Oh, I must have missed it. What did Trump say about nuclear energy that was negative?
I had a friend who was a mechanical engineering student at a prestigious university. He seemed to have a pretty negative view of nuclear energy (that came from the prof of a power class he was taking), and what he said was that nuclear energy is just too costly.
That's one aspect i'll admit I have zero knowledge of. Is it just way more expensive to provide a kwh from nuclear than from other energy sources?
He may be an engineer, but I'm an economist. So my other thought was: how much of the added cost is just from gov't red tape? (Approvals, permitting, insurance, etc).
My understanding is most of the extra cost is from red tape.
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That's my understanding as well.
My other thought, as a fellow economist, is that the engineering professor might be thinking about total cost rather than marginal cost.
My understanding is that nuclear is incredibly efficient in terms of marginal cost of energy, but the fixed cost of building a nuclear reactor is quite high.
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Part of what I caught from his conversation with Elon was a bunch of fearmongering about how dangerous nuclear power is and how we can't have proliferation of nuclear power because it's so dangerous. (I think he may have been getting some of the rhetoric mixed up with nuclear weapons.)
Elon corrected him about the relative risks of nuclear vs other power sources, which was good.
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