11 ms·

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry. Westinghouse has made some bad deals, sure, but the real "blow to nuclear power" has been the massive refusal by both citizens and governments to build new plants, and the few notable failures by plant operators to maintain safe operation. Of course the company that builds nuclear plants can't succeed if new plants aren't being built. Westinghouse going under isn't going to destroy nuclear power, nuclear power was already dead.

gph 10y ago
I feel like the only thing you did read was the headline... Westinghouse is a bit of a special case. There was accounting/financial fraud and they took on stupid fixed contracts that bit them in the ass when safety regulations forced them to spend more on design/construction. For as maligned as the nuclear industry is, a lot of this was self-inflicted.
- freehunter 10y ago
  The headline doesn't explain my comment of "sure Westinghouse made some bad deals". I completely acknowledge that Westinghouse is a bad company. But nuclear isn't dying just because this company is going under, there are a lot more pressures killing nuclear power.
dalyons 10y ago
After reading years and years of discussions like this, it seems like the citizen opposition and (somewhat unfair) demonisation of nuclear power is endlessly repeated as the reason we don't have nukes anymore, despite them being a great source of clean(ish) energy. However it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics. They're just too damn expensive to build and run, and the expected returns on investment take an extremely long time to materialise(20+ years) Noone wants to put up the enormous capital, with the very real risk that they'll never see returns as the alternative energy markets(gas, solar, etc) are evolving and dropping in price so quickly. I know I'd be pretty hesitant taking a half billion dollar 30 year bet against technology.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics The economics might be different if we paid for the real cost of carbon-based energy, instead of imposing that cost on the world as an externality.
  - luca_ing 10y ago
    While I don't disagree with your assessment of carbon-based energy, the same thing (externalising the cost of their downsides) happens with nuclear energy. So if anything, they're equally terrible in that regard.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > the same thing (externalising the cost of their downsides) happens with nuclear energy. / So if anything, they're equally terrible in that regard. That isn't true. There are externalities for both, but the externalities for carbon are far greater. The above statement is like saying: No houses are free to buy; therefore all houses are equally costly.
      - luca_ing 10y ago
        > That isn't true. That's rather sweeping, don't you think? If anything, my statement might be an oversimplification. But untrue? I wouldn't be surprised if they were of a similar order of magnitude. Like houses (Michael Jackson's mansion and similar outliers excluded). > the externalities for carbon are far greater Do you have numbers to back that up? (I don't). But keep in mind that it's not yet clear how expensive it will be to de-construct reactors and store nuclear waste for millenia. Just that it's going to be very, very expensive. And probably footed by the taxpayer.
  - kpil 10y ago
    The total cost for storing and securing shit for 100.000 years is also 'externalized.' Both costs are more or less impossible to establish upfront.
hackuser 10y ago
> nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry It's interesting that the fossil fuels do far more harm, but nuclear is what everyone fears. (In fairness, nuclear problems do far more harm locally to the plant.)
- dreamcompiler 10y ago
  Indeed. Coal plants create much more widespread radiation pollution than nuclear plants. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
  - kpil 10y ago
    As for instance half of Sweden still have increased levels of caesium 137 since Chernobyl, and I have just finished a spaghetti bolognese made from a moose from that area, I am not really impressed by average values. The health effects have been small in Sweden, but it still affects our quality of life, in the sense that we have to be vary of what we eat. If we keep having an incident every 15-20 years, it will potentially affect large areas, and another incident in Europe might be unfathomably expensive.
- cmurf 10y ago
  IEA says 6.5 million die per year from air pollution. WHO says it's 1 million deaths per year from specifically burning coal pollution. And it's roughly 1000 deaths per year from nuclear. Air pollution deaths are "normal operation" not catastrophic event. Whereas normal operation deaths for nuclear is essentially 0, where deaths happen as a result of catastrophe. So there is something of a lizard brain mentality going on when it comes to near term risk assessment. I think the rational arguments pretty much are all economic: they're expensive and basically even a highly regulated and subsidized "free market" has said this isn't worth it and we can't make it work.
  - hackuser 10y ago
novalis78 10y ago
Can't wait for an Elon Musk type investor tackle Thorium based Molten Salt reactors. The public opposition to nuclear needs to be changed with positive counter examples.
- thrillgore 10y ago
  It won't happen. MSRs may be a great idea on paper but solar scaling cheaply negates the need or interest in using them for small communes. Other political factors such as the inherit stigma around nuclear and the upheaval of the defense-sector supply chain make them a harder sell.
- caoilte 10y ago
  Won't happen. Why get energy from incredibly rare and cumbersome isotopes when the sun shines every day?
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Because it goes dark every night. Because solar farms are disastrous to the environment as they sterilize the ecosystem in their shade. Because Thorium is neither rare nor cumbersome.
  - fnordfnordfnord 10y ago
