The nuclear plant can be relied upon to produce its full rated 1.2GW 24/7/365 absent maintenance periods scheduled well in advance.
Wind power etc will produce its rated power only when it feels like it with no warning or predictability. To get actual continuous reliable power you need either massive grid-scale storage that nobody's even seriously proposed constructing, or massive over-capacity distributed over a continent-sized area with enough grid capacity to transfer sufficient power from areas with access to areas with shortages, which we also don't have and don't seem to have seriously proposed constructing. Probably both actually.
IMO there's no question that we've gotta get out metaphorical shit together and build lots more nuclear faster if we ever want to actually decrease carbon emissions in our lifetime.
Can you try to make that argument with price numbers and not rhetoric? I used to think like you did. Then I started looking up quantitative stuff. Please do the same.
My argument is not really about price, but instead capability.
I'm not saying that everything is just great with nuclear now - my impression is that it's vastly overpriced due to excessive regulation and red tape and being over-cautious. Part of my argument is that one of the things we need to do is cut way back on all that stuff to make more plants faster and for less money than we currently spend on them.
If you total up all of the deaths from all nuclear power incidents that have ever happened, including Chernobyl, the total is orders of magnitude less than what the Global Warming people tell us is going to happen if we keep pumping out CO2. We know how to build the plants now, we know we need to get CO2 emissions down now, so let's do it.
Bottom line IMO, either A) the Global Warming people are full of shit and they know it or B) we absolutely must get serious about nuclear power now, evaluating the cost both in dollars and lives against what unchecked CO2 emissions will do. We should be building them fast and cheap and cutting corners - I don't want people to die in nuclear accidents, but if we don't have anybody dying in accidents, then we're probably not building them fast enough. Kind of like how Elon Musk said about his rockets, if you're not failing, then you're not moving fast enough. We've got to get it done yesterday, waiting on grid-scale storage and transport improvements won't be fast enough.
I literally did, check upthread. What's happened is that replies are choosing to ignore those numbers, thus my pleading that you look them up yourself since you won't read what I provide.
> The nuclear plant can be relied upon to produce its full rated 1.2GW 24/7/365 absent maintenance periods scheduled well in advance.
Yes. That is exactly what is happening in france.
If you are willing to spend $23000/kW you can get a wholly renewable + storage system with 5 or 6 9s of uptime in months rather than decades vs. best case of 93% for nuclear. You'll also get 10kW net or so of variable power on top of your guaranteed 1kW.
Wind power etc will produce its rated power only when it feels like it with no warning or predictability. To get actual continuous reliable power you need either massive grid-scale storage that nobody's even seriously proposed constructing, or massive over-capacity distributed over a continent-sized area with enough grid capacity to transfer sufficient power from areas with access to areas with shortages, which we also don't have and don't seem to have seriously proposed constructing. Probably both actually.
IMO there's no question that we've gotta get out metaphorical shit together and build lots more nuclear faster if we ever want to actually decrease carbon emissions in our lifetime.