Hacker News Reader

Comment by wodencafe | Hacker News Reader

From TFA:

The cancellation means there are just two new nuclear units being built in the country — both in Georgia — while more than a dozen older nuclear plants are being retired in the face of low natural gas prices.

So what is going to happen when gas prices skyrocket?

View on HN

If it's anything like Australia, the high gas prices will cause electricity prices to skyrocket and then conservative politicians will blame it on renewable energy.

Then they'll attempt to put more nuclear plants in, then gas will plummet again and they'll abandon those plans and then gas will skyrocket and they'll make new plans and then gas will drop and

Which, once again, shows why nuclear is an economic disaster. The extremely high capital costs, and the long times from conception to completion means that it's very difficult for it to profitably (after adjusting for financial risk) compete with fossil fuels, which can be ramped up or down based on their costs, or renewables, which while also predominantly capital driven, can be brought from idea to pumping electricity in a fraction of the time.

"Nuclear" is not an economic disaster. "Nuclear politics" is, and has been since the technology first appeared.

We have the technological capability to build perfectly safe, high-performance reactors that spit out low-risk waste products (or no waste products) for far less than the cost of any current/planned project.

What we don't have is politicians with the balls to push through the political minefield that come with it.

At current technology levels and known reserves, there's about 85 years of natgas. And it just keeps getting cheaper to produce and known reserves keep expanding far faster than it is consumed.

The only way gas prices could skyrocket are political caps on production or a cheap way to export natgas across the oceans explodes demand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com