Not exact matches
Combinations of high gas prices and
significantly lower capital
costs could make
nuclear plants competitive with fossil fuel plants, but the bottom line is that in the current economic climate, commercial
nuclear generation is not even close to being competitive with fossil - fueled plants and there is no easy path to a competitive market for new
nuclear plants.
Ramping that up
significantly requires years of lead time to build factories & equipment... I've never seen a study that didn't betray an obvious bias, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the time &
cost to do all this, and get say 100 GWatts of solar panels out there generating power, is going to be much different from that needed to build 100
nuclear plants.
The time to construct a
nuclear reactor depends
significantly on regulatory requirements and
costs.
Ramping that up
significantly requires years of lead time to build factories & equipment... it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the time &
cost to do all this, and get say 100 GWatts of solar panels out there generating power, is going to be much different from that needed to build 100
nuclear plants.»
It is true that the
costs associated with building new
nuclear plants could be reduced
significantly with regulatory streamlining, that alone is not enough to counter cheap gas.
This clearly shows that renewables can not provide reliable power and are a higher
cost option than
nuclear to
significantly reduce GHG emissions:.
In the case of
nuclear power, the only new commercial energy generation technology to emerge and scale up
significantly in the 20th century, government insurance, liability limitation, and loan guarantees have allowed private financiers the certainty and stability to invest in
nuclear energy projects, which typically have high up - front capital
cost and long life spans.
It's just plain prohibitively expensive and absent constant source of cooling water like submarines and ships at sea have, as well as a
cost - is - no - object because there are no real options for a diesel navy to compete with a
nuclear navy, there is simply no economically or technologically justifiable way for
nuclear to
significantly expand in the commercial market.
What's needed now is a new national commitment to the development, testing, demonstration, and early stage commercialization of a broad range of new
nuclear technologies — from much smaller light - water reactors to next generation ones — in search of a few designs that can be mass produced and deployed at a
significantly lower
cost than current designs.
Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital
costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a
significantly different evaluation of the economics of new
nuclear power plants.