Spending excessively to provide a service that could have been supplied cheaper is not good a sign of good policy.

So what has released more uncontrolled waste into the world, all the nukes including those, or the equivalent mega-wattage of all other human power generation? Our entire global community is FUCKED to the tune of hundreds of trillions of dollars from consequences of petro, while meanwhile very few of us are suffering from the effects of nuclear power generation. Nukes don't replace solar and wind, they complement them.

it's a question if we can wait for grid scale energy storage being viable before we cook ourselves.

Given the average time to build one single nuclear power plant, you should consider whether we have time to finish construction of one before we cook ourselves.

The costs of construction and deconstruction are significant. You cannot just ignore them. That is useless cherry picking.

Having become a carbon neutral economy a couple years ago since we obviously adhere to the Paris agreement this does not seem like a good solution as we already (would have to have) deployed solutions based on current technology.

There are new kinds of nuclear power plants based on safe Torum instead of uranium, Torum is more abundant, easy to manipulate and "non explosive" china has many reactors with this technology, meanwhile people in the west world is still deciding their gender.

Fossil fuels are only 'profitable' if you ignore the long-term environmental costs.

and we're clearly not

Ah yes, the Fusion Reactors that are coming soon (TM) (promised decades ago).

We need energy now, not at some unknown point in the future. Of course, resaeching this technology may make sense. But it does not help today and also not the next 20 years.

Because money is finite. There's a good rationale for diversity of renewables, but at some point you have to look at the cost benefit analysis and let some ideas go. We could maybe harvest some energy from dropping gold bars into the Mariana trench, but it would take away money from better ideas.

The sentiment that people should just pay more than they have to become virtuous is hatred of the poor.

We must provide the cheapest power to the people. And cheap in this case is meant as cheapest including externalities.

Externalized costs are a thing though. For instance, a coal plant spewing smoke (and radiation) costs everyone else money. A nuclear plant OTOH is usually responsible for dealing with all of its own shit. So it's not always an apples to apples comparison to consider just the profitability of a project.

Cheaper is the definition of better. Power is a fungible good. Price is what matters. And it's not like they include the cost of waste handling in the price of nuclear energy. For simplicity it is easiest to assume it free. And it's not like it would change the result of the calculus.

From Wikipedia

In 2019, the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period.[63] Financial firm Lazard also updated its levelized cost of electricity report costing new nuclear at between $0.118/kWh and $0.192/kWh using a commercial 7.7% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 12% cost for the higher-risk 40% equity finance and 8% cost for the 60% loan finance) over a 40-year lifetime.[64]

The article discusses why that number is probably flawed and relies on cherry picked data, but it seems somewhat close to profitability. Assuming theyre above with a cost of electricity of ~$0.20/kWh (already cheaper than some of US) should be viable, yeah?

Nuclear's costs are primarily a capital cost issue. It takes so long to build a power plant that capital, interest and (?) utility of the investment grows to outrageous amounts.

Also you tend to not estimate the cost of waste handling since who knows what that's going to cost.

Yeah, putting your hopes / goals on a fusion powered future is foolish at this point.

But I def support (lots of) research into it.

Agree that we can get to carbon neutral / carbon negative with current tech.

I do think making plans based on having it are foolish at best.

But I do think we need to keep working on research of it. If we ever hope to achieve a world with "electricity too cheap to meter", nuclear fusion is the key to it. (That and dyson spheres, but that's kinda not in scope of discussion).

It sure isn't apples to apples, but it's also not like nuclear plants actually dealt with their waste

In a cash based capitalists society yes. Time to take the step towards a non scarcity world!

Honestly I think renewables are at a place where it doesnt really matter much anymore. My perception has been that its propaganda, but I'm not really knowledgeable on the subject

No, you couldn't. You need base load. Countries like Denmark and Germany freeload on the base load of France, Sweden and Finland. And the moronic EU laws that currently enable this will eventually change to charge them for that.

The question was “why is public sentiment so against nuclear?” and they answered, with a note that they personally support it over fossil fuels.

Water vapor from the cooling tower is also a greenhouse gas but all heat exchange power plants at such scale emit it, and it condenses quickly (and increases albedo if the cloud is visible). Plus the nuclear waste, if not economical to recycle, may become its own long-term problem too. So the overall externalities of a nuclear power plant are small (it's the least deadly one!) but not zero.

