[suoduandao3]

It's relevant because you challenged me to put my money where my mouth is, as I'm challenging you. And I have.

You say you haven't because of onerous regulations and it's true, I associate France with a heavier regulatory burden than most Anglophone countries. If it's the coal lobby that killed Nuclear's profitability in the US, I have two questions:

1) why are you attacking renewables rather than the coal industry? If you think Nuclear could compete on an economic basis with renewables, surely you could make common cause with my side of this debate to properly price fossil energy's negative externalities and let the market sort out the winners once that's achieved.

2) Why not build a nuclear reactor in Mexico and export the power to the US? Or in any of the other low-regulation countries with a neighbor looking to import power? If it's regulations that make nuclear unprofitable, surely nuclear investors could regulation-shop.

[vlovich123]

1. I’m not attacking renewables. I’m highlighting the failing track record of renewables on the grid failing to displace fossil fuels. They have demonstrated an ability to absorb energy growth and displace fossil fuels within that growth, but the more renewables are installed, fossil fuels remain a requirement to try to keep the grid stable (not just at night time, but during the day too). I have no problem with fossil energy’s externalities getting priced in and we share a goal of getting rid of fossil fuels. I just believe nuclear is the only technology that’s actually demonstrated that for grid energy. You also seem to be pretending like solar isn’t receiving subsidies when it’s receiving significantly more subsidies than nuclear - like estimates are that by 2040 we’ll have pumped in nearly 5T worth of subsidies. Nowhere near fossil fuels but significantly more than nuclear. And also keep in mind that increasing energy prices will also mean that costs across the board rise which will be politically unpopular for taxing fossil fuels more.

2. There’s a few problems with your proposal. Mexico has even less experience than the US building nuclear power and gen IV reactor designs (which is what we should be building) are just exiting into real world plants. Also, Mexico isn’t a nuclear power and it’s permission to build nuclear power plants comes from the US and falls under the US regulatory framework anyway:

> Under the PSAs, each nuclear transaction from the United States to Mexico was an exceptional case to the legal requirements of the Atomic Energy Act. In addition, where the PSA nuclear cooperation required the explicit consent of the IAEA, as well as Washington D.C. and Mexico City

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

I’m not aware of any other low-regulation countries near the US - are you? As for regulation shopping in Europe, again the same problem. The US has exported its nuclear regulatory framework to many Western countries. France is about the only one that managed to evade it and generates a surplus of energy (with no nuclear accidents by the way) that it then exports to its neighbors. This isn’t something nuclear investors can fix - it needs a top-down shift in nuclear policy and pushing politicians in Washington to fix the regulatory requirements. The US used to have the most forward nuclear industry until they killed it in the 80s and it’s taken 40 years for China to buck the worldwide regulations that the US has been using to lock things down due to their concerns about proliferation weakening their advantage they’ve had on force projection.