Excellent_Impact6860 t1_jddhm4n wrote on March 23, 2023 at 4:44 PM

Reply to comment by LouSanous in IPCC chart says Solar PV and Wind Turbines are best way to achieve Deep, Rapid, and Low Cost emission cuts before 2030. by DisasterousGiraffe

Here, take my downvote. Your arguments stand on water. New nuke is expensive NOW, after west killed the industry for 3 decades and made it a niche, low numbers "homemade" enterprise. If it was deployed in economies of scale, the economics would look completely different.

Just look at chinese nuclear

LouSanous t1_jddqhpx wrote on March 23, 2023 at 5:40 PM

Look at Chinese anything. We build light rail in the US for 202 million per mile. The Chinese build HSR for 14.7 million per mile. What's your point?

Comparing the US to China on building costs is apples and oranges. For one, steel, concrete, banking, and construction are all state enterprises in China. They don't contract out the construction of infrastructure or the materials to for-profit companies.

Consider the following inequality:

If A(>)0 and B(>)0 then,

A+B (>) A

Where A is cost and B is profit.

Excellent_Impact6860 t1_jde5byn wrote on March 23, 2023 at 7:13 PM

And yet china can afford to build it at this pace and price point for 2+ decades now, so I guess my point is western inefficiency?

But of course that would be not true. West is plenty efficient where real "free market" is in place, i.e. supply of office furniture, toilet paper, mass produced meat etc are all very efficient and affordable

But the west became disgustingly inefficient where politics or local power interests are involved - so construction became ridiculously expensive. Housing became expensive. Transit became expensive. Energy is next to become expensive if people won't push back.

LouSanous t1_jdg46sw wrote on March 24, 2023 at 3:29 AM

>2+ decades

7+ decades.

>supply of office furniture, toilet paper, mass produced meat etc are all very efficient and affordable

All of that stuff is significantly cheaper in China. Whatever perceived efficiency the US has is due primarily to unequal exchange.

The US is a failed state. See the TikTok debacle from today for all you need to know about how useless our regulators are.

Kaz_55 t1_jdh4xbi wrote on March 24, 2023 at 11:05 AM

>after west killed the industry for 3 decades and made it a niche, low numbers "homemade" enterprise.

The nuclear industry has been the most well funded and subsidized energy industry in history, and this was still the case up to ~2005

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/energy-subsidies.aspx

"The west" didn't kill the nuclear industry. The inherent limitations and problems, along with eternal stagnation as far as results are concerned is what "killed" the nuclear industry. And citing "but China" isn't going to change that. Even the chinese have been scaling back their nuclear efforts:

https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes

while pretty much every project involving renewables over there overdelivers. Nuclear is a dead end, simply because it's too slow, too expensive and it can't be scaled the way renewables can. Nuclear wouldn'T even be able to provide global base load capacity without running into massive issues.