Nuclear Power is too expensive and slow to build? Opinions?

lights won't start going out. The system won't let itself collapse... never does.. but you're right nuclear is certainly vitally important in the long term for sure... no matter what 'we' say, the economics say or the greens as you say... it's a brilliant idea... it just needs a radical rethink in how it's implemented in every aspect and I personally find it hard to see a real world situation where 'large-enough-scale-nuclear' achieves economic logic within the next 40-50 years and I reckon that this is in fact provable given the information available at present which was in fact my main thesis in this thread.

As it stands it really is simple maths and the limitations are clearly identifiable and measurable.. it takes too damn long to build, the manufacturing is too intensive and the front loaded capital cost is too great and shared unfairly among government, population, industry and insurance companies. If I was to conclude exactly WHICH issue is the greatest barrier to 'large-enough-fast-enough' nuclear roll-out, assuming the whole world decided it wanted nuclear, I would say 'DESIGN' is the main problem... some designs are better than others; some are cleaner, less dangerous, cheaper, some quicker to build, some more efficient etc etc etc but until the world agrees on one good design? then a necessary conveyor belt situation will not occur... and it'll just continue to be an unrealised dream (apart from in France:) rather than the world-energy-revolution it could really become. Some people think that the free market works everything out and that the simple search for profit will find a route through this problem and the ensuing economic pressures will find order and normalize this 'nuclear future' but I personally think that the complexity involved is too great for natural economics to play a benevolent-enough role. Huge problems especially when they become acute generally require huge acute solutions and the world is simply not that connected or peaceful yet to accomplish the task in question. Yes the science is good and yes it can be safe enough to do and yes, yes, yes to all the individual questions... there are clever solutions to most if not all of those questions as they stand alone but for the real global benefit of harnessing the power of the atom to take affect the world would have to commit to working together on a scale not experienced before... risk and capital expenditure would have to be spread out appropriately within an environment of competitive free market economics and such a notion is very challenging to rationalize.