Southern-Trip-1102

Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iugc6b6 wrote

A stable baseline means that it is easier to meet demand. Wind and solar both do not provide 24 7 constant power, they fluctuate. Thus you need to cover the shortfall when they provide less than required. By having a baseline you do not need to worry as much about those fluctuations because a portion of your electricity production is guarantied. Also, it is possible to ramp up or down nuclear plants. As I said above its a baseline not the full load, renewables plus nuclear is the solution.

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iufv3ec wrote

It would cost the economy that much is obvious. The reason using both nuclear and renewables is a good idea is because nuclear provides a good baseline of power which does not have dramatic swings.

What you just described is the issue, profit does not necessarily equal low costs, once marginal costs are low there isn't an incentive for it to be built. Nuclear isn't particularly profitable and has high capital costs so the private sector has little reason to invest in it even if it is very practical to use for our civilization.

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iuf54ak wrote

If we didn't need to worry about profit going full renewable + nuclear would have been so much easier. The government puts down the capital investment and does not need to worry about profit. High profits doesn't even necessarily mean cheap electricity. Profit is an objective which hurts our ability to get what we really want which is cheap renewable energy.

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iueqg52 wrote

They have an incentive to uplift since their interest is in a cheaper goods/an export market, not profit. The profit motive doesn't care if goods are expensive only that profits are high, meaning that profit driven foreign relations would want Africa to stay underdeveloped since less developed industry equals a larger porportion of value that can be extracted from labor. If the industry is very well developed then you will bearily make a profit since you can't exploit machines. You don't see this in capitlaist nations in themselves because competition forces the development of Industry but this in general one of the contradictions of capitlaism.

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