7 ms·

After reading years and years of discussions like this, it seems like the citizen opposition and (somewhat unfair) demonisation of nuclear power is endlessly re

by 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
    I'm not sure what you mean. We do establish the costs for carbon. In some countries you (or major users) must buy a permit to emit carbon. Some establish the maximum carbon the environment can handle, then auction permits, establishing a market price. The U.S. effectively estimates zero cost (without looking into the details); that certainly is a bad estimate.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      That's not the only cost of fossil fuel power plants. Coal plants kill huge numbers of people. The coal industry pumps huge quantities of uranium dust into the atmosphere alongside fly ash. The biggest externality of coal in particular is not carbon emissions but the massive health costs and human suffering. If fossil fuels were subjected to the same safety requirements as nuclear in terms of preventing public health effects, the cost would increase substantially.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        > The biggest externality of coal in particular is not carbon emissions but the massive health costs and human suffering The carbon emissions cause climate change, which causes human suffering at a scale, as I understand it, far beyond that of the pollution you describe (which is also substantial).
        vidarh 10y ago
        While that is true, coal is just one of the sources that play into that, and the point that you yourself made was that it can be offset. While the dust and radioactivity released by coal plants kills hundreds of thousands of people now, and we can't meaningfully offset it by trading quotas - it's not like having more kids makes up for killing other people.
- ohyes 10y ago
  The economics are based on two things: 1.) Incredible cost to privately insure a nuclear power plant. 2.) There hasn't been an economy of scale when producing nuclear power plants.
  - badloginagain 10y ago
    I'd also add 3) Nuclear power technology is running on technology half a century old. This gives you a couple interesting points to consider: - Once built, you have reliable baseload power for generations. - Modernized power plants could be safer, more efficient, and smaller by orders of magnitude. Demonization of nuclear power prevents improvements to nuclear power. The industry is stuck in the 60's. The real shame is that it's the only technology we have that is really future-friendly: Planetary colonization can't rely on wind, nor solar, and certainly not fossil fuels for power. Nuclear will really be the only option for reliable baseload power to extra-terrestrial colonies.
    - ohyes 10y ago
      Absolutely, and even the new designs are multiple decades old. (But even those are a huge improvement over what we have from the 60s/70s). Many of existing plants were at the time they were built considered to be important for national security (read: nuclear arsenal), which is much of why they're using the fuel they use and have the designs they have. Civilian nuclear never really materialized in it's own right, which is certainly a shame.
  - fnj 10y ago
    A nuclear power plant disaster is pretty much going to bankrupt somebody, no matter who insures it. Even if the insurance is nationally subsidized, something like Fukushima is going to be a crushing burden on the whole country.
- hwillis 10y ago
  At this point it seems like that would just mean nuclear losing to solar instead of natural gas. In both cases it's an extremely large investment and slow return, but solar PV juuuust seems to edge out nuclear. The numbers look like nuclear has a slight advantage, but that's skewed by underestimates of nuclear costs (or estimates that it'll come down in the future), as well as the rapid cost declines in solar power. Solar has a very wide price variation but the newest, cheapest stuff is better than nuclear. I find myself in conflict with people a lot regarding nuclear online. I used to be one of those LFTR reactor guys but the facts are that nuclear reactors are always some newer, untested design that will require new untested innovations. On the other hand solar has an easily predicted, easily met roadmap to cheap power with existing tech. We know for a fact that solar can power the entire world's needs cheaply for many decades to come, but we are just guessing that the same can be done with nuclear. Why make that bet when we have a sure thing?
- spangry 10y ago
  The Brookings Institute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution) agrees with you: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/05/19-low-carbon-future-wind-solar-power-frank/net-benefits-final.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/... Their study looks at different forms of electricity generation from the perspective of 'costs avoided' (e.g. avoided carbon emissions), net cost of generation (e.g. nameplate vs. actual generation), and total system costs (e.g. grid balancing / stabilising costs). On 'costs avoided', their base-case assumption is a $50 per tonne price on co2 emissions. The study concludes: "Assuming that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are valued at $50 per metric ton and the price of natural gas is not much greater than $16 per million Btu, the net benefits of new nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle plants far outweigh the net benefits of new wind or solar plants. Wind and solar power are very costly from a social perspective because of their very high capacity cost, their very low capacity factors, and their lack of reliability. For example, adjusting U.S. solar and wind capacity factors to take account of lack of reliability, we estimate that it would take 7.30 MW of solar capacity, costing roughly four times as much per MW to produce the same electrical output with the same degree of reliability as a baseload gas combined cycle plant. It requires an investment of approximately $29 million in utility-scale solar capacity to produce the same output with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle. Reductions in the price of solar photovoltaic panels have reduced costs for utility-scale solar plants, but photovoltaic panels account for only a fraction of the cost of a solar plant. Thus such price reductions are unlikely to make solar power competitive with other electricity technologies without government subsidies. Wind plants are far more economical in reducing emissions than solar plants, but much less economical than hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle plants. Wind plants can operate at a capacity factor of 30 percent or more and cost about twice as much per MW to build as a gas combined cycle plant. Taking account of the lack of wind reliability, it takes an investment of approximately $10 million in wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle plants." And here are my calculations on German solar and wind capacity factors (they're awful): https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbdf610ac https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd... Not that anyone here will care about any of this. This issue has pretty much become a matter of blind religious fear & faith.
