this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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That is the great misunderstanding of nuclear. It isn’t cheap. It’s supported massively by tax money. In France with all its big nuclear plants for example, the power company went bankrupt. Nuclear is too expensive to run. The government took over the operations.
In Germany, the power companies refused to prolong the operations of nuclear at the beginning of Russian invasion. It was too expensive for them.
The only advantage that nuclear has, is that it’s independent of weather and doesn’t emit carbon. The drawback is the costs, inflexibility (always on), and reliance on cool water (which was an issue in France). That’s why MS, Amazon and all put there eggs into this basket for AI power - they shit money.
Nuclear is too expensive to run in the short term. Nuclear plants only start being profitable after like 10 years. But then they're really fucking profitable. So it makes sense a company could go bankrupt when you're 10 years in the red.
Also, on the topic of flexibility, this is only true for, like, 70s era nuclear. France has had load-following nuclear for some time now. Does it follow second-to-second variations? No, but it can load follow on the scale of the daily variations in demand.