> Only one nuke plant in the US was shut down over protests (San Onofre) and that took 20 years.
You are overestimating the effectiveness of protests and underestimating the effect of sentiment.
It isn't normal for a project to get shut down by protests; capital is already deployed, the government is already on side (having given the requisite approvals) and there is a lot of logistical momentum in place. A couple of protestors aren't going to slow down that sort of juggernaut.
On the flip side, sentiment has a huge impact on whether investors feel like funding cost-up-front ventures. It takes a decade to make the initial investment back, so they have to be confident that 2-3 distinct governments are not going to come up with a hare-brained energy policy that would disrupt the project's profits. They'd have to be very bold in the current environment, especially given the risk of the recent government activism in Germany spreading.
It isn't just possible, it is likely for a nuclear project to have some nonsensical change in standards applied to it by, ironically, anti-science environmentalists.
Generally on HN, unlike other comment zones on the Internet, it's on people making claims to back them up with sources. Ideally if you have something controversial or interesting you provide links and resources, so we can all learn, instead of farming out the work of backing up your opinion to each reader.
I found a story about a new nuke plant in Georgia [1] which they seem like they are regretting building.
It's a $25 billion project which is several years late now. [2]
They are building two new generators which should each produce 1,215 MW of power. So that's ~$10 million per MW. Solar by comparison is about $1 million per MW, although a 1,215 MW solar installation would cover about 10 sq km.
I have to assume that solar, without any waste to process or high security requirements or chance of a meltdown, also has lower operating costs.
You also have to factor in the capacity factor. Sun isn't shining steadily all the time. You have night-time, notably, but also clouds and fog and smog. Capacity factor is very much location dependant, but all the places with good capacity factors are where people don't want to live either.
It can be as low as 12% [0], so divide your $/MW by the capacity factor to ascertain the true cost: something like $8 million/MW for solar in Swabia.
Thank you for that. I didn’t realize that was a fake headline grabbing number. It makes no sense to me that the headline numbers are not actual 24/7/365 average generating capacity and rather peak capacity, since it can be calculating quite accurately in the long run.
The numbers make a lot more sense with that. As I was typing it it didn’t seem right.
I appreciate that and I often do. However, nothing I said was controversial. Many nuke plants in the US have closed and all others (but one) have been cancelled. This is stuff you can see on the evening news. I don't really have to time to re-research every single case but, if someone doubts me it might be worth their time to do it.
Most likely, it's easier to just dismiss comments like mine if you're already pro-nuclear. It happens to me whenever I talk about nuclear here.
The press releases from plant owners who closed or cancelled their plans all cite negative economics as the reason.