[hef19898]

Fun fact: Free markets have not a lot to do with the technological leap of solar, that was mostly German subsidies for PV. In the end only Chinese companies benegited from that, but that is a different topic.

Nobody, I repeat nobody, is financing new nuclear reactors in the developed world (except specialized and military applications). The money goes, for quote a while now, into renewables and, sadly, some coal plants (which is mainly due to CO2 certificates being too dirt cheap, and making coal plants financially viable). The free market and financials decided against nuclear, as did politics in a lot of countries.

One thing you do ignore so, getting new nuclear reactors up and running takes decades in Europe, there is no such thing as a fast built out. Not even if the public and political will would be there, which it isn't. All we do achieve with argueing for new nuclear capacity is slowing the build out of wind and solar down and slow development of grid scale storage tech.

[bumby]

>The free market and financials decided against nuclear

I'm just trying to fully understand the position here. How do you mean "free market"? Because it seems a disproportionate amount of nuclear cost is driven by regulation. I'm not even saying that unwarranted, but it certainly seems to be very different from the colloquial definition of a "free market".

[hef19898]

"It seems" is usually not true. Sure, nuclear is regulated. As are all other forms of electricity generation. As usual, regulation is written in blood, or in the case of nuclear three figure billions of clean-up costs after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Regulation, I might remind you, that was written by staunchly pro-nuclear organizations.

Also, just necause you have regulations doesn't mean you don't have a free market. Hence, there is a free market for nuclear electricity. Thing is, nobody wants to finance new projects (with the exception of developing countries, but those have a lot of catching up to do).

One cost nuclear power plants do not have to carry is insurance against large accidents. No insurance comoany would take on said risk, hence the state is carrying that risk. Soubds to me like a huge cost factor is taken off from nuclear power plant operators here (just to pick one example).

As said elsewhere, I'm all for keeping existing NPPs running as long as safely possible (which was the reason Germany had to shut down a couple), and shut down coal plants instead. Building new NPPs takes too long to be a viable solution, and is too expensive (and hence the lack of fubding for new ones).

[bumby]

The rants about regulation being rooted in safety miss the point. As I stated before, I'm not making a claim that regulation is bad or unwarranted. What I'm pushing back on is the idea that the nuclear industry operates in a "free market." Utilities, in general, do not operate in a free market in the US. They are regulated monopolies. A startup cannot just decide to start generating electricity and tie into the grid, irrespective of whether they meet all the safety regulations. Not all regulations are safety-based but rather based on economics of scale being beneficial for the consumer. That's why it's not a free market.

So while there's a lot to discuss about the relative costs of nuclear, claiming they are the result of a free market doesn't really hold water.

[nickpp]

> Free markets have not a lot to do with the technological leap of solar, that was mostly German subsidies

The technology used to make solar panels is the same used for semiconductors. It evolved al Moore's law speed thanks to an unregulated free market for the tech industry. Same reason we enjoy a cheap supercomputer in every pocket in 2023 instead of the city’s Eniac. That’s what lack of regulation does.

What German guvernamental subsidies did was to build a lot of Solar capacity in a country with relatively little sun. I hope it works out for them, but I remember earlier this year importing nuclear electricity from France.

[hutzlibu]

" I remember earlier this year importing nuclear electricity from France."

And I remember france hat to partially shut down their reactors in the summer, because the rivers were too warm to cool them.

[nickpp]

Nope. The rivers where just fine to cool reactors, it was that they were heating the water too much for the (outdated) environmental regulations.