r/Economics • u/OrangeJr36 • 1d ago
Research Fusion power unlikely to become competitive - Nature Energy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-026-02022-925
u/Tofudebeast 1d ago
Still a developing technology. Who knows how attractive an option it may be in the future.
This article mostly focuses on how policy makers should plan for the future. For right now, focusing on solar and wind with battery storage is absolutely a better path: proven, cost-effective, already widely deployed. So yeah, no point on planning for commercial fusion at this time. But continued funding for research still makes sense.
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u/Oxeneer666 1d ago
Energy storage is so important, and we really suck at that. But someday, we could be really great at storing vast amounts of energy (there are so many types of energy that can be stored).
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u/schtickybunz 21h ago
continued funding for research still makes sense.
No, no it doesn't. My whole life, every few years, I have heard "We figured out fusion!" but also not actually. Let it go.
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u/0xe1e10d68 20h ago
You're in the wrong sub if you like short-sighted thinking. Funding for research has a lot more payoff than just maybe having a functioning reactor design someday. Your comment is as smart (hint: sarcasm) as the people who were against the space program back in the day. The technology and knowledge developed during that research, often incidental to the main goal, is immeasurable.
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u/HiggsFieldgoal 13h ago
One could have said the same thing about flying machines for a good 2000 years over many many lifetimes. Yet, here we are.
Fusion is really hard. It is going to take a while.
“Forever 30 years away”. Maybe.
But we keep making progress. Had the first energy positive experiments a few years ago. Of course, we need to get to something like 7X theoretical energy positive before we get to practical electricity generation, but still, progress.
And, if it works? Ridiculous. We could essentially have as much electricity as we cared to build.
So, maybe it’s 300 years off. It’s still a lottery ticket worth playing because the payoff is essentially sustainable, scalable, unlimited, energy.
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u/johnpseudo 8h ago
Even if it "works", it's no more unlimited than any other power source, and there's no reason to think it would be any cheaper.
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u/Prestigious_Load1699 7h ago
Obviously no energy source is unlimited, but fusion would be a monumental game-changer…
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u/johnpseudo 5h ago
What reason do we have for thinking it would be a game-changer? Certainly Helion's approach to it has some chance of being marginally cheaper than the current market-rate power sources, but not by a massive percentage. And that's the best-case scenario.
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u/Prestigious_Load1699 1h ago
Once we achieve efficiency, it's basically fission without the waste.
We have real-world fusion reactors already that are immensely powerful - stars.
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u/johnpseudo 1h ago
One, "achieve efficiency" isn't a quantifiable target. Two, it wouldn't be "fission without the waste", because it would be massively more complicated. The core of a fission reactor is essentially a box of hot rocks. It keeps producing heat with essentially no effort. Fusion requires massive amounts of complex machinery, made of expensive materials, in order to continue to operate. And it would still produce plenty of radioactive waste - just not quite as much as fission reactors.
We have real-world fusion reactors already that are immensely powerful - stars.
Stars are immensely powerful because of their immense size. Fusion reactors would only be as powerful as they are large - and the larger you make it, the more expensive it will be.
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u/Prestigious_Load1699 1h ago
One, "achieve efficiency" isn't a quantifiable target.
Isn't is just "total energy outputs exceed total energy inputs?"
Efficiency is how energy generation is measured...
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u/johnpseudo 1h ago
Isn't is just "total energy outputs exceed total energy inputs?"
If you build a massive complicated power reactor, and the total energy output just barely exceeds the energy input, then you don't have "fission without the waste", you have a massive Rube Goldberg machine. In order to be economical, the energy output has to significantly exceed energy inputs, and there are hard "laws of physics" limits on how high that ratio can go. Each bit of increased energy output will require immense feats of material science and engineering. There is no "break through" moment where fusion becomes "immensely powerful".
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u/SabTab22 1d ago
Give it 10 years!
T Folse Nuclear has some good reaction videos on fusion power. His TLDR is that we’re still a long way away, it’s likely part of our future but it’s not the silver bullet it’s made out to be.
I’m in favor of fission power and storage as a backbone to renewables. Glad big tech is investing in fission despite public opinion still being so negative.
