3 ms·
Except that's not the net effect. When you spend $20 billion on a nuclear plant it becomes a lot harder to also spend $5 billion on the same net capacity of sol
by Schroedingersat 4y ago
Except that's not the net effect. When you spend $20 billion on a nuclear plant it becomes a lot harder to also spend $5 billion on the same net capacity of solar.
There are plenty of much lower hanging fruit available than a nuclear plant. Insulation, residential thermal batteries, trains, cycleways, green hydrogen infrastructure, solar water heating, CAES projects, variable load upgrades to aluminium smelters, etc. etc.
I'm all for increasing public spend on green energy, but until there's enough money for the cost efficient things, then nuclear is just helping the fossil fuel industry
- throwaway894345 4y agoI repeat: solar and wind aren’t capital constrained. We’re already installing solar and wind as fast as we can, so spending an extra $5B isn’t going to get you any more solar or wind, so we should spend the extra money on other clean energy sources.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoYou could build production capacity and the panel for less than the price of nuclear and in less time. We're not constrained to only silicon or cadmium panels either, there are more expensive or less efficient (but still vastly cheaper than nuclear) chemistries that are made from abundant materials. Or just do any of the other things on the list I mentioned. Getting 400 commuters out of cars and into a train is an instant 4MW saving.