Start building the next nuclear plant now and by the time it's finished, solar will be king and most economical and safest with no worries about what might happen
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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Nuclear energy is not economic. Only military and bribery purposes by lying it is economic. Incumbent energy advocates for nuclear competition because completion can be dragged out to 15+ years, and its energy will forever be undercuttable on price.
The US has absurd 100% tariffs on energy, but even with those, Chinese solar imports are cheapest energy option in the US.
Nuclear is the lesser evil. But I think we should be clear that nuclear can Have a catastrophic effect on the environment if manged incorrectly. Like render entire swaths of earth inhabitable. Like beyond high temperature. Places that mean immediate silent death
But properly managed nuclear is like the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity.
But I will say in light of recent... Events, my faith that humanity could properly manage our waste if nuclear were to become more prolific has wained dramatically.
I have 3 issues with nuclear power plants.
- Centralised power generation is and will always be a focus of military conflict
- Nuclear power plants are not fully covered by insurance because such an insurance is too expensive. So the risk calculation of insurance agencies tells them to not risk it.
- No one wants nuclear plants in their area, or at least the storage sites.
And yet, people will tell me how nuclear is the way to go. They ignore all these reasons, while insisting that nuclear plants are safe.
This feels like when people tell you that we need to help the poor but they get mad when our taxes go up, and most of us don't do shit for them on their own. It is so cheap to speak.
I mean, we COULD manage itnproperly, but we also NEED tonslowly chip away at that safety budget each quarter to please shareholders.
Immediate silent death is grossly over exaggerating. Even in Chernobyl which was absolute worst case scenario that can’t happen with modern designs, the “immediate death” area was directly around the plant.
The concern is cancer in 30 years, not immediate death. Not that trying to downplay cancer, but it really only makes it uninhabitable for humans who live much longer than 30 years. A lot of wildlife basically doesn’t notice since their lives are shorter. It doesn’t mean we should be cavalier about irradiating the environment, but there is no need to go around calling it immediate death.
Last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission just approved a new construction of a reactor for the first time in 10 years, to the Bill Gates backed Terra Power. Cool, except it's projected to cost $4 billion and the government is expected to cover half the cost, to build a reactor with 345 MW of capacity.
In contrast, solar panels cost about $1 million per MW, so an equivalent amount of peak capacity from solar would cost about $345 million, or about 1/12 the price. Solar won't run all day, but the nuclear plants will also continue to cost money to run after construction is complete.
Looking at the different LCOE estimates of each type of power generation shows that advanced nuclear is around $80/MWhr and solar+battery for all day demand tracking is about $53/MWhr.
Basically nuclear is only economically viable with government support at this point, and we should be asking whether we'd rather have the government support towards other forms of energy.
The 4b are The estimations for now. As far as i know, every single new nuclear plant that we tried to built in the last years overshot its budget by quite a significant amount.
Oh, I agree.
I was a big, big nuclear proponent 20 years ago. But seeing how Vogtle and VC Summer played out, and how that "cheaper" and more "scalable" AP1000 design put Westinghouse into bankruptcy, basically turned me off from the economics of nuclear power.
Oh, and because of how utility generation is paid for, ratepayers in Georgia will be paying for the Vogtle construction and cost overruns in their electric bills for the next 75 years, as the nuclear plant is shielded from competition by price regulators (state Public Utilities Commissions and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), so even if newer and better technology comes online, customers in 2080 will still be paying for 2020 technology.
The technology is still neat but I don't believe there's an economic future for civilian nuclear power generation. Not anymore.
Yeah, unfortunately, nuclear power should have been heavily invested in about... 50 years ago. The "The best time was yesterday, the second-best time is now" line doesn't apply with advancements in other energy sources and the sheer time it takes to build and get a nuclear plant operational. The best time was yesterday - now is perhaps the worst time.
Still, it is always good to push back on anti-nuclear sentiment. Every nuclear plant kept running is a massive amount of fossil fuels removed from power generation. I remember when Merkel closed a ton of nuclear plants in Germany for dogshit PR reasons, handing power back to fossil fuel suppliers.
Also there's a specific type of reactor that is optimal because it allows for more easily recycling the spent fuel to use it again, and unfortunately these have not been built as much as the other type of reactor.
It's because fuel is such an insignificant percentage of the overall cost of building, operating, and maintaining nuclear power. Increasing the complexity of the reactor in order to make the fuel use more efficient is basically a nonstarter, economically.
Also how long until a Trump (or future) administration cuts those pesky nuclear regulations.
Humans are the ultimate risk with nuclear an humans fucking suck.
