Nuclear Power Still Doesn’t Make Much Sense
The energy source that was supposed to be &quot;too cheap to meter&quot; turns out to have a *net negative* energy value. When you add together the true costs of building, running, and decommissioning a nuclear plant it comes to more than you can sell the electricity for.<p>All nuclear plants rely on government subsidy and externalization of decommissioning costs. In other words -- they&#x27;re not on the balance sheets. What legit business gets away with that?<p>The reality is that nuclear power is a 1950&#x27;s technology -- one from the past, not the future. We never fully understood the implications of running or taking apart a nuclear plant at commercial scale and instead of addressing the real problems, we just pretend they don&#x27;t exist.<p>It&#x27;s time to put the effort and expense once reserved for nuclear into something that doesn&#x27;t create waste that lasts for 240,000 years (plutonium) or require supervised swimming pools to store (used fuel rods). We need power plants that can be turned on and off quickly -- at small scale -- not ones that require 20 years to build and 50 to tear down.<p>The time for nuclear is over... and it has been for a while! We&#x27;ve just been in denial.