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Nuclear energy is so economically inefficient that the biggest political scandal in Illinois this decade is about the nuclear company bribing political leaders

Nuclear energy is so economically inefficient that the biggest political scandal in Illinois this decade is about the nuclear company bribing political leaders for subsidies. Their former CEO is going to jail over it. The long time political boss was finally indicted over it. Hard to comprehend how blatant bribes have to be in this state to be prosecuted. I'd love to see expanded nuclear, but if that requires corruption it's a tough pill for me.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Their economic inefficiency are mostly due to high capital costs needed to build a plant and high insurance costs. Renewables provide much greater bang for buck now, although you need to build them in the right locations that Illinois may lack (and getting transmission in from the great plains might not be viable?). Maybe China will finally deliver some cheap reactors to work with, although I assume they are running into the same problems that we did (and corruption is a bit problematic with nuclear power plants).
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Illinois already has tons of wind and just-offshore wind in the Great Lakes has a LCOE of $60/MWh which is less than half the claimed cost of new nuclear and roughly 10x less than the actual cost of recent nuclear.
  - JeremyNT 3y ago
    I not infrequently drive between Chicago and Nashville and I'm struck by how many turbines I pass if I take a route that goes through Indiana. For whatever reason I see far fewer on the route that stays in Illinois, which isn't very far to the west. I wonder why this might be? Just a quirk of where the highways run? Interestingly Illinois actually doesn't have a very large coastline. Would it be sufficient for off shore wind? I guess it is convenient that Chicago is right on the lake, and the city must represent a huge percentage of Illinois power consumption.
    - Kon-Peki 3y ago
      > Just a quirk of where the highways run? Yes, most likely. According to this site [1][2][3], Illinois has almost double the wind generation capacity of Indiana. The average megawatts per site is almost 50% higher. Neither state holds a candle to Iowa, but again with Iowa most of those turbines aren't visible from an interstate. EDIT - This wikipedia page [4] shows a list of large wind farms in the US. Sort it by capacity, and you'll see that the turbines you see on I-65 in Indiana are part of two adjacent farms that each are in the top 15 largest in the US and would be the second largest in the US if considered a single project. [1] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=indiana&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=indian... [2] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=illinois&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=illino... [3] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=iowa&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=iowa&t... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_Unit...
tw04 3y ago
>Nuclear energy is so economically inefficient They're only economically inefficient when you ignore the costs of burning fossil fuels. Would you rather spend a couple (tens of) billion on a nuclear power plant, or face global starvation? Everything looks expensive when you externalize the cost of status quo.
- bxhdndnjdbj 3y ago
  [flagged]
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  They are much more expensive than renewables, which is why the corporations don't want to build them.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    Renewables are cheap only if you don't care about reliability.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Part of the high price of nuclear comes from pricing in all potential negative externalities upfront. Production of solar cells requires a lot of energy and 80% of them are made in China where most energy comes from brown coal. If we priced that negative externality into the solar cells the numbers would look a lot different. Battery storage has similar problems.
belorn 3y ago
Energy subsidies is a tricky one since depending on what kind of technology one want to promote/demote there are prime examples for why they are corrupt (except for geothermal I think. I never heard any stories about energy subsidies issues in Iceland). Nuclear do like their subsidies in term of research, building, deconstruction and waste storage. However looking at Europe, around 70% of that is for the single fusion research project called ITER, and like supercolliders, its not exactly about producing a product for paying consumers. Wind/Solar are the single biggest recipient of subsidies in EU by a factor of 2x of everything else in the grid. They also get far more per watt produced than anything else, mostly going to building, deconstruction, grid connections and price guaranties. Hydro receive a lot of subsidies for repair and modernization. Dam repair and flooding protection is expensive and with climate change there is even bigger need for fixing Europe old hydro power dams. They are also in general non-compliant with the environmental regulations (several species are going extinct), but that is not a subsidies issues directly. Fixing the dams so they allow for fish to pass is however a subsidies issue, but as far as I know no country in EU has so far started to put any serious money into it. And then we have fossil fuel subsidies. A large portion of the "reserve energy" plan in eu (the one that is used to balance the grid) is based on keeping a large number of fossil fuel plants on stand-by, paid through subsidies. Then there is subsidies on extracting the fuel itself, subsidies on trading fuel, and subsidies on storage of the fuel, and transportation of the fuel. This is not accounting for the environmental cost from burning fossil fuels, which some see as a form of subsidies. Energy subsidies are quite frankly very corrupt in basically every part that there is.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Their economic inefficiency are mostly due to high capital costs needed to build a plant and high insurance costs. Renewables provide much greater bang for buck now, although you need to build them in the right locations that Illinois may lack (and getting transmission in from the great plains might not be viable?). Maybe China will finally deliver some cheap reactors to work with, although I assume they are running into the same problems that we did (and corruption is a bit problematic with nuclear power plants).