Tell me, how are the french nuclear plants dealt with the last heat wave?

40-year lifetime

That dosent include the cost of maintaining the radioactive trash for the next few million years.

Nobody is defending Fossil fuels here.

Thorium

Meme is structured in a way to target ppl who claiming that nuclear energy is "cheap" and hence a solution to the climate change.
The conclusion should be, its not cheap and there are better ways to fight climate change than building more nuclear plants.

Electric power too cheap to meter exists and it's called solar power.

Renewables are dirt cheap. Hoping for even more abundance is forgetting that it's already ridiculous.

Then resources and labour would be finite. You can't just escape scarcity.

And anyone who confuses the problems with capitalism and currency is an idiot and their economic arguments should not be taken seriously.

Whomever drew this, is a master at dynamics and comedic timing. I fucking love the energy in every line and every panel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkIa99touXQ

Baseload has always been bullshit, see e.g. https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/migration_files/ceem/publication-documents/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf

It's even more irrelevant now that battery storage can level out multi-day variability.

Not many places where there's no wind AND no solar within a reasonable distance of a large population..

You're deflecting because you don't have a real argument to come up with. It's true that global warming is having a negative impact on nuclear power in France, Switzerland and other places, but it doesn't change the fact that you need some way to keep a stable voltage and frequency over your grid.

Ah. Then I think I understand what you're trying to do. If you at least use these triggered people and arguments correctly in the comments against them, then this is a tactic, I guess. I didn't read what you wrote in the other comments, but I just hope for the best now. After all you agreed to me. Then I was just not part of the targeted group. I wish you a nice day. o7

If you ever need firefighters make sure you ONLY go to a profitable firehouse, or you'll be a huge hypocrite. Either that or stupid.

Also make sure you ONLY drive on profitable roads, and ONLY use private delivery services. And ONLY during the day because of streetlights.

A public service should be a public service, not profitable from the basic level.

Great. Fucking build it then. Go ahead and build your non-hydro non-nuclear baseload, and I'll shut the fuck up. Until then, I'll call you out every time you say that nuclear and hydro is too expensive.

Public services (or even non-profit private organizations) still need to manage their resources efficiently. If the output of the service (number of meals fed to people, kilowatt hours produced, houses built, lives saved, passenger kilometers transported) is much smaller on a per dollar basis than comparable services, without good reason, then that organization is mismanaging resources.

Plenty of public services can and do break even, or bring in more than they cost.

Money is, in many ways, fake. But its accounting represents something real, in the real resources involved: land, human labor, physical materials like concrete and steel and copper that need to be turned into very complex equipment that require highly trained workers to operate and maintain.

So when a project doesn't break even, it's worth asking whether the project is still worthwhile, whether the external benefits outweigh the localized costs. I don't think modern nuclear passes that test (even if I believe that already-constructed nuclear should be extended as long as possible and operated at as close to full capacity as possible, because those up-front costs are already sunk).

I wouldn't say it is identical. Nuclear is far easier to solve. The waste is really not that impactful in comparison to climate change

A low maximum price is a better measurement of what is good.

We had 6 consecutive weeks of country wide harsh winter temperatures this year. Suddenly the fact that electricity was almost free and occasionally negative spot price during summer was irrelevant.

I'm in Australia, it's already happening..
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/green-energy-is-shielding-australia-from-a-global-power-price-shock-20260608-p604sc.html

It was decided after Fukushima under Merkel.

We're literally about to turn on snowy hydro 2.0 for base load AND storage

This has got to be the single silliest take I have seen so far on this website, like holy shit this is pants-on-head silly

I would not put all my money on just one solution. I don't know how many years away grid scale storage is. I hope it's 1 year, I expect it's a decade or more.

Besides, we had 6 consecutive weeks country wide harsh winter this year. Storing it over night, or over a few days of mild winds is feasible. 6 weeks of little to no sun, mild winds and high demand is eyepopping.

Are you talking about current nuclear plants or the first generation ones built in the 50’s. Because that’s like using steam train safety to negate the use of modern trains.

I don't know what this has to do with my post at all to be honest