Should We Subsidize Nuclear, When it Can Never Scale?
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So nuclear power plants cannot be mass produced, driving down costs, due the power of the market. So government subsidies don’t make it more attractive to more consumers, driving down costs.
And it is not just the cost of the nuclear power plant itself that government can’t drive down by subsidizing more of them, to create the initial demand. The cost of mining also can’t be reduced by digging for Uranium in more places, because Uranium may not be in more places, and so no amount of subsidies will create more mines. The cost of the insurance against accidents is the primary barrier that nuclear faces, and more insurance is not created by more subsidies.
Wind power, like nuclear power, is also primarily non-consumer produced energy. Although homeowners can buy home turbines, wind power is much, much more efficiently produced by large turbines, which are larger every year, with some now as large as 10 MW each.
However, unlike nuclear, in the case of wind farms, turbine and nacelle production can be made more efficient and cost-effective with production lines – because making wind turbines cheaper is primarily a matter of manufacturing small common parts more cheaply.
So, while it makes sense to subsidize some renewables like solar (and even wind), because of the opportunity to make it a mass-market cheap item, it does not seem that any amount of subsidizing nuclear is ever drive down its costs.
Or what do you think? Is there some way that nuclear can scale and thus justify the use of government incentives?
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