There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…
And again, the article does the same mistake they always do: attack wind and solar more than fossil or hydro. Instead of selling nuclear as the ideal companion to solar, it's always a sad try to convince us that we are wrong investing in solar and eolic, and the money should be going to more nuclear. My guess is that utilities are not happy with the decentralization of PV. They like fossils, hydro and nuclear because…
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#331The economics of nuclear power don't make it an ideal companion to wind and solar. You want to have backup power for days where it's neither windy nor sunny. So you need a lot of nuclear. But then you want to use renewables when they're available, so most of the time you run your reactors way below capacity. Unfortunately most of the cost of nuclear is capex, so every minute you don't run at 100% makes nuclear power much more expensive.