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A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Yeah, on one hand nuclear energy is very safe, runs 24/7, and doesn’t belch greenhouse gases and poisons into the air. But on the other hand, it’s expensive, takes a long time to build, and many people are irrationally afraid of it.
Unfortunately, I think the real-world decisions are going to be dictated 99% by economics. But that can turn back into a good thing as green/renewable energy gets cheaper and cheaper.
The cheaper renewable energy gets the less economic sense a nuclear power plant makes. If you design a multi-billion-dollar plant for an expected electricity price and that price drops in half before the plant is completed now it won't make a profit for twice as long.
For sure. If renewables are already significantly cheaper, and that’s because the cost has been falling and falling, how much cheaper will they be in another decade?
For nuclear, maybe the only hope is if SMRs ever take off and benefit from some economies of scale. If you can just order a handful of modular reactors from the factory and be selling electricity within a year, that changes the whole dynamic.
Unfortunately I think the latest I read about it is that SMRs are currently more expensive per watt than the traditional nuclear plants, and they’re focusing on remote areas and industrial heat and stuff like that. If that’s correct, we might need a solar-like rapidly dropping price for them to compete for mainstream grid power use.
I wish we had some place where all the anti-nuclear, flat earthers, theists, anti-GMO, vaxxers, etc. could live and pray in peace....far away from the rest of us.