Re:A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by ...
by jjoonathan on Tuesday May 03, 2022 @10:09AM
(#31248494)
Yeah, renewables have gotten a lot cheaper. They weren't viable, but now they are, and waiting is a sunk cost.
I think it's unconscionable that we chose to emit ~20 gigatons of CO2 instead of pushing nuclear from 20% of our electric supply to 100% -- we would be there today if we had just kept up the pace -- but what's done is done. We killed nuclear and waited for renewables to become viable. We paid the price. The CO2 is in the air. Now we can move forward.
Nuclear doesn't have a big support base. It's basically only supported by educated technocrats.
And those educated technocrats are already holding their nose, because they know big government projects are often late and over budget. And the designs that are intrinsically safe haven't been built before. And if there was a meltdown, the taxpayer would have to foot the bill. And nobody's going to want the plants built in their area. And a permanent waste repository has been a political football for longer than most of us have been alive.
At the same time, if you squint hard enough when you look at the figures, solar+wind+batteries look cheaper.
Squinting that way is pretty tempting if you were on the fence anyway.