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Comment by peterspath | Hacker News Reader

One of the things we (the Netherlands) should do is get to a more average level on EU levels. Not trying to be the best. The costs are too high.

Also energy cost should be as low as possible. A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert) When you lower energy cost, the cost of all other things can also be lowered.

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And that's a big big part of the issue, Germany said "fuck ghg" and closed their nuclear plants.

We also have soaring energy costs in Sweden.. but _only in the south_ close to Germany, in the north we still have plans on using relatively inefficient electrolysis to produce hydrogen to in turn reduce GHG's from steel production, because we have so much power generated from wind (uneven) and waterfalls (even).

Sweden is once again building nuclear plants after 40 years, but we could've started far earlier.

Not an expert either, but commonly nuclear energy tops the list of most expensive sources, even if we ignore cost of mining, waste storage and dismantling of old installations.

There are arguments to be made in favor of nuclear, but I don't think cost is one of them

The costs of nuclear are 80% in managing regulatory burdens, where laws require recertifying a design for every unit constructed and spurious lawsuits postpone beginning construction for a decade etc.

Nope. The costs comes from being absolutely enormous civil project.

Construction workers haven’t gotten meaningfully more efficient while the salaries have risen based on industries with efficiency gains.

It seems like nuclear power has an extremely tiny sweet spot in countries development curve where it is only very expensive.

Right where salaries are still low but the knowhow for advanced technology has started to burgeon. For example India and China. Although China has been cutting back their nuclear program in favor of renewables for a while now.

Another data point is to consider the price of nuclear submarines, in the 10s of billions. Admittedly, military spending leaves room for misestimation but the point is that many if not most of regulation around nuclear plants does not apply to marine vessels. Safety still plays a major role, but a very different one. More pragmatic, less regulatory.

> A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert)

You should look at the track record of recent nuclear projects in Europe. Olkiluoto and Flamanville both 3x+ over budget in time and money. Sizewell C isn't doing too well either, its very far from cheap.

Nuclear is never a good solution if you are looking for cheap energy.

What are you talking about? We’re below average already[1].

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

It’s not just about green energy, also everything else that relates to being green and good for the environment, like CO2 and nitrogen emissions.

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