4 ms·
The money cost of 10 all-new nuclear reactors is minor when compared to the economic cost of electricity prices doubling and tripling again, gas and oil prices
by 2ion 5y ago
The money cost of 10 all-new nuclear reactors is minor when compared to the economic cost of electricity prices doubling and tripling again, gas and oil prices doubling again until EOY 2022. Rolling blackouts are not unreasonable to expect.
Industries have moved east and west from Germany because energy is just too expensive (besides too expensive labour due to high state quota as well). In Brandenburg, Chemical plants are threating to shut down because gas prices are out of whack (50% of gas price is tax). This is an extremely high cost for a national economy to pay.
Major consumer energy seller E.on has stopped selling household gas delivery contracts. Transportation cost in gas, diesel and electric car terms is skyrocketing as well. This makes all goods that are getting shipped more expensive. Germans are the poorest people of Western Europe. After tax, salaries are quite low. €500 to a €1000 more in yearly energy cost is a significant burden on many households, dampening spending in any other area including long retirement saving/investing.
All of the above will deconstruct industries, ruin household finances of the already pressured middle and lower class, and set the expectations for years to come when it comes to regulatory politics --- which during the past 20 years were the equivalent of shitposting on 4chan, just dressed up in nice suits and sitting in ideologically blind party councils.
10 all new power plants are chump change compared to that.
- CyanBird 5y agoOh yeah, it might very well be the case for 10 "all new" nuclear plants The issue is that because as I mentioned above, you have a cursed trifecta, you can't have reactors be "safe", "reasonably priced" and "without schedule overruns" at the same time because all of these are inherently conflicting interests such as the Westinghouse/Toshiba collapse has shown, just yesterday there was a thread here in HackerNews of all the corruption inherent to the project, how even when they knew that it was impossible to meet deadlines they still kept saying that they would do it, because of highly profitable tax rebates linked to the run-up to the accorded milestones Only "happy" cases where several reactors have been built on schedule might be France, or right now in China, but both of these where done from a government "national defense" perspective, not from anywhere near to be free-market schemes, the UK I believe also recently canceled a sets of Nuclear reactors again, for safety concerns after Fukushima which led to slight re-designs and therefore schedule and cost overruns It would be neat if this werent the case, but here we are, and closing ones ears and eyes wont make these structural problems go away either