Tldr: renewables are really cheap and utility partners backed out from buying the energy so it didn’t make economic sense.
I can’t help but feel that it would make more economic sense if we taxed the fuck out of other stable sources of energy that are killing us (coal/gas).
But it’s Utah: they don’t give a single shit about air quality or global warming.
To answer your idea solar costs on a MW bases 30times less today, with falling prices. Solar runs something like 20-25% of the time and you need storage, but that is still much much cheaper then this nuclear plant would be. So you are really wasting money going for nuclear today.
Exactly. Nuclear is quite expensive compared with wind, solar, and short-term storage. The only place new nuclear might make sense is as a competitor for longer-duration storage, and then only if it’s able to come in more cheaply than people know how to build it.
Nowadays a big problem with nuclear is that as almost no new reactors are built the expertise to build them has disappeared so it always leads to these huge cost overruns.
There are locations where, judging by the general populations ignorant attitudes, they don’t have enough sense to give a shit about air quality or global warming.
However, in western “educated” society, those general attitudes have been formed due to corruption.
For example, where l live the general public are simply not exposed to the facts about air pollution & climate change. Many live in their own social bubbles & are exposed to industry propaganda
What’s funny is I tend to believe the average Utahn cares about air quality. They have some insanely toxic air when inversions set up in the valley.
But they keep electing politicians that run heavy industry (copper mining, steel smelting, oil and gas refining) in that selfsame valley with 0 oversight.
Tldr: renewables are really cheap and utility partners backed out from buying the energy so it didn’t make economic sense.
I can’t help but feel that it would make more economic sense if we taxed the fuck out of other stable sources of energy that are killing us (coal/gas).
But it’s Utah: they don’t give a single shit about air quality or global warming.
Also according to the guardian the project had massive cost overruns increasing the costs by a factor of five:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/09/small-modular-nuclear-reactor-that-was-hailed-by-coalition-as-future-cancelled-due-to-rising-costs
To answer your idea solar costs on a MW bases 30times less today, with falling prices. Solar runs something like 20-25% of the time and you need storage, but that is still much much cheaper then this nuclear plant would be. So you are really wasting money going for nuclear today.
Exactly. Nuclear is quite expensive compared with wind, solar, and short-term storage. The only place new nuclear might make sense is as a competitor for longer-duration storage, and then only if it’s able to come in more cheaply than people know how to build it.
Nowadays a big problem with nuclear is that as almost no new reactors are built the expertise to build them has disappeared so it always leads to these huge cost overruns.
@huginn @otter @climate
There are locations where, judging by the general populations ignorant attitudes, they don’t have enough sense to give a shit about air quality or global warming.
However, in western “educated” society, those general attitudes have been formed due to corruption.
For example, where l live the general public are simply not exposed to the facts about air pollution & climate change. Many live in their own social bubbles & are exposed to industry propaganda
What’s funny is I tend to believe the average Utahn cares about air quality. They have some insanely toxic air when inversions set up in the valley.
But they keep electing politicians that run heavy industry (copper mining, steel smelting, oil and gas refining) in that selfsame valley with 0 oversight.