pm90 10y ago
I am not a Nuclear Engineer...but here, again it seems like the operating factor is scale. If you were building many nuclear reactors, cost per reactor would perhaps go down. Not to mention: recent advances in technology and automation might help better monitor and operate the reactors, increasing safety and decreasing cost. All of this is just armchair reasoning though. I have not the faintest idea what the most expensive parts of building a reactor are.
- addicted 10y ago
  The problem with this is that nuclear has consistently displayed a negative learning curve over the last 4-5 decades. It's only gotten more expensive as time has gone on.
LordKano 10y ago
However it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics. Who's going to invest a billion dollars to build a new facility when they know that at any step along the way, some half-wit celebrity can decide that they want to buy property in the area and they don't want to live near a nuclear power plant, start protests and cause the project to be delayed or scrapped. Continuing to run an old design is a very big part of how we ended up with the current situation with Fukushima.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  You keep saying its NIMBY, when it is apparent its shoddy construction, mismanagement, and cutting corners for cost savings.
  - _delirium 10y ago
    Some evidence for the interpretation that construction and cost problems are the root is that even France has been having these problems with recent construction projects. France doesn't have the same NIMBY or regulatory problems as the U.S. with nuclear. It's a national priority, and the legal landscape is different, you can't sue to stop projects the way you can in the U.S., because direct authorizing laws are passed by Parliament, vs. it being up to a patchwork of agency decisions (which can be challenged in court), state regulations, etc. And yet their next-gen reactor project in Flamanville is going badly, with huge cost overruns and manufacturing problems, to the point where the contractor (Areva) is seeking some kind of bailout or state buy-out of its nuclear construction business. This is also somewhat surprising because the previous-gen projects in France are usually seen as an example of a fairly well managed nuclear industry, with construction coming in reasonably close to budgeted cost, and a good safety record.
cbhl 10y ago
To be fair, solar and wind are now approaching scale, whereas every nuclear power plant seems to be a bespoke special snowflake. The cost of nuclear would go down if R&D costs could be amortized over dozens or hundreds of reactors.
- epistasis 10y ago
  That was the hope with Westinghouse's AP1000. We shall see if this actually reduces costs. I'm skeptical it will though, as it appears that most of the cost is actually in construction, and not as much in the R&D. If there are specially constructed parts that benefit from producing a dozen at a time rather than one at a time, then perhaps there will be some savings there. At least in the US, large construction projects are expensive, and not getting cheaper. Battery-based storage and renewable energy is getting cheaper. Within 10 years I would expect that solar/wind with 30-50% of the production stored in batteries will be cheaper than nuclear. It also deploys more quickly, in smaller amounts, and therefore poses less financial risk. I would love to see a full breakdown of the budget on some nuclear power plants, but I have not yet seen anybody provide evidence that R&D or unnecessary regulations are significant enough of a cost burden that reducing them by a factor of 10 would make nuclear more cost competitive.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I don't disagree, the economic factors however go beyond scale. And I also agree that if we could agree on the 'externality costs' it would fare better in comparison but I have given up trying to have that conversation with people who can't or won't move past the emotional fear. In many ways this wound on Westinghouse (and nuclear power) is self inflicted. As engineers moved out of senior management and politicians moved in in the late 70's, the company became less about moving technology forward and more about 'getting money for management'. It really lost its way. I expect that the Chinese nuclear power industry will become nearly all of the civilian reactors by the end of this century.
guscost 10y ago
While your point is important, keep in mind that the value of nuclear safety (like so many other things the market puts a price on) is entirely determined by what people think. If they think the hazards are significant, because they hear alarming rhetoric, because the hazards actually are significant, or for any other reason, the value will reflect what they think. Regulations like the Price-Anderson Act[0] then formalize this value as insurance and construction and operational expenses, essentially defining many of the economics. [0] http://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_nuclear_liability_insurance.htm http://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_nuclear_liability_insu...
gozur88 10y ago
One of the reasons nuclear plants are so expensive to build is "citizen opposition and (somewhat unfair) demonisation of nuclear power". I'm all for making sure people who build and operate plants do so without cutting corners, but the US system makes it too easy to tie up a project for years with lawfare.

