Nuclear power is not viable under capitalism for really boring reasons related to project turnaround time and financing. You'd need at least a heavily pro-infrastructure socdem government to make it happen. Or socialism.
very true actually, building reactors is a multi decade endeavor and something a lot of pro nuclear leftists forget about re the urgency of climate change (me included)
Multi-decade is a bit much. They typically take 5-6 years to construct. Some plants take significantly longer, but having a few prominent counter-examples is not the same thing as an average.
The big problem is that this is 5 years of not making any money, instead losing money on whatever loan was used to finance the project. If you're running an energy company, you could instead build a gas power plant that's already showing a profit by then and paying its way towards your next project. This is only a problem under a capitalist mode of finance, but that's the one we're using, so it's a problem we have.
In terms of physical logistics, we're not going to solve climate change in a five year flurry of building renewable power plants either. Unless there's some magic tipping point within the next few years that's avoided with a partially completed renewable grid, it makes sense to prioritize whatever creates the most carbon-free kilowatts per amount of effort.
Nuclear power is not viable under capitalism for really boring reasons related to project turnaround time and financing. You'd need at least a heavily pro-infrastructure socdem government to make it happen. Or socialism.
Well, yeah.
Needing communism to save the world is a given.
very true actually, building reactors is a multi decade endeavor and something a lot of pro nuclear leftists forget about re the urgency of climate change (me included)
Multi-decade is a bit much. They typically take 5-6 years to construct. Some plants take significantly longer, but having a few prominent counter-examples is not the same thing as an average.
The big problem is that this is 5 years of not making any money, instead losing money on whatever loan was used to finance the project. If you're running an energy company, you could instead build a gas power plant that's already showing a profit by then and paying its way towards your next project. This is only a problem under a capitalist mode of finance, but that's the one we're using, so it's a problem we have.
In terms of physical logistics, we're not going to solve climate change in a five year flurry of building renewable power plants either. Unless there's some magic tipping point within the next few years that's avoided with a partially completed renewable grid, it makes sense to prioritize whatever creates the most carbon-free kilowatts per amount of effort.
It was a multi decade endeavor in the 70s.
Now, it's just a political hurdle.