[pfdietz]

Nuclear partisans like to call renewables ideological, but I think this is another example of "the accusation is a confession".

The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive. The current focus on variant reactor designs appears to be something of a Hail Mary attempt to get around this sad state of affairs.

You sometimes see them making an argument about energy density, which goes back to Vaclav Smil. But Smil used this argument to massively mispredict how solar would be go in the market. We don't hear him much anymore.

Nuclear advocates increasingly resort to conspiracy theoretic reasoning to explain away the failure of their technology to compete. This should be a red flag.

[rayiner]

> The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive.

France nuclearized 75% of its grid in the 1980s while the solar folks were faffing around. It's not a cost issue, it's that anti-nuclear folks have choked out the industry.

We need to take the boot off the neck of nuclear. Wind and solar aren't an avenue to moving up the tech tree of civilization, which will involve using vastly more power.

[pfdietz]

We don't actually know how much that cost France, sine it was mixed in with their military nuclear effort. French auditors threw up their hands trying to figure out the actual costs.

What we do know is their attempt to build more NPPs now has gone spectacularly tits up, with costs completely out of control. This should make one view their earlier efforts with great suspicion. Have they become much worse, or were earlier problems concealed?

[rayiner]

Costs are out of control due to nuclear regulation.

[pfdietz]

This is the conspiracy theory reasoning I was talking about. Nuclear is wonderful, but a global omnipotent green conspiracy has hobbled it.

Or, maybe, it really is complicated and needs regulation to keep it sufficiently safe in a world where corners are always cut.

[ToValueFunfetti]

Right or wrong, I don't think conspiratorial is the right descriptor here. The pro-nuclear claim is that the very loud, very public anti-nuclear movement was influential in setting regulations of the industry. It's not "an evil cabal of shadowy green elites secretly control everything", it's "democracy works; fellow citizens were/are dumb; legislation improvements move slowly".

[tech_ken]

> moving up the tech tree of civilization

Life isn't Civ 6, there is no tech tree to climb.

[rayiner]

Incorrect. Compare Bangladesh to the United States.

[tech_ken]

Tech development != tech tree, history is nonlinear and ecological. Linear, unlockable "tech trees" are an ahistorical fantasy necessary to make some video games fun and digestible. Applying them to the real world is like trying to win a war by replicating the Battle of Helm's Deep or something.

[rayiner]

I’m not saying it’s literally a tree. My point is that we need vastly more power to upgrade to the next level of civilization.

[tech_ken]

Right but “upgrading to the next level” is exactly the type of cognitive error that I’m against, it’s forward-looking Whig history. There is no “levels” of civilization, there’s only the arrangements we have now and the ones that will occur in the future. Maybe those arrangements will have different pros and cons than we have now, maybe they’ll have more sophisticated engineering practices, but there’s no objective “development score” that is being maximized it’s just more humanity.

[pfdietz]

How do you know nuclear is even on the "tech tree", rather than being a blind alley? Isn't this argument just assuming what you're trying to show?

[rs_rs_rs_rs_rs]

>The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive

I have a solution, take the subsidies spent on "renewables" and put them into nuclear! Easy peasy!

[bryanlarsen]

Too late, governments have already subsidized nuclear more than they've subsidized renewables.

[pfdietz]

Renewables have shown excellent experience effects. These effects are a kind of positive externality: improvements in the technology become available generally to future consumers. It makes sense to subsidize positive externalities, just as it makes sense to penalize negative ones.

If nuclear had shown good experience effects it too would have merited its subsidies. Unfortunately it hasn't done that.