by dalyons 10y ago

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
  I'm not sure what you mean. We do establish the costs for carbon. In some countries you (or major users) must buy a permit to emit carbon. Some establish the maximum carbon the environment can handle, then auction permits, establishing a market price. The U.S. effectively estimates zero cost (without looking into the details); that certainly is a bad estimate.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    That's not the only cost of fossil fuel power plants. Coal plants kill huge numbers of people. The coal industry pumps huge quantities of uranium dust into the atmosphere alongside fly ash. The biggest externality of coal in particular is not carbon emissions but the massive health costs and human suffering. If fossil fuels were subjected to the same safety requirements as nuclear in terms of preventing public health effects, the cost would increase substantially.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > The biggest externality of coal in particular is not carbon emissions but the massive health costs and human suffering The carbon emissions cause climate change, which causes human suffering at a scale, as I understand it, far beyond that of the pollution you describe (which is also substantial).
      - vidarh 10y ago
        While that is true, coal is just one of the sources that play into that, and the point that you yourself made was that it can be offset. While the dust and radioactivity released by coal plants kills hundreds of thousands of people now, and we can't meaningfully offset it by trading quotas - it's not like having more kids makes up for killing other people.
ohyes 10y ago
The economics are based on two things: 1.) Incredible cost to privately insure a nuclear power plant. 2.) There hasn't been an economy of scale when producing nuclear power plants.
- badloginagain 10y ago
  I'd also add 3) Nuclear power technology is running on technology half a century old. This gives you a couple interesting points to consider: - Once built, you have reliable baseload power for generations. - Modernized power plants could be safer, more efficient, and smaller by orders of magnitude. Demonization of nuclear power prevents improvements to nuclear power. The industry is stuck in the 60's. The real shame is that it's the only technology we have that is really future-friendly: Planetary colonization can't rely on wind, nor solar, and certainly not fossil fuels for power. Nuclear will really be the only option for reliable baseload power to extra-terrestrial colonies.
  - ohyes 10y ago
    Absolutely, and even the new designs are multiple decades old. (But even those are a huge improvement over what we have from the 60s/70s). Many of existing plants were at the time they were built considered to be important for national security (read: nuclear arsenal), which is much of why they're using the fuel they use and have the designs they have. Civilian nuclear never really materialized in it's own right, which is certainly a shame.
- fnj 10y ago
  A nuclear power plant disaster is pretty much going to bankrupt somebody, no matter who insures it. Even if the insurance is nationally subsidized, something like Fukushima is going to be a crushing burden on the whole country.
hwillis 10y ago
At this point it seems like that would just mean nuclear losing to solar instead of natural gas. In both cases it's an extremely large investment and slow return, but solar PV juuuust seems to edge out nuclear. The numbers look like nuclear has a slight advantage, but that's skewed by underestimates of nuclear costs (or estimates that it'll come down in the future), as well as the rapid cost declines in solar power. Solar has a very wide price variation but the newest, cheapest stuff is better than nuclear. I find myself in conflict with people a lot regarding nuclear online. I used to be one of those LFTR reactor guys but the facts are that nuclear reactors are always some newer, untested design that will require new untested innovations. On the other hand solar has an easily predicted, easily met roadmap to cheap power with existing tech. We know for a fact that solar can power the entire world's needs cheaply for many decades to come, but we are just guessing that the same can be done with nuclear. Why make that bet when we have a sure thing?
spangry 10y ago
The Brookings Institute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution) agrees with you: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/05/19-low-carbon-future-wind-solar-power-frank/net-benefits-final.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/... Their study looks at different forms of electricity generation from the perspective of 'costs avoided' (e.g. avoided carbon emissions), net cost of generation (e.g. nameplate vs. actual generation), and total system costs (e.g. grid balancing / stabilising costs). On 'costs avoided', their base-case assumption is a $50 per tonne price on co2 emissions. The study concludes: "Assuming that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are valued at $50 per metric ton and the price of natural gas is not much greater than $16 per million Btu, the net benefits of new nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle plants far outweigh the net benefits of new wind or solar plants. Wind and solar power are very costly from a social perspective because of their very high capacity cost, their very low capacity factors, and their lack of reliability. For example, adjusting U.S. solar and wind capacity factors to take account of lack of reliability, we estimate that it would take 7.30 MW of solar capacity, costing roughly four times as much per MW to produce the same electrical output with the same degree of reliability as a baseload gas combined cycle plant. It requires an investment of approximately $29 million in utility-scale solar capacity to produce the same output with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle. Reductions in the price of solar photovoltaic panels have reduced costs for utility-scale solar plants, but photovoltaic panels account for only a fraction of the cost of a solar plant. Thus such price reductions are unlikely to make solar power competitive with other electricity technologies without government subsidies. Wind plants are far more economical in reducing emissions than solar plants, but much less economical than hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle plants. Wind plants can operate at a capacity factor of 30 percent or more and cost about twice as much per MW to build as a gas combined cycle plant. Taking account of the lack of wind reliability, it takes an investment of approximately $10 million in wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle plants." And here are my calculations on German solar and wind capacity factors (they're awful): https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbdf610ac https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd... Not that anyone here will care about any of this. This issue has pretty much become a matter of blind religious fear & faith.

