[xroche]

> Because nuclear plants are expensive, and they take a long time to build, financing their construction can also be a significant fraction of their cost, typically around 15-20% of the cost of the plant. For plants that have severe construction delays and/or have high financing costs (such as the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants in Georgia), this can be 50% of the cost or more.

This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests.

[mellavora]

Huh. I'd argue that they should be state-sponsored because that is what the state is for-- investing in long-term infrastructure where the value is widely diffused and thus hard to capture via market mechanisms, i.e. investments which are foundational to the more focused investments which business is so well suited to maximize.

similar to things like interstate highways or internets or public schooling. I'd add "healthcare" to the list, but some countries haven't realized this yet.

[joe_the_user]

Indeed, US large-construction has reached a point of fundamental/terminal corruption through the process of private contracting and especially through the bid-based system.

You can see this with the disastrous failure of public transit construction and planning in the country and if nuclear became an option, it seems very likely that the same corrupt mouths that eat up transit spend would also eat nuclear spending. Something for nuclear proponents to consider.

[this_user]

> This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests.

Not anymore with inflation at around 8% in many western countries. And even so, construction and operation still remain expensive. France's EDL is basically bankrupt if it were not for the state backstopping them. However you want to slice it, nuclear power is not economically viable, and looks even worse compared to the rapidly decreasing costs of renewable sources of energy.

So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and everything that comes with that. That approach will do a lot more good in the long run than trying to keep the nuclear industry on life support even though it has failed for half a century to deliver on its promises.

[outworlder]

> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology

It is not obsolete. At all. You can argue that some reactor designs should not be used and I would agree. But fission is the only answer we currently have for baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. It will become obsolete if we can ever make fusion work.

We should be deploying more reactors. There are small reactors (shipping container-sized) that could be used to power small towns and are pretty safe. Good luck getting one approved and installed in your neighborhood. It's not the tech that's being held back, it's people.

Look, I love batteries, I drive EVs since 2015. But if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to provide cheap and reliable baseline power 24/7. There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone.

[belorn]

> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and everything that comes with that.

A few years ago Sweden did a study on green hydrogen, the energy storage that Germany and many other countries seem to view as the best bet as a storage for places where solar + daily discharging batteries won't work. The cost was then around 10-20 times more expensive than nuclear. Those costs has gone down a bit since then, but it is still several times more expensive than nuclear.

Sweden and Germany are still very much in favor of green hydrogen, and there are on-going experiment to use it for industries that need hydrogen itself (rather than burning it for energy), but they are no investments for a grid storage. If nuclear is not economically viable, a technology that is several time more expensive is not something they are just going to throw money at. Those money are currently going towards fossil fuels, since that is cheaper than nuclear.

If however we would ban fossil fuel, especially cheap fossil fuel from Russia, the economics might change. There is also always the hope that politicians investment into fossil fuels today will give green hydrogen enough time to become economical viable for the energy sector.

[samstave]

Inflation is WAY fn higher than 8%.

Try more like 30%

Go to costco's meat section, walmarts juice section, any fn gas station.

Fleecing is whats happening.

EDIT:

Cool, clearly you arent tracking prices like I do.

Costco's meat section is up ~22%$

Walmarts Juices are up ~30%

We all know what gas prices are. $7 a gallon in Napa.

[pmyteh]

Yes, probably. This can bring its own problems, though. In Britain, for example, the Treasury is extremely reluctant to approve new public capital projects, even at negative real interest rates. Investment is effectively rationed by requiring a benefit/cost ratio of above 2 (at net present value, after making heavy optimism bias adjustments) before it will approve funding. New nuclear won't get close to that on any conventional appraisal, which is one reason why our current nuclear new build is happening on an eye-wateringly expensive private finance arrangement.

