Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

Uhh . . . source on that claim?

Which claim? Regarding investments, from the world bank, "The pricing mechanism [a component of a PPA] is the primary mechanism for allocating revenue and market risk in respect of the project between the public and private sectors and is central to the private project proponent’s and its lenders’ assessment of the commercial viability and bankability of the project."

I believe Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Programs Office at DoE, also talked about the importance of PPAs in attracting outside investment in his book Creating Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy

https://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private-partnership/sector/...

Again we’re not talking about an agreement to built a wind farm or solar or a big LNG turbine. A bank sees a PPA for any of those and knows if it cuts a check, it’ll happen with high probability. These tech PPAs are not much more than mutual handwaving by comparison.

This is a very far cry from the claim, which is that the American aviation industry would not exist were it not for some orders by Britain and France.

That one is hard to support, given that the American aviation industry was the first such industry, anywhere, and was doing quite well for itself prior to the outbreak of the war.

Did the orders help? Um. Yes? I mean they stopped paying for the planes after Lend-Lease so, mixed bag there, there was a war on and all. But I don't see how the gulf between "Without Britain and France paying for a few planes before the war started" and "$50 Billion in materiel provided free of charge with most of the debt written off and most of the production destroyed in combat" gets bridged. I'm calling shenanigans.

Yep. Exactly.

Do you think a weaker but more accurate claim would be :

"The US aircraft industry was considerably helped by French and British orders for World War II."

This seems circular.

"No one will invest in PPAs for nuclear because there isn't interest."

"These PPAs in nuclear don't represent real interest because they're made with the understanding that the actual product will never develop."

You're assuming your preferred conclusion and inventing a corporate conspiracy to support it.

The claim that there would be no US aviation industry without British/French orders in WWII, which given US production for our OWN Armed Forces is a flat-out absurd thing to claim. France was overrun in 1940 and the RAF only used a few American designs compared with their own.

It's worth noting that only several years earlier, the US aircraft industry was almost completely killed by the Wright's patents and licensing practices.

The UK, France (especially), Italy, and others were way ahead of the US until the Feds made the Wrights share their patents to support production of arms for WW I. This led to the rise of far more innovative competitors in aircraft design and production: Curtiss, Martin, Lockheed, Boeing, etc., which rapidly eclipsed the Wright company's fossilized and already obsolete technology. (Note that Wright was soon more or less forced to merge with Curtiss...)

It would be circular if a single person was saying both of those.

Are the people you're talking to in support of the first quote?

I would expect them to say a lack of PPAs shows lack of confidence, or for them to barely care about the number of PPAs. Not to use it as evidence that there's no interest.

All true. But that's the Great War, not the World War.

Also worth noting that it had been eleven years between the Wright brothers' first flight, and the outbreak of the Great War. By the time WWII was on the horizon, US aviation was a force to be reckoned with. By the end of WWII, it was about the size of all European aviation industry combined, but certainly not before.

To address the sibling comment as well, yes that's accurate as I understand history. The big benefit of the prewar orders was that it gave the US a head start on ramping up for war production, which was nonetheless a basket case for the first year or so after the US entered the war, just before 1942. Without that head start the entire timeline for winning the war would have been pushed back, I don't think it could have changed the outcome but the additional suffering would have been immense.

Yes, the person I replied to was doing both, which is why I replied the way I did.

Oh, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "there isn't interest".

I thought the disputed claim was that companies don't make nuclear PPAs because of lack of interest. In that case those claims would combine into a very flawed argument, but pinewurst isn't saying that.

But if the actual meaning was that companies don't invest in the power plants needed to fulfill the nuclear PPAs because of lack of interest, then yes pinewurst was saying that, but that's not a circular argument anymore. "Nuclear PPAs don't represent real interest in power plants." and "There's negligible demand for nuclear PPAs for actual power because there isn't real interest in power plants." are compatible statements and not circular at all. The implication is simple: PPAs are a useless signal, and if you want to check for meaningful interest you need to check other signals. I don't know if I agree, but I think it's a reasonable position. And there's no 'conspiracy' needed.