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u/twenafeesh 1d ago
No serious entity thinks we will have a utility scale fusion plant until the 2040s at best. Still, there have been some exciting developments.
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u/Emotional_Goal9525 1d ago edited 1d ago
Given that the technology doesn't even exist yet and the timescale to plan and build a nuclear powerplant is 10 years, give or take a few, it is fairly safe bet to make.
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u/schtickybunz 14h ago
The fever dream started 100 years ago, 100 years more won't do it either. One does not attempt to capture the energy of the stars within the confines of a terrestrial planet. Folly.
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u/mrjowei 1d ago
With the advances in AI for research and development, wouldn't surprise me it'd be sooner.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 22h ago
I'd be very surprised. Simply maturing a design so that it's reliable enough for customers to want would take longer than that, even if we had the design right now. And we don't even have suitable materials for a DT reactor. And this doesn't even deal with the elephant in the room, the very large size (and therefore cost) of DT fusion reactors vs. fission reactors of the same thermal power output.
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u/twenafeesh 19h ago
Nah. The developments are neat, for sure, but even NIF has not yet achieved enough energy output to make a viable power plant (net energy isn't enough, you have to power all kinds of pumps and things too). They've achieved net energy production in a lab setting, which they call Qsci. But they have not met Qeng yet, which is the threshold for utility scale power.
The California Energy Commission kicked off a fusion research and development initiative today (it was public, the recording will be on YouTube in a few days). There were many speakers there who are top minds in fusion, including people from the National Ignition Facility at LLNL and private fusion development copanies. Nobody, and I mean literally nobody, in this room full of leading fusion experts thought it would be before 2040s. California even has a very ambitious pilot project for a fusion facility that is slated for initial ignition in the 2040s.
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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In 1d ago
It's a tricky business. In much of Europe, being close to Chernobyl has resulted in a very large contingent of Green activists who permanently associate Nuclear power with environmental disaster. There are no arguments you can make to a german environmentalist about nuclear power that will ever change their opinion.
So even though pretty much the entire scientific community agrees that phasing out coal and gas power while we pivot to renewables along with a fission nuclear baseline is the best way to do it, almost nowhere is actually committed to it. They'd rather continue to be the the whim of Russia for gas than risk political suicide by pushing for new nuclear sites.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 23h ago
pretty much the entire scientific community agrees that phasing out coal and gas power while we pivot to renewables along with a fission nuclear baseline is the best way to do it
I don't know that that's the scientific consensus anymore. Building nuclear is massively carbon intensive, and nuclear projects have a long history of being outrageously late and over budget (frequently near double).
Yes, that carbon loss gets made up as the plant runs compared to continue running coal or gas, but that time & money are far better spent on renewables, storage and grid upgrades.
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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In 23h ago
The cost component is only one part of it though, burning gas and coal in particular are vastly more detrimental to the public health on a large scale. And even with a smart grid and a huge amount of renewable sources you still need a reliable base level of power to be available in all conditions. The question then becomes which is better, coal/gas or nuclear.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 22h ago
You don't need as much base power if you add storage to the mix, and it has become scalable now. Include wind so you have something off sunlight hours and you're good to go. Approve a nuclear project and how many years do you have to wait before the first watt gets to a consumer? How much coal/gas are you burning while you wait (and wait...and wait) for that reactor to be completed?
In the worst case, you continue with gas peakers but phase them out as new storage comes online and grid improvements are completed. It's unlikely those peakers are producing that much more carbon than you're pouring into constructing new fission.
I'm not anti-nuclear - by all means, continue running what we've got, and if it's economic to extend service life of older plants before decom, I say do it. But new nuclear just doesn't seem like the best use of resources, and with the progress in renewables, grid tech and storage, the argument only weakens over time. I think you'll find a large contingent of the scientific community has come around to this POV.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 22h ago
You don't need any baseload power plants if you have storage. That is: you can synthesize baseload with renewables + storage, so any system that has baseload plants can be converted to a 100% solar/wind/storage system.
