2 ms·

Just as a side note: Recently it seems as if there is interest in finishing those projects as a result of data center energy needs. Your point still stands but

• epistasis 8mo ago
  There's been talk for a long time about restarting construction on Virgil C Summer again, but it has never happened. I remember an interview with a Santee Cooper exec that was extremely withering on the prospects of it actually happening. I can't find it now, but here's a 2019 video from the then-new CEO about the people who were looking into restarting construction, that's far less withering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq0LsX_fCm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq0LsX_fCm4 I'll believe it when it happens. Traditional 1GW nuclear like the AP1000 is just such a huge financial bite to make these days that the only orgs big enough to do it are large consortiums of large companies, or nation state. It's a tough position because the AP1000 has a much better chance of reaching affordability than SMRs, but nobody wants to spend the $50B-$100B in capital to produce uneconomic nuclear reactors in order to maybe drive down the cost of construction so that future reactors will be economic. It's a very different situation for funding than solar, because there's small scale use cases where expensive energy makes sense, in places that wires don't reach, etc. etc., on devices, etc., and that's what really drove a lot of the early development of solar manufacturing capacity. That got it to the point that Germany could do subsidies to really scale up the deployment of expensive energy, and since Germany spent that money, it's been smooth sailing for the rest of the world. The path for nuclear is not as clear as it was for solar.