This is a key point: > Plants, though, take a decade or more to construct at best and the risk is high of running over time and over budget. Finland’s new Olki

This is a key point: > Plants, though, take a decade or more to construct at best and the risk is high of running over time and over budget. Finland’s new Olkiluoto-3 unit is coming on line after a 12-year delay and billions of euros in financial overruns. I'll expand on this further: do you know how many of the world's nuclear power plants (~660 IIRC) were privately funded and built without (significant) government subsidies? The answer is zero. This is not just a construction issue, it also affects maintenance [1]. Sure lets continue researching smaller, modular reactors that can be constructed more cheaply and in less time. But we're not there yet. None of the research projects, prototypes or proposals are anywhere close to commercial viability yet. Most of them don't even exist yet. Personally I'm bearing on fission power. Plants take too long to build. They're too expensive to build and maintain. I don't trust humans or corporations for long-term management and maintenance, particularly in countries without strong government. We don't have a good story for the long term storage or disposal of enrichment waste or power production waste. The significant systems required around mining, fuel processing, spent fuel processing, maintenance, fuel replacement, inspection and oversight (eg the NRC) are significant and won't scale to the required level. The article is right though: this is political and the politics are bad for nuclear. It will take the likes of China to mass deploy nuclear once these problems are solved to change any opinions in the West. [1]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nuclear-power-wont-survive-without-a-government-handout/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nuclear-power-wont-surv...