this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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What makes you think it’s not cost effective? Nuclear fuel is 98% recyclable, something which the US was (before Trump) considering building infrastructure for.
How recyclable are low and medium radioactive concrete walls from decommissioned power plants? Answer: not at all.
Why is there is not a single private company interested in building a nuclear reactor in Germany without subsidies? No company on this planet would ever construct a nuclear reactor if they had to finance everything - including all waste management - from selling energy.
German law demands that highly radioactive material must be safely stored and monitored for 1 million years. Sure, the quantity is lower but it's still in the hundreds to thousands of tons.
Please find a company willing to pay for all of this prior to constructing a nuclear power plant and I will admit you're right.
Concrete is 100% recyclable. Radioactive concrete could be reused in new power plants indefinitely. Stop voting for people who let corporations throw away things they don't want to deal with.
You're asking me why capitalism capitalizes? I don't think I need to explain to you why a corporation would hold out their hand if they know the government will pay for everything and they can reap even more profits, and if you're of an intellectual capacity that I do have to explain that, then you probably wouldn't understand anyway. I'm not even sure what your argument is here. It probably sounded good to you when you typed it, but the answer is so painfully obvious that I must be missing something, because who would would unironically ask that?
I haven't found any study about reusing radioactive concrete waste in new reactors. There are a couple for removing the radioactive contaminants but the process is fairly expensive. I'm not sure it's even possible to safely reuse (instead of decontaminate) radioactive concrete without harming workers.
As to your point about capitalism:
There are multiple private, non government subsidized gas power plants planned/in construction in Germany.
Private solar farms and wind plants are very common as well, although they are partially subsidized.
No company dares to touch nuclear power plants with a ten foot pole in Germany. Even reactivating partially deconstructed plants - which is both cheaper and quicker than rebuilding new one's - is considered "practically impossible" by Preussen Elektra and EnBW. Not even qualified workers exist anymore. Training and certifiying them would further require several years and tens, if not hundreds of millions of euros.
The one - and only one - group in Germany who wishes for a return of nuclear power are conservative populists who despise renewable energy (and wind turbines in particular).
Instead of wasting tens of billions euros, how about we use that money to massively expand battery storage and renewables as well as inter-European power lines?
Today, nuclear energy is only economical if you want to build and maintain nuclear bombs. That's pretty much it.