I wish that Meta would pay for the extension of Diablo Canyon in California. They have had to jack up already sky-high electricity rates to keep it going, after deciding nearly a decade ago that it would be uneconomical to try to extend its lifetime.
Meta's nuclear intention is a perfect example of how tech is willing to pay far more for energy than other customers, and how it's driving up everybody's costs because we are all paying for that increase at elevated prices.
Nuclear is extremely expensive, higher than geothermal, renewables backed by storage, and natural gas. Nuclear is good for virtue signaling in some communities, but from the technological and economical perspectives, nuclear is very undesirable and unattractive. It's only social factors that keep alive the idea of new nuclear in advanced Western economies, not hard nosed analysis.
Here's a new preprint from Germans showing that even for Europe, a continent with very poor solar resources for many countries, new baseload is not the most economical route:
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/...
Meta's nuclear intention is a perfect example of how tech is willing to pay far more for energy than other customers, and how it's driving up everybody's costs because we are all paying for that increase at elevated prices.
Nuclear is extremely expensive, higher than geothermal, renewables backed by storage, and natural gas. Nuclear is good for virtue signaling in some communities, but from the technological and economical perspectives, nuclear is very undesirable and unattractive. It's only social factors that keep alive the idea of new nuclear in advanced Western economies, not hard nosed analysis.
Here's a new preprint from Germans showing that even for Europe, a continent with very poor solar resources for many countries, new baseload is not the most economical route:
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/...