I mean im guessing its because it may not be as profitable, or atleast at first, boycotts or directly just capitalism fucking everything up? i legit always imagine aliens seeing us still use coal while having DISCOVERED IN 1932
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
23 points (65.3% liked)
Green Energy
3070 readers
4 users here now
Everything about energy production and storage.
Related communities:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Its a type of energy that gets more expensive
Hard to get insurance, so all costs fall to the states while all profits go to companies
Trash is not solved
A minor error can have a huge environmental impact, especially in densly populated areas like Europe
Plants need cooling, most use rivers and that does not mix well with rising temperatures, and have to be shut down in summer
No public backing
High initial costs, high costs so run, high costs to dismantle
Nuclear plants are not flexible and can't react to energy availability
Most fuel is produced by less reliable states. Renewable energy is produced in your home country.
No chance of decentralizing the grid, making it a target for single point of failures or attacks (State sponsored or terrorism)
Solar is cheaper, battery parks are cheaper, hydrogen is cheaper, wind is cheaper, hydro is cheaper.
All in all, there are cheaper ways to create and store more energy safely, more decentralized and with less ties to single big companies.
Money is no issue, because if we have billions to throw at one plant, we obviously have enough for a smarter grid with storage options.
To summarize: it's being suppressed to keep the fossil industry alive.
It's the opposite, convincing governments to invest in totally uneconomic nuclear reactors that will take 15-20 years to build, ensures that these countries will continue to depend on fossile fuels for the next 15-20 years.
They do not take that long to build. At all. Besifes, most of the build time is because of red tape, like requiring a plant to be FULLY DESIGNED, reviewed, and approved by multiple bodies before they can even break ground on one in the US.
It is red tape and fear mongering, not an actual feature of nuclear power itself.
It's the current reality in both the US and Europe. And looking at the various serious construction defects that are surfacing in French plants that were build at a time when the government waived much of the red tape, these extra precautions save a lot of costs over the lifetime of the plants.
Nuclear plants are very complex machines and government contractors are well known to cut corners and do shoddy work when not supervised well. This has nothing to do with fear mongering 🤷
No you're just ignorantly wrong. New plants, even ones built around the same time as Chornobyl, are LITERALLY INCAPABLE of breaking in the same ways. This entire discussion is filled with ignorant people speaking confidantly.
No one talked about Chernobyl like disasters, please don't argue silly strawmans.
A large part of the French plants had to be recently shut down for very expensive repairs, because their containments developed serious cracks due to shoddy construction.
I am not generally against nuclear reactors, and the ones already running should be kept online for the time being, but building new ones is complete economic nonsense and way better alternatives exist.
Yes it has been mentioned multiple times across the entire discussion. Besides, most people imagine containment breach when they think of nuclear disaster anyways, so it is absolutely not hyperbole to point out that it literally cannot happen.
Your attitude is similar to the fools who freaked out when they heard Fukushima was releasing yons of "contaminated" water in to the ocean. Water that is less radioactive than many natural places around the planet. Water you could swim in every day of your life and still live just fine.
The fear mongering is absolutely real and the ignorance about newer technology is staggering.
Again you are arguing a strawman. I am talking about costly repairs and cost / time overruns when constructing them. Nuclear reactors are just not making any economic sense 🤷
You're using ONE example to say the entire industry is full of shoddy work and overruns, when I've already described several mechanisms that artificially balloon the costs in the first place. You can continue to pretend you're correct, but you're simply not.
There are endless examples. Just look up recent delays in the reactor under construction in the UK, or the hugely delayed and overly expensive one recently completed in Finland.
There is no artificial balooning, quite the contrary. These contracts always go to the lowest bidder who then proceeds doing shoddy work and later blackmails the government for more money to complete the works.
Renewables are best for sure. I guess if the required logistics are not in place to get them online faster, I guess waiting for fusion is better.
I would have thought it could be done faster. Thanks for the info!