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The expense and lead times and nimby-ism which cripples nuclear are mostly regulatory. If you apply the same constraints to wind generation (which is increasin
by brc 11y ago
The expense and lead times and nimby-ism which cripples nuclear are mostly regulatory.
If you apply the same constraints to wind generation (which is increasingly happening) it looks even worse than nuclear.
- epistasis 11y agoI've never seen convincing numbers that the expense is regulatory. And the nimby-ism is not regulatory in the least. There are always grand claims of how cheap nuclear can be, but it has never been seen in practice. Sometimes people even claim that nuclear is cheap by only looking at the operating & maintenance costs, ignoring the true costs of nuclear, which are all upfront. What type of nuclear constraints could be applied to wind generation? Validation of designs? There's very few turbine designs out there. I can't see how wind could be ever be made more expensive than nuclear, but am open to new data.
- brc 11y agoWhere you can put wind power, how many approvals you must have, how long the lead times are. If you can't see how regulatory process increase costs, use this thought experiment. You want to build a house. You buy some land for it, and submit the plans for approval. Now spend the next ten years paying an architect to complete forms and submitting them for review. You have to pay the carrying cost of the land and the architects salary. The cost of the building materials for house remains the same. Can you now afford the house?