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Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

Great is the enemy of good.

Nowhere is this proven stronger than in alternative energy.

Nuclear is proven, practical, and we have technological benefit of decades of experience.

If finding alternative energy was really necessary (and thanks to the abundance of coal and the tragedy of the commons, it won't be for ages), there wouldn't even been a discussion.

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The thing is, nuclear power straight up isn't profitable to build now. 15 years ago, sure, but according to Lazard's most recent analysis, nuclear power is beaten by alternative sources with storage. The cost of financing projects on such large timescales is huge, not to mention the risk of fiascos like the one going on in South Carolina and to some extent Georgia. We should keep the plants we have running, but use the available funding for new renewables. If we really want to go to the nuclear power route, the government should just do what France and China did by nationalizing new nuclear plant construction. The prviate sector is past the point that it makes sense to choose new Nuclear plants over gas baseload or renewables.

A lot of the problem comes from the excessive, ridiculous, way-too-onerous over-regulation of nuclear power plants. Over-regulation brought on by an irrational fear of nuclear power- a fear fostered (and herein I put my conspiracy theory hat) by oil lobbying groups, who identified nuclear as one of the few energy solutions that would jeopardize their energy monopoly.

What I never understood is why Exxon/BP/etc never positioned themselves to corner nuclear/solar/etc. At their level, pivoting from being a "Gas Company" to an "Energy Company" seems like a no-brainer. Who cares which energy source wins, if you own all the energy sources?

In the West over-regulation destroyed nuclear as a viable option a long time ago. However even where there is no over-regulation there are still economic problems - China hasn't broken ground on a new reactor since 2016. Nuclear is too expensive.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-...

Current cost estimates deserve some skepticism; they've be magically increasing for years, despite not building any more plants.

We have literally built actual, real, currently operating plants almost 50 years ago for half the inflation-adjusted cost of some of the estimates. Even better than an estimate is real-world evidence.

The economics analysis of nuclear power vs renewable always depend on the assumption that it is acceptable to burn fossil fuel when renewable is unable to fill demand. It is the central problem in all such discussion.

I would like to see a complete ban of all air and water pollution that can be sourced to power and heating plants. A zero tolerance policy. If alternative sources with storage can economically beat nuclear in such world then that is great. Lets put the regulations in place today. If not then lets still put the regulations in place because the environment really need us to do so, but we need something to fill demand when renewable alternatives can't produce.

> I would like to see a complete ban of all air and water pollution that can be sourced to power and heating plants.

Does that include the natural gas heating furnace in my basement, or just commercial stuff? Because in my area electric heating costs about 3x more than NG.

There are discussions already to ban people from connecting new homes to gas lines (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47306766).

In general however I think politics should focus on bigger problems before small ones. Industry, power plants and central heating are the primary users of natural gas. In Germany, over half the energy production is generated from gas, which the pollution graphs clearly shows (https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=...)

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