Nuclear power has had a negative learning curve since its inception. How many hundreds of billions in subsidies to "climb it"?
Personally I think nuclear costs are closely aligned with the Baumol effect. [0] It is construction and does not become more efficient while wages rise as an economy develops.
Therefore there is a small timespan to build nuclear power with acceptable costs right when the economy is advanced enough to manage the technology but wages haven't caught up yet. Like they have done in the west.
> Are you saying even the private sector should not invest in nuclear? Why?
The private sector can do what it wants. But that is not what is happening in the west, the few construction projects that get greenlit do it on the base of absolutely massive subsidies.
Rockets were extrordinarily expensive, and getting more expensive with every passing decade, until SpaceX showed up. The Baumol effect is not a law of nature.
Yes. SpaceX was experimenting with private money until something stuck with a few tiny pushes from the government buying risky launch contracts after they had already proven themselves.
Looking at the current crop of nuclear startups they are relying on government handouts until those run out and then they silently disappear. Making absolutely no progress on the economics of nuclear power.
Today no one talks about NuScale anymore, because they had to admit not solving the problem. Instead it is the latest PowerPoint reactor still being able to claim it is cheap, fast to build and ”by default safe”.
5-10 years earlier the name of the game was mPower. Until that became too expensive.
Personally I think nuclear costs are closely aligned with the Baumol effect. [0] It is construction and does not become more efficient while wages rise as an economy develops.
Therefore there is a small timespan to build nuclear power with acceptable costs right when the economy is advanced enough to manage the technology but wages haven't caught up yet. Like they have done in the west.
> Are you saying even the private sector should not invest in nuclear? Why?
The private sector can do what it wants. But that is not what is happening in the west, the few construction projects that get greenlit do it on the base of absolutely massive subsidies.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect