97
88-2: Only Markey, Sanders Oppose 'Expensive, Risky' Nuclear Power Expansion
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Nuclear is the most expensive energy technology used, so expansion is only useful if all renewable sources are already built out to the limit
This is not the case, so investing in renewable is the smarter choice environmentally and fiscally
Of course, the route we took in Germany reducing nuclear to upscale coal is even stupider, but it is far too late to reverse that
don’t y’all buy excess power from France’s nuclear base capacity? Like 1.6TWh a year?
It is not the most expensive for any intrinsic reason. It's not necessarily that complex to operate. It's expensive because bureaucracy that has been strapped to it to make switching to it harder, which was designed to keep dirty energy in demand longer. It is the safest power source we have available (including renewables). There's no reason it's so expensive except to attempt to kill it.
I'm pretty sure that bureaucracy was also about controlling nuclear materials because they're dangerous and potential weapons.
Some of it, yeah. Obviously some is required. Not the amount that it has though.
It's the most expensive if you don't already have the infrastructure & experience needed to support it. Of course in places where nuclear is barely used or not used at all, it's going to be more expensive than others. But the US doesn't have such a problem – in large part due to lifetime extensions (which allow plants to operate for another 20-40 years, up to a maximum of 80 years), which bring nuclear's cost down to comparable to renewables. Without lifetime extensions though, nuclear indeed would be more expensive than renewable energy.
Renewable energy also gets subsidized significantly more than any other form of energy – in the US, solar and wind both get roughly about 16x the $/MWh of nuclear, and 2x the total amount of budget. The EU also puts like half of its total energy subsidies into renewables (and a third into fossil fuels) and almost none in to nuclear. That should probably be taken into account too.