2 ms·
No, completely not. Of course I am aware that nuclear power plants are still being built. For various reasons. I said, no one can afford to build nuclear power
by _ph_ 6y ago
No, completely not. Of course I am aware that nuclear power plants are still being built. For various reasons. I said, no one can afford to build nuclear power plants. That some still do, is another matter.
The thing is: France is not building enough nuclear power plants to sustain their current nuclear production levels. Finland is struggling to finish the one under construction (vast cost overruns), the UK has a single plant in production with guaranteed prices way higher than market (they want to keep nuclear capability for military reasons I guess). In the US, two half finished plants got abandoned for cost reasons.
Yes, China (and some others) still have ongoing nuclear power plant construction, but compared to the country size, their efforts are also miniscule. To get to the same level of nuclear production, China would need about 1000 plants. They are very far from that and their expansion in renewables is much larger than in nuclear.
- GlennS 6y agoWhen the Hinkley project in the UK was originally planned it probably looked like a much better calculation. Renewables were still expensive then. Oil prices were heading over $100/barrel - with no reason to believe they would drop. There was a lot of hope around the new generation of automatically safe reactors. Hinkley was supposed to be the first in a chain of new reactors, with later reactors having decreasing costs due to economies of scale and learning. Time passed, delays accumulated, the situation changed, and I guess they just refused to adapt to the new circumstances, because they'd already spend so much money?