[Georgelemental]

> The point is that solid fuel reactors are currently completely fucked from an economic standpoint. They are fundamentally economically noncompetitive.

If all of this is so "fundamental", then why does South Korea manage to build plants for cheap? And why has France managed to have its entire grid be nuclear-based for many decades? Please explain.

> I want the nuclear industry, nuclear lobby, and American research infrastructure to WAKE UP and start really working on economically viable reactors.

Then we must fix the regulatory incentives. That's how capitalism works: corporations chase profit. So if you want them to innovate, you make innovation the profitable option, instead of adding a mountain of regulation to block anything new.

[ZeroGravitas]

> its entire grid be nuclear-based for many decades?

This has a "60% of the time it works every time" feel that seems common when discussing the French grid.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/462535/nuclear-share-ele...

Why didn't they get to 100%, and why do people go out of their way to avoid discussing that?

[Georgelemental]

France nuclear share stopped growing because of the terrible policies of François Hollande—the president with low-single-digit approval rating, who singlehandedly turned France's formerly largest political party into small fry, because people hated him so much.

And then Macron decided to continue the insanity by following up on Hollande's unfulfilled promise to close the perfectly functional Fessenheim plant.

Then there are the "market competition" policies. It used to be that the French grid was entirely run by EDF, a state enterprise. And it worked well enough. But then the EU (with buy-in from complicit French politicians) decided to introduce "privatization"—except it's totally fake, as EDF has to sell energy to the private companies at prices set (to much lower than the market price) by the government. This has hurt EDF financially, and combined with other lacks in investment during the past decade or two means that they have lost a lot of organizational competence (skilled engineers are gone).