The only way to generate short-term profits from nuclear power is to take over a running reactor. But building these things takes a close-to-prohibitive amount of money in all Western countries. There must be motivations other than cost effectiveness.
And those don’t even need to be pro-nuclear lobbyists… fossil fuel ones will do to as every single “sure, we totally will build nuclear power and it will magically solve all our problems (even i fthe capacity is meaningless to actually solve anything)”-story helps to delay reneweable power.
Weird how fossil fuel companies also managed
to instrumentalize solar PV too. Iirc, both Shell and BP created solar departments which they then allowed to generate a low single-digit percentage of revenue. Thus, a) generating positive media coverage and b) not endangering their fossil core business.
Not at all. Renewables used to be so expensive, that they were basically not an option. That is no longer the case.
Today nuclear is great as a new power plant takes a decade in planning, approving and building before it produces any power. So a decade more fossil fuels.
The only way to generate short-term profits from nuclear power is to take over a running reactor. But building these things takes a close-to-prohibitive amount of money in all Western countries. There must be motivations other than cost effectiveness.
The motivation is getting money from lobbyists.
And those don’t even need to be pro-nuclear lobbyists… fossil fuel ones will do to as every single “sure, we totally will build nuclear power and it will magically solve all our problems (even i fthe capacity is meaningless to actually solve anything)”-story helps to delay reneweable power.
Weird how fossil fuel companies also managed to instrumentalize solar PV too. Iirc, both Shell and BP created solar departments which they then allowed to generate a low single-digit percentage of revenue. Thus, a) generating positive media coverage and b) not endangering their fossil core business.
Not at all. Renewables used to be so expensive, that they were basically not an option. That is no longer the case.
Today nuclear is great as a new power plant takes a decade in planning, approving and building before it produces any power. So a decade more fossil fuels.
Agreed that other motivations exist, but the companies building the reactors are the ones making the profit - not tax/rate payers