What are the numbers here? Honest question, has there been an announcement or something?
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@mrundkvist The complexity of planning energy infrastructure and weighing stability, current economic cost, future economic cost, environmental impact of construction/operation/deconstruction, associated costs (e.g. storage for solar balancing, level of regulatory regime for nuclear safety), means that any cost-cost comparison is making lots of assumptions and choices. Those assumptions and choices can be influenced by ideology or by partisanship in fun feedback loops that again influence the validity of estimates of future cost. And anti-nuclear has an ideological history causing some people to reflexively reject it and others to treat that lack of objectivity as proof the objective stance is being pro nuclear.
What are the numbers here? Honest question, has there been an announcement or something?
@Tallish_Tom
Ignoring waste storage, the main problem is that you can't get a #nuclear plant from zero to online in five years. It's closer to 25 years. And the efficiency of the solar tech is growing steadily. So if I start building a nuclear plant today, there is no likely future scenario where it will make economic sense to run it once it's online.
The Irony is that Swedish home grown BWRs are some of the fastest to build reactors around. Partnering with Japan(?) & Sweden could build one in less than 10 years.
Solar & storage (& wind) are getting cheaper & faster to power, but with the big seasonal swings might nuclear make some sense? At least as a component?
What must not happen is to put solar, wind &storage projects on hold while waiting for "the nuclear fix", 'cos 10 years is a long time for renewables tech.
@Tallish_Tom @mrundkvist Storage has still a long way to go until it (plus massive overbuild) can /maybe/ compete with the simple generation from nuclear power.
When the main problem is that some nuclear plants take 20 years to build, while others (most even) take only 5—7, then the question is how to do it right, not whether to do it at all.
Storage does have a long way to go OTOH it went from ~7 GW / ~11 GWh in 2018 to ~270 GW / ~617 GWh in the 7 years from 2018 - 2025 and that was while it was finding its feet. So its got the legs.
OTOH, Scandinavia's long, cold, dark winters probably make it a better case for some Nuclear than pretty much anywhere else.