Per watt doesn't matter in regards to nuclear because any calculations you can find publicly and even many industry ones are based on currently utilized tech, regulations, and massive inefficiencies in production.
Were we to fully adopt nuclear the price for usage would go down dramatically.
i agree. i didn't contradict this point at all. in fact i said we should still go for nuclear and it's partially for this reason
In regards to realpolitik, this also isn't true. The United States would benefit massively from adoption of nuclear and an end to the petrodollar. Hell, we could today be providing power for the entirety of two continents today if we had begun adoption of nuclear fully in the 60s.
it is true. of all countries apart from SA, the USA benefits the most from a fossil fuel world.
we currently benefit hugely from the petrodollar.
we are a net exporter of fossil fuel energy
our dominance of the world is in a large part due to our navy whose primary job is to ensure oil tankers move freely. if we were to remove oil tankers and our navy, we'd go back to being isolationists and the rest of the world would rely far less on us. that gives us far less leverage than we currently have.
my point is far more nuanced than you picked up on, so i'll try it again: it is everybody else relying on fossil fuels that makes us want to keep using fossil. if the USA themselves swapped to nuclear there'd be very little difference for us domestically apart from increased energy costs in the short term and decreased in the long term. domestic energy production for the USA isn't important in this discussion. what is important is 1) how much we control fossil energy in the world right now and 2) how much other nations rely on it.
as you agreed earlier, if the USA unilaterally adopted nuclear energy, we would plummet the per MW cost of nuclear energy. this would be good for humanity but bad for us because we'd pretty much destroy any advantage we have in the fossil sector.
it's like if we're all making sandwiches and the USA has all the bread and you want to release a "free bread" device into the world. that'd be good overall, yes, but bad for us even though we get free bread. the benefit of the free bread is far less than the advantage we lose from having cornered the bread already.
yes SA can make oil for about 2x as cheap as the USA. however, their economy is tied almost entirely to the price of crude. in other words, if they flood the market, they get hurt more than us. furthermore, we produce about the same amount as they do if you include lease condensate and we produce double the amount of petroleum they do. we are the leader of fossil fuels and SA is basically an oily appendage of the USA's foreign energy policy.
it is vastly in our interests to keep fossil fuels around as long as possible
everything i said was correct.
right, and if we implement nuclear today, it will use those "massively inefficient" numbers. and, as i said, it's the most expensive todayhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
i agree. i didn't contradict this point at all. in fact i said we should still go for nuclear and it's partially for this reason
it is true. of all countries apart from SA, the USA benefits the most from a fossil fuel world.
my point is far more nuanced than you picked up on, so i'll try it again: it is everybody else relying on fossil fuels that makes us want to keep using fossil. if the USA themselves swapped to nuclear there'd be very little difference for us domestically apart from increased energy costs in the short term and decreased in the long term. domestic energy production for the USA isn't important in this discussion. what is important is 1) how much we control fossil energy in the world right now and 2) how much other nations rely on it.
as you agreed earlier, if the USA unilaterally adopted nuclear energy, we would plummet the per MW cost of nuclear energy. this would be good for humanity but bad for us because we'd pretty much destroy any advantage we have in the fossil sector.
it's like if we're all making sandwiches and the USA has all the bread and you want to release a "free bread" device into the world. that'd be good overall, yes, but bad for us even though we get free bread. the benefit of the free bread is far less than the advantage we lose from having cornered the bread already.
yes SA can make oil for about 2x as cheap as the USA. however, their economy is tied almost entirely to the price of crude. in other words, if they flood the market, they get hurt more than us. furthermore, we produce about the same amount as they do if you include lease condensate and we produce double the amount of petroleum they do. we are the leader of fossil fuels and SA is basically an oily appendage of the USA's foreign energy policy.
it is vastly in our interests to keep fossil fuels around as long as possible