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by inapis
1540 days ago
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>Really the whole debate is mostly scientism: nuclear power didn't lose because it was too dangerous. It lost because it is too expensive. These days, it's still too expensive, but now it also just takes too long for it to be useful for the climate emergency. It's expensive because Chernobyl caused the whole world to develop cold feet. Innovation stopped and funding for nuclear dried up after 2-3 accidents. Solar and wind were super expensive (vis-a-vis coal or gas) in 2010 and before compared to 2022 and people were railing against solar for that reason alone. But only a decade later, the cost has fallen by an order of a magnitude, making it far more practical and a valuable source of energy because society invested money and resources to bring the cost down. Imagine having 3 children and lavishing all your attention and resources on two of them, leaving one to fend for itself and then turning around and saying that the aloof one has no talent, skills and is basically a burden on the society. Nuclear is not a panacea but railing against the technology because humans goofed up, then refused to pay more attention and do things correctly in the future is an irrational stance. |
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There hasn't ever been a nuclear plant built which was not subsidized. Wind and solar needed a kick-start, now they bid to even get permission to build off-shore wind power.
> By the mid-1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as quickly as once believed. Cost overruns were sometimes a factor of ten above original industry estimates, and became a major problem. For the 75 nuclear power reactors built from 1966 to 1977, cost overruns averaged 207 percent. Opposition and problems were galvanized by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.[48]
> Over-commitment to nuclear power brought about the financial collapse of the Washington Public Power Supply System, a public agency which undertook to build five large nuclear power plants in the 1970s. By 1983, cost overruns and delays, along with a slowing of electricity demand growth, led to cancellation of two WPPSS plants and a construction halt on two others. Moreover, WPPSS defaulted on $2.25 billion of municipal bonds, which is one of the largest municipal bond defaults in U.S. history. The court case that followed took nearly a decade to resolve.[49][50][51]
> A cover story in the February 11, 1985, issue of Forbes magazine commented on the overall management of the nuclear power program in the United States:
> "The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible.[55]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...