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Comment by PunchTornado | Hacker News Reader

Green energy like nuclear

Nuclear is as dead as a great technology can be. A few more incremental improvements in solar and battery industry and nuclear won't be profitable even in theory, to say nothing of construction cost overruns.

Reactors are only good at providing baseload but that isn't how grids operate anymore. Renewables are too cheap, if a power plant can't drop output fast enough it is punished.

nuclear plants can cut power as quickly as any other power plant, you are just controlling steam. divert the steam from the turbine and you aren't generating power anymore.

The problem is that a nuclear plant is extremely high CAPEX and acceptable OPEX.

Halving the output essentially means doubling the price.

For Vogtle halving the expected capacity factor means the generated electricity now costs a completely stupid 40 cents per kWh or $400 per MWh.

I agree with that, I have just seen on here before that people think you can't regulate the electrical output of a nuclear plant like with more traditional ones.

Politically hamstrung because a bunch of short sighted people have their panties in a bunch?

Mostly because it's very expensive and slow to build, what with nuclear engineers not wanting their workplaces to be as dangerous as a construction site. Look up who invented the Maximum Credible Accident, it wasn't the environmentalists.

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