> Which is why nukes don’t get built.
Nukes don't get built because:
- billions (if not trillions) of subsidies were poured into wind and solar over decades to make them viable while nuclear energy was addled with additional taxes, reactor closures, and very few new reactor licenses
- decades of fear-mongering led to loss of expertise in building new nuclear power plants (and instead South-East Asia has been picking up speed in building new reactors) [1]
In 2015 nuclear was significantly cheaper than most other types of energy across most markets: https://world-nuclear.org/images/articles/REPORT_Economics_R... (Figure 12, in some markets including the then-emerging renewables). And yet renewables were enjoying unprecedented amounts of subsidies and money poured into them while nuclear... Oh we know what was happening to nuclear, just look at Germany.
[1] Here's EU's own report: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2025...
Renewables: 80-80 billion euro in subsidies a year.
Fossil fuels: 60-140 billion euro in subsidies a year.
Nuclear: good luck finding the thin orange line in the graph. (1% of subsidies)
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As shown on Figure 4 , solar energy received by far the largest share of subsidies, both historically and in 2023 (EUR 21 bn), followed by biomass (EUR 9 bn) and wind power (EUR 7 bn). Hydropower received marginal financial support (~EUR 1 bn), while subsidies targeting multiple renewable technologies (such as tax reductions on green technology or public aid for investment projects) jumped to EUR 23 bn by 2023.
Subsidies for nuclear energy dropped from EUR 7.9 bn in 2021 to 3.7 bn in 2022 and 4.1 bn in 2023. Of the 14 MS providing nuclear subsidies, France (EUR 2.9 bn) accounted for the biggest share, followed by Germany (EUR 0.8 bn) , Spain and Belgium (EUR 0.1 bn each).
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