Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game
by civilitty on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @05:23AM
(#38275179)
Solar was never “unfairly sidelined” because it was never regulated to death. That’s why it’s gotten cheaper while nuclear has stagnated.
Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game
by epistasis on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @10:31AM
(#38277725)
Why is solar 3x more expensive in the US then, say, Australia? Because it is indeed regulated out of and into existence. Will the utility let you even connect solar to power your house, will the utility charge excessive fixed per-month fees for the privilege, how many hoops will your local municipality make you jump through for permitting, how many weeks or months of delay will there be, how many pointless and useless diagrams will they make you submit, how will a large installer every gain efficiency while dealing with every single city's pointless differences in . Or even, will you silly HOA allow panels, and if so, where and at what visibility?
"By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous...
Also, "marginally cheaper" can't help but sound like sour grapes; the cost-per-watt of solar has fallen by 500x in the past 50 years (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-...). How many hundreds of times cheaper per-watt is nuclear since then?