undefined | Better HN

0 pointsMaursault4y ago0 comments

> It’s insane that the environmentalist movement is inadvertently supporting the fossil fuel industry due to their traditional stance on nuclear.

The environmentalist movement, anti-nuke section, had little to nothing to do with the downfall of nuclear power. It was always and only economics, nothing else contributed to this. Nuclear is very complicated and thus very expensive, and this has nothing to do with regulations. Everything about generating power from nuclear is just expensive. If there was any opportunity to turn a profit with nuclear power, and I mean even the slightest margin of profit, you could not keep investors away, nor prevent nuclear power plants being built in every county in the country. There is a false narrative that supporters of nuclear energy seem to insist on perpetuating, which is that if the idiots would stop being so irrationally afraid of nuclear, we could have cheap, clean energy. This is a completely false position. The scardies have nothing to do with it. It is all and only economics that is killing nuclear power, and nothing else whatsoever enters into it.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

cableshaft4y ago· 1 in thread

Yep. Seems to be just a convenient excuse to hate on environmentalists, when nuclear power is just too damn expensive (and also takes too long to build), especially today when there are cheaper alternatives.

I was all for nuclear power myself before I started seeing how infeasible it was to get us to carbon neutral with them. I'm still fine with any new nuclear power plants that want to be built but it looks like pretty much no one wants to invest in them anymore anyway.

"The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189."

"Capital flows reflect that trend. In 2018, China invested $91 billion in renewables but just $6.5 billion in nuclear."[1]

"Nuclear power plant construction costs—mainly materials, labor, and engineering—rose by 185 percent between 2000 and 2007. More recently, costs have been increasing even faster: In mid-March, Progress Energy informed state regulators that the twin 1,100 MW nuclear plants it intends to build in Florida would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.”

Jim Harding, former direc tor of power planning and forecasting for Seattle City Light, estimates that nuclear plants constructed today would provide electricity at between 12 and 17 cents per kilowatt-hour. To put this cost into perspective, the average U.S. electricity price in 2006 was 8.9 cents per kWh, and well-placed wind turbines can produce electricity for less than 5 cents per kWh."[2]

"Study claims that investment in a new 1GW nuclear power plant leads to average losses of approximately 4.8 billion euros." [3]

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...

[2]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/10-reasons-not-to-i...

[3]: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/24/nuclear-a-poor-invest...

Melatonic4y ago

Cost is not everything though - Nuclear also produces extremely consistent and reliable power. That in it of itself can be a double edged sword in that if we do not have a way to store the excess then it is "wasted" in some ways. But it also has big advantages in certain situations. If there is a decent sized natural disaster or war or some other thing that temporarily interrupts solar or wind power then the increased cost of nuclear power becomes much more attractive. Those situations may be rare but I still maintain we are best off with many different sources working simultaneously.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse