alt Hacker NewsThe price of electricity in the UK is going up right now to start paying for the next nuclear plant 10 years (fingers crossed) in advance of it generating any electicity.
They literally invented the idea of applying Contracts for Difference from finance to help build nuclear in the UK.
Those have massively helped renewables get built in the UK and elsewhere by letting governments cheaply subsidize financial risk in energy investments while allowing competitive developers to bid the price lower.
But it wasn't enough for nuclear, where the builders didn't want to be on the hook for the inevitable doubling (or worse) of final cost, so they wrote special rules for new nuclear to be paid in advance and not held to cost estimates.
> where the builders didn't want to be on the hook for the inevitable doubling (or worse) of final cost, so they wrote special rules for new nuclear to be paid in advance and not held to cost estimates.
Sounds relatively fair to me - since the vast majority of delays and cost is government initiated (or enabled: e.g. giving power to NIMBY groups). Ideally there are carve-outs for any delays or cost overruns solely the fault of the builders and operators. Projects like these always will have a certain amount of incompetence and graft to them, unfortunately.
Maybe once/if the nuclear industry can get un-destroyed by the government that destroyed it in the first place, these subsidies can go away. If subsidies are good for green energy, they are good for kickstarting the nuclear energy segment again. If countries can successfully hold the line and stick to a 20 year program of increasing the pace and velocity of building new plants a robust industry just might emerge.