Re:US installs record solar capacity as prices keep falling
by jokoon on Friday September 23, 2022 @01:05PM
(#32954468)
In the context of CO2 emissions, money doesn't matter, only resources and physical units do.
Re:US installs record solar capacity as prices keep falling
by ncmncm on Friday September 23, 2022 @02:29PM
(#32955464)
Money matters in that you can spend it building and operating nukes, or building renewables. You can't spend the same dollar on both, but the dollar spent on renewables gets you more kW than the same dollar spent on nukes.
We will need every non-carbon kW we can muster.
Nukes have the extra ball-and-chain of huge capital cost to amortize over all the kWh they will produce over their lifetime. This means that if you end up operating only half time, there are half as many kWh to amortize over, and each kWh costs even more, making you even less competitive. (Operating a steam turbine less might reduce maintenance cost, but probably not if you are starting and stopping it every night, or if you keep it cycling to avoid that.)
So the expectation is that nukes will very quickly become unable to produce enough revenue to pay for continued operation. Then they are mothballed. Suddenly, all that capex is amortized over a much smaller lifetime kWh total, and the actual cost of every kWh ever produced jumps instantly to greater than you ever were able to charge for it. Then you go into receivership, or anyway write off that capex you thought you had invested, but really just poured down a hole.