[pfdietz]

It's not just political reversal risk; there's the risk of technological obsolescence. It's very much a stretch to assume a nuclear plant will remain operationally viable (in the sense of being competitive) for 40 years, never mind the 60 or 80 years sometimes mentioned, because the competition isn't standing still.

[littlestymaar]

The only credible competition against a state funded nuclear plant is hypothetical next gen geothermal power though.

Nuclear won't save the planet, as few countries can develop a nuclear industry. But for countries that have one, it should be a no brainer if not for irrational nuclear bomb fears.

[pfdietz]

> The only credible competition against a state funded nuclear plant is hypothetical next gen geothermal power though.

If we extend renewables and batteries on historical experience curves they could become incredibly cheap, with solar well below $0.01/kWh. Nuclear couldn't even make an operating profit in an environment with solar that cheap.

[littlestymaar]

Price is irrelevant when you need most of your electricity in a season when there's barely any sun.

Most of the European population leave on places that are more northern then Montreal, we have less than 8 hours of daylight per day, and a significant fraction of it is cloudy.

There's no storage solution that can store the excess summer solar exposure (when we get more than 16hours on sun per day) to reinject it into the grid in winter. That's literally science fiction tech, and that's what you'd need to make solar + storage a reliable source in Europe.

Solar in California, India or the middle east? Sure. Solar in Europe, Canada and even Japan, good luck (and yes, these countries constitute most of nuclear power plants operators).

[pfdietz]

Even taking into account intermittency and seasonality, nuclear would have a very hard time surviving in a $0.01/kWh PV world.

[littlestymaar]

Again, price is irrelevant if there's no electricity available at all when you need it.

[pfdietz]

The implication that the energy couldn't be available when you need it is utter codswallop.

At $0.01/kWh, PV electricity, if converted to resistive heat, would be below the cost of Henry Hub natural gas heat. And this heat would be very storable in artificial geothermal at maybe 600 C, where it would lose < 1% of stored energy per month.

Would this have low round trip efficiency if converted back to electricity? Sure. But if the PV electricity is that cheap, so what?

When levelized cost is low enough, there's plenty of room for engineering to work around intermittency and seasonality.

[mastermage]

looking at the current Geopolitical Climate this does not seem like an Irrational Fear. And I do not mean the fear of a reactor meltdown. But if you refine Uranium for a Powerplant you can also Refine it for a bomb.

[littlestymaar]

Any country that can make a nuclear bomb could decide to make one whether or not they chose to have a civil nuclear industry (Israel being the prime example).

And in the current geopolitical climate, expect more countries to build a bomb.

[TheOtherHobbes]

If we're talking about war, what does more damage to the surroundings - dropping a nuke on a solar plant, or dropping a nuke on a nuclear plant?

[littlestymaar]

Dropping a nuke on a city where nuclear plants aren't … And it's not even close. That'd be exactly like the difference between the sole victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident vs the 19 000 dead from the tsunami that caused the accident.

If nukes get involved, all bets are off no matter what, millions of people would die and the consequences of a subsequent reactor meltdown would be negligible compared to the mess you've got already.

And even compared to a conventional war, nuclear accidents are benign next to armed conflicts. (Not only during the war, but also decades after: most people are familiar with the Chernobyl red zone, but there's red zone in France due to the eternal pollution caused by WWI ammunitions).

[pfdietz]

> the sole victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident

This is a misrepresentation. There is a single person who the courts have established was (to their satisfaction) killed by nuclear exposure from Fukushima, although even that is quite debatable.

But that doesn't mean there weren't any victims, just that they could not (or could not yet) be identified. The estimated ~200 cancer deaths from Fukushima will mostly be lost in a sea of cancers from other causes. This doesn't mean they can be, or should be, ignored. Regulation is not like criminal law; one does not have to prove a technology is guilty beyond reasonable doubt to regulate it.