[ImHereToVote]

This is because of "not corruption"

[sfe22]

Zero percent or negative just means people involuntary pay by inflation. There is not free lunch (someone had to work to make it)

[trashtester]

It is a tax on deposits. You only have to pay if you have deposits. Basically, it means the saver has to pay to store value as currency. On the other hand, they also have to pay if they want to store other valueables, such as gold or the most ancient store of value of all, grain.

I don't think a negative real interest rate is inherantly unfair, any more than it was unfair to have 10% of grain go to waste 3000 years ago when storing for a bad year.

If you had 7 good years, and expect 7 bad years, the utility of the stored grain may be way higher in the bad years than the good years, even when accounting for the waste. The same goes for cash.

The same can be true with cash.

To demand that cash maintains its purchasing power, is the same as ancient farmers demanding to purchase grain from their neighbour (who did save) in a bad year as they themselves got paid for their grain during the good years.

In periods of growth, we may start to think that positive time preference is natural. But the fact is that throughout most of human history, we would switch to negative time preference in good times, since we expected bad times to come back. During good times, humans would store grain, dry meat, fish and fruit, build housing, tools or boats, all of which were investments into goods that were likely to gradually perish over time.

Even after people started to use coins, this was true. If you produced a surplus during one year, you could trade it for cold coin instead of storing it. But not only was there a risk that the coins would be stolen or otherwise vanish, it was also highly likely that at the time where you needed to spend that goal, prices would be higher.

[danuker]

Negative interest rates mean more than your units of currency going down in purchasing power.

It also means them going down in number (a bank CHARGES you for the costs incurred holding your money).

[kube-system]

No, interest rates are quoted nominally -- i.e. they are independent of inflation.

If you purchase a negative interest rate instrument and experience inflation, you will lose real value to both.

[imtringued]

If there is a negative interest rate of 4% on cash, then the easiest way to avoid it would be to lend out your money at 0%. Since there is no growth dependence and excessive savings do not grow automatically anymore there is no need for inflation and the central bank can do price level targeting instead.

[Tenoke]

If you think 50% cost overruns and overheads are uncommon for state sponsored projects.. you will be right but only because often the actual numbers are much higher.

[ncmncm]

Maybe if they had to be state-sponsored, we could manage to do entirely without them, instead.

But it didn:t save France from needing to spend tens of $billions decommissioning old junk reactors.

[fulafel]

States tend to have self imposed debt limiting policies, so opportunity costs are still there for investments.

[strainer]

A project should garner favorable financing arrangements for its merits, not for its risks.

[danans]

Merit must be determined in a way that includes known risks. Anything otherwise would be fraudulent.

[Krasnol]

Why should states invest it's taxpayer money into overpriced and slow technology when there are cheaper and fast improving alternatives?

[sofixa]

Because you can start a project with the existing, proven and expensive tech today. Grid-scale storage is purely theoretical today (bar pumped-up hydro, which is infeasible in most locations). There's lots of hope, and money should be invested in the various alternatives, absolutely. But nobody can say when and if that tech would be ready.

[babypuncher]

Hedging your bets. We know nuclear works. Grid-scale energy storage for renewables still feels far fetched. Maybe it's not. Either way, we should not put all our eggs in one basket.

[xienze]

Because transitioning over to green technology is a decades-long project, it's not something you can just snap your fingers and make happen, as many countries are discovering. You still need non-renewable energy sources to fill in the gaps that renewables currently have.

[xyzzyz]

There are no cheaper and fast improving alternatives to provide plentiful electricity at 9pm every single day.

[BurningFrog]

Note that solar and wind power are NOT alternatives to the predictable base load of nuclear, hydro, or fuel burning power generation.

[stewbrew]

The state better invests the money in cheaper technologies. Why should it waste the money on nuclear plants?

Edit: To the downvoters: Seriously, why should the state waste money on a technology that doesn't work and never has? More than half of France's nuclear power plants are currently offline and in maintainence mode. Maybe also because they could not produce electricity at market prices.

[ryan93]

They get 80% of their electricity from nuclear. And even export some.