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by piva00 750 days ago
> If you get permission for a new nuclear reactor today, it starts to produce energy 6 to 8 years from now. It could be possible 3 to 5 years in the ideal conditions that never happen.

Starting producing energy is one thing, on top of that is the breaking point where it becomes economically viable to pay off the construction costs of those plants. For that we are looking into a 20-30 years timeframe when the plant starts to generate money back.

As much as I like the idea of nuclear power it just becomes less and less economically viable when renewables get cheaper. The only ways to build and run nuclear plants is through government funding or by keeping energy prices at a higher level to pay back the construction costs.

On top of it all you also depend on having trustworthy and stable governments to keep those plants operating safely for the 50-70 years period they should be running.

1 comments

Renewables and nuclear can't replace each other completely.

Let's talk about

nuclear vs natural gas + renewables

nuclear vs. energy storage + renewables.

Current increase om capacity comes from solar + wind + natural gas combination.

While they can't provide a baseload I agree, renewables can't provide the same steady output that nuclear can. I think it's sensible to consider solutions to this problem (like we see with many different ways being researched on how to store excess production) rather than believing nuclear still has a chance in the current landscape.

Like I mentioned, I do like the idea of nuclear power but it has many issues with construction costs, source of materials, safety, etc. aspects of it which mean many countries would be excluded from running reactors.

Technology for transforming/storing excess renewables' energy which in turn can then provide a baseload output are much more accessible to the rest of the world, and I believe it has a potentially much bigger impact fighting the climate crisis than nuclear can provide us in the next 20-30 years.