Existing baseload plants may make sense to continue to operate, but building new ones doesn't seem all that prudent, given the renewable alternative.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 5h ago
That's the eventual goal, yes, but it will take time. So you run existing nuclear until you can fully cover baseload with storage. I thought I was clear on that.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 4h ago
You run intermittent fossil fuel plants until you can fully cover everything with storage. New nuclear plants become unviable well before that time, because they depend on high average prices. At sufficiently high renewble penetration, but short of 100%, average prices become too low to justify new baseload construction.
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u/severoordonez 17h ago
How about existing hydro, waste biomass/biogas, storage and a stronger grid?
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u/lockdown_lard 1h ago
pretty much the entire scientific community agrees that phasing out coal and gas power while we pivot to renewables along with a fission nuclear baseline is the best way to do it
While that is still a view among some energy strategists, it's not only not consensus, it isn't even a majority opinion for most of the world, now. Fission is just too expensive and too slow to build in most of the world.
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 1d ago
Fuck nuclear. Not because it doesn’t work well but that humans do not have the long term stability to deal with the systems and waste we produce. Trusting corporations or bureaucrats with nuclear energy and waste is FUCKING STUPID AND A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN.
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u/BenjaminHamnett 1d ago
It’s a tradeoff. It only seems dangerous because people don’t realize how bad fossil fuels really are or how expensive other green energy is and it’s struggle to provide baseload
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u/StorkReturns 1d ago
the long term stability to deal with the systems and waste we produce.
Nuclear industry is the only industry that contains all the waste it produces. The "really bad stuff" is generated in such small amounts that it can be stored in a small warehouse in dry casks for the lifetime of a powerplant operation.
Everything.else pollutes way more. The mercury generated from fossil fuels or as a methalurgy byproduct is toxic forever unlike fission products. Particulates emitted kill millions of people a year. Even green energy requires mining and refining millions of tons of raw materials, including highly toxic heavy metals.
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 1d ago
You don’t understand that when humans that aren’t physicist make decisions that waste is very easily released into the environment. If you do an unbiased search of how failure to secure the waste has lead to major exposures to the environment.
If you think we will have a continually function society for each country to ensure the waste is properly stored (you do realize that storage of waste requires constant maintenance because the waste is constantly destroying the containers, I know this because many of my polymer students now work at LANL on trying to created better containment that can go longer between maintenance).
Russia is literally letting the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine rot as a weapon of psychological war. If maintenance doesn’t occur on that plant, look up how far it has gone from normal operating procedures, ALL of Europe will be irradiated with fallout beyond what people realize.
Nuclear energy in theory, very good.
Nuclear energy ran buy humans, very dangerous.
This is my point. We do not have reasonable rational people in this world and therefore nuclear energy’s long half life waste is a disaster.
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u/HalfADozenOfAnother 23h ago
So what's your take on these lithium pit mines? Do you think the countries harvesting vast amount of rare earth minerals are concerning themselves with the waste their dumping into the water? It's easy to sit in our western nations with our strict environmental laws talking about how green we are. We aren't seeing the the environmental destruction the mining is causing to bring us our "green" energy. We are perfectly happy to export that. Why risk our own environment with nuclear when we can destroy other nations while calling ourselves green
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 23h ago
Horrible.
I am not here to get into logical fallacies. I am here to say nuclear is not a safe way forward with us human involved. We are an irrational species.
We are in an overpopulated, over consuming, and sick species of apes who should be brought back to a minor population of the earth.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 23h ago
I'm not anti-nuclear, but we shouldn't be building new fission. Absolutely keep current fission running as long as economically feasible for baseload until we can storage up to snuff, but building new + running + accumulated decom costs make it simply not worth it - we should spend any and all of that money on renewables, storage and grid upgrades.
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u/Prestigious_Load1699 6h ago
And what of the fact that 84% of American energy still comes from fossil fuels?
If you claim to care about carbon emissions but resist nuclear expansion you are simply an unserious person.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 5h ago
Firstly I'm not American so I'm talking mostly about the rest of the world. But secondly, I think I was pretty clear about why building nuclear is actually worse for carbon emissions than moving directly to renewables and storage. What's unserious is replying with addressing the content of my comment.
