zlacker

>>belter+(OP)
I, for one, welcome the solar age. Truly clean power that can be generated decentralised, on a regional, even local commune level.

It's wild how big companies, certain countries and billionaires are still holding on to nuclear fission (not fusion).

Nuclear reactors:

- take decades to build

- go massively over budget, at least 2x if not more [0]

- are inherently uneconomically: energy companies would never invest/build them on their own, only by lobbying governments for HUGE subsides (in various forms) do they get build

- inherently uninsurable: no private insurance company would insure a plant, again if private companies would need to build/run them on their own, every insurance company would deny them

- deconstructing them takes again billions and decades

- there's still no real-world solution (or even long-term secure storage) for nuclear waste in the world

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Solar / Wind / Storage

Compare the 60 Billions for 1 single nuclear plant (UK) to what you would get from the same investment in solar (plus battery tech getting cheaper and better for storage). We are talking about differences in the magnitudes.

About the only value nuclear fission has is that's a central power source which gives the entities owning it huge power over the consumers.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/uk-nuclear-plant-hinkley-point-co...

>>mental+gU
This is not an adequate way to look at nuclear. If you check the stats of established constructions and not first of a kind prototypes (check Barakah instead Hinkley), the construction time is closer to 10 years, often less.

With transmutation and the option for recycling it altogether, waste is not an issue. Only the low fission parts of the spent fuel is low-grade active for longer than 1000 years, but this is such a low level of radiation, it is comparable to natural uranium formations and not an issue. The high radiation part of the fuel has lost the dangerous level of radiation in less than 1000 years and can be recycled before. The arenic compounds and other substances as byproduct of copper etc production for the mass of renewables have a much longer shelf life of toxitity. Also, you need more of them.

>>wortel+bV
The average is probably between 10 and 20 years.

This is on top of an LCOE that is 5x that of solar or wind power and the need for catastrophe insurance to be provided essentially for free by the taxpayer on top of that.

(Fukushima cost about $1 trillion to clean up, the liability cap for US plants is about $250 million because otherwise private insurers who understand the risks better than you or I WILL NOT shoulder the liability)

The cost of nuclear can be dragged down by taking various risks that the people getting that sweet free catastrophe insurance would probably be happy with.