Nuclear Power is an Economic Disaster

 The nuclear power industry is positioning itself as "green" because it doesn't emit as many CO2s as the fossil fuel power plants. A new generation of shills is marketing nuclear power to young people and some of them are falling for the sales pitch.

The nuclear power industry is a basket case all around the world. If you delve into the history and economics of nuclear power, once you get past the paper thin sales pitch you see a bankrupt, subsidized disaster everywhere you look.

In the heyday of the industry, half the planned reactors in the USA were cancelled because they are too expensive to build and operate. Perry nuclear plant in northeast Ohio is one example; It was originally going to have two reactors but only one was built. It took 13 years to build the plant.

The plants are massively complicated and require expertise in all sorts of fields that apparently doesn't exist anymore, and it did not even exist at the time of the construction of most of the US nuclear power plants.

Back in the 1980s, some experts looked at France's nuclear program as a success compared to the US. France used two reactor designs and "mass produced" them to control costs. Guess what, though, 50% of France's nuclear plants are currently offline and the industry is bankrupt. The corporation that runs the power plants is heavily subsidized, but is still bankrupt and is being nationalized right now.

I don't think there's any chance to revive the industry. Its track record of failure is too obvious. Its like a violent drunk that's been kicked out of the bar, but keeps hanging around outside. Back in the early 2000s during the "W" administration, the industry attempted a revival, but that didn't get anywhere. Now it's trying again... Ironically there might be enough dumb white liberal "environmentalists" to get at least one or two white elephant retro plants built, but the severe difficulties with construction of the plants--mega expense, chronic cost and schedule overruns and the like--will crop up again, and that'll be that.

Here's a really detailed article from Forbes on the failure of the industry in the US. At the time it was written (1985) it looked like the Japanese nuclear power industry and the French nuclear power industries were "success" stories... that conclusion obviously did not hold up over time.