The safety of any power source projects past performance onto future performance. This is a tautology, and not really relevant as we have 80 years of experience and nuclear provides 20% of US power. It provides almost 40% of Canada's electricity. 10% of the world's electricity. We have plenty of samples necessary to make an informed projection.

The direct cost of produced energy is very low with nuclear - super low. Just ask Ontario. [1] There is a large cap ex cost at the start, but you can amortize it over 80 years - whereas solar and wind has to be replaced every 20-30.

Nuclear prices in all externalities in its cost assessments due to the onslaught of attacks whereas other energy prices in almost nothing. Coal kills about 100 people per TWh, and at the same $9M NRC cost, coal should cost about $1/kWh.

[1] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...

> The direct cost of produced energy is very low with nuclear - super low.

Only if you ignore the amortization of the cost of financing and building the nuclear power plant. That's fine if the plant is provided by the Nuclear Fairy; not so fine in the real world if we're talking about building new nuclear plants that have to be paid for.

Some things are expensive - more expensive - but we should do them anyways because they're the right thing to do. Generally I refer to the 'nuclear fairy' as the government, whose job it is in my opinion, to make sure we do the right thing even when the market isn't interested.

You are engaging in the egregious fallacy of "if the government pays for it, it's free". That's true at the individual level. It's not true at the level of the whole society. And it's that latter level that matters when asking if nuclear power makes sense.

It's hard to see how wasting resources and, all else being equal, doing something the much more expensive way would be "the right thing to do". If nuclear is too expensive than a renewable solution, too bad so sad.

> You are engaging in the egregious fallacy of "if the government pays for it, it's free".

No, I'm not.

A role of government in my opinion is to facilitate providing services and creating infrastructure in the public interest which might not make market economic sense at the time we need it - if it is a better outcome for the citizenry. You're welcome to disagree but there's no fallacy there. I never said it was free, I said it was more expensive - but the government should do it anyways because it will make us better off. Like the post office and the EPA.

There's a reason in going to the moon, JFK never said that “we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not just because they are easy, but because they are the cheapest thing we can possibly do, and if it starts to look like it's cheaper or easier to be sitting on the couch then too bad so sad, to the couch we shall return!"

He said it was "because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

> If nuclear is too expensive than a renewable solution, too bad so sad.

Right no. I don't believe in that. Again, nuclear is renewable, this much is basically indisputable. I believe that a better solution can be government funded in line with the charter of any world government, be it a western democracy or the PRC. I do not believe market viability is the be all and end all in this here world. I believe that attitude would have left us living as hunter-gatherers. I do not believe the cheapest solution is the only solution we should advocate for or pursue, period.

We deserve better and should demand better than your position.

Renewables literally can't beat nuclear at power generation until long term grid storage is a proven thing. We're not there yet.

They can beat nuclear right now -- you get more CO2 reduction per $ from adding renewables than you do from adding nuclear. And you get it sooner. Little or no storage is required. By the time storage becomes necessary, the economic environment (price as a function of time) on the grid will be so hostile to new nuclear that there will be no sense even trying to pretend nuclear makes sense.

You get more CO2 reduction until intermittency or geopolitical issues require you to bring coal plants back online to address energy shortfalls, like with Germany. You'd need an order of magnitude more renewables and a huge grid expansion to even remotely come close to solving energy unreliability in Germany, and even then you'll still have some issues. CO2 reduction is not the only goal, power stability is important.

When you need storage, the residual demand is highly intermittent. Coal would serve this rather poorly (and nuclear even more so). Gas would be more likely. However, at that point there are wild swings in the price of power across each day (and possibly across seasons), making storage quite attractive, and it would be rolled out.

If your objection is that storage would not be rolled out instantaneously, I will ask you to try to be more serious. Nuclear isn't rolled out even that fast.

You can make all the theoretical arguments you like, but the empirical data (California, Germany, and more) disagrees with your conclusion. Perhaps you should consider a more serious argument that actually agrees with the current evidence.

What? Experience in Germany and California is completely consistent with what I was saying. Of course natural gas without sufficient CO2 charges will continue to cover intermittency, especially when there's a great deal of already installed gas capacity whose capital cost is sunk.

Why is Germany reopening it's coal plants if not to make up for the intermittency problems of renewables?

If intermittency issues caused storage to be quite attractive, why hasn't storage already been rolled out across Germany and California?

Neither if these claims agrees with what happened in these two cases. Any electrical engineer could have told you storage is needed before decommissioning nuclear in favour of renewables.