmingly more both to build and to operate than the competition, with or without considering subsidies on either side, and has always produced exactly zero watts for many years after a project started.
Coal and oil still get huge subsidies, yet even with are not viable against solar and wind without.
I'd be very surprised if you could convince me that solar or wind could eliminate the need for the majority of our electricity to be generated by base-load systems like hydro, coal, oil, or nuclear. Do you know what the cost of solar power is if you factor in storage needs?
Wait, what? Other than solar (for obvious reasons), renewables can run 24/7/365, and that's extremely common; as an example, the Itaipu power plant has run continuously since 1984, and it only powered down once in 2009, when several of the transmission lines taking power from it failed at nearly the same time due to lightning.
Solar doesn't. Wind doesn't. Hydro does (usually). You know he was talking about solar and wind. Why are you being a turd? Hydro is tapped, we can't build significantly more hydro in this world.
Because from the end of WW2 up to at least the 90s civilian nuclear was supported, often indirectly, by military programs (nuclear weapons). In France the Court of audit could not even assess it.
I worry instead that the lesson taken from this will be "nuclear is too expensive and ineffective".
reply