3 ms·

Given all of the factors involved to manufacture the capacity the author is talking about (we'll ignore labor & land costs to install), wouldn't it be better to

• epistasis 4y ago
  Run the numbers, I don't think there's any chance of nuclear providing any sort of economic competition. Even at hopelessly optimistic prices like $7k/kW overnight cost, nuclear is at a huge disadvantage to current solar pricing. Much less the pricing for solar at halfway through the nuclear reactor's life, 20-30 years from now. Additionally, we have little hope of scaling nuclear construction capacity to meet the necessary demand. Whereas solar/wind/storage is way ahead and scaling at ridiculously high rates. Spend 5 years building a reactor, and you get a some number of GW. Spend that same construction capacity building mines and factories, and you get some GW/year additional production capacity. Construction capacity is fixed, really bad, and productivity has not increased in years. Applying that construction capacity to nuclear is a linear attack to energy production. Applying that construction capacity to solar/wind/storage is an exponential attack on energy production.