3 ms·

This neglects how the great expense of nuclear and the long amount of time it takes to build is at least in part due to decades of anti-nuclear propaganda. Ther

This neglects how the great expense of nuclear and the long amount of time it takes to build is at least in part due to decades of anti-nuclear propaganda. There are certain activist groups who have created this problem and are now disingenuously pointing to the problem as if they had nothing to do with it.

lamontcg 11y ago
No, even the French nuclear build showed negative learning effects that had nothing to do with anti-nuclear propaganda. A global nuclear build is going to do much, much worse than France did: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510003526 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510... Abstract The paper reviews the history and the economics of the French PWR program, which is arguably the most successful nuclear-scale up experience in an industrialized country. Key to this success was a unique institutional framework that allowed for centralized decision making, a high degree of standardization, and regulatory stability, epitomized by comparatively short reactor construction times. Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs. Conversely, operating costs have remained remarkably flat, despite lowered load factors resulting from the need for load modulation in a system where base-load nuclear power plants supply three quarters of electricity. The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
- rwallace 11y ago
  Interesting! The article is paywalled; I don't suppose you could summarize what negative learning effects they found, and the explanations they gave?

lamontcg 11y ago

No, even the French nuclear build showed negative learning effects that had nothing to do with anti-nuclear propaganda. A global nuclear build is going to do much, much worse than France did: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510003526 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510... Abstract The paper reviews the history and the economics of the French PWR program, which is arguably the most successful nuclear-scale up experience in an industrialized country. Key to this success was a unique institutional framework that allowed for centralized decision making, a high degree of standardization, and regulatory stability, epitomized by comparatively short reactor construction times. Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs. Conversely, operating costs have remained remarkably flat, despite lowered load factors resulting from the need for load modulation in a system where base-load nuclear power plants supply three quarters of electricity. The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.

rwallace 11y ago
Interesting! The article is paywalled; I don't suppose you could summarize what negative learning effects they found, and the explanations they gave?