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by pjc5023 hours ago |
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upvoteby herecomesyour_22 hours ago|
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Heartening to see someone talking about both the pros and cons. I find here and on, for example reddit or twitter, that people are unanimously in favour of Nuclear.

I really don't think costs and delays are well understood. The costs are astronomical and in the UK the cost of energy has been monstrously subsidized. Consumers (public) are paying for this before the plants are running and for hundreds of years after they are running.

I wouldn't call myself anti-nuclear however as in terms of base load, sovereignty and environmentally it strikes me as hitting the sweet spot.

But I don't think people really appreciate how expensive it costs the public over the lifetime (even if "day to day" cost per MWh compares favourably with other sources), and how long it takes to get running. Even small modular reactors fail to address this.

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upvoteby pjc5022 hours ago|
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> Even small modular reactors fail to address this.

I'd be willing to engage with SMRs on the merits of actually constructed systems, but if you open https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-power-... and restrict to "operational" all but two of the projects disappear.

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upvoteby marcosdumay20 hours ago|
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One in China and one in Russia.

I doubt they are talking about the same thing as the US companies. So it would be useless to extrapolate their economics.

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upvoteby matthewdgreen20 hours ago|
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Not only this, but the benefit of SMR is based on the possibility that they can be mass-produced at low cost. Until that happens, the benefit doesn’t exist. Solar and batteries and wind have already passed that threshold, but cheap mass-produced SMRs don’t exist yet, even if someone can point to a couple of expensive, bespoke SMRs.
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upvoteby matthewdgreen20 hours ago|
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It doesn’t really matter if people on HN or Reddit are in favor of nuclear. At the end of the day, nuclear will get built if someone thinks the cost is worth it over the alternatives. The Internet fan club is mostly irrelevant.
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upvoteby herecomesyour_6 hours ago|
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How the public understand what they are (or are not) signing up for is critical though.
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upvoteby Jensson7 hours ago|
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That relies on imports of nuclear from France and isn't winter, its easy to say you don't need nuclear when you import a massive amount of others nuclear when the sun doesn't shine as much.

UK is not energy independent so its not a good example.

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upvoteby gib44419 hours ago|
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And what is your median domestic electric unit price? (actually consumed)

It's certainly not £0.01203/kWh, or even in the same order of magnitude.

Later

(For context for non-Brits: there is a price cap of £0.2467 kWh currently, which many people are paying (or very close to that))

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