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Comment by angiosperm | Hacker News Reader

Solar and wind are now much cheaper than alternatives, even without subsidies. E.g. it is cheaper to build a new solar farm and switch over to it than to continue using an existing coal plant.

The only reason massive subsidies for renewables continue is to accelerate build-out to address the looming climate catastrophe. We need to ramp up to building out a TW of new renewable capacity every year.

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I'd like you to concede that your snarky comment about subsidies implies things that are incorrect. Nuclear is not subsidized and has never been widely subsidized. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...

In France this is false: nuclear always obtained heavily (albeit indirectly) subsidies: the R&D was public, it was built by a public monopoly using public money and money borrowed thanks to the state vouching for it...

Financial effect of renewables in Europe: https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...

No one was talking about France. angiosperm snarkily implied that Nuclear only works if its subsidized. He's clearly wrong. The fact that France does subsidize it isn't relevant. Nuclear in the US is not subsidized and yet is massively more cost effective than fossil fuel power plants.

The larger debate is way less clear-cut than your assertion, check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate#Subsidies and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...

The civilian nuclear industry stemmed from massive military investments, which were a way to subsidize it. "In the United States, the federal government has paid US$145 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($85 billion) and fossil fuels ($60 billion) from 1950 to 2016" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United...)

The very PWR reactor exists thanks to the US Army desire of nuclear subs, which paid all associated R&D (Westinghouse then adapted it to the civilian on-shore market). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor#Hist...

Nowadays the sole direct federal energy support "peaked in FY 2021 at over $500 million" ( https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pd... )

There is no secret here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via... https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/nuclear_s... Nuclear enjoys massive tax reduction

Cost effectiveness will be established after the last hot waste of the last decommissioned plant will be cold. In the meantime any serious accident or waste particle wandering around may induce costs.

Was the basic research funded by governments? Yes. Is subsidization necessary or even done for nuclear powerplants to be built and profitably run given that basic research as an already-existing stepping stone? No.

> Is subsidization necessary or even done

As already answered: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via...

Thanks for the info. I did some more research and found out that Nuclear Power was indeed not subsidized from 1985 to 2000, but after 2000 some nuclear subsidies seem to have been created. However, while over 20% of the electricity in the US is produced by nuclear plants, only 1% of energy subsidies goes to nuclear, which looks like is approximately on par with subsidies for fossil fuel power.

I don't think we should be subsidizing power (or most things) but it seems disingenuous for an article to claim that nuclear power isn't viable because it gets subsidies, even tho fossil fuel gets at least as much subsidies per mwh as nuclear.

Nuclear power is not viable for a reason other than than it depends on subsidies. It is not viable because it costs overwhelmingly more both to build and to operate than the competition, with or without considering subsidies on either side, and has always produced exactly zero watts for many years after a project started.

Coal and oil still get huge subsidies, yet even with are not viable against solar and wind without.

I'd be very surprised if you could convince me that solar or wind could eliminate the need for the majority of our electricity to be generated by base-load systems like hydro, coal, oil, or nuclear. Do you know what the cost of solar power is if you factor in storage needs?

Solar and wind are subsidized by everything else that puts electricity into the grid when the sky is dark or calm.

They are a supplement to, not a straight replacement for, nuclear or gas or anything else.

Factor in the cost of filling in the gaps, and solar and wind don't come out ahead.

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