>but I wouldn't put my money on it...

That's a large part of the reason that it likely won't be a part of the future mix. Because no investor groups want to "put their money on it". Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment. The problem is that everyone sees the shit show that Vogtie has become. Also, energy investors can see what's happened to nuclear in places like Iowa where it almost seems as though every guy able to even get a USD100,000 loan has gotten a group of his buddies together and slapped up some windmills. (Seriously, have you ever driven through Iowa lately?) Anyway, what investor group wants to put up the USD4 Billion to compete against all that? Harsh reality is that, assuming all they care about is generating more money, there are better places for their money to go. That's why we need government investment.

I've been saying for a while, we've reached the point where if we want nuclear to be a part of the future mix, government is going to have to step up in a big way. You could argue that the problem with Vogtie was that the government was unrealistic in expecting private industry to be able to pull that off with the provided level of assistance. (And yes, that also implies that private industry was just as unrealistic in believing they could pull that off without additional assistance.)

> Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment.

It's not expensive, financially, compared to Solar and Wind.

But it is expensive politically. For whatever reason, Nuclear is toxic in the public's eye. To shift public opinion is not going to be cheap.

Some Nuclear plants were stopped before starting their energy generation due to the public opinion shifting against them.

> government is going to have to step up in a big way.

We have agreement on that but how that's done is difficult.

> It's not expensive, financially, compared to Solar and Wind.

Per-megawatt, it might not cost more but:

1. The upfront investment is high. I can build a 1MW solar installation, or 10MW, or 100MW. Our smallest nuclear plant is around 500MW.

2. It will take many years to build.

3. It will take even longer to fully pay itself off.

Nuclear is fine if you have a massive amount of capital and know the market won't change in the next 50 year. But no rational actor in the energy market is about to bet on that stability when solar is a much more nimble investment that's cost-competitive.

It's not expensive to build or operate as long as everything goes right. If and when things go wrong it may be so expensive that dealing with it requires major resources. IIRC, nuclear plants are all basically government insured because there's no insurance company or set of companies that could underwrite the potential losses from a catastrophic failure.

Living only expecting things to go right means that cities don't need to worry about backups and hardened networks.

It's when things go wrong that you end up with an HBO series a few decades later.

> It's not expensive to build or operate as long as everything goes right. If and when things go wrong it may be so expensive that dealing with it requires major resources.

Say that to France. Stop buying the propaganda. HBO series has warning signs. Chernobyl and Fukushima were grossly mismanagement and ignored the glaring issues. France has never had the problem.

"Gross mismanagement" is an easy diagnosis after the fact. During the time in which the decisions were being made they probably made perfect sense, at least given the knowledge and constraints the decision makers were working with.

With some notable high profile exceptions people don't go into things with the intention of completely screwing them up.

If the issue is brought up to management more than 3 times then yes, it's gross mismanagement and could be solved.

Which is why I provide France as a counter-example. They aren't mismanaging the potential issues. It's a solvable problem and France is continually demonstrating it.

But it is expensive compared to solar and wind.

Let's remove all regulations for everyone. Wind, solar, nuclear, everyone. A nuclear plant is still going to run you north of USD1 Billion. Not only that, but you won't start seeing any return for 5 to 10 years. And that's doing everything in a headlong rush, on the cheap, with no regard for safety. Now someone would need to come up with that money.

Contrast this with throwing up windmills. You need, (again, no more regulations here), around 500 g's. You start generating income on that outlay inside of a year. Worse, because the prices are so low, enterprising people who would never have been able to compete in the energy markets before, all of a sudden are able to slap up windmills too. It can just snowball into a free for all. What happened in Iowa was a bit more controlled than that, but you still ended up with runaway growth in wind generation capacity. And now their nuclear plant is literally closing down. It can't even compete. One nuclear plant can out generate one windmill. But if everyone and his mother is gonna try to get a piece of the wind generation pie on their family's farm, well, that's an awful lot of windmills.

We've got to get serious and look at the energy markets in a realistic fashion. Iowans are not anti-nuclear hippies, they just don't want to get a bill for 15 cents a kWh instead of the bill for 2 cents a kWh. I don't blame them. Yeah, go wind, and fill in the gaps with whatever fossil fuel generation you have. It's cheaper for you. But we've got to get realistic about that fact and have government either pay for nuclear outright, or put it's finger on the scale like it ended up doing with Vogtie. Basically, telling consumers that you have to use the energy from the nuclear plant, you have to pay the higher price, and you're not allowed to switch away from it.

Like you said, that was not popular, but it is what it is. Those are the choices, we can't soft pedal this stuff anymore if we're serious about a carbon free future.

It is cheaper by all measures. Which is what you're not understanding.

Even if there is a a few years until actually being fully operational. It is still a better use of capital, providing the situation you described (no regulations for everyone). Which, to me, would remove the substitutes to solar.

A nuclear power plant has lower upkeep than the 20-30 year lifespan of wind and solar. This is a large cost you aren't including.

Small nuclear is uneconomical the last time I ran the numbers but mid to large scale is.

1 GW Nuclear power plant uses less land, less resources in materials and labor, and is more durable considering the maintenance/upkeep. If you compared that to solar or wind, using the most economical price point, it wouldn't even come close.

But Nuclear has major problems, since your situation isn't realized, an investor could lose 100% of their investment just to be used as a political scapegoat. You don't see that often with Wind and Solar.

So, given the current environment, yes, Wind/Solar are more economical but give no regulations and no substities, Nuclear would be the most economical.

I've recently stumbled upon some videos where Kirk Sorensen describes LFTR reactors (Liquid fluoride thorium reactor) that his startup is working on, and he is claiming that their reactor can cover its costs simply by selling fission products like xenon, helium, and rare radioactive elements used in medicine.

Nuclear is expensive in large parts because of the crazy rules and regulations around it. With nuclear you get the true cost + cost of bureaucracy

If we started actually calculating wind and solars true cost (ex. backup power by coal, oil, nuclear) then it too would be extremely expensive.

If we added the cost of decommissioning which isn't added to solar and wind but to nuclear then that would increase the price even more.

Wind, in particular, has a great deal of bureaucracy around it. Environmental issues. Construction codes. Land use issues. Land ownership issues. Air rights. And more. Today, investors have to work through all these in order to put up a wind farm. The reason they still do it is because as an entry into the energy markets it is an incredibly cheap vehicle. (Comparatively speaking.) The technology is just not that complicated. Even compared to fossil fuels, wind is just a dead simple tech. The costs when you don't count regulation reflect that.

Cost of bureaucracy is just abating the risks, so it is 100% a real cost.

Compared to wind and solar it certainly is.

Define 100% clean.