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Electricity is unlimited and cheap when people do not fear to build nuclear power plants. > Maybe electricity should be sold in blocks that have to be refilled

Electricity is unlimited and cheap when people do not fear to build nuclear power plants. > Maybe electricity should be sold in blocks that have to be refilled, set daily/monthly quotas or limit current draw Or maybe there should be realtime electricity price and fines for outages, so both providers and consumers would be incentivised to optimize consumption, and market will make the electricity available.

Johnny555 6y ago
Nuclear power is nearly the most expensive source of power if you include the cost of decommissioning and liability insurance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Global_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
- pas 6y ago
  Yes, but no. Nuclear power plants are extremely costly because they lack prefabrication-level standardization. This is the main cost driver. And this is simply because there's no economies of scale. Because we're not building enough. Classic vicious cycle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - lightgreen 6y ago
    > because they lack prefabrication-level standardization It is not the only reason. Another reason is too many regulations and unpredictable government. As a private investor, you get lower ROI because you'd need spend several years fighting bureaucracy with no predictable outcome, and after the project started, it can be shut down in a couple years.
    - pas 6y ago
      > it can be shut down in a couple years. This is true for almost any energy project nowadays. EPA regulations change and bam, you're out of business. > too many regulations I don't think there's "too many", but I'm very far from an expert on this. What seems evident is that a prefab reactor/plant can amortize the cost of getting approved, whereas template plants, like the AP1000 are unique every time, even if they are fundamentally very-very similar, they are not identical. Hence the need for going through all the site specific differences, and their effects on the whole system.

Johnny555 6y ago

Nuclear power is nearly the most expensive source of power if you include the cost of decommissioning and liability insurance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Global_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

pas 6y ago
Yes, but no. Nuclear power plants are extremely costly because they lack prefabrication-level standardization. This is the main cost driver. And this is simply because there's no economies of scale. Because we're not building enough. Classic vicious cycle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- lightgreen 6y ago
  > because they lack prefabrication-level standardization It is not the only reason. Another reason is too many regulations and unpredictable government. As a private investor, you get lower ROI because you'd need spend several years fighting bureaucracy with no predictable outcome, and after the project started, it can be shut down in a couple years.
  - pas 6y ago
    > it can be shut down in a couple years. This is true for almost any energy project nowadays. EPA regulations change and bam, you're out of business. > too many regulations I don't think there's "too many", but I'm very far from an expert on this. What seems evident is that a prefab reactor/plant can amortize the cost of getting approved, whereas template plants, like the AP1000 are unique every time, even if they are fundamentally very-very similar, they are not identical. Hence the need for going through all the site specific differences, and their effects on the whole system.