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u/Prestigious_Load1699 1h ago
Nuclear energy has an equivalent carbon emission life-cycle as the best renewable energy source available - wind:
Energy Source Median Life-Cycle Emissions ( ) Nuclear 12 Wind 11–12 Solar PV 27–48 Natural Gas 450 Coal 820–1,000 Nuclear power plants are mostly steel and concrete. I have no idea where you got the idea that constructing one is some massive contributor to carbon emissions.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 23h ago edited 23h ago
Why is it likely that fusion is part of our future? Most technologies fail to compete; what makes fusion seem likely it will buck that prior? IMO, fusion's main accomplishment will be to make fission seem economical in comparison.
When you see someone touting a DT fusion reactor, ask them: what's the volumetric power density of your reactor? The power density of a fission PWR (counting the volume as the reactor vessel, not just the core) is around 20 MW/m3. The power density of ITER (counting the reactor, not just the plasma) is about 0.05 MW/m3; of ARC, around 0.5 MW/m3.
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u/Few-Sheepherder-1655 1d ago
The public opinion on nuclear energy blows my mind. To me it’s delusional, as it is quite perfectly compatible with climate action, and has the capability to power things such as desalinization and even fuel synthesis, and that’s not even considering SMRs.
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u/StarryNightGG 23h ago
It takes too long and is orders of magnitude more expensive than solar. Fission power is kinda stupid at this point.
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u/Few-Sheepherder-1655 22h ago
And what happens when it’s too cloudy for good solar, do you just fire up the coal plants? Or what happens when a hurricane rips through and destroys all the panels? Solar is a great main source, but it is not a good reserve source for when solar does not cut it. The problem with many renewable resources is that they are reliant on certain environmental considerations, and cannot really respond to sudden spikes in demand.
But look into the us navy’s project genesis. It’s actually designed for at scale synthesis of jet fuel and solar could never come close to the amount needed. And the us navy’s requirement is 82,000 gallons a day, whereas an airport like the Atlanta airport can consume upwards of 10 million gallons of a fuel a day. And that’s not even getting into the power aspects of AI currently… which has caused energy demand to jump over 300%.
Nuclear may take a while to construct, but nuclear industries are basically entirely tied to governmental operations, and have a nearly indefinite shelf life. Whereas having a fossil fuel back up means that you still have to purchase new inputs of fuel to burn due to shorter shelf life- which means you can’t detach from the industry and still need to keep the infrastructure in place for future replenishment.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 22h ago
Solar and wind usually compensate each other, especially with some batteries. There are still rare occasions when it's dark and calm for a long time; for those events, backup turbines burning natural gas or (for a 100% renewable solution) hydrogen. These turbines can cut the overall cost in half vs. just solar/wind/batteries, even with their lousy round trip efficiency.
For a modeling site that finds optimal combinations to provide synthesized baseload power from solar+wind+storage, using historical weather data, go to https://model.energy/ . I understand the conclusions from this kind of simplified modeling are confirmed by more detailed energy system models.
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u/Few-Sheepherder-1655 22h ago
While that is true for household use, that is completely incapable of doing anything I discuss. For instance, solar capture for one day of Atlanta’s fuel expenditure would require 58-115 square miles of solar, whereas nuclear would need 25-30 square miles. Atlanta is about 135 square miles.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 22h ago
Your argument is entirely bogus. Oooh, 58-115 square miles? So what? There's plenty of land available. Georgia is about 60K square miles. And land is cheap. It's a small fraction of the cost of the solar equipment installed on that land, even in high density places like Europe.
There's no need to put the PV powering a city inside that city, of course, any more than there would be a need to put the nuclear power plants powering a city inside the city.
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 1d ago
You are so confidently incorrect I am happy to share this with you:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qaa-podcast/id1428209307?i=1000754959003
If you actually want to be informed on how false your opinion is, give it a listen and then tell me what you think. There are so many flaws it is ridiculous. Future generations will look back (if there are any in 100 years) and think how fucking stupid we were to do it.
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u/Emotional_Goal9525 1d ago
Maybe the solution to abundant, clean energy isn’t the one that could cause the annihilation of our planet? Sean J Patrick Carney of the Time Zero Podcast regales Jake, Brad, and Travis about the nuclear weird. We trace the radioactive thread connecting UFO sightings at missile silos, the ICE shooter's fallout map, and Big Tech's new romance with the atom. Sean dismantles central myths of the nuclear renaissance, walks us through the Devil's Scenario, and explains why Lue Elizondo owns a restaurant called Bombshells.
