| "Nuclear power isn't agile. It has poor reactivity to future market changes. It costs billions to get up and running, and isn't modular. You can't commission it in 100MW increments." If you read the article you'll see that this company plans to produce modular reactors starting at only 5 MW. Many of the innovative new nuclear startups, like ThorCon and Terrestrial Energy have similar plans. Also, since the plan is to mass produce standardized reactors a whole lot of the regulatory burden associated with the current approach of "one off" construction is avoided. "A solar power plant requires a dozen handy men and a couple of electrical engineers to maintain, a nuclear power plant requires a few dozen nuclear engineers." The next generation of modular nuclear reactors will require few or no specialists constantly on site. They also don't require water cooling, so siting options are much more flexible. "Solar power doesn't have publicly socialized decommissioning or waste storage costs." Solar power does have externalities having to do with mining, processing and manufacturing. Also, solar requires large tracts of land at utility scale, is intermittent, and unsuitable at higher latitudes. It is currently a good bit more expensive than nuclear will be once modular reactors are being produced. Solar has significant downsides. |