[ajross]

> nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore

Nobody ever could! Nuclear power generation, from its infancy, has been outrageously subsidized, both directly (i.e. DoE grants, government funding of waste disposal) and indirectly (industrial-scale refining of fuel as a side effect of the weapons industry). Once those sources dried up it just plain stopped making sense.

At the end of the day it needs to stand on its own to make sense, and it can't, especially when compared to its green (and largely unsubsidized!) competitors. People who really want this to happen need to solve the technical problems and then come back with a plan.

To riff on the title: it's not "anti nuclear" to be anti-pro-nuclear. Make it work first before shouting about it on the internet.

[graeme]

Subsidized against what? It's main competitor, carbon, has the implicit subsidy of not having to account for the externalities in the waste it creates.

Against new green tech yes, it's a better argument.

[ajross]

> Against new green tech yes, it's a better argument.

Right, so I'll take cheap panels and turbines please. We should stop pushing the luxury reactors. We can't afford them if we actually want to spend the limited funds we have to save the planet.

[unethical_ban]

>At the end of the day it needs to stand on its own to make sense

Why? Why does such a critical piece of civilization NEED to make money on a free market? Why is it absurd to expect governments to help fund power generation like they are expected to fund other infrastructure (and healthcare, in most of the developed world)?

[icebraining]

Because the point of a subsidy is to benefit the public, not particular industries. If others can stand on their own, why would you waste public money on subsidizing a less efficient one?

[unethical_ban]

The point of government is to serve the public interest. There is a lot of current public-private power generation in the U.S.

I also disagree with your assertion that there are renewable technologies that compete with the reliability of Nuclear.

[icebraining]

> The point of government is to serve the public interest. There is a lot of current public-private power generation in the U.S.

Sure, that doesn't go against what I said.

> I also disagree with your assertion that there are renewable technologies that compete with the reliability of Nuclear.

Neither can minicomputers compete with the reliability of mainframes, yet we've seen how that went. Reliability can be worked around with engineering. It'll be a messy mix of power sources, storage technologies and distribution networks, but it'll be cheap. Nuclear will keep existing - at the margins.

[jstummbillig]

Is this actually the prevailing analysis of the status quo? Is the best unsubsidized nuclear power plant we could technically build today actually cost effective or is it not? Can people with insight chime in? I just tried to google an answer and, from a layman's perspective without a horse in the race, there seems to be no single easily available answer.

As a side note, it irritates me how often this is the case for many simple and important (but, apparently, hard) questions, that must have a correct answer.

[bjourne]

See https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... Main finding is that newly built nuclear power is about twice as expensive as wind and 40% more expensive than solar power. Other studies come to similar conclusions. With the cost of solar and wind expected to decrease due to mass production and technology advancements, their advantage grows even larger.

The real nail in the coffin are the huge uncertainties and capital costs. Suppose projections show that electricity demand will rise by 1000MW over the next ten years so new reactor is built. But what if demand only rises by 500MW? Then you have wasted billions that won't ever be recouped.

[realusername]

> See https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation..... Main finding is that newly built nuclear power is about twice as expensive as wind and 40% more expensive than solar power. Other studies come to similar conclusions. With the cost of solar and wind expected to decrease due to mass production and technology advancements, their advantage grows even larger.

I highly doubt they take the unreliability into account in their study. One MW of nuclear is worth much much more than a MW of solar or even worse wind since you can count on it.

I'd mention that there's not a single country in the world which currently succeeds as using solar & wind as their primary electricity generation.

[bjourne]

Modern wind farms are built offshore and with towers 200 meters high or higher. At those altitudes in such locations wind power is quite reliable.

Anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If nuclear power megawatts was worth much more than wind power megawatts then why are many new wind farms being built but so few nuclear power plants? It seems to me that those who put their money where their mouth is do not think the superior reliability of nuclear power is enough to make their investments profitable.

[realusername]

> new wind farms being built but so few nuclear power plants?

Because of the initial investment, private companies already have trouble to project themselves just 5 years into the future and they lack the big picture. That's also why privately managed electricity generation just doesn't work.

> Anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I'll believe what I see as well, there's not a single country in the world which manages to use wind & solar as their primary electricity source and there's nothing indicating any could in the future.

[The_rationalist]

Stop spreading dangerous fake beliefs, if you make such an extraordinary claim that nuclear is less cost effective than "green competitors", source it. This is in complete Contradiction with this scientific analysis: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...

[Jedd]

Okay. How about we use the same source you -- which does sound like it may not the best site to obtain impartial metrics from, but includes this paragraph:

> These show: advanced nuclear, 9.9 c/kWh ... wind onshore, 5.2 c/kWh; solar PV, 6.7 c/kWh; offshore wind, 14.6 c/kWh; and solar thermal, 18.4 c/kWh.

Two things to note.

1. A better comparative assessment is available here [1], specifically drawing your attention to page 1333.

2. The min/med/max numbers invite questions around the cause of such large disparities, and this leads you to ask what 'advanced nuclear' means in the citation you offered. Many of these very impressive LCOE and gmC/kW figures are for new designs of fission power plants, while we should be factoring in those costs & emissions of current installations that'll be maintained for the next few decades.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...