Source - The colors of the grids represent CO2 emissions
The title is a reference to the 2021 Texas power crisis
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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they absolutely should be decreasing, the problem is that gen 4 plants don't exist yet, if they did it would be substantially lower.
Also this isn't propaganda, you're pulling this out of your ass, the nuclear industry is fucking DEAD homie.
Well, if reality disagrees with you, it's usually not reality that's wrong. You can say that prices should have been decreasing, but I can show you that prices did not decrease, they increased, whereas prices for renewables have been decreasing.
Also, nuclear energy is the dream of the current fossil fuel industry - it's centralized (no individuals can produce their own energy), it's heavily subsidized (otherwise it would be way too expensive), and negative effects are socialized (cleanup is oftentimes not fully covered by the operator, and they also won't be held accountable in the case of accidents). They are terrified of renewables, as they'd lose control and gain more competition.
and housing prices are fucking insane, it doesnt mean that building houses is expensive.
Prices should have been decreasing, like they should have been with housing. But due to a lack of funding and manufacturing, modern nuclear power plants have very little R&D investment, and the entire labor pool surrounding nuclear plant fabrication doesn't really exist anymore.
The primary reason for the prices of renewables falling is more than likely china and chinese subsidies gunning for a market dominance, followed by technological advancement, Unfortunately these advances don't solve the problem of solar panels needing silicon, and batteries being expensive, and wind turbines being a maintenance nightmare, as well as a disposal nightmare (most wind turbine blades are made out of fiber glass, good luck have fun)
It's not the dream of the fossil fuel industry, if it were, it would be a successful technology that was actively in use, because the only thing fossil fuel companies care about is making money. Why do you think they wouldn't do nuclear if it was feasible? The answer is that it isn't in comparison to fossil fuels like oil and coal. And that's it.
Yes the grid is centralized. What next, going to the grocery store is centralized? Wait until you figure out what walmart did.
Exactly. This means that pumping money into this sector is ineffective if the goal is to combat climate change - the optimal build times will most likely not be met for any of the initial reactors that could be built, which pushes the first day of power generation back further and further. Renewables start to give some power immediately while you're building up more and more capacities.
Given the technological advancements and the current prices, it's a good idea to start investing massively. If this should affect pricing negatively instead of positively (it was the latter before), investments could ensure local production. Every country will want access to silicon anyway for chip production, so this is not a new problem, just a difference of scale.
The price of batteries keeps falling and falling. Recently, the price of renewables + grid-scale storage has fallen below the equivalent price of nuclear energy. Given the current pricing trends, investing in nuclear means hoping that the trend reverses. With renewables and grid-scale storage, you're simply betting on the same trends of the last decade continuing.
Just like with nuclear energy, these are problems of investments and scale. Because of the supply of used turbine blades increasing, there has been a lot of development and investment into recycling them, and the situation has already improved a lot. You're, again, hoping that the same will happen for nuclear energy on a short-enough timescale.
And that somehow means it should stay centralized? A decentralized grid has a bunch of advantages: lower costs for the individual participants, higher resilience during catastrophes, lower impact of maintenance/disruptions/attacks, and a much shorter time to first production.