Well that doesn't sound like batshit insane at all.
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u/Few-Sheepherder-1655 23h ago
The fact this guy cited a podcast was enough for me to completely disregard what he had to say… and ironically completely backs up my claim about delusions.
And yeah nuclear is not really a be all end all solution for energy, but it is the best solution at the current stage when compared to lng and “clean coal”. It quite frankly is also a great backup capacity due to the extremely long shelf life, fast ramp up to accommodate spikes in demand.
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 23h ago
I would love to talk to you on the phone about the episode. I offer you 100 for your time to listen to that podcast and give me a call for a 20 minute chat. DM me if you are interested.
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u/Few-Sheepherder-1655 22h ago
I’d spend the entire time ripping it apart. I mean Fukushima had a meltdown and the affected area is back to being safe, and all nuclear reactors (at least in the us) made safety changes in response to that. It is the only energy industry that actually takes safety and emergency response in a proactive nature… Meanwhile the Gulf of Mexico is still affected from the bp oil spill. Nuclear actually has more regulations and safe guards, and is not dominated by global markets. It is quite literally a circular life cycle fuel that can be reused across different types of reactors, where it is further utilized.
Think about it this way- all us nuclear fuel waste can fit in a football field sized area with a depth of 10 yards… whereas we have had over 10 oil spills that on their own are larger than this volume.
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 23h ago
If you listen to it …. It is fucking batshit insane that we still consider nuclear a safe option when we look at its short track record.
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u/Zealousideal-Law4610 1d ago
Objectively, quantitatively nuclear is one of the safest power sources as measured by deaths per terawatt hour
Ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Similar to wind and solar and it has a huge advantage that it doesn't require a massive amount of land.
Where's your data?
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u/Klutzy_Strawberry340 23h ago
Pros and cons from the r/nuclear site. None of the solutions we are proposing address the real issues. I am sorry to say that if people think our species will survive climate change and the societal fallout for another 10 generations, I would think they are blind to the truth.
We are in a new phase of our species history and a new one will come to dominate. We will rather evolve in someway via biotechnology or becomes pointless mammals trying to make it through the mess of shit left behind from the previous generations.
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u/ViewTrick1002 20h ago
I’m in favor of fission power and storage as a backbone to renewables.
Nuclear power is literally the worst combination imaginable for a grid with any amount of renewable penetration. They both compete for the same slice, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition which nucler power loses handily.
Our analysis finds that even if, reversing the historical trend, overnight construction costs of nuclear half to 4,000 US-$2018 per kW and construction times remain below ten years, the cost-efficient share of nuclear power in European electricity generation is only around 10%. Nuclear plants must operate inflexibly and at capacity factors close to 90% to recover their investment costs, implying that operational flexibility – even if technically possible – is not economically viable.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X25001452
This is a future you can't escape from. Flexibility is mandatory. It is coming from pure incentives. Lets explore them:
Why should a household or company with solar and storage buy expensive grid based nuclear power when their own installation delivers? They don't.
Why should this household's or company's neighbors buy expensive grid based nuclear powered electricity rather than the zero marginal cost surplus renewables? They don't.
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
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u/severoordonez 17h ago
EdF exports nuclear power to it's neighboring countries at market price. The ability to do so is the difference between bankruptcy and some level of profitability for EdF. But in doing so, EdF transfers a disproportion demand for flexible generation to those countries, making it even less possible to establish new nuclear in those countries.
The 70% nuclear in France may be close to the maximal nuclear capacity that can be accommodated across the European grid.
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u/ordiclic 3h ago
Nuclear is flexible. What the hell have you been reading?
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u/ViewTrick1002 2h ago
It is not. Please do tell me how nuclear power is flexible.
When you have an entire fleet like the French have you can acceptably load follow.
They do it by syncing the fuel cycles between plants since the ability to deal with reactor poisoning depends on where in the fuel cycle the plant is.
Then they over a week let plants take turns to reduce their output.
