New research shows renewables are more profitable than nuclear power

"Sure we destroyed the planet as we knew it, but for a brief moment in time, we increased value for shareholders!"

"Research shows slavery is more profitable than paid labour in the cotton industry"

Uhhh...... So?

It's not even how denialist politicians value it. Who is getting those profits is just as important to them as the size of those profits.

Given that most countries have a capitalistic, private energy sector, profit may not be the best metric but it's the only one that matters.

The nuclear bros never seem to understand this though. If nuclear energy made any sense from a financial standpoint, we'd be building a ton of reactors but it doesn't. With renewables and storage getting cheaper and new nuclear getting even more expensive, we're not going to see much more new nuclear.

In this case the price is a reflection of the resources required to generate power, it also represents how much of something we can do - establishing solar panel factories and putting up solar farms is something we can do with less resources in a shorter amount of time.

From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it's actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they're circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we're going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren't available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that's going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.

Well that high cost and build time is in part the most unique design if each reactor. A small scale modular reactor is very cheap and fast to build.

The trick with the economics of nuclear is that building it is the main cost, once the plant is operable the cost is much lower than other sources. So by the time you have a working plant, you might as well use it to get value out of it since you have already paid for it.

Yep, that's exactly why it's not worth it to build reactors now. We need an alternative right now, not in 10 years.

We should use the current nuclear reactors as much as we can and deploy renewables while we can.

And the reason nuclear isn't on a decline cost curve is due to the lack of investment monies. Nuclear didn't get the same level of RND like renewables did over the last decade.

The one I’m interested in is the “mini” reactors. They can build them in a fraction of the time. And from what I’ve read they appear to generally be “safer”, but it’s always hard to tell with all the bullshit we all get peddled.

I’m all for renewables and had hoped they’d have been more implemented by now, but here we are…

Most likely we are never going to be 100% renewable. All (except maybe hydro...) current exploitable renewables are inherently unstable. Take solar for example, it's only available during the day. Or wind power, where it is difficult to predict how much energy will be produced at any given time.

Using nuclear as a supplement to renewables is probably the cleanest solution we have. If the renewables aren't producing enough power, let nuclear fill in the deficit.

The other choice is to build lots and lots of grid energy storage.

A lot of that is because a) protests, formalities, FUD and b) lack of scale (each plant is built as one of a kind). Same for price.

With a bigger scale the construction and prices would lower significantly (as with anything done at scale), but for that we have too much populism, fear and emotional driven propaganda and gullible voters. Nuclear power always had the potential to fix the humanity energy needs relatively simply, it's sad how we got to this point.

What’s cheaper to recycle, fiberglass windmills or radioactive waste?

This is why we need SMRs and probably government funding as well. It's hard to run a grid without base load power.

Also very prone to spikes in fuel cost or huge extras costs associated with a leak or disaster plus extra security costs in emergencies. Solar is decentralised, robust, and easy to repair or clean away even if bombed or hit by a natural disaster.

It's got huge draw backs for people who don't plan for the future and huge drawbacks for those that do - it's really not looking like a choice many people are going to be make, especially when so many big solar projects have already paid for themselves while nuclear projects started at the same time haven't even broken ground yet.

spent fuel rods

Ugh.. this again?

The solar/wind lobbyists like how recycling is not at all considered it priced into the products. They also like how any sort of storage, that is unnecessary for nuclear, is not priced in, nor are the additional environmental costs.

Amazing how you can make one system look better when you just ignore a bunch of things.

What do you think those people have been investing in? They're not sitting around on a sinking ship hoping it works out. They've invested in nuclear.