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- cross-posted to:
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Nuclear isn’t bad. I hate articles like this. We need more renewable energy to bolster our grids, but nuclear energy isn’t the problem. It’s fossil fuels primarily.
Nuclear is bad. All existing nuclear plants should remain in service until they age out, but no new nuclear should be built. Nuclear power is very expensive, creates nearly eternal waste disposal problems, and poses huge security risks.
Some people have been misled into thinking nuclear energy is cheap, because they’re only told about the direct cost of generating each watt. But the *actual* cost per watt after you include all costs involved is actually very EXPENSIVE for nuclear. This is called the “Levelized Cost Of Energy” (LCOE).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
And OP’s article has a quote from the study commission that says it directly.
Quote: “In fact, [nuclear] is one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity according to GenCost [and] the time it would take to design and build nuclear generation would be too slow to replace retiring coal fired generation.”