pm90 10y ago

I am not a Nuclear Engineer...but here, again it seems like the operating factor is scale. If you were building many nuclear reactors, cost per reactor would perhaps go down. Not to mention: recent advances in technology and automation might help better monitor and operate the reactors, increasing safety and decreasing cost. All of this is just armchair reasoning though. I have not the faintest idea what the most expensive parts of building a reactor are.

addicted 10y ago
The problem with this is that nuclear has consistently displayed a negative learning curve over the last 4-5 decades. It's only gotten more expensive as time has gone on.

LordKano 10y ago

However it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics. Who's going to invest a billion dollars to build a new facility when they know that at any step along the way, some half-wit celebrity can decide that they want to buy property in the area and they don't want to live near a nuclear power plant, start protests and cause the project to be delayed or scrapped. Continuing to run an old design is a very big part of how we ended up with the current situation with Fukushima.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
You keep saying its NIMBY, when it is apparent its shoddy construction, mismanagement, and cutting corners for cost savings.
- _delirium 10y ago
  Some evidence for the interpretation that construction and cost problems are the root is that even France has been having these problems with recent construction projects. France doesn't have the same NIMBY or regulatory problems as the U.S. with nuclear. It's a national priority, and the legal landscape is different, you can't sue to stop projects the way you can in the U.S., because direct authorizing laws are passed by Parliament, vs. it being up to a patchwork of agency decisions (which can be challenged in court), state regulations, etc. And yet their next-gen reactor project in Flamanville is going badly, with huge cost overruns and manufacturing problems, to the point where the contractor (Areva) is seeking some kind of bailout or state buy-out of its nuclear construction business. This is also somewhat surprising because the previous-gen projects in France are usually seen as an example of a fairly well managed nuclear industry, with construction coming in reasonably close to budgeted cost, and a good safety record.

cbhl 10y ago

To be fair, solar and wind are now approaching scale, whereas every nuclear power plant seems to be a bespoke special snowflake. The cost of nuclear would go down if R&D costs could be amortized over dozens or hundreds of reactors.

epistasis 10y ago
That was the hope with Westinghouse's AP1000. We shall see if this actually reduces costs. I'm skeptical it will though, as it appears that most of the cost is actually in construction, and not as much in the R&D. If there are specially constructed parts that benefit from producing a dozen at a time rather than one at a time, then perhaps there will be some savings there. At least in the US, large construction projects are expensive, and not getting cheaper. Battery-based storage and renewable energy is getting cheaper. Within 10 years I would expect that solar/wind with 30-50% of the production stored in batteries will be cheaper than nuclear. It also deploys more quickly, in smaller amounts, and therefore poses less financial risk. I would love to see a full breakdown of the budget on some nuclear power plants, but I have not yet seen anybody provide evidence that R&D or unnecessary regulations are significant enough of a cost burden that reducing them by a factor of 10 would make nuclear more cost competitive.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I don't disagree, the economic factors however go beyond scale. And I also agree that if we could agree on the 'externality costs' it would fare better in comparison but I have given up trying to have that conversation with people who can't or won't move past the emotional fear. In many ways this wound on Westinghouse (and nuclear power) is self inflicted. As engineers moved out of senior management and politicians moved in in the late 70's, the company became less about moving technology forward and more about 'getting money for management'. It really lost its way. I expect that the Chinese nuclear power industry will become nearly all of the civilian reactors by the end of this century.

guscost 10y ago

While your point is important, keep in mind that the value of nuclear safety (like so many other things the market puts a price on) is entirely determined by what people think. If they think the hazards are significant, because they hear alarming rhetoric, because the hazards actually are significant, or for any other reason, the value will reflect what they think. Regulations like the Price-Anderson Act[0] then formalize this value as insurance and construction and operational expenses, essentially defining many of the economics. [0] http://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_nuclear_liability_insurance.htm http://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_nuclear_liability_insu...

gozur88 10y ago

One of the reasons nuclear plants are so expensive to build is "citizen opposition and (somewhat unfair) demonisation of nuclear power". I'm all for making sure people who build and operate plants do so without cutting corners, but the US system makes it too easy to tie up a project for years with lawfare.