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I work in a Climate and Energy R&D group, so while I agree it would be great if nuclear power was resurrected (being safer and cleaner than any other form of po

I work in a Climate and Energy R&D group, so while I agree it would be great if nuclear power was resurrected (being safer and cleaner than any other form of power, solar included, despite its representation in the media), it very likely will never happen--purely for economic reasons. Ironically, it's wind and solar that finished off nuclear power. Renewable energy has high variability in supply, but sells power at zero marginal cost. That means grid demand becomes highly variable during the day. Nuclear (and coal) are both systems with high capital costs and very low marginal cost. To be cost competitive, they both need to produce power 90%+ of the time to amortize the initial capital. However, with the current variability in demand, they can't get anywhere close to 90% demand from the grid. This leaves a market opening for peaker plants with very low capital costs, notably natural gas and hydro in the US. Hydro is saturated, and combined with low-cost fuel due to the fracking boom, natural gas is exploding. Basically, the net result of wind/solar is actually a wash, from an environmental standpoint. That will get better with HVDC interconnects (reduces variability of wind), but in general it is not happy outcome.

pm90 8y ago
I hope you can answer a theoretical question I've had about Nuclear energy for a long time: if instead of stopping the construction of new Nuclear plants, the US had continued to build more of them, would that have lead to a decrease in capital costs and enough of a Nuclear Energy Ecosystem that it would be cost-competitive with Coal, if not with Renewables? Or are the costs of safety-measures the main cost center for building new reactors?
- beat 8y ago
  I find it helpful to look at how other countries handle nuclear, not just the US - particularly China and Russia, where "safety" and the usual fingerpointing about those treehugger liberal regulations simply don't apply. Did they scale out nuclear much more than we did? How much? With what technical innovations, if any? And if their nuclear ambitions, in the end, didn't come to a whole lot more than ours did... well, why not? It wasn't "regulation", so there must be other structural factors at work, which may or may not be the same as ours.
  - sheepmullet 8y ago
    China is still expanding nuclear capacity with ~20 new reactors under construction. They have not gone all in on nuclear and are exploring as many alternatives to coal as they can.
    - beat 8y ago
      China gets only 2% of its electricity from nuclear - a tenth of what the US accomplishes. New reactors will get them to 6%. This strongly suggests to me that environmental regulation is not the limiting factor.
      - sheepmullet 8y ago
        > This strongly suggests to me that environmental regulation is not the limiting factor. Why does it suggest that? China has only been seriously trying to cut back on coal for ~10 years. All it shows is that coal is cheaper than nuclear and that to a rapidly industrializing country cheap is more important than environmentally friendly. On the other hand the US is shutting down plants and decreasing overall capacity.
        beat 8y ago
        Yes, but... whenever reading discussions about nuclear power, I'm told over and over that the reason we don't have more nuclear is because of over-regulation and irrational environmentalism, not other factors - that if we weren't so regulated, it'd be cheap and easy to do. China, as you observed, has no qualms about "environmentally friendly", so according to America's nuclear proponents, China should have more nuclear than us, not less, since it's cheaper. This is not the case, ergo their argument is flawed.
        sheepmullet 8y ago
