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What solar and wind have made irrelevant is the assumption that constant supply of the baseload is an addressable market for a power plant. That only works if the supply is the cheapest on the market (something nuclear has even historically struggled to achieve without big subsidies), and solar and wind will supply the baseload much cheaper than any other source when they're running, causing a lot of problems for any plant on the grid that wants to run at a constant output.


There needs to be a market mechanism to ensure there is enough dispatchable spare capacity to meet demand when solar and wind can't supply it. More reliable sources of power are inherently more valuable.


Yes. That’s called ancillary markets. One such are ”capacity markets”.

Nuclear power’s problem is that neither its spread between CAPEX and OPEX, nor its operational profile fits them.

We also have electricity futures. Again with the problem that their cost is far far below what new built nuclear power requires.

Here’s some reading on electricity futures:

https://www.next-kraftwerke.com/knowledge/futures-market


The flawed economics of nuclear are largely do the NRC basically making it as hard as possible to make a new reactor. China and Korea can build reactors for reasonable cost per watt.




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