Comment Re:Nuclear doesn't work either (Score 1) 652
The electricity prices are low in France, not because nuclear power is cheap, but because they tax it less. It simply isn't economically feasible to build nuclear power plants that must operate on normal market mechanisms; it is too expensive. Gas and coal, and even oil prices makes it impossible.
The people of France and Europe are paying less for electricity generated with nuclear power. How else do I have to phrase that before you'll stop insisting it is impossible? It doesn't matter what kind market situations and various problems you can concoct about how challenging or impossible a task it is to accomplish. It has none the less been accomplished and won't cease to exist for all your insistences against it.
First, there is no real free market in France regarding electricity; almost everything is state owned, controlled and subsidized. Their national energy company, EDF, is bleeding money beyond belief, which are resulting in massive price hikes on electricity in France, with at least a 30% price increase of the next few years.
At the same time the French industry pays way more than their German counterparts, and despite further subsides this will probably be case in the future too.
My point is exactly, that nuclear power simply isn't economically feasible without massive state control, subsides, and by forcing the consumers to pay higher prices. The free market have simply rejected nuclear power as a worthwhile investment because other energy prices are lower.
You could argue that there is a free market failure that allows eg. coal to be used without its producers paying the massive costs of global climate change, and that state intervention is the only real choice in securing clean energy, and that energy price increases by going nuclear, is much cheaper than the absurd cost of climate change. But as a free market solution, nuclear power is a dying technology.
Citation needed, by all appearances EDF was still turning a profit in 2013. It looks like some of their foreign holdings outside of Europe are problematic for them, but that just goes to show their core business of selling nuclear power to Europeans is profitable enough to offset losses from other investments. Hardly a condemnation of the economics of nuclear power.
As for 'free market solutions' I hadn't realized that when we discussed emissions reductions that a solution must be rejected because it is or is not capitalist enough in nature.