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by jimmaswell 1685 days ago
We'd have "power too cheap to meter" from fission if it wasn't sabotaged by politicians, fossil fuel lobbies, and an ignorant, easily frightened public.
4 comments

That may be partly true. But we simply never managed to build enough of them fast enough to know if economy of scale could be reached. I think even if so, cost of building the structures and maintaining them won't be negligible and will have to be payed for (we need many smart and skilled people to build and operate them and we need to pay those people).
No, we wouldn't. Fission has massive public subsidies, and the industry is still crying for more before they will even build more capacity. I mean, sure, if the public subsidy was high enough there'd be no consumer cost, but that's not what “too cheap to meter” is supposed to refer to.
I've read on here that a lot of extra cost comes from politics, like unreasonably redundant safety tolerances. There's also a lack of political will to reuse spent fuel.
...or that pesky problem of nuclear waste. Which nobody has solved. Every 'solution' today leaks.

Websearch Yucca Valley; do you want your aquifer to be downstream of that?

The Green movement needs to be called out specifically here.