Frankly, this is why I'm still antinuclear; everyone is always, "It's so easy to store!" but, like, that's a reliance in a world that loves cutting corners (usually because of corporate pressure…).
I'd rather invest in the energy source that doesn't have devastating consequences if we don't do it right or someone decides to drill into it despite all the warnings we put up.
Im pretty sure i read that already happened
What is the bottom bar on that graph?
Which graph? I linked to a PDF with a ton of graphs.
The one you're quoting under the link
Are you talking about battery storage itself being about $126/MWhr? Yeah, that incorporated into the solar+battery LCOE, because solar itself is $31, battery is $126, and the weighted average of how much energy is expected to come directly out of the solar panels onto the grid (at $31) and how much is expected to be stored for later ($31 plus $126) averages out to $53, presumably because most demand matches the daytime solar curve and doesn't need to be stored for later.
How they actually actually do.
Mining for the rare earth elements used in solar panels is pretty ugly, too. But once they’re taken out they can be reused, it’s not like coal or oil where you use it once and it’s gone forever.
That's why the actual solution is degrowth, not a technology of any kind. Nuclear is better than coal, renewables are better than nuclear, but none are good.
Uranium and rare earth elements mining are cause of massive biodiversity reductions, political destabilisations, wars, and they have to be transformed, transported and disposed (and we use a lot of fossil energies for that). So no it's not green, it's just less brown (and the direct effect are mostly sensible in third world countries, so nobody cares in the first world).
Moreover, nuclear and renewables never caused a reduction of coal in a global perspective. They just added themselves to the mix.
We should ban petrol except for ambulances and fire engines
Ambulances and fire engines are probably an example of a top choices to convert to ev. They don’t drive far at all and they are parked at a central location most of the time.
Also puts incentives to install solar panels at hospitals and fire stations.
We should be banning, or more accurately, phasing out combustion engines for all vehicles including government and emergency vehicles. If anything should be EVs these should be it. Also consider that American fire trucks are massively oversized compared to ones in the rest of the world. They don't need to be that big, and thus more compact European-style ones could easily be replaced with electric equivalents.
Combustion engines will likely have a place for a long time. Large equipment just doesn't do well on battery power. They can't get the required runtime. Also, in places where they are used, electrical power is often limited.
Hydrocarbons are an excellent way of storing energy. We will also need to overproduce renewables, to keep grids stable. Synthetic hydrocarbons could be a good solution to both issues. Currently, they are nowhere close to competing with fossil fuels, but that will change in time.
You can make a solar panel out of recycled materials or without destroying the planet
A lot of progress has also been made in hybrid/organic solar panels in recent years. The things state of the art stuff can do is frankly nuts.
(Me reading this while watching Beyond 2000, an 80's show describing state-of-the-art tech (of its time), having speculations of solar energy tech)
Just because Coal is waaayyyy worse, it doesn't mean that nuclear scores are a joke to deal with.
But sure, Coal is WAAAAAAAAY WORSE.
Nuclear is the lesser evil. Even my former boss who is an environmental scientist agree we should still maintain nuclear power plants, but only as stop gap before renewable energy becomes more ubiquitous.
Look all I’m saying is we shouldn’t mix big lizards and nuclear power. Trust me bro, there’s a documentary.
The recent surge in oil and gas prices has indeed sparked a "told-you-so" moment for nuclear energy advocates. As of March 2026, geopolitical instability in the Middle East—specifically involving the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—has driven Brent crude to peaks near $120 per barrel, exposing the inherent volatility of fossil fuel dependence.
Do we really want to flood the world with crocodiles, tho? The dinosaurs had their time.
Florida would be the first to fall.
~so~ ~yes~
Florida man would like to beg your finest pardon.
.... Buuuut he's busy howling at the moon.
I guess that's a positive spin on heat waste, I'm sure there are a lot of negative consequences from hot waste water going into streams...
Not like nuclear is the only thing that does this though, this is a problem with data centers too.
Does “how they actually do” include whitewashing the energy industry with Fox News?
"FOR THE LAST TIME KEVIN, THE COOLING TOWERS ARE RELEASING STEAM. THEY ARE NOT 'BURNING' URANIUM"
Hey! That's my town.
For anyone curious, We have a nuclear plant that uses cooling canals in the coastline instead of cooling towers, here's what they look like.
The temperature change and marshy environment in Florida creates the perfect condition for Crocs (Not gators, those live inland in the everglades)
I have solar panels and my backup power company runs three hydroelectric dams in the area, which have replaced the nuclear power station.
How much do they pay you to spout bullshit?
"Fuck you, got mine"
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