    Thorium isn't rare. You probably have enough in your lawn to supply your lifetime energy needs. Also, it's a waste product of rare earths mining, and there's a United States stockpile of 3.2 million kg of thorium nitrate that nobody knows what to do with.
cmurf 10y ago
It's not dead in China. It's on the decline in Europe and Japan. And it's somewhere in between in the U.S. What is probably dead is the idea of a highly regulated and subsidized monopoly nuclear industry. Whereas an entirely state own industry is still making a go of it, but we'll see what China does with all their nuclear power plants in 15-30 years.
hristov 10y ago
The problem isn't that westinghouse made a couple of bad deals. The problem is that westinghouse was completely incapable of finishing the nuclear plants anywhere near their budget or their scheduled time. The cost overruns were absolutely ghastly and made the plants way too expensive. All the cost was charged to consumers on their electric bills. Nobody in their right mind will order more nuclear plants when they see the expensive disaster that the currently built nuclear plants are.
- ericcumbee 10y ago
  >The problem isn't that westinghouse made a couple of bad deals. The problem is that westinghouse was completely incapable of finishing the nuclear plants anywhere near their budget or their scheduled time. There is also no accountability on the part of the customer companies either. The public service commission pretty much votes to allow ga power to pass the costs to the rate payer. Georgia Rate payers are already paying for the cost of votgle 3&4 in the form of rate increases when their completion is no where in sight.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    If one is curious to see raw corruption on full public display, it's a sure bet to attend a state PSC/PUC meeting. It doesn't matter whether it's telecom or energy or whatever, if they're open for business then they are truly open for business.
philipkglass 10y ago
I don't know if you have been following this saga over the past few years, but the reason that they're going bankrupt is they got several orders for new AP1000 reactors, but couldn't deliver on their planned budgets and schedules. (4 reactors under construction in China, 4 under construction in the United States, zero of them on schedule.) Was it a court injunction that put the Vogtle project behind schedule? Local citizen protests? "Direct action" work disruption from Greenpeace hardliners? Nope! The locals are mostly looking forward to the tax revenue and employment boost from the new reactors. The project has had no legal interruptions nor on-site activist-disruptors. Whatever has gone wrong with these new reactor projects originates inside the nuclear industry itself. (I was happy about the new AP1000 builds until they blew their budgets and schedules. Same with the disastrous EPR projects. I still believe that nuclear power is safe enough, certainly safer than continuing to burn fossils for electricity. But at this point I'll only believe the industry's next "this project will be faster and cheaper to build, I swear" promise five years after the project has met all objectives and demonstrated smooth commercial operation.)
- akvadrako 10y ago
  I don't know the specifics, but a big reason nuclear is more expensive is regulations. There are so many regulations it's safer per megawatt than even wind or solar. Thus your argument does not support your conclusion, since regulations come from outside the industry.
  - philipkglass 10y ago
    In the 1980s and later parts of the 1970s, nuclear projects in the US did face the impossible challenge of regulations that shifted as projects were underway. But that doesn't apply here, AFAICT. The American AP1000 projects began work on their nuclear sections, starting with basemat concrete, in March 2013. The regulations haven't changed since the new American units began construction. Regulations were supposed to be factored in to the cost/schedule estimates. Yet the original cost/schedule estimates turned out to be badly mistaken. Being in a highly regulated industry (like making nuclear reactors, airliners, or pharmaceuticals) does increase costs over lightly regulated sectors. But it isn't an excuse for mis-estimating costs and schedules that were supposed to be developed considering those factors. Boeing would be in crisis too if every unit of its latest airliner were double-digit-percentages over budget and over allotted assembly time. I've been following the American AP1000 projects for years. The contractors blame the sub-contractors. The new sub-contractors are behind schedule just like the old sub-contractors. Nobody actually involved with these projects, AFAICT, is blaming the cost/schedule problems on regulators. Pro-nuclear bloggers have still tried shifting the blame away from the industry and back to environmentalists/regulators/the public at large. EDIT: here's what Georgia Power and Westinghouse alike believed about the new AP1000 design: Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 will be the first in the industry to use the Westinghouse AP1000 advanced pressurized water reactor technology. This advanced technology allows nuclear cores to be cooled even in the absence of operator interventions or mechanical assistance. The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The AP1000's simplified plant design results in a plant that is easier and less expensive to to build, operate and maintain. The plant's design has: + 50 percent fewer valves + 35 percent fewer pumps + 80 percent less piping + 45 percent less building volume + 70 percent less cable than earlier-generation nuclear plants. The modular design also allows for faster construction. https://www.georgiapower.com/about-energy/energy-sources/nuclear/overview.cshtml https://www.georgiapower.com/about-energy/energy-sources/nuc... The builder and the buyer both believed that these reactors would be faster and cheaper to build than past designs, before they actually tried to build them.
Tepix 10y ago
What about the failure to find a solution for long term storage? 75 years later and we are still at the beginning of this important issue that hundreds of even thousands of future generations will be affected by if it isn't done perfectly.

