this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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"Doesn't make a profit" doesn’t mean "is run inefficiently". It doesn't even mean "doesn't generate excess value". It just means excess value is reinvested into the system, like the US Post Office. It never makes money, never has made any money, has always either saved or reinvested the money left over on the balance sheet at the end of the year.
Yes, the specific accounting rules make the line between "profit" and "loss" fuzzy at times, but however you slice it, nuclear power costs a lot of resources for the amount of electricity that it produces. The money represents an opportunity cost of engineering effort and concrete and steel and equipment manufacturing and mining that could have been steered towards other types of projects.
I'm agnostic towards the technology itself, but the economics of nuclear power just don't make sense in the current environment, where we know that any new plants will get undercut by technologies that are already on the market today (solar+wind+batteries), technologies right around the corner (advanced geothermal), and even technologies that might be commercialized (fusion) within the 50-80 year lifespan of any new fission plant. That's the competition, and I don't think new nuclear plants are gonna be able to compete with those other technologies on cost.