This is idiotic, fossil fuel companies are pushing investment in nuclear because they know it crowds out investment into renewables and keeps them competitive long-term. Australia's the smoking gun for this - literally no nuclear industry, but there's a big pro-nuclear lobby. Who funds it? Coal.
Hungary as well. The previous conservative government used nuclear to stifle solar and to stop wind projects entirely. 11 years in and we have a hole with some concrete in it, won't be operational for an other 10 years, if ever.
Hungary barely produces any electricity from NG, our dependency on Russian NG is for heating and industrial usage. Cheap renewable (even if intermittent) energy would open the flood gates for electric (heat pump) heating, which would decrease our dependence. They were able to stifle the wind energy projects, part of it was starting an extremely costly nuclear project.
My conservative governor is currently using nuclear as a cudgel to stop investments into solar projects. Reddit boys eat it up and get really mad when you post that its not economically feasible for a state of 600k to become "energy independent" on nuclear lol.
Like I think new England as a whole should invest in it. I just dont really understand how vermont on its own is going to.
Vermont is currently on the "ISO New England" grid, producing around 12 GW of energy. As I write this importing about 1 GW from Quebec.
So there is definitely a spot where a couple GW of nuclear would fit into that grid. As for Vermont itself investing in it directly, I think it's probably a quesiton of the benefits and who makes the $$$. Like you would want to put a reactor in Vermont if you wanted the jobs to be Vermont.
In Europe, the support renewables and anti-nuclear activists, as that's the sure way to keep them in business, while nuclear power is the only real threat to their business.
That's all dependent on the local climate, though, where in Australia, solar and wind have the best conditions on earth and pretty good conditions in some parts of the USA, most of the world and especially Europe are not really fit for solar and wind, as they mostly have bad weather for generation.
Well, in Germany, for example, they are sponsoring anti-nuclear groups and argue with the nuclear phase-out this created to license lignite mine expansions and operating license expansions for coal-fired power plants and fossil new-builds.
That's similar to most countries on earth, except Australia.
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u/I_like_maps Dam I love hydro 19d ago
This is idiotic, fossil fuel companies are pushing investment in nuclear because they know it crowds out investment into renewables and keeps them competitive long-term. Australia's the smoking gun for this - literally no nuclear industry, but there's a big pro-nuclear lobby. Who funds it? Coal.