I'm 100% convinced there is an oil/coal lobby conspiracy here. Nuclear used to cost $3000/kw in the fucking 80s, still does in China.
America needs 700GW of Nuclear power for 100% nuclear energy AND to charge EVs. That's just $2.1 trillion to COMPLETELY decarbonize both energy and transport. That's 3 years of military budget, we could have done this 40 years ago :agony-consuming:
For the UK, even assuming a conservative $5k/kW cost of construction, it would cost $250 billion to fully nuclearize the electricity grid. That's 1% of the GDP over 10 years. This 1-2% over 10-15 years figure applies more or less to all developed countries.
There is ample evidence of coal/oil interests frustrating nuclear power construction through sockpuppet environmental NGOs, lobbying to hamper nuclear development, anti-nuclear propaganda etc.
Here are 5 reasons why capital doesn't want nuclear:
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Nuclear is structurally unprofitable. It requires massive initial capital investment, and there are very little running costs to profit from. Nuclear power has never been profitable anywhere, BUT IT DOESNT MATTER. It is still massively beneficial to humanity. It is living proof that profitability is not the only metric for a better society, and in fact can actively hamper building a better society.
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Nuclear lasts 60-80 years, modern designs could even last 100 years. Coal, Oil and even wind turbines, solar, need continual gradual replacement. See why fossil interests support wind and solar, and oppose nuclear? It's better for them to have a constant stream of revenue. :capitalist-laugh:
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Virtually all reactors are owned by the state, for reasons of profitability. Nuclear is a socialist source of power, private corporations HATE that! There is a reason why China is going all in on nuclear. The Soviet Union also was planning on making nuclear it's primary source.
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Resource extraction industries also extract rent, i.e super profits (according to Ricardian theory of differential rent). Uranium is a tiny fraction of nuclear costs, can't have that, gotta get that oil/coal/gas rent.
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Solar/Wind requires trillions in energy storage, that's another massive cost to humanity, but for capital - a massive source of profit :capitalist:
Edit : China built a 6000MW nuclear power plant for $10 billion. At that cost, it would cost USA just $1.2 trillion to go full nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangjiang_Nuclear_Power_Station
are we going to start invading every poor country with lithium on the planet, genociding their population, and using them as slaves for building tens of billions of solar panels in the next 3-5 years? i sure hope not.
reddit voice Lithium is for the batteries, but yeah I appreciate your point. Energy storage is a different and equally irritating problem. That said, same thing with mining happens for uranium and other needed materials for nuclear.
There’s problems with every method, but pretending nuclear is the best one doesn’t help anyone. There’s been one nuclear plant built in the US in the last 25 years.
to much lesser degree, though. and mining uranium is not the ideal for the vast majority of countries, there are other fissile materials that are more common
You have to mine for the materials to do nuclear power, and solar panels don't require lithium. Solar panels actually seem pretty simple in terms of materials (aluminum,. glass, silicon). Sure storing energy is a problem, but that will have to be tackled no matter what, and solar panels can at least be placed anywhere including on buildings, which means energy travels less distance, etc.
solar panels certainly do require lithium if you want to power things at night time
There's also development of alternative energy storage like gravity based storage. They only have to store the energy that will be used during the night, and there's always wind and other forms of renewable energy that can further reduce energy storage needs (at least I think that's how it works).