I feel like this is a prime example of someone failing to update their beliefs with new information.
For decades it would have been a reasonable position that governments should override political objections, embark upon mass nuclear power programs, and try to drive costs down through economies of scale and process improvements over time.
20 years ago it was arguably a correct and very strong position to take?
10 years ago, still a reasonable-seeming one?
By 5 years ago, nuclear had probably missed its chance. Most of us had probably not quite grasped that yet.
Today, anyone arguing this just needs to redo their sums with up-to-date numbers and they'll see the impossiblity of their argument. Nuclear is done. Baseload business models are done. The market has chosen a winner, which is mass deployment of wind and solar.
Exactly, people are repeating decades old argument without incorporating what has happened with technology over the last 10 or 20 years.
In the last decade, grid scale battery costs have declined by 75%. Wind turbines and solar panels have declined by 80% and 90% respectively. These declines are actually accelerating at the moment - grid scale battery storage has halved in price over the last two years. In contrast, the LCOE of nuclear has increased by 20%.
The industry is moving so fast that arguments become stale very quickly but people are slower, it seems, to update their opinions.
"The industry is moving so fast that arguments become stale very quickly but people are slower, it seems, to update their opinions."
How fast is it moving? "For the first time in nearly a decade, annual installations of energy storage technologies fell year-on-year in 2019. Grid-scale storage installations dropped 20%" [1]
For decades it would have been a reasonable position that governments should override political objections, embark upon mass nuclear power programs, and try to drive costs down through economies of scale and process improvements over time.
20 years ago it was arguably a correct and very strong position to take?
10 years ago, still a reasonable-seeming one?
By 5 years ago, nuclear had probably missed its chance. Most of us had probably not quite grasped that yet.
Today, anyone arguing this just needs to redo their sums with up-to-date numbers and they'll see the impossiblity of their argument. Nuclear is done. Baseload business models are done. The market has chosen a winner, which is mass deployment of wind and solar.