jeffbee 3y ago
Illinois already has tons of wind and just-offshore wind in the Great Lakes has a LCOE of $60/MWh which is less than half the claimed cost of new nuclear and roughly 10x less than the actual cost of recent nuclear.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  I not infrequently drive between Chicago and Nashville and I'm struck by how many turbines I pass if I take a route that goes through Indiana. For whatever reason I see far fewer on the route that stays in Illinois, which isn't very far to the west. I wonder why this might be? Just a quirk of where the highways run? Interestingly Illinois actually doesn't have a very large coastline. Would it be sufficient for off shore wind? I guess it is convenient that Chicago is right on the lake, and the city must represent a huge percentage of Illinois power consumption.
  - Kon-Peki 3y ago
    > Just a quirk of where the highways run? Yes, most likely. According to this site [1][2][3], Illinois has almost double the wind generation capacity of Indiana. The average megawatts per site is almost 50% higher. Neither state holds a candle to Iowa, but again with Iowa most of those turbines aren't visible from an interstate. EDIT - This wikipedia page [4] shows a list of large wind farms in the US. Sort it by capacity, and you'll see that the turbines you see on I-65 in Indiana are part of two adjacent farms that each are in the top 15 largest in the US and would be the second largest in the US if considered a single project. [1] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=indiana&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=indian... [2] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=illinois&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=illino... [3] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=iowa&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=iowa&t... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_Unit...

tw04 3y ago

>Nuclear energy is so economically inefficient They're only economically inefficient when you ignore the costs of burning fossil fuels. Would you rather spend a couple (tens of) billion on a nuclear power plant, or face global starvation? Everything looks expensive when you externalize the cost of status quo.

bxhdndnjdbj 3y ago
[flagged]
kagakuninja 3y ago
They are much more expensive than renewables, which is why the corporations don't want to build them.
- cyberax 3y ago
  Renewables are cheap only if you don't care about reliability.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Part of the high price of nuclear comes from pricing in all potential negative externalities upfront. Production of solar cells requires a lot of energy and 80% of them are made in China where most energy comes from brown coal. If we priced that negative externality into the solar cells the numbers would look a lot different. Battery storage has similar problems.

belorn 3y ago

Energy subsidies is a tricky one since depending on what kind of technology one want to promote/demote there are prime examples for why they are corrupt (except for geothermal I think. I never heard any stories about energy subsidies issues in Iceland). Nuclear do like their subsidies in term of research, building, deconstruction and waste storage. However looking at Europe, around 70% of that is for the single fusion research project called ITER, and like supercolliders, its not exactly about producing a product for paying consumers. Wind/Solar are the single biggest recipient of subsidies in EU by a factor of 2x of everything else in the grid. They also get far more per watt produced than anything else, mostly going to building, deconstruction, grid connections and price guaranties. Hydro receive a lot of subsidies for repair and modernization. Dam repair and flooding protection is expensive and with climate change there is even bigger need for fixing Europe old hydro power dams. They are also in general non-compliant with the environmental regulations (several species are going extinct), but that is not a subsidies issues directly. Fixing the dams so they allow for fish to pass is however a subsidies issue, but as far as I know no country in EU has so far started to put any serious money into it. And then we have fossil fuel subsidies. A large portion of the "reserve energy" plan in eu (the one that is used to balance the grid) is based on keeping a large number of fossil fuel plants on stand-by, paid through subsidies. Then there is subsidies on extracting the fuel itself, subsidies on trading fuel, and subsidies on storage of the fuel, and transportation of the fuel. This is not accounting for the environmental cost from burning fossil fuels, which some see as a form of subsidies. Energy subsidies are quite frankly very corrupt in basically every part that there is.