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Comment Re:I don't believe it (Score 1) 61

Might want to check out the WNA's own economic assessment.

It explains in detail how nuclear is only competitive with renewables in a highly regulated environment where utilities pledge to pre-purchase power over the long term.

Without those agreements or in a unregulated, competitive environment where they have to compete on price, then the plant has to be idled during peak solar/wind generation periods and that prevents it from ever recouping its costs.

Or in their own words, "The increased penetration of intermittent renewables thereby greatly reduces the financial viability of nuclear generation in wholesale markets where intermittent renewable energy capacity is significant."

That said, I think nuclear has a chance of being commercialized for specialty applications like the proposed Mcirosoft/SMR-powered data center. The data center is the SMRs sole customer, and the power generated never has to be competitive in a wholesale marketplace.

And that's where we should be focusing our nuclear efforts.

But as been pointed out innumerable times, China is basically building out solar at a rate equal to five nuclear plants every two weeks. They are building nuclear, but nowhere close to the same scale (0.3%, IIRC)

So I'm not buying the arguments that say we shouldn't build wind and solar today because we should be building nuclear. And then not building anything at all.

It's simply a bad faith argument for maintaining the status quo.

https://world-nuclear.org/info...

Comment Re: Simple... (Score 1) 199

"Weather alerts, flood, tornado, etc. should be able to wake people up."

They're already *able* to wake people up. What do you do about people not wanting to be woken up who silence their phones? Do you pass legislation making it illegal for phones to be able to silence certain alerts? Okay, some people will put their phones somewhere other than their bedside so they can't be woken up. Do you make that illegal, or at some point do you just say "Okay, you know what, this is on you"?

Comment Re: Simple... (Score 1) 199

Okay, all those alerts saved one life.

And all those alerts convinced a bunch of people to silence their alerts, and resulted in lives lost.

Have you bothered to compare the two numbers to see whether the alerts are, in fact, justified? Or do you always only look at a benefit and ignore any associated costs?

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