When I shared a draft of this I got objections to the claim that nuclear’s cost is cheap enough on the theory that solar is already pretty cheap (remember not to count tax subsidies in the calculation) and will become cheaper on the relevant time frames for building new plants. I do agree this is possible, but it seems far from certain even if we go full out on solar, especially when requiring it to scale on the level of ‘the entire electrical grid,’ and considering the storage issues involved in too heavy a reliance on solar power on that scale. This seems to me like a clear case of Why Not Both given the magnitude of the costs versus the benefits – you’d like to rely purely on solar most of the time in the worlds where it’s cheap and can scale that big fast enough, including because it conserves uranium, but you don’t know you live in those worlds and even if you do you’d like a backup system to relieve pressure on the necessary amount of storage so you’re fine in case of unusual weather events.
Even without unusual weather events, usual weather means you need something to handle times when you don’t have it: whether stored (solar) power, or using a different resource.
the costs of ow production
ow?
or this and other reasons, it is good policy to not allow oneself to be taken advantage of even when the cost of not allowing this is higher than the cost of allowing it. And especially when that second cost is time. There is of course a limit, but one needs to be careful not to get into bad habits. One must keep one’s honor.
Even without unusual weather events, usual weather means you need something to handle times when you don’t have it: whether stored (solar) power, or using a different resource.
ow?
Sort of ‘cost versus opportunity cost’.