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Look, I prefer nuclear over fossil fuel every day of the week. It's the great hope of the non-carbon electricity sources. In practice it is expensive to build,

Look, I prefer nuclear over fossil fuel every day of the week. It's the great hope of the non-carbon electricity sources. In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. And that's before we add the risk of meltdowns. Economically it makes no sense, not at the returns level, not at the timescale level, and certainly not at the political level. (If a US president can shutter an offshore wind farm unilaterally, imagine the risk to a nuclear plant that is 50% complete, and not yet fueled.) There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Govts are the only providers who don't have a money motive. Personally I think research into storage, coupled with "wider" grids geographically, make solar and wind far more financially attractive. Private capital has no appetite for nuclear, and few govts are left with both financial ability, and political will, for 30 year projects. And if you think fission is expensive, wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...

dalyons 1mo ago
Nuke fanboys hate this one weird trick (economics)
- rightnutwingjob 1mo ago
  “Nuclear is too expensive.” Enter pumped hydro: The $12 billion Snowy 2.0 scheme will cop further cost and timeline blowouts, auditors say, but the project has been beset with management failures and the government-owned corporation delivering the project cannot yet say how much more it will cost and how much longer it will take.[1] My proposed solution: invite any of the 31 nuclear power reactor operating countries over to Australia to build them for us, and teach us how to do it. 1. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/extreme-risk-of-yet-more-cost-construction-blowouts-at-snowy-2-0-20260618-p6082n.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/extreme-risk-of-yet-...
  - leonidasrup 1mo ago
    "A 2009 poll conducted by the Uranium Information Centre found that Australians in the 40 to 55 years age group are the "most trenchantly opposed to nuclear power". This generation was raised during the Cold War, experienced the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, witnessed the 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It was the generation which was also subject to cultural influences including feature films such as the "nuclear industry conspiracies" The China Syndrome and Silkwood and the apocalyptic Dr Strangelove. Younger people are "less resistant" to the idea of nuclear power in Australia. Analysis of opinion polls from 2012 shows a "significant decrease in favourable views of nuclear power" following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Austr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia Decarbonisation is very much discussed in Australia, but not much progress has been done, because coal and natural gas is cheap in Australia. Australia also one of the largest coal exporters in the world. https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/decarbonisation/pathways-for-Australia-report https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/decar... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1988..latest&country=AUS~NZL~BHR~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-exports-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-expo...
    - dalyons 29d ago
      Australian electricity in 2026 is about 45% renewable. And rising fast. 40% of Australian homes have rooftop solar. How is this “not much progress”? Yes more could be done but that is massive progress Also, I’m not sure what point you’re making about public opinions. They’ve soured because it’s an economicly uncompetitive option, plus some safety fears. Seems rational to me.
  - defrost 1mo ago
    CSIRO releases final 2024-25 GenCost report following consultation * The report found renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technology, while nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) are the most costly. * Electricity systems rely on a mix of technologies, because no single option can deliver all the capabilities required for a reliable, secure and flexible supply. ~ https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-gencost-final-report https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-genc... Nuclear power, in Australia, relies upon high upfront costs with an uncertain delivery timeline; there are no sizeable existing nuclear power skillsets in the country, no living experience of construction, and a history of global clusterfucks when it comes to third party power station construction / delivery. For the same money that maybe gets Australia some turnkey nuclear power by 2040 (ish) there can be nearly immediate delivery of solar power, battery farms, geological hydrogen storage, mini hydro, etc. Right now, in Australia, nuclear isn't a pragmatic economically feasible choice.
  - anenefan 1mo ago
    Uranium based nuclear is ... a headache to say the very least, if not for the realisation that any waste sites will require much more security than they do presently, not ideal for the issue of decommissioning large uranium nuclear plants when they reach end of life. [1] [2] Perhaps the smaller reactor plants might not quite the same level of trouble decommissioning them. Almost always what echoes in the quiet gap between the reality there is if not multiple billions of dollars of expenditure to implement going nuclear with Uranium, is the repetitive assertion just having all that Uranium is why we should go ahead with it. Well actually we have plenty of Thorium too, and the by product waste is not as great an issue. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Cs8I-6PkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Cs8I-6PkQ [video 27 mins] How a Nuclear Power Plant Is Actually Decommissioned — The Full $20B Process - can take 30 to 60 years - average US nuclear plant decommission cost sits around 10 billion dollars.
Honali 1mo ago
I think the political-risk point is underrated. Even if you somehow get the engineering and construction costs under control, you're still asking investors to commit capital for decades while permitting rules, subsidies, electricity markets, and governments can all change underneath them
tancop 1mo ago
Nationalize all power utilities and use their capital to build new plants. That costs the government nothing, and power will get cheaper even if the nuclear plans fail because their profit margins would be limited by law. It's also the best way to enforce a transition away from fossil fuels.
