| > What's always bothered me about this argument is: how much of that cost stems from the nuclear industry being misregulated into a pulp over the last 50 years?? Agreed! Nuclear could be much cheaper were there not so much fear mongering and red tape in the path. Chernobyl and TMI taught us the wrong lesions as a society. However, fat chance getting those policies, politics, and activists minds changed to decrease those regulatory costs. > And beyond that, nuclear and solar/wind are not directly comparable. Solar/wind cannot provide the base load that nuclear is so apt at. What you really need to be comparing is a nuclear plant vs renewable PLUS energy storage. And last time I checked, grid-level energy storage is still extremely expensive. I don't discreet per say. However, for the US, most power grids simply aren't at the point where storage needs to be considered. A large portion of power is coming from fossil fuels (more than the tipping point where storage needs to be considered). In those cases, the clear path forward that will cut carbon emissions the fastest is deployment of renewable tech. You can bring online new solar and wind plants in less than a year. Nuclear requires at least 10->20 years of time before it can be brought online (mostly due to all the regulations surrounding it). Storage will enter the equation when a large percentage of the grid is renewable (30->50% someone cited). We simply aren't even near that point yet. However, even before we hit that point, natural gas can provide a stop gap to allow us to have even higher mixes of renewable generation. Nuclear doesn't solve the storage problem. You still need a peaker plant with nuclear. > It still blows my mind that we found an almost magical solution to use of fossil fuels over 60 years ago and fumbled it so hard. Shame on big oil, shame on our regulatory agencies and politicians. Agreed. We SHOULD have been ramping up on nuclear usage. I would MUCH rather have to deal with localized nuclear waste problems vs our current issues with climate change. It was simply a societal failure that we didn't go nuclear for everything from the 1960 onward. It was the best solution to climate change for nearly a half century and the very people that should have supported (environmentalist) killed it with fear mongering. |