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The central challenge for new nuclear in the USA can be called the "chump search". You need to find some chumps to put up the billions. The chumps footing the
by marze 9y ago
The central challenge for new nuclear in the USA can be called the "chump search". You need to find some chumps to put up the billions.
The chumps footing the bill tend to be poor utility rate payers who are ignorant of the economics.
- epistasis 9y agoWell, the key feature is not that they are ignorant of the economics, it's that they have no control over the process, or what decisions are made on their behalf! When two, incomplete, reactors account for 18% of rates while delivering 0% of the power, the bad decisions were made back when it was thought that gambling even 6% of the electric rate on one resource. $9B on 2.2GW of generation capacity could have bought 36GWh of energy storage at current lithium ion prices. Match that with solar and HVDC to import wind on regionally cloudy days, and then even if the project "fails" they have some grid capabilities to show. Here, there is nothing.