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Comment by revertmean | Hacker News Reader

The fuller quote from the PSEG page is:

"Since the first ZECs eligibility period began, power markets have deteriorated significantly, thus the financial needs of New Jersey's nuclear plants have continued to grow. Nationwide, nuclear plants continue to struggle economically to survive. Since 2018, three nuclear plants have closed in the eastern U.S., all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect."

So, they aren't blaming regulations, they're blaming the fact that the power markets have "deteriorated" ie. there is less money to be made.

Nuclear clearly hasn't become cheaper, and neither have fossil fuels, so what exactly has led to this cheaper electricity if it isn't the plummeting price of renewables?

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> they aren't blaming regulations

Yet no evidence for this is raised.

I don’t believe an abandonment of nuclear R&D is solely to blame. But I haven’t seen sufficient evidence to discard the hypothesis.

The industry lobbies heavily (as described in the article and well documented in other sources) for subsidies not reduced regulation. This suggests the nuclear industry's issues are financial not regulatory. This conclusion would also agree with most financial analysis of wholesale electricity markets where nuclear electricity is multiple times the price per MWh compared to not just renewables but also CCGT. Wind, solar and gas turbines are the only competitive generation technologies available currently.

Don't big players in every industry lobby for more regulation? Does this mean that this is what is good for the markets they are dominant in? I fail to see this implication.

The nuclear industry is dying on aggregate globally, as indicated by metrics such as market share, overall capacity or price competitiveness. Nuclear proponents often blame the cost of meeting onerous (and by implication unreasonable) regulations for the fact that it cannot compete on price.

Most of the rest of the electricity energy sector campaign for LESS regulation - the coal power industry is notable example but you see this even in the renewables space where, for example, wind producers would like to have more freedom to site turbines.

The fact that the nuclear industry puts nearly all its lobbying effort into securing financial support instead of attacking regulations, suggests that regulation is not the reason why nuclear is failing to survive but that it's simply because of price/cost.

The other notable example I can think of in the energy sector is with directly growing biofuels. A similarly uneconomic way of providing energy that couldn't exist without massive subsidy.

No evidence for what? I'm genuinely baffled here. They're the nuclear power company; surely they would know the reasons they need a subsidy?!

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