Ranked: Nuclear Power Production, by Country

I'm as pro-nuclear as they come, but this blog post [1] that came out a few days ago kind of made me change my mind. The main issue is that nuclear power plants have a thermal power plant inside. Even if nuclear experiences some unbelievable breakthrough, the thermal power plant will still cost as much as an good old coal burning power plant, and those are not economically competitive anymore. And by the way, fusion has the exact same problem.

I still root for nuclear. Maybe NuScale's small modular reactors [2] will reduce so much the construction costs and time to deployment that nuclear will be competitive again. Maybe China's Helium cooled reactors [3] will turn out more economical than dreamed.

In the end though, nuclear seems to me to be the only realistic option for the exploration of the Solar system. In which case, we should continue to pursue nuclear even if it's not economical right now.

[1] https://austinvernon.site/blog/nuclear.html

[2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive

[3] https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HTR-PM...