gph 10y ago

I feel like the only thing you did read was the headline... Westinghouse is a bit of a special case. There was accounting/financial fraud and they took on stupid fixed contracts that bit them in the ass when safety regulations forced them to spend more on design/construction. For as maligned as the nuclear industry is, a lot of this was self-inflicted.

freehunter 10y ago
The headline doesn't explain my comment of "sure Westinghouse made some bad deals". I completely acknowledge that Westinghouse is a bad company. But nuclear isn't dying just because this company is going under, there are a lot more pressures killing nuclear power.

dalyons 10y ago

After reading years and years of discussions like this, it seems like the citizen opposition and (somewhat unfair) demonisation of nuclear power is endlessly repeated as the reason we don't have nukes anymore, despite them being a great source of clean(ish) energy. However it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics. They're just too damn expensive to build and run, and the expected returns on investment take an extremely long time to materialise(20+ years) Noone wants to put up the enormous capital, with the very real risk that they'll never see returns as the alternative energy markets(gas, solar, etc) are evolving and dropping in price so quickly. I know I'd be pretty hesitant taking a half billion dollar 30 year bet against technology.

hackuser 10y ago
> it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics The economics might be different if we paid for the real cost of carbon-based energy, instead of imposing that cost on the world as an externality.
- luca_ing 10y ago
  While I don't disagree with your assessment of carbon-based energy, the same thing (externalising the cost of their downsides) happens with nuclear energy. So if anything, they're equally terrible in that regard.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > the same thing (externalising the cost of their downsides) happens with nuclear energy. / So if anything, they're equally terrible in that regard. That isn't true. There are externalities for both, but the externalities for carbon are far greater. The above statement is like saying: No houses are free to buy; therefore all houses are equally costly.
    - luca_ing 10y ago
      > That isn't true. That's rather sweeping, don't you think? If anything, my statement might be an oversimplification. But untrue? I wouldn't be surprised if they were of a similar order of magnitude. Like houses (Michael Jackson's mansion and similar outliers excluded). > the externalities for carbon are far greater Do you have numbers to back that up? (I don't). But keep in mind that it's not yet clear how expensive it will be to de-construct reactors and store nuclear waste for millenia. Just that it's going to be very, very expensive. And probably footed by the taxpayer.
- kpil 10y ago
  The total cost for storing and securing shit for 100.000 years is also 'externalized.' Both costs are more or less impossible to establish upfront.

hackuser 10y ago

> nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry It's interesting that the fossil fuels do far more harm, but nuclear is what everyone fears. (In fairness, nuclear problems do far more harm locally to the plant.)

dreamcompiler 10y ago
Indeed. Coal plants create much more widespread radiation pollution than nuclear plants. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
- kpil 10y ago
  As for instance half of Sweden still have increased levels of caesium 137 since Chernobyl, and I have just finished a spaghetti bolognese made from a moose from that area, I am not really impressed by average values. The health effects have been small in Sweden, but it still affects our quality of life, in the sense that we have to be vary of what we eat. If we keep having an incident every 15-20 years, it will potentially affect large areas, and another incident in Europe might be unfathomably expensive.
cmurf 10y ago
IEA says 6.5 million die per year from air pollution. WHO says it's 1 million deaths per year from specifically burning coal pollution. And it's roughly 1000 deaths per year from nuclear. Air pollution deaths are "normal operation" not catastrophic event. Whereas normal operation deaths for nuclear is essentially 0, where deaths happen as a result of catastrophe. So there is something of a lizard brain mentality going on when it comes to near term risk assessment. I think the rational arguments pretty much are all economic: they're expensive and basically even a highly regulated and subsidized "free market" has said this isn't worth it and we can't make it work.
- hackuser 10y ago

novalis78 10y ago

Can't wait for an Elon Musk type investor tackle Thorium based Molten Salt reactors. The public opposition to nuclear needs to be changed with positive counter examples.

thrillgore 10y ago
It won't happen. MSRs may be a great idea on paper but solar scaling cheaply negates the need or interest in using them for small communes. Other political factors such as the inherit stigma around nuclear and the upheaval of the defense-sector supply chain make them a harder sell.
caoilte 10y ago
Won't happen. Why get energy from incredibly rare and cumbersome isotopes when the sun shines every day?
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Because it goes dark every night. Because solar farms are disastrous to the environment as they sterilize the ecosystem in their shade. Because Thorium is neither rare nor cumbersome.
- fnordfnordfnord 10y ago
  Thorium isn't rare. You probably have enough in your lawn to supply your lifetime energy needs. Also, it's a waste product of rare earths mining, and there's a United States stockpile of 3.2 million kg of thorium nitrate that nobody knows what to do with.

