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If you can't change the physics, you can change the economics by passing a carbon tax (although I don't know if the carbon cost of building a nuclear plant woul

If you can't change the physics, you can change the economics by passing a carbon tax (although I don't know if the carbon cost of building a nuclear plant would make it cost-savings positive).

bilbo0s 8y ago
Yeah. It really is complicated. That's the thing with nuclear, if we really want it, at some point, the government is going to have to kick in some money to do it. With all of the competing generation technologies looking so good as investments right now, it really would almost be financial malfeasance for an investment group to put money into nuclear instead. You have to give those guys something if you want to make it happen. Right now, even with no subsidies, it's just hard to compete with a lot of these other investment opportunities in power generation. And even government subsidies are going to be complicated, because I'm sure the tax payers would get up in arms about having to finance private reactors. Especially when more and more of them could be getting their energy from wind, natural gas, and hydro or pumped hydro. At that point you'd have people in, say, Iowa, where wind is abundant, paying for reactors for people in New York, or Florida. I suspect that would likely go over about as well as a fart in church.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  There has been a federal production tax credit available for new nuclear power in the US since 2005: https://www.nei.org/advocacy/build-new-reactors/nuclear-production-tax-credit https://www.nei.org/advocacy/build-new-reactors/nuclear-prod... It's structured similarly to the wind power production tax credit but isn't as generous. Presumably this is because in 2005 lawmakers believed that nuclear power was a more mature, more affordable electricity source than wind and needed less subsidy to attract new investment. I'd be fine with nuclear incentives matching PTC terms for wind power (available for 10 years after construction instead of 8, same per-unit rate, no cap on nationwide capacity). But I don't think even that would be enough to spur new investment. Both wind and nuclear power projects have costs concentrated up-front in construction, but wind projects can go much smaller in terms of capacity and dollar investment. $75 million wind projects are common. Any modern power reactor is a multi-billion dollar commitment at minimum, and there's a longer time lag between pouring first concrete and selling the first watt of power. These long timelines and "chunky" capital requirements made investors wary, even before South Carolina and Georgia demonstrated that the newest reactor projects still have major problems sticking to planned cost and schedule.
PaulHoule 8y ago
That is how I thought. Back in 2000 I was a leader in the local Green Party and my ultimate "stretch goal" was to shut down the coal burning power plant that was a single point source of CO2 greater than everything else in the county. It did not look at all practical to do it, we did other things, then the group broke up. A decade later the coal burning power plant got put out of business by hydrofracking. (The town the power plant was in was furious that it was losing the tax revenue, which was one of the reasons I knew getting rid of the plant was a non-starter.) (Oddly enough after the Green Party in our county wound up in 2003, the big environmental activism in our area was "stop fracking".) What did I learn from that? Better technology and market forces can accomplish things that politics can't. It is common to frame the climate change problem as being caused by "entrenched fossil fuel interests" and that is certainly part of it, but most people are at least somewhat aware that the lifestyle they lead was not possible at all in the "solar economy." Surveys show that climate change is a lower priority globally than "good jobs", "clean government", "access to health care" and if we see tackling climate change as a zero sum game about those things then tackling climate change will damage the legitimacy of governments and make people feel less represented and contribute to political instability. The technical fix on the other hand lets governments focus on what their constituents want.

If you can't change the physics, you can change the economics by passing a carbon tax (although I don't know if the carbon cost of building a nuclear plant would make it cost-savings positive).

bilbo0s 8y ago

Yeah. It really is complicated. That's the thing with nuclear, if we really want it, at some point, the government is going to have to kick in some money to do it. With all of the competing generation technologies looking so good as investments right now, it really would almost be financial malfeasance for an investment group to put money into nuclear instead. You have to give those guys something if you want to make it happen. Right now, even with no subsidies, it's just hard to compete with a lot of these other investment opportunities in power generation. And even government subsidies are going to be complicated, because I'm sure the tax payers would get up in arms about having to finance private reactors. Especially when more and more of them could be getting their energy from wind, natural gas, and hydro or pumped hydro. At that point you'd have people in, say, Iowa, where wind is abundant, paying for reactors for people in New York, or Florida. I suspect that would likely go over about as well as a fart in church.

philipkglass 8y ago
There has been a federal production tax credit available for new nuclear power in the US since 2005: https://www.nei.org/advocacy/build-new-reactors/nuclear-production-tax-credit https://www.nei.org/advocacy/build-new-reactors/nuclear-prod... It's structured similarly to the wind power production tax credit but isn't as generous. Presumably this is because in 2005 lawmakers believed that nuclear power was a more mature, more affordable electricity source than wind and needed less subsidy to attract new investment. I'd be fine with nuclear incentives matching PTC terms for wind power (available for 10 years after construction instead of 8, same per-unit rate, no cap on nationwide capacity). But I don't think even that would be enough to spur new investment. Both wind and nuclear power projects have costs concentrated up-front in construction, but wind projects can go much smaller in terms of capacity and dollar investment. $75 million wind projects are common. Any modern power reactor is a multi-billion dollar commitment at minimum, and there's a longer time lag between pouring first concrete and selling the first watt of power. These long timelines and "chunky" capital requirements made investors wary, even before South Carolina and Georgia demonstrated that the newest reactor projects still have major problems sticking to planned cost and schedule.

PaulHoule 8y ago

That is how I thought. Back in 2000 I was a leader in the local Green Party and my ultimate "stretch goal" was to shut down the coal burning power plant that was a single point source of CO2 greater than everything else in the county. It did not look at all practical to do it, we did other things, then the group broke up. A decade later the coal burning power plant got put out of business by hydrofracking. (The town the power plant was in was furious that it was losing the tax revenue, which was one of the reasons I knew getting rid of the plant was a non-starter.) (Oddly enough after the Green Party in our county wound up in 2003, the big environmental activism in our area was "stop fracking".) What did I learn from that? Better technology and market forces can accomplish things that politics can't. It is common to frame the climate change problem as being caused by "entrenched fossil fuel interests" and that is certainly part of it, but most people are at least somewhat aware that the lifestyle they lead was not possible at all in the "solar economy." Surveys show that climate change is a lower priority globally than "good jobs", "clean government", "access to health care" and if we see tackling climate change as a zero sum game about those things then tackling climate change will damage the legitimacy of governments and make people feel less represented and contribute to political instability. The technical fix on the other hand lets governments focus on what their constituents want.