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0 pointsKon5ole6d ago0 comments

For solar I believe it's profitable without subsidies in most parts of the world by now. It's the fastest growing power source by far worldwide and it wouldn't be if it had to be financed by subsidies.

I don't know enough about wind to say either way about that.

But both wind and solar have the benefit of being able to just abandon the plants if they turn out to lose money. Which you of course cannot do with a nuclear plant.

Rancho Seco in the US has had a taxpayer financed security crew for 36 years without producing any electricity. That costs eats away at the profits (if any) generated by the plant when it was operational, but nobody keeps track of that.

The costs are not relevant to the nuclear operator and are not retroactively counted as costs for the electricity, since the government pays.

But they pay with our money. And our children's money. And their children's money.

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hereme8886d ago· 1 in thread

Well, wind and solar were absolutely subsidy-driven. The difference is that after subsidies, they became cheap and modular, and I hope nuclear becoming modular and cheaper as well.

Rancho Seco.... what an insane story. Didn't know about that. So if your have a bad nuclear project, people are basically stuck with it, unlike replacing solar panels or wind turbines.

Kon5oleOP6d ago

I think it's possible that the actual construction of nuclear power plants could become cheap if they were mass produced, but I don't think that's the real problem.

The inherent long-lasting dangers of the fuel and waste are the real cost, and we are still in the first few percent of years where we have to pay for those. In 100 years, the french might be on synthesized fuels from solar and there will be a multibillion budget post dealing with the old nuclear plants that haven't generated anything for years.

Many plants are in the "downpayment of the construction costs" phase and current calculations are made on the idea that once paid for, nuclear is cheap. But that's not true.

There are costs for every nuclear plant that will come due 50-70-100+ years down the line and they are very rarely considered.

The "stuck with it" aspect is what bugs me the most. Once a few politicians today decide to get rich from building nuclear, many, many generations of people are robbed from the ability to make any decision on the matter afterwards. They get stuck with it.

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