- bruce511 1mo ago
  >> That costs the government nothing The costs are actually substantial, but measured in things other than money. Countries have nationalised things in the past, including energy, (think Cuba, Venezuela, Iran etc). The real cost tends to be in lost investor confidence at the bottom end, up to massive sanctions at the top end. >> because their profit margins would be limited by law yes, and no. I've lived in a place where selling price was below cost price for electrcity (with a Govt run electricity production.) Ultimately the price is paid out of the budget, which in turn is not infinite. Pressure on the budget in turn leads to redicing costs - like proper maintainence. There's some serious long term pain that is at the end of this path.
  - leonidasrup 1mo ago
    Cuba, Venezuela, Iran have many problems, nationalizing energy production is only one of them, mostly it is the corrupt government. On the other hand France fully nationalized EDF and results are good. https://www.edf.fr/en/2025-annual-results https://www.edf.fr/en/2025-annual-results https://datacentremagazine.com/news/how-france-is-set-to-become-a-data-centre-powerhouse https://datacentremagazine.com/news/how-france-is-set-to-bec...
- inglor_cz 1mo ago
  In most Western countries, you cannot just confiscate someone else's property without adequate compensation. "That costs the government nothing" It does - it costs you your international reputation, willingness of other countries to trade with you and invest in your economy, lost arbitrations in courts. Once you mount this particular tiger of just taking things you want by force, you are riding it all the way towards the "let us build glorious autarky!" club, whose members are famous for their blackouts. Once upon a time, if you started nationalizing industries, you could at least rely on the Soviet Bloc to support you. That was their ideology, after all. Now the Soviet Bloc is gone, Russia is an economic dwarf and China is not interested in supporting precedents like that - they have too many investments abroad to encourage others to fleece foreigners.
belorn 1mo ago
If we all agree that we prefer nuclear over fossil fuel, then the solutions is extremely simple. Ban construction of new combustion based energy production in the national grid. Let the economy and market forces compete to find the cheapest alternative when there is no fallback to burning fuels for electricity. Take Sweden, since that is the country where I live in and which has an ongoing election right now. We are not building any new nuclear. We are building a bit more wind and solar, but both is close to 100% capacity and interest for overcapacity is low. New production is located in areas which has yet to reach 100% capacity. Hydro capacity is already at maximum capacity and need to be decrease in order to follow environmental rulings from EU and prevent extinctions of multiple species. Thermal power plants however is seeing an increase with new plants being planned to burn fuel for electricity and heat. Private capital has great appetite for thermal power plants since those has great financial ability to extract rent from the government as part of the reserve grid and providing readiness to stabilizing the gird, and when they produce energy they can extract the highest price since periods of low wind and low solar create the absolute highest market price. The energy crisis a few years ago demonstrated that a single month can create market prices that exceed that of a whole year if the weather produce non-optimal conditions during the winter. So the solution is really that simple. Do not build power plants that burn fuels. The economics will push the next cheapest solution to the top.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- bruce511 1mo ago
  >> So the solution is really that simple. Do not build power plants that burn fuels. The economics will push the next cheapest solution to the top. That's not strictly accurate. It'll push the next most profitable solution to the top. If there's no solution that offers the desired rate of return, at acceptable risk levels, then private capital simple doesn't bother to arrive at all. Govts don't need a reasonable rate of return, so they can fill that gap, assuming that it doesn't cost too much political capital. Yes we need base load, but that message gets lost when the opposition are complaining about high govt spending etc. Storage is the holy grail here. That allows for more provision of wind and solar.
mpweiher 1mo ago
> In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. That turns out not to be the case. Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap. They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY And they run for a long time, if you don't do stupid shit like ban nuclear power. The US has so far extended the operating license of every nuclear plant that has applied to 80 years, and they now thin 100 years is a realistic option. > There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Most nuclear power plants in the US are privately run, last I checked. So were the nuclear power plants in Germany. In Germany, the Greens tried to force nuclear power to become uneconomical by ever stricter regulations. They failed. Nuclear power had to be outlawed. > Private capital has no appetite for nuclear This turns out not to be the case. https://world-nuclear.org/net-zero-nuclear/news/international-banks-express-support-for-nuclear-expansion https://world-nuclear.org/net-zero-nuclear/news/internationa... https://www.nucnet.org/news/polish-billionaire-to-invest-gbp35-billion-in-nuclear-plant-rollout-across-uk-7-4-2026 https://www.nucnet.org/news/polish-billionaire-to-invest-gbp... Also, the hyperscalars, for example, have all invested in nuclear. The biggest risk to nuclear is governments, which is why private investors want assurances or the government on board. > wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs... What does it cost?
- harrouet 1mo ago
  Nuclear power plants are expensive because 95% of the cost of the produced MWH is in building the plant. If you avoid irrelevant comparisons of costs (e.g. vs intermittent sources), nuclear is actually attractively priced.
- derriz 1mo ago
  > Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap. Not according to the standard statistic for electricity generation cost - LCOE which amortizes capital costs. > They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs. The are not cheap to run. Indian Point closed ahead of end-of-life because it couldn't support its operational costs - about $31 per MWh - about $500m per annum. Average wholesale prices at the time were around $28/MWh.

dalyons 1mo ago

Nuke fanboys hate this one weird trick (economics)

rightnutwingjob 1mo ago
“Nuclear is too expensive.” Enter pumped hydro: The $12 billion Snowy 2.0 scheme will cop further cost and timeline blowouts, auditors say, but the project has been beset with management failures and the government-owned corporation delivering the project cannot yet say how much more it will cost and how much longer it will take.[1] My proposed solution: invite any of the 31 nuclear power reactor operating countries over to Australia to build them for us, and teach us how to do it. 1. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/extreme-risk-of-yet-more-cost-construction-blowouts-at-snowy-2-0-20260618-p6082n.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/extreme-risk-of-yet-...
- leonidasrup 1mo ago
  "A 2009 poll conducted by the Uranium Information Centre found that Australians in the 40 to 55 years age group are the "most trenchantly opposed to nuclear power". This generation was raised during the Cold War, experienced the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, witnessed the 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It was the generation which was also subject to cultural influences including feature films such as the "nuclear industry conspiracies" The China Syndrome and Silkwood and the apocalyptic Dr Strangelove. Younger people are "less resistant" to the idea of nuclear power in Australia. Analysis of opinion polls from 2012 shows a "significant decrease in favourable views of nuclear power" following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Austr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia Decarbonisation is very much discussed in Australia, but not much progress has been done, because coal and natural gas is cheap in Australia. Australia also one of the largest coal exporters in the world. https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/decarbonisation/pathways-for-Australia-report https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/decar... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1988..latest&country=AUS~NZL~BHR~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-exports-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-expo...
  - dalyons 29d ago
    Australian electricity in 2026 is about 45% renewable. And rising fast. 40% of Australian homes have rooftop solar. How is this “not much progress”? Yes more could be done but that is massive progress Also, I’m not sure what point you’re making about public opinions. They’ve soured because it’s an economicly uncompetitive option, plus some safety fears. Seems rational to me.
- defrost 1mo ago
  CSIRO releases final 2024-25 GenCost report following consultation * The report found renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technology, while nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) are the most costly. * Electricity systems rely on a mix of technologies, because no single option can deliver all the capabilities required for a reliable, secure and flexible supply. ~ https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-gencost-final-report https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-genc... Nuclear power, in Australia, relies upon high upfront costs with an uncertain delivery timeline; there are no sizeable existing nuclear power skillsets in the country, no living experience of construction, and a history of global clusterfucks when it comes to third party power station construction / delivery. For the same money that maybe gets Australia some turnkey nuclear power by 2040 (ish) there can be nearly immediate delivery of solar power, battery farms, geological hydrogen storage, mini hydro, etc. Right now, in Australia, nuclear isn't a pragmatic economically feasible choice.
- anenefan 1mo ago
  Uranium based nuclear is ... a headache to say the very least, if not for the realisation that any waste sites will require much more security than they do presently, not ideal for the issue of decommissioning large uranium nuclear plants when they reach end of life. [1] [2] Perhaps the smaller reactor plants might not quite the same level of trouble decommissioning them. Almost always what echoes in the quiet gap between the reality there is if not multiple billions of dollars of expenditure to implement going nuclear with Uranium, is the repetitive assertion just having all that Uranium is why we should go ahead with it. Well actually we have plenty of Thorium too, and the by product waste is not as great an issue. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Cs8I-6PkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Cs8I-6PkQ [video 27 mins] How a Nuclear Power Plant Is Actually Decommissioned — The Full $20B Process - can take 30 to 60 years - average US nuclear plant decommission cost sits around 10 billion dollars.

Honali 1mo ago

I think the political-risk point is underrated. Even if you somehow get the engineering and construction costs under control, you're still asking investors to commit capital for decades while permitting rules, subsidies, electricity markets, and governments can all change underneath them

tancop 1mo ago

Nationalize all power utilities and use their capital to build new plants. That costs the government nothing, and power will get cheaper even if the nuclear plans fail because their profit margins would be limited by law. It's also the best way to enforce a transition away from fossil fuels.

