I live in South Korea. One thing people miss about nuclear power in South Korea is that natural gas is expensive in South Korea, because there is no pipeline connection and it is imported liquified. The article quotes $25/MWh for natural gas in PJM, where comparable number in South Korea is $100/MWh.
Truth is, if South Korea had pipeline connection to Siberian natural gas field (not an absurd supposition, there was fairly concrete plan proposed in 2012 which fell through due to politics), nuclear power would be uneconomical in South Korea no matter how it keeps construction cost cheapest in the world. Therefore, economical nuclear power in the United States can never happen by copying South Korea, because natural gas is cheap in the United States.
If pipelines between russia and germany ( who had ties stretching centuries and pipelines for decades ) are such an issue for the US, any pipeline between russia and korea or russia and japan are non-starters. After fukushima, we allowed japan to buy lots of gas from russia. There was even talk about Japan and Russia building pipelines. But that got squashed real quick. Instead we forced japan to build LNG terminals for gas shipments by sea. Far costlier, more inefficient and much slower.
It's an example of politics trumping economics. Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far. Japan and Korea are relatively wealthy but energy poor nations. A pipeline between Russia and Japan/Korea makes all the economic sense in the world. You'd expect there be a bunch of pipeline already and more scheduled to be built in the future. But no. Not a single pipeline.
Unfortunately it also has the paranoid aggressive Russian security apparatus in charge that brought us to where we are, which for some strange reason you entirely omit.
Also, we have climate change, remember? We are supposed to not use up all the available fossil carbohydrates! The more we bring up the more even more large-scale issues we will have. Making fossil fuels cheap and easy does not lead us to somewhere good.
> It's an example of politics trumping economics.
Which is good especially in this case, so I don't understand your point.
One thing I don't understand is why nobody in German government (I'm German), not even the Greens, mentions that the kick in the rear that we get from the threat of Russia cutting gas is actually good for us, otherwise we would happily continue to rely on lots and lots of cheap natural gas and climate goals be damned because it's soooo convenient.
We would need to make big changes to our (German) economy to use significantly less fossil fuels even if Russia had a nice and peaceful government.
> Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far.
Which should remain where it is, underground! Or 50 °C will be the new normal in some heavily populated areas of this world, and other very inconvenient changes.
The plan for some seems to be to ignore the laws of thermodynamics and spend even more resources and energy on collecting carbon from the atmosphere and returning it underground using technology, instead of just letting it sit where it already has been sitting for several hundreds of millions of years. Funnily enough, this inefficient and leaky and destructive busywork adds much to GDP, compared to doing nothing (leaving the carbohydrates and not raising and using them).
Truth is, if South Korea had pipeline connection to Siberian natural gas field (not an absurd supposition, there was fairly concrete plan proposed in 2012 which fell through due to politics), nuclear power would be uneconomical in South Korea no matter how it keeps construction cost cheapest in the world. Therefore, economical nuclear power in the United States can never happen by copying South Korea, because natural gas is cheap in the United States.