[Maursault]

I'll respond to your straw man. It isn't about the energy within the thing, the exorbitant cost of Uranium is in mining and refining. No one said anything about coal, but it doesn't need refined, and is cheaply mined... but you've also made a false equivalency, because coal isn't the only competition to nuclear. The sun just shines, wind just blows, water just flows, and the geothermals just produce heat, without any investment or refinement.

If just 10% of the resources poured into nuclear development, which is a cost no one that is pro nuclear wants to tally into the bill, were instead invested into solar energy, nuclear power would not have been able to compete with solar power by 1980.

Nuclear power isn't cheap, unless you ignore the insane R&D that was paid for by tax payers by government mandate and never paid back, unless you ignore the massive cost of construction long before one watt of power is produced, and unless you ignore the massive cost of decommissioning, and unless you ignore the never ending cost of spent fuel storage. It is entirely absurd that you believe once a spent fuel storage facility is built, the costs just disappear. The costs never go away. Maintenance. Security. Testing. It isn't free and it isn't cheap.

[ClumsyPilot]

Two questions:

You keep repeating this idea thay uranium is expensive, by what metric? Where do you get the idea that its expensive?

If nuclear is so expencive, why does France have cheapest elecrticity in EU? And Denmark /Germany have invested in renewables have expensive electricity.

[Maursault]

Looks like I was simplifying. Uranium prices peaked around 2010 for $135/lb., and today is only $35/lb. The break even point for mining uranium is about $50/lb. So the problem in 2010 was that uranium was crazy expensive, but the problem today is it is so cheap, it can't be mined for profit.

But you raise a decent point about what metric we should choose... I meant the cost of the stuff, but there are other metrics, such as clean up costs, because mining uranium is not clean. There is also a human health cost to populations within the proximity of the uranium mine.

French electricity is likely cheap because the French tax payers already picked up the cost of constructing spent fuel storage facilities and power plant construction, and they will ultimately shoulder the burden of the cost of decommissioning. This is just an educated guess, because that is usually how nuclear economics work. Otherwise, the investors that run the plants and sell the electricity would not be interested.

[cromwellian]

4 words: Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (LIFTR)