How can you call it cheap when we’re discussing a specific project that ran out of money? I can’t think of a more hard and fast example of something being “not cheap.”

I’m not supporting any particular alternative technology or narrative, so I dunno what your point is about batteries. Those aren’t even an electrical production method so IDK how it relates at all. What I’m saying is, it is straight up mind-numbing that people keep telling me nuclear is cheap when I drive past the “expensive local boondoggle” failed nuclear plant pretty regularly. And here you are, in my replies, recursively reaffirming the “nuclear is cheap” gospel in response to me linking a specific example of nuclear being too expensive to even turn the dang thing on. I don’t even know what else to say.

Look into what China is doing with Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. That's the future of nuclear.

I wonder if we can get RFK to convince him to start drinking out of these. There is already at least one MAHA person on YouTube/Tiktok doing so for the supposed "health benefits"

Good thing nobody screws up oil and spills it into the environment…

Right, this is what drives me up a fucking wall about the horseshoe types. I hear people talking about how I should think it’s a good thing that turnip opened up nuclear energy again. But his incompetence and grift will ensure it lives up to all the worst public fears about it. It’s going to set back nuclear progress immeasurably.

Probably the point of this kakistoctacy though, keep the oil prices up…

But how does it compare with installing a pool liner?

Tipping Nuclear Rod seems like Homer Simpson's level of blunder.

Nuclear is getting drastically cheaper as of late, and will likely continue to do so. Power infrastructure should not operate to turn a profit, but to provide a service. Nuclear does not take drastically different power infrastructure than current fossil fuels. Radiation is genuinely a non-issue. Waste can be stored in seismically inactive rock above the water table and be essentially ignored forever. Coal causes far more radiation contamination, by orders of magnitude, than nuclear, not to mention there has been barely any nuclear energy incidents, and we only know so much about the ones that did happen because of fearmongering. If water temperature is affecting the local rivers, the plant is mismanaged and poorly designed. My local plant only draws water from its own artificial lake, and does not affect the environment. In fact, it's lake and the surrounding area was turned into an excellent park, where I hike often.

The reasons why nuclear makes a ton of sense, at least right now:

• Power storage technology is not ready for 100% renewables on most grids, so some level of base power needs provided
• Nuclear can replace existing fossil fuel plants, since they provide nearly the same service
• Renewables are not available everywhere. In places where the solar flux is too low for significant parts of the year, both wind and solar can suffer. If the power grid is entirely reliant on them, this could cause catastrophe. Nuclear bridges that gap without affecting CO2
• Nuclear is already nearly at the point where plants can be built on-site for power supply on power hungry infrastructure with relative ease, and is only getting better and cheaper.
• Until we have other options and better power storage, some base load power is necessary, and nuclear is infinitely preferable to fossil fuels

Nuclear won't be a forever solution for large grid power, and will eventually be replaced by mature renewable infrastructure. That time is not going to be in the next decade, or even two, most likely. In the temporary, it can largely replace the fossil fuel industry that is killing the planet. In the long term, on-site reactors will allow power hungry infrastructure to avoid affecting the local power grid, like research institutions, large scale manufacturing, and data centers. You're totally right in that renewables are far preferable to nuclear, but they simply aren't swap in, swap out replacements for each other. Nuclear isn't really competing with renewables, it's competing with fossil fuels. They're both critical parts of what we need to get off fossil fuel dependence.

Edit: For the record, coal plants can take upwards of 8 years to construct and typically multiple decades to "break even." We don't operate power infrastructure because it's profitable, but because we need it.

Well, yeah if we had bet more on nuclear two decades ago and kept building them, this would have been relevant.

But now renewables are expanding at a rate faster than nuclear power ever did, and unlike nuclear the growth rate is not flattening out yet. I don’t see how nuclear is much more than an irrelevant distraction when it comes to new energy production (existing is another matter, please don’t shut them down).

The base load problem is essentially solved IMO. Just a few years ago the duck curve was made to be insurmountable, and now it’s basically fully solved. Long term months long storage is also partially solved for colder regions where they are the most relevant.

But most importantly, this all ties into all the work we have to do to decarbonise industry. We have to make a lot of hydrogen and build a lot of electrical industrial heat production (which comes with free energy storage). Modern gas power plants are already hydrogen ready. We just need to build lots and lots of hydrogen electrolysis plants (for steel and ammonia production) near the gas power plants, and put some aside to use during dunkelflaute. That means many places already have much of the infrastructure needed to balance 100% renewables.

As dumb as Germanys shut down of nuclear has been, I think their strategy will be considered brilliant in 30 years time. The reason they have relied so much on gas is they need a that gas for the industry they specialised in anyway. The trick now is just to transition them to hydrogen and electric heating. There are already factories and fertiliser plants with on-site hydrogen production. It has started.

Not to mention, nuclear is GREAT for reliable baseline load. Pair that with renewable sources (which in many locations tend to be bursty) and grid-scale batteries/supercapacitors/some other energy-storage mechanism, and you’ve got a zero-carbon electric grid.