view the rest of the comments
politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
Nuclear is expensive because we've made it expensive. The most expensive part is bureaucracy. Running nuclear plants is cheap. Even still, the price of nuclear around the world is competitive. If you scroll down to the regional studies, nuclear looks even better. In every place except the US that has nuclear, nuclear is the second cheapest, with large-scale PV the only one higher (which doesn't price in solutions to provide baseline power, which nuclear has built in). The US has (purposefully) made nuclear appear expensive because laws have been paid for by dirty oil companies.
Nuclear is also one of the safest and cleanest energy sources. If you include negative externalities into the cost (which is never done but should be) nuclear is amazing.
Nah, even the wikipage shows double the price compared to solar or wind. Which isn't surprising when you look at the basic technology of each energy type. And they all have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy.
Stop lying. No it doesn't. Unless you can't read the graph, it's very similarly priced to the rest. Solar is significantly more expensive at low capacity but cheaper at high capacity. It's approximately equal to coal and wind, depending on capacity. Nuclear can be cheaper than even the cheapest offshore wind.
The graph showing nuclear getting more expensive at higher capacity does show something interesting though. I can't say what causes that, ~~but I assume larger plants have more bureaucracy to deal with, which artificially increases their cost.~~ (Edit: I even read it wrong I think. It shows as more are installed they got more expensive, which implies a temporal relation. More laws restricting nuclear make it more expensive, which is not surprising. Nuclear would be very cheap if it stayed at the same cost as the minimum was.) It may be something else. It's hard to say. Nuclear is basically right on the middle of the cost axis though.
Yes, AND, Nuclear is also cheaper in cost of human lives per gigawatt hour!
EVEN SOLAR AND WIND KILL MORE PEOPLE PER GIGAWATT HOUR THAN NUCLEAR.
(Hydro admittedly kills less people per GWh than nuclear, though - but not every place has that option.)
Hydro causes a whole host of other issues though. It requires changing the environment in a very direct way. There are methods to reduce the issues, like fish ladders and things like that, but it's an immediate shift of an area from a running river to essentially a lake with a waterfall.
And in order for hydro's effects to be most easy to curtail, you need very specific terrain topology - such as where I live, in the Springfield area of Massachusetts, there's a hydroelectric dam on the Connecticut River in South Hadley/Holyoke (the two sides of the river at that section):
The dam was built where there were natural falls. So the dam leveraged the fact that the change in water elevation was natural and already extant prior to the dam's existence. They've had a fish elevator system for longer than I've been alive, too. Rather than changing how the hydrological system worked in the area, the dam stabilized it upstream such that the water level up the Connecticut River from there is more consistent than it used to be before - whenever there's more water than usual, the dam can increase spill rate.
The city of chicopee, across the river from holyoke and just north of springfield, also has a hydroelectric dam, also built where there were natural falls. This region is pretty good for stuff like that, and our electrical supply is much hardier as a result!