This is concern trolling. The key to nuclear economics is speed of construction, and controlling costs, and not caving to safety pearl-clutchers (that is, adding cost and delays for 'safety measures; meant to appease the public, not things deemed necessary by experts and regulators).

But the key is speed. If you tie up $20B for 20 years uselessly, there's no way you can make a profit on anything.

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pfdietz 3 days ago | parent [-]

You're just trying to smear a conclusion you don't like with fatuous insults.

The argument that this time, for sure, nuclear will be much cheaper has worn quite thin. Why do you think anyone in power is going to listen that song again?

BTW, do you think the dominance of renewables over new nuclear construction in China is due to "pearl clutching" there?

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torginus 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's no conclusion or root cause in the article. It just suggests that since the Canadians had cost overruns and delays, it's impossible to build reactors on time and budget.

Yet China has managed to build those plants exactly around those costs and budgets - I have seen this argument so many time, around high speed rail, where Americans failed at infrastructure and deemed it 'uneconomical', then when China succeeded they smeared them for building probably in 'an evil way' or what.

Let me turn your question back at you - if China is doing so well on renewables, why is it that they're still building tens of gigawatts of nuclear capacity with hundreds more planned?

Even the linked article admits that 'Solar GWh' is not comparable to nuclear GWh because if you add the wattage of panels together you get a meaninglessly big number.

If you are planning around a 24/7 available power source, you need to overbuild solar by 20x I estimate, and the article admits, their calculations do not take storage into account (which you simply would not need if you had an always available power source.

China leads on solar panels, equipment and batteries, yet they are the biggest investors into nuclear today, I think that says enough about solar (and wind) not being able to economically substitute for nuclear.

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torginus 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Also a different angle - economics. If you take 20 years to build a reactor, then the interest that investment assuming an 5% YoY, would be ~2.7x the original purchase price. Your yearly profits wont be enough to pay the interest at that point.

You are right - by these standards it makes no economic sense to build a nuclear reactor, but the standards only exist because of the positively lethargic Western work moral.

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pfdietz 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's never nuclear's fault, is it? Like communism to the true believer, nuclear can never fail, it can only be failed. There's always an excuse.

I think the world has grown tired of the excuses and has largely moved on. You laggards will be coming along soon enough.

	▲	torginus 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You seem to misunderstand me - I'm not some nuclear fanboy, but I'm looking for a powerplant solution that's 3 things: universal (unlike hydro), always available (unlike renewables) and sustainable (unlike gas and coal). It seems that with SMRs, nuclear is finally getting to that state. I would like to ask you - what is your problem with it? For me I wouldn't like to live next to a nuclear power plant, but I'd overwhelmingly prefer living there compared to a chemical plant - and there are a lot more of those everywhere. Plants are huge investment of time and effort and I believe the costs mainly come down sabotage to pearl clutchers like the Greenpeace folks who think every plant is going to turn into Chernobyl, bureaucrats with their own loyalties and agendas of preserving a lucrative status quo and a huge civilizational laziness in the West results in a lack of will to get together and see things through in a timely manner.