There was an obvious path that the environmentalists mostly opposed. A decade is plenty of time for massive scale buildout of nuclear power. If we'd started that a decade ago we'd be in a good position now.

▲

adrr 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nuclear power is expensive. One of the most expensive ways to produce electricity when you capitalize expense of the construction of the plant into the electricty cost. Path forward is wind/solar + storage which is cheapest next to hydropower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

▲

Tadpole9181 20 hours ago | parent [-]

The Wiki page above didn't really go into it much, but how much of the cost of nuclear power is self-inflicted? I.e. regulatory costs and actually paying the cost of externalities up-front. And if we were more consistent at building such facilities and producing said fuel, would there be cost reductions from scale?

▲

rfgplk 19 hours ago | parent [-]

~99% of the cost is due to red-tape regulations. It's so obscene that they require certified backup genererators for the backup generators and 3-4 layers of fail safes. Then you need to wait YEARS to get all the permits and licenses. Oh and if you get preapproval for a componant (say the generators) but too much time has passed from installation until you actually are ready to go, you need to go through the process again, hence the constant delays. An actual nuclear power plant is actually stupidly cheap to run if you cut all the red tape. Stupidly. Like $50k of fuel produces $50 million of electricity good.

Edit because I forgot to mention this, if coal or ccgt were regulated like nuclear is, not a single one would be profitable. And even if you take into account every single death due to radiation poisoning (from any source) nuclear would still be the safest power source in the world. Literally worker deaths from installing wind power plants exceed it.

	▲	jltsiren 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Nuclear power plants are ultimately not that different from coal power plants. Typical estimates for the capital costs of coal power are ~$4000/kW, which can be used as a lower bound for the costs of nuclear power. The costs are high, because construction industry has suffered from poor productivity growth for decades. Renewables are getting cheaper, because they rely more on mass-produced stuff and less on hiring people to construct a big specialized building to house the power plant. Regulatory costs of nuclear power also largely come from poor quality control in construction industry. Regulators require something specific, subcontractors try doing that but often don't get it right, and regulators order them to tear it down and try again.

▲

ViewTrick1002 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem is that we attempted to build nuclear power. It just didn’t deliver. There was massive state support behind it.

It is hard looking at Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C, Hanhikivi and the countless cancelled projects and think: ”That’s what I want some more of!!”

▲

r_lee 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yup.

I remember seeing just a few years back, a Greenpeace postlet moaning about dangerous nuclear energy

I think it's pretty clear that nothing meaningful will be done because there's no shock value to entertain the "empaths" like there is with war and other stuff

▲

p-e-w 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed. At this point I’d say that the “green movement” has done more damage to the planet than the fossil fuel industry.

The entire Western world (with the exception of France) pretty much stopped building nuclear power plants 40 years ago, because of a single accident that by its most pessimistic estimates killed fewer people in total than coal emissions kill every 3 days. It’s madness.

	▲	dfdydx 21 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What was the fossil fuel industry plan to massively shrink the fossil fuel industry exactly?
	▲	ViewTrick1002 20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nuclear power had already collapsed due to its own costs and timelines. In hindsight it’s much easier to blame the accidents rather than face the structural problems nuclear power has. Which has only been exacerbated by renewables and storage disrupting the global energy markets, forcing ”baseload” plants to become peakers. Against their will.