For better or worse, we live in a highly capitalist world, and most western electricity is an open market. In this construct we only make decisions based on money.
replyThe markets won’t do it, because nukes don’t make any capital sense to invest in, so the only way you can build nukes is nation states forcing it. Forcing the populace to pay extra for very expensive power that will only get even less competitive over the 30+ year lifetime… is not a popular move. It works only in single party states (eg china)
This is just the reality of economics and the world we live in
Power build outs are rarely driven by cost structures in a vacuum, or we'd all still be digging for coal. They're regularly driven by policy. It is a farce to think electricity choices are entirely capitalistic in nature, although maybe that's the case in some localized regions that probably (and regularly) hold other backwards policies in the name of "capitalism".
replySo your answer is use the state to force people to pay more for less competitive energy? There isn’t another choice here.
replyThat's what we are currently doing. We are using the state to force people to pay for expensive intermittent renewables.
replyWhere? In every country in the world? Because the world met something like 85% of the energy growth of 2025 with renewables. All regions of the world are seeing massive and accelerating renewables buildout. All forced by the state? Extraordinary claims require evidence.
replyThe state's role is to help shape policies that might help people over a time horizon greater than a couple of years. Often, this means current people are supposed to subsidize the world for future generations. This used to be the societal handshake that let kids have better outcomes than their parents. Somewhere along the way, the average joe seems to have lost sight of that societal contract and is more focused on instant gratification and short term payback.
replyI agree in general, but you may as well be wishing for ponies and unicorns as for change here. Short term economics is the current dominant force.
replyAlso consider that if you’re wrong about the progress of clean tech, and it closes the gaps on storage, the kids “better outcome” is going to be being locked into paying higher energy prices for a lot of their life. (Of course if you’re right it will help them)
[dead]
replyExcept they are mutually exclusive. Money spent by utility companies (or by taxpayers more broadly) to add new generation is not infinite, every dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar not spent on other renewables.
replyDo you also believe they're eventually going to balance the budget and tackle governmental debt?
reply