cmurf 10y ago

It's not dead in China. It's on the decline in Europe and Japan. And it's somewhere in between in the U.S. What is probably dead is the idea of a highly regulated and subsidized monopoly nuclear industry. Whereas an entirely state own industry is still making a go of it, but we'll see what China does with all their nuclear power plants in 15-30 years.

hristov 10y ago

The problem isn't that westinghouse made a couple of bad deals. The problem is that westinghouse was completely incapable of finishing the nuclear plants anywhere near their budget or their scheduled time. The cost overruns were absolutely ghastly and made the plants way too expensive. All the cost was charged to consumers on their electric bills. Nobody in their right mind will order more nuclear plants when they see the expensive disaster that the currently built nuclear plants are.

ericcumbee 10y ago
>The problem isn't that westinghouse made a couple of bad deals. The problem is that westinghouse was completely incapable of finishing the nuclear plants anywhere near their budget or their scheduled time. There is also no accountability on the part of the customer companies either. The public service commission pretty much votes to allow ga power to pass the costs to the rate payer. Georgia Rate payers are already paying for the cost of votgle 3&4 in the form of rate increases when their completion is no where in sight.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  If one is curious to see raw corruption on full public display, it's a sure bet to attend a state PSC/PUC meeting. It doesn't matter whether it's telecom or energy or whatever, if they're open for business then they are truly open for business.

philipkglass 10y ago

I don't know if you have been following this saga over the past few years, but the reason that they're going bankrupt is they got several orders for new AP1000 reactors, but couldn't deliver on their planned budgets and schedules. (4 reactors under construction in China, 4 under construction in the United States, zero of them on schedule.) Was it a court injunction that put the Vogtle project behind schedule? Local citizen protests? "Direct action" work disruption from Greenpeace hardliners? Nope! The locals are mostly looking forward to the tax revenue and employment boost from the new reactors. The project has had no legal interruptions nor on-site activist-disruptors. Whatever has gone wrong with these new reactor projects originates inside the nuclear industry itself. (I was happy about the new AP1000 builds until they blew their budgets and schedules. Same with the disastrous EPR projects. I still believe that nuclear power is safe enough, certainly safer than continuing to burn fossils for electricity. But at this point I'll only believe the industry's next "this project will be faster and cheaper to build, I swear" promise five years after the project has met all objectives and demonstrated smooth commercial operation.)

akvadrako 10y ago
I don't know the specifics, but a big reason nuclear is more expensive is regulations. There are so many regulations it's safer per megawatt than even wind or solar. Thus your argument does not support your conclusion, since regulations come from outside the industry.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  In the 1980s and later parts of the 1970s, nuclear projects in the US did face the impossible challenge of regulations that shifted as projects were underway. But that doesn't apply here, AFAICT. The American AP1000 projects began work on their nuclear sections, starting with basemat concrete, in March 2013. The regulations haven't changed since the new American units began construction. Regulations were supposed to be factored in to the cost/schedule estimates. Yet the original cost/schedule estimates turned out to be badly mistaken. Being in a highly regulated industry (like making nuclear reactors, airliners, or pharmaceuticals) does increase costs over lightly regulated sectors. But it isn't an excuse for mis-estimating costs and schedules that were supposed to be developed considering those factors. Boeing would be in crisis too if every unit of its latest airliner were double-digit-percentages over budget and over allotted assembly time. I've been following the American AP1000 projects for years. The contractors blame the sub-contractors. The new sub-contractors are behind schedule just like the old sub-contractors. Nobody actually involved with these projects, AFAICT, is blaming the cost/schedule problems on regulators. Pro-nuclear bloggers have still tried shifting the blame away from the industry and back to environmentalists/regulators/the public at large. EDIT: here's what Georgia Power and Westinghouse alike believed about the new AP1000 design: Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 will be the first in the industry to use the Westinghouse AP1000 advanced pressurized water reactor technology. This advanced technology allows nuclear cores to be cooled even in the absence of operator interventions or mechanical assistance. The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The AP1000's simplified plant design results in a plant that is easier and less expensive to to build, operate and maintain. The plant's design has: + 50 percent fewer valves + 35 percent fewer pumps + 80 percent less piping + 45 percent less building volume + 70 percent less cable than earlier-generation nuclear plants. The modular design also allows for faster construction. https://www.georgiapower.com/about-energy/energy-sources/nuclear/overview.cshtml https://www.georgiapower.com/about-energy/energy-sources/nuc... The builder and the buyer both believed that these reactors would be faster and cheaper to build than past designs, before they actually tried to build them.

Tepix 10y ago

What about the failure to find a solution for long term storage? 75 years later and we are still at the beginning of this important issue that hundreds of even thousands of future generations will be affected by if it isn't done perfectly.