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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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14 years and 35 billion (combined with #4 which has not been finished) and didn't generate a single kWh in anger until now. Put the same investment into renewables and it would generate similar or greater energy and would start doing so within a year.
The argument against nuclear now is not about safety. It is about money. Nuclear simply cannot compete without massive subsidies.
There’s also a reliability element too. Nuclear can reliably output a given amount of energy, at the cost of being slow to alter. Many renewable sources have sporadic amounts of power throughout each day. Either is better than fossil fuels at least.
Nuclear isn't entirely reliable though. During the big heatwave last year at least 1 and iirc at leat a few French reactors had to be shut down because the water levels in the rivers they were on were not high enough to get sufficient water to cool them. Which is a problem that's only going to get worse as climate change progresses.
That's a limitation of the secondary power conversion side and is true for any power generation methodology that relies on steam generation. That said, there's alternatives to the traditional Rankine cycle that could be deployed without modifying the nuclear side of the plant.