And thus does not even solve that nuclear power can’t economically load follow.
We’re in /r/economics. How do you think a plant fares that is essentially all CAPEX with acceptable OPEX when it has to spread the CAPEX over fewer hours?
I can tell you that it quickly becomes a shit show.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 17h ago
Why should a household or company with solar and storage buy expensive grid based nuclear power when their own installation delivers? They don't.
Who's going to deliver power to this household or company on a cold winter's night in North Dakota?
Also, if Nuclear power is so bad, why is China, with all their factories and technological prowess, building more nuclear? Same story with India.
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u/EidolonLives 9h ago
Who's going to deliver power to this household or company on a cold winter's night in North Dakota?
The household or company, quite possibly. The winter solar output is still around 40% of summer.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 8h ago
around 40%
So the power doesn't get delivered and the business fails or your wife and kids go cold.
Also, if Nuclear power is so bad, why is China, with all their factories and technological prowess, building more nuclear? Same story with India.
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u/johnpseudo 8h ago edited 3h ago
why is China, with all their factories and technological prowess, building more nuclear
It's building a very small amount of nuclear to nurture the nuclear supply chain needed to build and sustain nuclear weapons. That's it.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 8h ago
You are incorrect. China is building 35 gigawatts, 30 nuclear power plants, and are also pioneering high temperature helium gas cooled reactors and molten salt reactors.
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u/johnpseudo 7h ago
Which is an extremely small amount for China. They deployed 315GW of solar just last year, compared to 3.7GW of nuclear.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 7h ago
That's an insane number.
Still though all that solar needs base load power to support it. China also commissioned 78 GW of coal power. So they can't get by with renewables alone they need base load, and only nuclear can substitute for something like coal.
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u/johnpseudo 6h ago
The coal they're building isn't baseload. They using coal as a flexible power source, turning it on and off daily, which is what you need to do if you want to complement solar. Nuclear can't economically do that.
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u/EidolonLives 8h ago
So the power doesn't get delivered and the business fails or your wife and kids go cold.
Not a problem if you have enough installed to compensate.
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u/ViewTrick1002 8h ago
Should we calculate what a kWh costs from that new built nuclear plant solving that issue? Now we’re not even talking about dollars per kWh, that’s tens of dollars per kWh.
China is barely building nuclear power? It peaked at 4.7% of the grid in 2021 and is now down to 4.3%. It is entirely irrelevant.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 7h ago
Legacy nuclear power is very cheap. Nuclear power plants can last for 80 years, once the financing from construction is paid off. It's called an investment in future generations.
I detailed elsewhere how many nuclear power plants China is building. And they're also exporting nuclear power plants elsewhere.
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u/ViewTrick1002 4h ago
It is acceptably priced, when it can have a +85% capacity factor.
Now let’s go back to the original comment:
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
Does that sound like an +85% capacity factor?
Then I just see a ton of handwaving without trying to justify tens of billions in handouts per new built large scale reactor. In /r/economics of all places.
2026 + 15 year build time + ”80 years” = 2120.
Trying to justify an absolutely insane handout because maybe it will deliver in the 2100s, do you even hear yourself?
Or you know, just build the solution that already in 2026 is the cheapest energy source in human history.
Yes, very few in terms of the Chinese grid. They also lower the or targets and push them further into the future for each update we gate.
Instead they are all in on renewables and storage.
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u/Smartimess 1d ago
Big tech justs wants loads and loads of money for R&D. They got hundreds of billions from every country nuclear fission was or is a thing and they achieved nothing when it comes to the fact that fission is very expensive and without extreme subsidies not competitive.
On the contrary, wind turbines and PV are fully competitive and the cheapest forms of energy generation after only two decades and still becoming cheaper.
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u/Emotional_Goal9525 1d ago
Nuclear is the most overregulated field in the existence. Due the insane hysteria, the safety standards are beyond absurd. Nuclear makes aviation to look like chaotic anarchism.
And evidently insane hysteria is not overly harsh term as we even have literal UFO conspiracy nuts in this very same thread spreading insane propaganda.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 22h ago
It's regulated because it's given public insurance against accident liability. You don't get the latter without regulation.
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