<story><title>Big money, nuclear subsidies, and systemic corruption (2021)</title><url>https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/big-money-nuclear-subsidies-and-systemic-corruption/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>vonadz</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re currently working on including the lobbying costs of each provider on our website (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;findenergy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;findenergy.com&lt;/a&gt;), because we believe consumers should be aware of what providers are spending their money on.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve also begun building a full industry map of who owns which power plants and the chain of parent companies &amp;#x2F; subsidiaries. Quite amazing how deep the rabbit hole goes on the thing that all of our modern lives rely on but many of us take for granted. For example here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;findenergy.com&amp;#x2F;providers&amp;#x2F;first-energy&amp;#x2F;#overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;findenergy.com&amp;#x2F;providers&amp;#x2F;first-energy&amp;#x2F;#overview&lt;/a&gt; you can see all of the companies tied to the company at the beginning of the article.&lt;p&gt;If any journalist or fellow dev is interested in this space, feel free to drop me and the team a note at alex@findenergy.com</text></comment>
<story><title>Big money, nuclear subsidies, and systemic corruption (2021)</title><url>https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/big-money-nuclear-subsidies-and-systemic-corruption/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>maliker</author><text>Since it’s coming up a lot, here [0] is a good resource on levelized energy costs (i.e. per kWh).&lt;p&gt;Energy costs are a tricky subject but in general new unsubsidized solar&amp;#x2F;wind is about the same cost or cheaper than operating existing nuclear (leaving out the issue that nuclear receives subsidies, which tilts things further in favor of renewables). And existing solar&amp;#x2F;wind operating costs are small, so their energy can be priced very low on day ahead and hour ahead markets, making it hard for fossil&amp;#x2F;nuclear to cover their operating costs.&lt;p&gt;But renewables are intermittent, and adding storage pushes the costs of renewable + storage above existing nuclear operating costs and most new build nuclear options. And storage isn’t lossless—I wouldn’t bet on those batteries holding charge affordably for more than a couple days.&lt;p&gt;We’ll probably muddle through with fossil + renewables for a while, which is the cheapest combo. When we get to the point of trying to take the last 20% of the fossil down is when we might regret not trying harder with nuclear, and in the meantime nukes will continue to struggle with selling energy at a competitive price. But hey, we’ve got another ten years until we phase out the last of the fossil (at the earliest) so maybe some storage cost declines will make it easier. Here’s hoping. Nukes are getting more expensive not less, so I don’t have much expectation they’ll be in the generation mix by the end of the century.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lazard.com&amp;#x2F;perspective&amp;#x2F;levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lazard.com&amp;#x2F;perspective&amp;#x2F;levelized-cost-of-energy-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>