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Happy new year, all. More geopolitics that I don't understand:
Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government? This would defuse narratives of the tech tree being made inaccessible to developing nations due to climate change campaigns. It would also promote nuclear non-proliferation and defuse narratives of preventing access to effective power technologies due to the risk of dual-use tech development. Finally, it would stabilize local power grids in regressing states and promote both stability, enabling eventual growth, and loyalty/dependency on the operator in the region. For the cost of single-digit billions of investment, the US (frex) infuses money into American industry, develops the region, and effectively infuses an extra quantum of stability and pseudo prosperity into regions that desperately need it, while extending and securing American hegemony and economic entertwinement/influence.
Because it is impossible to operate a nuclear power plant at a profit anywhere. I can't find a single example of a nuclear power plant that's run at a profit without a galaxy of government subsidies - the EROEI is not high enough to do so (and no, France doesn't count). You'd have to clear that particular hurdle first, and so far nobody has managed it.
Has anyone calculated the price per KWh for nuclear to break even without subsidies, and compared that to other power sources? My problem with this argument is that energy gets subsidized up the wazoo regardless whether it's nuclear, "green", or fossil fuels, so just shouting "look, subsidies!" doesn't really prove anything.
Sabine Hossenfelder looked at the topic and came up with numbers of Nuclear costing 2-3 times more compared to other sources of energy. Mostly due to longer building time, which increases financial costs (interest) which in turn feeds into a lot of negative feedback loops.
Nevertheless I am still very skeptical about any cost calcultions. Nuclear seems to be the worst, but it is also the most thorough source of energy where everybody is obsessed about everything due to decades long campaign against this type of energy. As far as I know it may be the only source of energy where we calculate all costs ranging from building costs, operation costs including nuclear fuel as well as decommissioning cost. I am yet to see some comparisons where let's say fossil fuel costs will also include all the damages caused by climate change, respiratory diseases and/or hypothetical costs of carbon capture and storing of all the CO2 released - that would be equivalent of nuclear waste storage and power plant decommissioning for nuclear power.
I am also vastly skeptical regarding the prices of wind/solar as this new and cheap perfect solution. Renewable energy is supposed to be the most efficient and greenest energy - and yet the one country that heavily invested in the plan of turning their energy system to this new source (Germany) sees rapid rise of energy prices. Try even googling things like "total cost of German Energiewende" and you will see widely different estimates ranging from tens of billions to trillions of EUR. The costs are hidden in various types of subsidies, surcharges but also regular infrastructure projects. I am more inclined to see the costs in hundreds of billions just by looking at one project of new north-south grid that is supposed to bring wind power from windy North to industrial South with the price tag according to Bloomberg from years ago exceeding EUR 100 billion and that was in 2020. This grid upgrade alone has the price equivalent to that of around 9 nuclear power plants similar to highly criticized one constructed in Finland. These 9 nuclear power plants could produce 130 TWh of reliable baseload output that could be thrown onto the old grid providing over 20% of energy production in Germany (all renewables now produce 40% of electricity). And we are talking only about grid cables - the costs are insane.
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