bruce511 1mo ago
>> That costs the government nothing The costs are actually substantial, but measured in things other than money. Countries have nationalised things in the past, including energy, (think Cuba, Venezuela, Iran etc). The real cost tends to be in lost investor confidence at the bottom end, up to massive sanctions at the top end. >> because their profit margins would be limited by law yes, and no. I've lived in a place where selling price was below cost price for electrcity (with a Govt run electricity production.) Ultimately the price is paid out of the budget, which in turn is not infinite. Pressure on the budget in turn leads to redicing costs - like proper maintainence. There's some serious long term pain that is at the end of this path.
- leonidasrup 1mo ago
  Cuba, Venezuela, Iran have many problems, nationalizing energy production is only one of them, mostly it is the corrupt government. On the other hand France fully nationalized EDF and results are good. https://www.edf.fr/en/2025-annual-results https://www.edf.fr/en/2025-annual-results https://datacentremagazine.com/news/how-france-is-set-to-become-a-data-centre-powerhouse https://datacentremagazine.com/news/how-france-is-set-to-bec...
inglor_cz 1mo ago
In most Western countries, you cannot just confiscate someone else's property without adequate compensation. "That costs the government nothing" It does - it costs you your international reputation, willingness of other countries to trade with you and invest in your economy, lost arbitrations in courts. Once you mount this particular tiger of just taking things you want by force, you are riding it all the way towards the "let us build glorious autarky!" club, whose members are famous for their blackouts. Once upon a time, if you started nationalizing industries, you could at least rely on the Soviet Bloc to support you. That was their ideology, after all. Now the Soviet Bloc is gone, Russia is an economic dwarf and China is not interested in supporting precedents like that - they have too many investments abroad to encourage others to fleece foreigners.

belorn 1mo ago

If we all agree that we prefer nuclear over fossil fuel, then the solutions is extremely simple. Ban construction of new combustion based energy production in the national grid. Let the economy and market forces compete to find the cheapest alternative when there is no fallback to burning fuels for electricity. Take Sweden, since that is the country where I live in and which has an ongoing election right now. We are not building any new nuclear. We are building a bit more wind and solar, but both is close to 100% capacity and interest for overcapacity is low. New production is located in areas which has yet to reach 100% capacity. Hydro capacity is already at maximum capacity and need to be decrease in order to follow environmental rulings from EU and prevent extinctions of multiple species. Thermal power plants however is seeing an increase with new plants being planned to burn fuel for electricity and heat. Private capital has great appetite for thermal power plants since those has great financial ability to extract rent from the government as part of the reserve grid and providing readiness to stabilizing the gird, and when they produce energy they can extract the highest price since periods of low wind and low solar create the absolute highest market price. The energy crisis a few years ago demonstrated that a single month can create market prices that exceed that of a whole year if the weather produce non-optimal conditions during the winter. So the solution is really that simple. Do not build power plants that burn fuels. The economics will push the next cheapest solution to the top.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
bruce511 1mo ago
>> So the solution is really that simple. Do not build power plants that burn fuels. The economics will push the next cheapest solution to the top. That's not strictly accurate. It'll push the next most profitable solution to the top. If there's no solution that offers the desired rate of return, at acceptable risk levels, then private capital simple doesn't bother to arrive at all. Govts don't need a reasonable rate of return, so they can fill that gap, assuming that it doesn't cost too much political capital. Yes we need base load, but that message gets lost when the opposition are complaining about high govt spending etc. Storage is the holy grail here. That allows for more provision of wind and solar.

mpweiher 1mo ago

> In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. That turns out not to be the case. Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap. They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY And they run for a long time, if you don't do stupid shit like ban nuclear power. The US has so far extended the operating license of every nuclear plant that has applied to 80 years, and they now thin 100 years is a realistic option. > There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Most nuclear power plants in the US are privately run, last I checked. So were the nuclear power plants in Germany. In Germany, the Greens tried to force nuclear power to become uneconomical by ever stricter regulations. They failed. Nuclear power had to be outlawed. > Private capital has no appetite for nuclear This turns out not to be the case. https://world-nuclear.org/net-zero-nuclear/news/international-banks-express-support-for-nuclear-expansion https://world-nuclear.org/net-zero-nuclear/news/internationa... https://www.nucnet.org/news/polish-billionaire-to-invest-gbp35-billion-in-nuclear-plant-rollout-across-uk-7-4-2026 https://www.nucnet.org/news/polish-billionaire-to-invest-gbp... Also, the hyperscalars, for example, have all invested in nuclear. The biggest risk to nuclear is governments, which is why private investors want assurances or the government on board. > wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs... What does it cost?

harrouet 1mo ago
Nuclear power plants are expensive because 95% of the cost of the produced MWH is in building the plant. If you avoid irrelevant comparisons of costs (e.g. vs intermittent sources), nuclear is actually attractively priced.
derriz 1mo ago
> Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap. Not according to the standard statistic for electricity generation cost - LCOE which amortizes capital costs. > They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs. The are not cheap to run. Indian Point closed ahead of end-of-life because it couldn't support its operational costs - about $31 per MWh - about $500m per annum. Average wholesale prices at the time were around $28/MWh.