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by fartsucker69
1462 days ago
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This is afaik true about nuclear power plants in general. They are one of the least cost-efficient energy generation sources out there because of their insane construction and running costs. In some countries they never make their money back, even if run by private companies, and only exist because of subsidies when they were built. However, they are by far the most practical and safe way to generate ludicrous amounts of environmentally friendly energy out of all technologies that we have available. Even solar can't match up. If you factor in the really long term cost on every country on this planet due to climate change for example, this footed bill is chump change. |
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Starting a new nuke means burning coal for an extra decade, and at the end of that decade getting much less power per euro, displacing correspondingly less CO2, than if you had built out renewables instead.
There is simply no contest.
Even refurbishing a nuke instead of building out renewables is a losing proposition. Just continuing to operate a nuke instead of building out and then operating renewables is a losing proposition.
The only legitimate use for keeping a nuke running is while you are waiting to bring enough renewables you are building online to wholly displace it, because what you are spending operating it is using up money that could be building more renewables.
This is the magic of exponentially falling costs.
At the point where enough spare renewable generating capacity is available to charge storage, it will be time to start building out increasingly cheap storage.