EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the prices, like PG&E in California. My rates have doubled in a few years to over $0.40/kWh and up over $0.50/kWh after I go up a tier depending on usage.

> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation.

It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup with an extra coolant loop. You need shielding and equipment to move spent fuel and a spent fuel cooling pond. Insurance isn’t cheap when mistakes can cost hundreds of billions. Decommissioning could be a little cheaper with laxer standards, but it’s never going to be cheap. Etc etc.

Worse, all those capital costs mean you’re selling most of your output 24/7 at generally low wholesale spot prices unlike hydro, natural gas, or battery backed solar which can benefit from peak pricing.

That’s not regulations that’s just inherent requirements for the underlying technology. People talk about small modular reactors, but small modular reactors are only making heat they don’t actually drive costs down meaningfully. Similarly the vast majority of regulations come from lessons learned so yea they spend a lot of effort avoiding foreign materials falling into the spent fuel pool, but failing to do so can mean months of downtime and tens of millions in costs so there isn’t some opportunity to save money by avoiding that regulation.

It really is. Nuclear is 100-1000x safer than coal. By insisting on such an aggressive safety target, we force prices up and actually incur much higher levels of mortality - just delivered in the boring old ways of pollution and climate-driven harms.

See https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy for detailed stats.

I think we should target “risk parity with Gas” until climate change is under control.

The problem with nuclear is not the ultra-low probability of incidents, but the potential size of the incidents.

And then you have bad faith actors.

No one would ever put graphite tips in the control rods to save some money, wouldn't they?

No one would station troops during war in a nuclear power plant, wouldn't they?

No one would use a nuclear power plant to breed material for nuclear bombs, wouldn't they?

Finally, no CxO would cheapen out in maintenance for short term gains then jump ship leaving a mess behind, right?

None of that has never ever happened, right?

> The problem with nuclear is not the ultra-low probability of incidents, but the potential size of the incidents.

This is also not as bad as people think. Chernobyl was bad, but the real effect on human health was shockingly small. Fukushima is almost as well-known, and its impact was negligible.

Even if we had ten times as many nuclear disasters - hell, even fifty times more - it would still be a cleaner source of energy than fossil fuels.

Meanwhile the amount of overregulation is extreme and often absurd. It's not a coincidence that most operational nuclear plants were built decades ago.