Berkshire Hathaway Energy said they would, from a financial point of view, never build a nuclear plant and keep increasing renewables. And they're not known to be bad capital allocators.
Buffet also said, "I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate.” … “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
Oil also doesn't make sense without subsidies. If renewables are going to compete, they currently need subsidies. He's simply saying that they wouldn't cover their own costs without the credits. Not that the credits somehow pay for more than the price of the wind farm.
From what I heard, they also make sense without subsidies (about the same as solar panels which everyone is throwing onto their roofs now, except an efficient unit doesn't cost millions to get started), but I suppose this guy's logic for "worth it" includes outperforming sticking his money into an index fund
Also, what surprised me to learn is how much money goes into subsidies for fossil fuel companies. I really didn't think they needed that
I'd expect that to be because of the current regulatory hurdles and associated costs. If policy shifts to make it easier (thus cheaper) to build, I'm sure berkshire would jump in.
There are a lot of countries that are building or have tried to build nuclear in the last ten years.
In the US, the major nuclear projects are long running boondoggles, going way over.
In France, nuclear is so expensive that the national electricity company had to be nationalized to avoid bankruptcy, and plants are being closed.
Finland's Olkiluoto plant is 10 years over-schedule and has 300% cost overrruns.
South Korea had major cost overruns and is set to close half their plants
China isn't kind enough to share cost figures, but has reduced planned plants by a major percentage, indicating that the investment return is not very good. They do not have regulatory hurdles.
Maybe the only country on earth capable of building competitive nuclear is Russia of all places. They steadily increase the number of plants under construction and do not see to go over-schedule, though we don't know what the budgets look like.
While the US has a bad reputation for make infrastructure building ability, it seems to be global problem.
>China isn't kind enough to share cost figures, but has reduced planned plants by a major percentage, indicating that the investment return is not very good. They do not have regulatory hurdles.
PRC is currently building indigenous nuclear relatively economically which appear to be performing around expectations. What happened / what PRC can't seem to do, like the west, is build _western_ nuclear tech economically. Nuclear ambition under 13th 5-year plan has been delayed largely due Fukushima reassessement and drama over western nuclear tech (French EPR / US AP1000 technical and political issues like US sanctions / Westinghouse bankruptcy) forcing PRC to switch to domestic tech. Current 14th 5-year plan still aiming for ~180-200 GWe by 2035 with ~150 reactors, which is in line with mid 2010s assessments. What is also happening is PRC scaling up coal and solar, due to geopolitics of rushing energy security and lower renewable costs, but not at the expense of nuclear rollout.
Subsidizing weapons would be incidental - no need for 150 reactors. US/USSR had <20 production reactors to make pu239 for 1000s of nuclear weapons. IIRC think current US projections of PRC nuclear proliferation is 1000-1500 weapons by 2030s, based on production from a few plants dedicated to nuclear production (404 and 821). If PRC wanted 1000s of nukes, it would be much more economical to build a few dedicated weapons-grade plutonium reactors, which won't be subject to civil regulatory concerns, i.e. multi year pause due to Fukushima. Parsimonious incentive for building 150 civilian reactors is because it's economically feasible there.
Nuclear has massive government subsidies. Most notably, construction contracts are structured such that cost overruns are borne by tax payers, not the builder. Also, clean up costs are covered by the tax payer.
> Also, clean up costs are covered by the tax payer.
Maybe you can provide a link.
Because here in the US that's not the case. For the Three Mile Island meltdown, the cleanup cost was about $1 billion, and the vast majority was born by the private corporations, not by the public. Here's a GAO quote [1]
During the period 1979 through 1981, five federal agencies committed $275 million for TMI related matters, but very little of this money had been used to directly offset cleanup expenditures. However, the current Administration commitment of $123 million for data acquisition and research and development could directly offset as much as $54 million of GPU-budgeted expenditures. Other reductions have occurred or are expected to occur as a result of Department of Energy involvement.
> Because here in the US that's not the case. For the Three Mile Island meltdown, the cleanup cost was about $1 billion, and the vast majority was born by the private corporations, not by the public.
That's called holding private corporations accountable for negligently contaminating the environment. There's a difference between the government paying to decom a well-run plant after 40-50 years, and sticking the taxpayer with cleaning up a mess that's not the public's responsibility.
That's all well and good except there's a nearly-zero number of nuclear plants being built. Which means there's a nearly-zero number of subsidies. You don't get in the business of building Widget X for the tax credits when nobody is asking for Widget X and Widget Y also gets tax credits and is being cranked out everywhere you look.
Don't forget that many nuclear plants have a guaranteed electricity price and demand.
Basically, if a nuke plant wants to operate, other plants will have to shut down to let them. And if the electricity price on the free market is below their guarantee, the government will pay the difference.