> Investors aren't scared of the high upfront cost of nuclear. They are scared by the risk of spending the high upfront cost of nuclear then having the rug pulled out from under them by hostile government policy.

You peddle this line every time the subject of nuclear (fission) power comes up.

My usual response is to point to all the countries that have administrations that are pro fission nuclear -- the UK being the most magnificent example -- and observe that the relentless scheduling delays, cost blowouts, and logistical problems, combined with the equally relentless growth of deployment (and reduction in cost) of renewables in that isle.

In any case, no one's interest in jumping onto the fission nuclear bandwagon around the world can't entirely be down to some policy wobbling going on within the USA.

I change my peddling sometimes when people come up with a good counterargument.

I've been hearing stories saying that climate change represents a likely civilisation level threat for something like 20 years. Nuclear represents a very rare maybe city level threat. We don't really know if it is a city level threat, but we evacuate because it isn't very common so it isn't worth finding out.

For most of that 20 years, nuclear has been a more economic option than renewables; and safer and probably cleaner to boot on average. Nuclear has been a technically better option and only a bit more expensive (less than double usual practice). I don't think it is an economic issue, I think it is an irrational public opposition issue. The economics aren't helping, but if it was strictly a scientific/environmental question we'd be seeing protestors saying 'split atoms, not icebergs'.

The UK having poor project management is evidence, but it isn't a strong counter. That happens to pretty much every large project. And wobbly policy in the US isn't what would scare investors, it would be wobbly policy in Germany. The energiewende pummeled nuclear; it wasn't up-front cost because the plants were already built.

Good points.

However, my point remains that if it's so abundantly clear that nuclear fission is an economically, manageable, palatable option, it'd have a significant uptake around the world.

Fission power plants may represent, as you say, a rare city-level threat -- but that threat increases linearly as number of plants goes up. And while I agree there's a degree of irrationality involved in terms of risk assessment, it's non-trivial to talk people around from that position. If you're comparing the health risks to coal / gas, nuclear wins on pure numbers. But if you're arguing against solar PVC, solar thermal, wind, hydro, tidal, etc it's a much harder sell.

As to the UK having poor project management -- this may well be true, but it's somewhat aside. Ultimately no one else is ramping up nuclear fission plants, and everyone believes they have (or can easily purchase) good project management skills.

But even ten years ago the construction of the forerunners of the proposed UK plants -- managed by the French Areva corp -- were way behind schedule and over budget. I'm referring to the embarrassing Finland / TVO experiences.

Jeremy Leggett -- an undeniably partisan, UK based analyst -- ten years ago was expressing dire concerns [1] about the UK's direction here. The subsequent decade have been kind to his predictions.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/nuclea...

Yeah, nuclear can be expensive when you're building only couple of them per decade & continent. Look at China.

On the other hand, what is the actual cost of renewable energy with storage / backup / grid upgrades accounted for?

Nobody ever brings up _those_ numbers when claiming how nuclear is uneconomical. Maybe because those would be sky high today, and only might become manageable in the future. But hey, nuclear reactors are expensive!

So all we need to do to fix the nuclear industry is make the public rational. And also, fix pathological project management issues. I don't think either of those things are going to happen. Nuclear power may be technically better, but that is not enough.

Also, economics has an influence on these two issues you identify. If something is cheap then it is more likely that government will override the views of the public. This happens all the time on projects that make economic sense to the politicians. Also, very large projects are harder to commoditize. If a company can get thousands of orders for something it is easier to scale than if they get one or two orders. Project management is harder when every project is singular.

And yet, France converted their grid to 80% nuclear in twenty years. Maybe we should do whatever they did.

And yet five years ago the French government committed to dropping their nuclear power generation from 75% to 50% by 2025.

Last year this was revised out by ten years -- same target, though, but aiming for 50%.

So one country briefly had three quarters of their power coming from nuclear, and this country's typically held up as the poster child of nuclear fission, and they're moving away from it.

50% nuclear is enough to achieve 100% clean energy today. It wasn't enough 50 years ago when renewables were expensive. Basically it has to provide base load power which is supplemented with renewables and peaker plants.

Exactly! This is what we want to do with nuclear. Pro-nuclear isn't anti-renewable (we want diversified energy portfolios, not a single source. That'd be ridiculous). It is about load balancing. If we can load balance with renewables and cheaper than nuclear options, then let's do it. Let's just not load balance with fossil fuels.

The US is 20% nuclear, maybe we should do whatever we did.

Congrats to solar, btw, for finally breaking into the single digit percentages.