However, my point remains that if it's so abundantly clear that nuclear fission is an economically, manageable, palatable option, it'd have a significant uptake around the world.
Fission power plants may represent, as you say, a rare city-level threat -- but that threat increases linearly as number of plants goes up. And while I agree there's a degree of irrationality involved in terms of risk assessment, it's non-trivial to talk people around from that position. If you're comparing the health risks to coal / gas, nuclear wins on pure numbers. But if you're arguing against solar PVC, solar thermal, wind, hydro, tidal, etc it's a much harder sell.
As to the UK having poor project management -- this may well be true, but it's somewhat aside. Ultimately no one else is ramping up nuclear fission plants, and everyone believes they have (or can easily purchase) good project management skills.
But even ten years ago the construction of the forerunners of the proposed UK plants -- managed by the French Areva corp -- were way behind schedule and over budget. I'm referring to the embarrassing Finland / TVO experiences.
Jeremy Leggett -- an undeniably partisan, UK based analyst -- ten years ago was expressing dire concerns [1] about the UK's direction here. The subsequent decade have been kind to his predictions.
Yeah, nuclear can be expensive when you're building only couple of them per decade & continent. Look at China.
On the other hand, what is the actual cost of renewable energy with storage / backup / grid upgrades accounted for?
Nobody ever brings up _those_ numbers when claiming how nuclear is uneconomical. Maybe because those would be sky high today, and only might become manageable in the future. But hey, nuclear reactors are expensive!
However, my point remains that if it's so abundantly clear that nuclear fission is an economically, manageable, palatable option, it'd have a significant uptake around the world.
Fission power plants may represent, as you say, a rare city-level threat -- but that threat increases linearly as number of plants goes up. And while I agree there's a degree of irrationality involved in terms of risk assessment, it's non-trivial to talk people around from that position. If you're comparing the health risks to coal / gas, nuclear wins on pure numbers. But if you're arguing against solar PVC, solar thermal, wind, hydro, tidal, etc it's a much harder sell.
As to the UK having poor project management -- this may well be true, but it's somewhat aside. Ultimately no one else is ramping up nuclear fission plants, and everyone believes they have (or can easily purchase) good project management skills.
But even ten years ago the construction of the forerunners of the proposed UK plants -- managed by the French Areva corp -- were way behind schedule and over budget. I'm referring to the embarrassing Finland / TVO experiences.
Jeremy Leggett -- an undeniably partisan, UK based analyst -- ten years ago was expressing dire concerns [1] about the UK's direction here. The subsequent decade have been kind to his predictions.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/nuclea...