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by nickpp 1167 days ago
The world doesn’t have to decide to go "all in" on anything. It can simply lift all the unnecessary burdens it placed on the nuclear industry and let the free market sort out the best solution, like always.

If nuclear works for the world's subs, it works on land too. It will probably be a mix of energy sources anyway, each with its own strengths and weaknesses and it’s own place in ecosystem.

2 comments

>If nuclear works for the world's subs, it works on land too.

Kind of like saying that if solar panels work on the ISS then they work on land too.

It's surface level true while missing the broader issue.

In that case nuclear is completely dead. There probably hasn't been a nuclear power plant built without government subsidies in history. French nuclear for instance is essentially bankrupt because they can't even run them let alone build new ones, so the government nationalized it last year.

But sure, get rid of all subsidies on everything and let the market sort it out. We can agree on that.

Talking about the market in energy policy is just silly. It has been driven by government, all over the world for decades.

And if you have things like a public health care system then, it matters a whole lot if coal and gas plants blow smoke into the air or not.

Historical data from the US shows this well. If coal plants would have had to pay even a fraction of the health cost the caused, nuclear would have been universally adopted 1990. And that is before we even talk about coal sluge and other issues. Its before we talk about all the stuff the US did in the middle east to keep the oil flowing. Nuclear in the US even paid a fee for nuclear waste, while coal paid no fee for its waste.

If you look at societies total energy cost over the last 50 years, France looks incredibly good. They had very low energy prices for many decades now and had not no health cost from bad air from electricity production. Nuclear plants are also stable high quality healthy employment for many.