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Comment by wumpus | Hacker News Reader

Modern nuclear has flunked every economic test.

If by this you mean that it hasn’t gotten cheaper over time, that’s only true in countries where there hasn’t been multiple waves of plants built over time to allow the construction crews to learn and then apply that knowledge. In Japan cost scaling did indeed happen more or less exactly as economics predicts.

This is, I assume, the point that gp is making. We’re about to learn whether the same cost reductions from repetition that happened in Japan will happen in Georgia.

Sure, let's summarize:

  Solar cells have an awesome reduction in cost over time
  Wind has an awesome reduction in cost over time
  Nuclear is a clown show

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not, but nuclear has been somewhat of a clown shown because it requires a small number of politically connected firms to function. This has engendered graft and incompetence in many different countries. Renewables suffer less from this because there are many more competitors and all are replaceable.

I was specifically pointing out that nuclear's construction costs have been going up, not down, despite the entire industry's claim that this time will be different.

You’re replying to a comment up thread about why that is true in the US and why it isn’t true in a country (Japan) where the constraint was removed.

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