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It is not delusion, but simple economics what makes it impossible to build new nuclear plants. The Obama administration granted permissions to build new plants,
by diegocg 7y ago
It is not delusion, but simple economics what makes it impossible to build new nuclear plants. The Obama administration granted permissions to build new plants, but few people were interested because fracking made gas cheaper - but even the ones that were built required loan guarantees from the government. The private sector wasn't able to find a solution by itself.
A nuclear power plant requires billions in up front costs, which take a long period of time to recover, a time which can not be calculated reliably because nobody can predict the future and nobody knows how technology may evolve during that time and how will it affect power prices, how future wars will affect supply, how much demand developing nations will bring to the markets, etc. Even if nuclear power is cheap, the margins are not static and betting billions without knowing when you will get them back is not something everyone wants to do.
Nuclear is going to need a lot of government subsidies if it wants to have a renaissance.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hurricanetc 7y agoIt wouldn’t cost so much or take so long if there hadn’t been decades of misguided propaganda and whining about nuclear. The fact that nuclear is expensive is not an engineering or construction problem. China is building nuclear fast and cheap, right now.
- number6 7y agoAnd there will never be a nuclear disaster in china. Ah the wonders of progress and dictatorships
- anticodon 7y agoSo, Fukushima disaster could be blamed on Japanese dictatorship?
- usrusr 7y agoGP is being part sarcastic, part claiming that China would just keep it under wraps. It worked for the Soviets, for three whole days.
- hurricanetc 7y agoWe’re living in a coal energy disaster right now. People fear the wrong things.
- imtringued 7y agoIf that's true then why isn't every country replacing their old nuclear plants with new designs? Why keep around legacy plants like Fukushima that had obvious design mistakes (emergency generator was flooded)?
- hurricanetc 7y agoBecause there is virtually infinite red tape and paper pushing to do it. There are new, smaller, safer, and easy to build plants that have been waiting approval for years and years. The US has never had a nuclear disaster but we’ve had countless coal disasters. Oh and we’re living in a climate disaster caused by coal.