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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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:

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  • Quimby [any, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    If you theoretically had an excess of energy, couldn't you convert some of the electrical energy into mechanical energy (or thermal, etc) then back into electric? Obviously the energy loss would be high, but if you really had an excess of energy, you might not care.

    Also, you might not need a room temperature superconductor if you were sending the energy over a wire deep in the ocean (which is considerably colder than room temperature), though they did recently discover the first known room temperature superconductor (obviously nowhere near the point yet where it could be reliably produced and used in any sort of application.)

    • Baron [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      You need superconduction because current conduction tech isn't good enough to transfer power over vast distances, and there isn't a way to efficiently harvest lost heat energy. It isn't an economics / capitalism thing, it's just physics to have more and more evenly distributed power generation systems.

      This site has a heavy ML tilt so ofc they're big fans of nuclear power, and nuclear is good, but you need state violence to keep the radioactives safe. Solar power is a much more anarchist form of energy because it allows a large degree of independence from centralization.