You know what cost they never factor in? The cost of climate change. If they actually factored in the cost of emissions then nuclear power would be one of the cheapest forms of energy alongside solar.
Another thing a lot of people fail to mention about nuclear power, is the lifespan of a reactor. We have reactors from the 70s still running at full power, it’s pretty insane. I’m wondering what the TCO per kWh is for a nuclear reactor compared to other sources of energy.
A solar farm in Switzerland from 1982 is also still providing power at 80% of original spec. Even today solar companies give 25 year warranty on new panels.
So this is not really an advantage of nuclear. In fact after 50 years a lot of them become a lot less reliable. We recently saw that in France.
I don’t remember, but nuclear is the highest operating cost of electricity, until the reactor is paid off by rates, in which it becomes very cheap. Natural gas is the cheapest starting and maintaining and is reaching better efficiencies. However, it’s killing the environment.
Methane (natural gas) is cheap because they don’t factor in the cost of climate change caused by methane emissions. Methane would be one of the most expensive if they factored in the leaks and its strong ability to trap heat in the atmosphere.
If Republicans want to elect Republicans that force them to pay extra for their preferred (marginal) carbon free power source, fine I guess? The rate increases aren’t great for the other 48% of the state though.
If you’re only looking from a financial perspective, sure. But given the slow construction times, these decisions are an issue for absolutely everyone, given that decarbonization is a worldwide project.
Georgia has every reason to be a solar powerhouse. They have sunlight to spare and every reason to want to build it. Batteries are finally getting cheap enough to outcompete fossil generation, too.
And they ARE building it, so they even are achieving learning curves on it. There are even Republicans on the PSC (Tim Echols) that are highly, highly pro-solar.
Meanwhile Georgia Power is currently planning more fossil gas plants and extending the life of a handful of coal plants because they think they have a shortfall in energy forecasts for future demands. Because, among other things, so many huge tech datacenters are moving to the state (which of course many were doing on the promise of the quite green grid Georgia has to offer, which was the bait that is now being switched on them).
Why? Because they’re lazy, super conservative, and they get guaranteed profits off of capital investments. The Southern Company is one of the most powerful forces of great evil in the country and goes largely unnoticed. They are actively incentivized to fuck their own ratepayers in order to increase their profitability by the agreements and statutes that allow them to be the utility.
The reality is that Vogtle was built and we should be glad for it and use it. It’s spun up and producing gobs of power, and will continue to do so for a damn long time. Great. But in a state where fossil production is still being actively expanded, putting money towards ultra-expensive nuclear over incredibly cheap solar and storage, betraying your own potential “customers” in the process, is just idiotic.
I just wanted to point out that Georgia has consistently had a budget surplus for quite a while now, mostly because Republicans keep cutting critical gov’t services. Seem to me like Republicans could pay for a new plant using all of the excess taxes that they’ve been saving for a rainy day.