        > This is not the case, ergo their argument is flawed. Your argument doesn't really make sense. Nobody is arguing that nuclear is cheaper than dirty coal. Proponents argue that it's cheap and orders of magnitude more environmentally friendly than burning dirty coal. China is still very price conscious and are building out nuclear in an effort to reduce pollution - proving that the Chinese do believe nuclear can be done cheaply and safely.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Not really answering your question but, from the IEA the capital cost of a nuclear plant is about 50% higher than a coal fired one. Although cost overruns over the last 15-20 years points to that being maybe too generous. That would indicate that safety issues are only about half to a third the cost problem. Other problem is the long construction times. As the planning and construction time becomes a larger fraction of the payback time, the economics gets increasing bad. That's a problem for nuclear plants with 10-15 year construction time lines and 30 year payback. Compare with nat gas or solar plants with 2-5 year build outs. Worse nat gas plays back in 5-10 years.
- chris_va 8y ago
  If I had to guess, overly aggressive safety regulation adds about 50% to the cost. A lot of the cost is actually just in concrete (it is amazing how much concrete a nuclear plant uses), and concrete costs wouldn't have come down with volume. Even if you relaxed the safety regulations, natural gas has an edge with fracking.
  - wahern 8y ago
    The engineering and construction requirements are costly and burdensome, but I don't think that explains the insane costs. I think most of the market burden stems from the regulatory delay and uncertainty. That delay and uncertainty makes it impossible to quickly build plants, regardless of how stringent the engineering specifications. And if you can't quickly build one plant, you can't quickly build ten of them, and you lose the expertise and proficiency needed to build them cost-effectively. I remember reading an article about the South Korean nuclear industry. At their peak they could build a nuclear power plant quickly, on time, and on budget. Presumably these plants adhered to Western standards. Repetition built project management proficiency and a skilled, specialized workforce. Ultimately I don't blame the regulatory agencies, per se. I blame the mandate they've been given by a very fearful population. Industry doesn't know what will pass regulatory muster because the regulators are winging it because the public makes safety demands completely divorced from concrete science and engineering. My takeaway is that if you're going to regulate, you better be darned sure what, why, and how you're going to regulate. If you (i.e. Joe Public, Senator Smith) can't answer those questions, then regulation will prove disastrous. If you can answer those questions well than the true regulatory burden will quickly become apparent and industry will adjust accordingly or exit, without all the confusion, bickering, and wasted resources. It's like with GMOs: people against GMOs (or proposing strong oversight) can't articulate well why, how, or precisely which aspects of the industry they want to regulate. Which makes it easy for me to vote against propositions purporting to regulate the industry. A poorly articulated solution is no solution at all, and a poorly articulated problem is strong evidence there may not be any problem.
- ageofwant 8y ago
  The primary cost of nuclear plants are due to the hyper-over regulation of the industry. If the same risk-mitigation requirements were in place for coal power stations costs would be comparable. As it stands coal stations produce more nuclear waste than nuclear power plants https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Not really. Nuclear plants don’t scale down. The same factors putting coal plants out of business impact nuclear — cheap, flexible gas and renewables. With electricity, peak demand is king. It doesn’t make sense to build a billion dollar nuclear plant that isn’t needed except for August.
st26 8y ago
Wonder if HVDC could increase the viability of nuclear. Colorado, for example, despite plenty of space and nearby uranium mines, doesn't have nuclear- supposedly because there isn't demand for that much power! Nuclear seems to be one of those incredibly capital intensive projects where scale is king. If you could build one site as big as you wanted, wherever you wanted, that could sell every watt of power anywhere in the country- maybe that works a lot better for nuclear.

