If governments would get their act together and build nuclear power…
End users could have simple resistive heating.
But no, in the name of invitation and net zero, end user are forced to bear the cost and maintenance burden of much more complicated equipment systems.
The latest nuclear reactor built in Europe was in France and took 17 years and its costs were 23 billion euro (roughly 27 billion $) with this amount of money you can basically install around 750000 heat pumps costing 30000€. So no it is probably not arse-backwards. (Germany alone would need 20-25 of them and it is unlikely that we can build more than 3-4 at the same time and even that is unlikely…)
Now pick the best (least costly / swiftest build) new power reactor build in the last ten years anywhere in the world.
And anyway, your numbers are disingenuous, because it ignores the fact that heat pumps need electricity to power them, and that nuclear power reactors can provide district heating and that, and that the mean time between failures for the average split system heat pump is 7 to 10 years and that heat pumps sometimes fail in ways that the ozone depleting refrigerant to escape.
It’s evident the average commenter on this subject hasn’t run the numbers on a full cost benefit of the various options.
A mix of nuclear / hydroelectric / combined cycle gas turbine power plants provided ample electricity for end-users to make use of cheap to manufacture heating technology (resistive), low maintenance, low replacement costs.
> Now pick the best (least costly / swiftest build) new power reactor build in the last ten years anywhere in the world.
Unless you can pay the workers the same rates, and it's politically acceptable to the electorate to use the same standards, this is as irrelevant as the fact (yes, I have done the maths on this) that it's *technically* possible for China to divert an affordable percentage of its aluminium output over a decade to build a genuine planet-spanning power grid with 1Ω electrical resistance so you can have your mid-winter midnight electricity supplied by the mid-summer midday on the opposite side of the planet.
> and that nuclear power reactors can provide district heating and that
I have a heat pump. It works both ways, which means that unlike district heating, it also cools down the building in summer.
> that heat pumps sometimes fail in ways that the ozone depleting refrigerant to escape.
"Can" is also doing a lot of heavy lifting even if such things hadn't been banned.
> A mix of nuclear / hydroelectric / combined cycle gas turbine power plants provided ample electricity for end-users to make use of cheap to manufacture heating technology (resistive), low maintenance, low replacement costs.
Hydro is cheap, but nuclear isn't. Hydro also works as a buffer (and pumped hydro as storage), so if you're combining it with stuff anyway, may as well combine with PV. Even small-scale domestic rooftop PV (which is the most expensive PV) is cheaper than nuclear at this point, so cheap that it makes sense to use as a fencing material even if you never get around to using it for power generation.
End users could have simple resistive heating.
But no, in the name of invitation and net zero, end user are forced to bear the cost and maintenance burden of much more complicated equipment systems.
It’s all arse-backwards.