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A comment on China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear reactors. Parent comment

Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by belorn on Monday November 08, 2021 @04:03PM (#29154248)
The cost picture is complex. Using nuclear they can build the plants next to the industry centers, replacing existing coal plans. They don't need to build batteries to address the intermittency of renewables. In addition 150 power plants being built at the same time might gain some benefit of scale, and might attract other countries to follow suit.

We need to compare the cost to what other countries are doing to achieve similar goals. Countries like Germany is planning to create green hydrogen in order to replace the current natural gas plants, and we don't know the price tag for that. Europe is currently also seeing the consequences of relying on natural gas and energy trading, with record high energy costs for the end consumer, despite building a lot of solar and wind farms. The high demand for natural gas is also creating additional problems for industries that depend on that limited resource, like agriculture. With uranium there isn't many other industries that compete for that resource.

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Re:China to supercharge uranium race with 150 new nuclear re... by jillesvangurp on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @05:56AM (#29160058)
High gas prices are short term very disruptive but actually speed up the agenda of relying less on it. Which is why it is a good thing IMHO with some bad/unfortunate impact on people with lower incomes, You can bet, a lot of home owners that haven't already are now considering heat exchanges, solar, and batteries as ways to have less exposure to high energy prices. Additionally, high gas prices push gas power plants towards being less profitable. Most European energy companies are already investing heavily in wind (particularly) and solar. So, you could argue that investing in gas plants just got a lot less attractive than it already was.

High cost would actually still be manageable if it was predictable. However, that is becoming exactly the issue. It swings between too low for exploitation to be even profitable due to over supply and then too high because of Russian and OPEC policy resulting in supply disruption. Kind of a bad situation to be in if you are dependent on that. The smart move would be to eliminate such dependencies as soon as possible. Energy companies are going bankrupt right now because they are locked into contracts with consumers they no longer can afford.

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