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I've been hearing just the opposite for the last few years, that nuclear power no longer makes economic sense in comparison to renewable energy. Renewables are

by ewzimm 11y ago

I've been hearing just the opposite for the last few years, that nuclear power no longer makes economic sense in comparison to renewable energy. Renewables are just getting cheaper much, much faster than nuclear and don't require the enormous initial investment and construction time. I'm no expert, and this is just based on several things I've heard over the years, so I'd suggest just starting at the Wikipedia article if you wanted more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... It's showing a range of estimates between $0.067-$0.30/kWh. In comparison, solar was around $0.25/kWh in 2008, $0.15/kWh in 2011, and continues to fall quickly.

VLM 11y ago
The problem is how do megacorps and their privately owned properties such as media and government do their FIRE sector thing to profit off distributed solar panels... Well, they could issue subprime loans and all kinds of weird financialization for people to buy panels. The factories are all all in china but some games can be played there. That's about it. Its not as profitable as building billion dollar class nuke plants... They don't like being frozen out of a market, in this case the energy market, so we're all going to have to sit thru a lot of what boils down to sponsored content about how "we" need plants not panels (who is this "we" anyway?), and how panels are going to destroy the grid and motherhood and apple pie, etc.
AstralStorm 11y ago
That is sadly not counting in the cost of energy storage and is counting the huge regulatory overhead and major inefficiencies in building nuclear plants so far. And the fact that you'd need massive areas of high quality solar panels - it's not like the solar panels will continue to get infinitely cheaper. And massive numbers of energy storage plants which do not exist. (Even lithium-ion does not have enough energy density and it's very limited on lithium mining.) Check the Lazard (2015) numbers. A comparable PV plant in a favorable location itself is only 25-30% more expensive than modern nuclear plant, but the batteries required put it an order of magnitude higher. Plus nuclear plants scale better - they looked into medium-sized power plants.

by ewzimm 11y ago

VLM 11y ago

The problem is how do megacorps and their privately owned properties such as media and government do their FIRE sector thing to profit off distributed solar panels... Well, they could issue subprime loans and all kinds of weird financialization for people to buy panels. The factories are all all in china but some games can be played there. That's about it. Its not as profitable as building billion dollar class nuke plants... They don't like being frozen out of a market, in this case the energy market, so we're all going to have to sit thru a lot of what boils down to sponsored content about how "we" need plants not panels (who is this "we" anyway?), and how panels are going to destroy the grid and motherhood and apple pie, etc.

AstralStorm 11y ago

That is sadly not counting in the cost of energy storage and is counting the huge regulatory overhead and major inefficiencies in building nuclear plants so far. And the fact that you'd need massive areas of high quality solar panels - it's not like the solar panels will continue to get infinitely cheaper. And massive numbers of energy storage plants which do not exist. (Even lithium-ion does not have enough energy density and it's very limited on lithium mining.) Check the Lazard (2015) numbers. A comparable PV plant in a favorable location itself is only 25-30% more expensive than modern nuclear plant, but the batteries required put it an order of magnitude higher. Plus nuclear plants scale better - they looked into medium-sized power plants.