> Finland even built a new one recently. They are still in the process of buildi...

Guthur · on Sept 26, 2019

So, do you care about the environment or not?

It should be reduce carbon no matter the dollar cost, right?

It's utterly delusional to think that low density generation such as solar or wind can meet the growing energy needs without covering vast areas.

And electric vehicles will just increase the need.

bildung · on Sept 26, 2019

> It should be reduce carbon no matter the dollar cost, right?

The point is that nuclear is expensive. You get more energy per dollar by building renewables.

Robotbeat · on Sept 26, 2019

That's only true at low penetration of renewables. When you approach 100% clean energy, even current new nuclear actually looks just as cheap or cheaper as the combination of curtailment (i.e. over-building nameplate capacity and throwing away much of the energy), storage, and transmission you need to produce reliable power with wind and solar alone.

(and for the same reason, we should be looking at expanding hydro and geothermal)

So while I definitely think we should build solar and wind, it's ridiculous to just dismiss nuclear out of hand for cost reasons if the goal is 100% clean energy (unless you have, say, massive amounts of hydro power).

Given the climate emergency, it's silly to pit one clean energy project against another when in fact we need all we can get. Particularly in the case of variable renewables, as they benefit tremendously from being in a source-diverse power grid.