pm90 8y ago

I hope you can answer a theoretical question I've had about Nuclear energy for a long time: if instead of stopping the construction of new Nuclear plants, the US had continued to build more of them, would that have lead to a decrease in capital costs and enough of a Nuclear Energy Ecosystem that it would be cost-competitive with Coal, if not with Renewables? Or are the costs of safety-measures the main cost center for building new reactors?

beat 8y ago
I find it helpful to look at how other countries handle nuclear, not just the US - particularly China and Russia, where "safety" and the usual fingerpointing about those treehugger liberal regulations simply don't apply. Did they scale out nuclear much more than we did? How much? With what technical innovations, if any? And if their nuclear ambitions, in the end, didn't come to a whole lot more than ours did... well, why not? It wasn't "regulation", so there must be other structural factors at work, which may or may not be the same as ours.
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  China is still expanding nuclear capacity with ~20 new reactors under construction. They have not gone all in on nuclear and are exploring as many alternatives to coal as they can.
  - beat 8y ago
    China gets only 2% of its electricity from nuclear - a tenth of what the US accomplishes. New reactors will get them to 6%. This strongly suggests to me that environmental regulation is not the limiting factor.
    - sheepmullet 8y ago
      > This strongly suggests to me that environmental regulation is not the limiting factor. Why does it suggest that? China has only been seriously trying to cut back on coal for ~10 years. All it shows is that coal is cheaper than nuclear and that to a rapidly industrializing country cheap is more important than environmentally friendly. On the other hand the US is shutting down plants and decreasing overall capacity.
      - beat 8y ago
        Yes, but... whenever reading discussions about nuclear power, I'm told over and over that the reason we don't have more nuclear is because of over-regulation and irrational environmentalism, not other factors - that if we weren't so regulated, it'd be cheap and easy to do. China, as you observed, has no qualms about "environmentally friendly", so according to America's nuclear proponents, China should have more nuclear than us, not less, since it's cheaper. This is not the case, ergo their argument is flawed.
        sheepmullet 8y ago
        > This is not the case, ergo their argument is flawed. Your argument doesn't really make sense. Nobody is arguing that nuclear is cheaper than dirty coal. Proponents argue that it's cheap and orders of magnitude more environmentally friendly than burning dirty coal. China is still very price conscious and are building out nuclear in an effort to reduce pollution - proving that the Chinese do believe nuclear can be done cheaply and safely.
Gibbon1 8y ago
Not really answering your question but, from the IEA the capital cost of a nuclear plant is about 50% higher than a coal fired one. Although cost overruns over the last 15-20 years points to that being maybe too generous. That would indicate that safety issues are only about half to a third the cost problem. Other problem is the long construction times. As the planning and construction time becomes a larger fraction of the payback time, the economics gets increasing bad. That's a problem for nuclear plants with 10-15 year construction time lines and 30 year payback. Compare with nat gas or solar plants with 2-5 year build outs. Worse nat gas plays back in 5-10 years.
chris_va 8y ago
If I had to guess, overly aggressive safety regulation adds about 50% to the cost. A lot of the cost is actually just in concrete (it is amazing how much concrete a nuclear plant uses), and concrete costs wouldn't have come down with volume. Even if you relaxed the safety regulations, natural gas has an edge with fracking.
- wahern 8y ago
  The engineering and construction requirements are costly and burdensome, but I don't think that explains the insane costs. I think most of the market burden stems from the regulatory delay and uncertainty. That delay and uncertainty makes it impossible to quickly build plants, regardless of how stringent the engineering specifications. And if you can't quickly build one plant, you can't quickly build ten of them, and you lose the expertise and proficiency needed to build them cost-effectively. I remember reading an article about the South Korean nuclear industry. At their peak they could build a nuclear power plant quickly, on time, and on budget. Presumably these plants adhered to Western standards. Repetition built project management proficiency and a skilled, specialized workforce. Ultimately I don't blame the regulatory agencies, per se. I blame the mandate they've been given by a very fearful population. Industry doesn't know what will pass regulatory muster because the regulators are winging it because the public makes safety demands completely divorced from concrete science and engineering. My takeaway is that if you're going to regulate, you better be darned sure what, why, and how you're going to regulate. If you (i.e. Joe Public, Senator Smith) can't answer those questions, then regulation will prove disastrous. If you can answer those questions well than the true regulatory burden will quickly become apparent and industry will adjust accordingly or exit, without all the confusion, bickering, and wasted resources. It's like with GMOs: people against GMOs (or proposing strong oversight) can't articulate well why, how, or precisely which aspects of the industry they want to regulate. Which makes it easy for me to vote against propositions purporting to regulate the industry. A poorly articulated solution is no solution at all, and a poorly articulated problem is strong evidence there may not be any problem.
ageofwant 8y ago
The primary cost of nuclear plants are due to the hyper-over regulation of the industry. If the same risk-mitigation requirements were in place for coal power stations costs would be comparable. As it stands coal stations produce more nuclear waste than nuclear power plants https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
Spooky23 8y ago
Not really. Nuclear plants don’t scale down. The same factors putting coal plants out of business impact nuclear — cheap, flexible gas and renewables. With electricity, peak demand is king. It doesn’t make sense to build a billion dollar nuclear plant that isn’t needed except for August.

st26 8y ago

Wonder if HVDC could increase the viability of nuclear. Colorado, for example, despite plenty of space and nearby uranium mines, doesn't have nuclear- supposedly because there isn't demand for that much power! Nuclear seems to be one of those incredibly capital intensive projects where scale is king. If you could build one site as big as you wanted, wherever you wanted, that could sell every watt of power anywhere in the country- maybe that works a lot better for nuclear.