8 ms·

Policy will is one obstacle, but high costs are the main factor. Compared to new gas plants, new nuclear plants are extremely expensive. Look at the debacle in

Policy will is one obstacle, but high costs are the main factor. Compared to new gas plants, new nuclear plants are extremely expensive. Look at the debacle in South Carolina and you can clearly see: new nuclear is not working (outside China). Old nuclear is still a huge portion of the carbon-free electric grid in parts of the USA and Europe, especially in other countries like France. I do believe that if carbon were taxed based on its negative effects, nuclear would get the much-needed economic re-conception that allows it to proliferate. It can and should be a climate solution, alongside batteries and renewables.

akvadrako 8y ago
I suspect much of the high costs are largely due to the policy factor. We should be able to build plants much more cheaply than 50 years ago.
- dotancohen 8y ago
  Actually plants are much more expensive now. I won't go into the different types of plants that are built today vs. the 1960s, but modern safety features and materials have a price.
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    Aren’t modern safety features a policy decision? The old plants were already one of the safest forms of energy available - so by making nuclear safer it’s making us all less safe.
- hwillis 8y ago
  > We should be able to build plants much more cheaply than 50 years ago. Negatory- access to heavy industry is far more constrained in the US than it used to be. Nuclear plants require huge forges, which are now nearly unavailable in the US. The ones that still exist[1] are used for aircraft and military purposes. In short the increasing size, popularity and profit in large/high performance (fighter jet spars) aircraft has driven the price of the heaviest industry up much higher in the US. It's a double whammy because heavy industry abroad is also kind of meh, and the complications of shipping cause month or year delays in construction that are incredibly expensive. IMO the best way to combat this is with small modular reactors, but advanced nuclear is not that. Still, it is better in a number of ways. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program
  - manfredo 8y ago
    How does the Navy acquire nuclear powerplants for their vessels? I assume maritime powerplants are much smaller.
    - supergarfield 8y ago
      Maritime power plants are tiny, but they typically require much more enriched uranium, which is frowned upon for civilian programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Differences_from_land_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Diff...
      - akvadrako 8y ago
        Which is another policy decision - we could allow civilian plants with richer fuel.
        btilly 8y ago
        The closer civilian fuel is to weapons grade, the easier it is to convert civilian fuel into bombs. I like the current policy.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - mjevans 8y ago
        Why not have a branch of the military / DoE run plants for power production? Or at least provide security at the plants and clearances for working at them?
    - adventured 8y ago
      There's a mash of entities involved, including numerous contractors, the Department of Energy, etc. Bettis Atomic Power Labs for example has been run since 2008 by Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corp., under the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. Westinghouse previously ran it for 50 years until 1998. https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/missions/powering-navy https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/missions/powering-navy
nickik 8y ago
Its not just in China that you can build cost effective nuclear. There are other places as well. South Korea for example has shown itself very effective. The problem in the US is that there is only so few builds, these large projects can only be effective if you 'mass' produce these buildings so people have done it before. Actually it was looking good for building many new plants in 2007 but sadly it all collapsed because of cheap gas and the financial crisis.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  China has scaled back its plans for nuclear plants, in part perhaps because even in China the cost and risk profile of nuclear vs renewables seems to demand a reexamination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
  - nickik 8y ago
    They have scaled it back somewhat but it is still a huge program and they are developing many types of reactors and also buy many types of reactors at the same time. The difference is that china is totally happy with continuing to use massive amount of coal and other things for baseload power. While it is true that they are investing massively in renewables, specially in the places it makes sense, they also are building nuclear plants and coal plants. In the west we aim to reduce the number of coal plants, and that is very much harder with renewables.
dmfdmf 8y ago
> Compared to new gas plants, new nuclear plants are extremely expensive. This was an explicit policy of the enviros to stop nuclear construction back in the 80's and 90's. The NRC had a separate license to build then operate a plant. The enviros could not stop the licensing but tied up the license to operate in endless lawsuits and killed a number of projects. It was the licensing delays, not actual construction costs, that killed nuclear in the USA. Power utility CEOs stopped ordering plants when the path to licensed operation was blocked and could add 100's of millions of unknown costs in delays and lawsuits. I think the NRC later revised the process to stream-line licensing and minimize the risks but no private utility is willing to go first. The enviros have threatened to sue the NRC if they use the new license process and tie that up in court. There had been talk of the TVA or some other govt utility going first but I have not heard of that lately.
- davidf18 8y ago
  I don't understand why environmentalists would prefer carbon-based fuel greenhouse gas power plants over nuclear. Does that make any sense to anyone? I wish some major journalist would ask this question and get an appropriate response.
- skybrian 8y ago
  That might make sense as long as "streamlining" doesn't also involve subsidies for things like catastrophe insurance. Would nuclear be cost-effective without subsidies?
mempko 8y ago
Nuclear power is supported by many climate scientists. I think technically it's a fantastic solution. However, I don't think it's a great socio-economic solution and the costs if we fail to deal with climate change may be too high. Let me explain. Earlier this year a nuclear power plant in Finland had to reduce capacity because the sea waters got too warm. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-fortum-oyj/warm-sea-water-in-finland-caused-capacity-reduction-in-loviisa-nuclear-plant-idUSKBN1KF2CO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-fortum-oy... This is one example where climate change may make it difficult to operate nuclear power plants. Another is that the seas are rising and storms are getting slower which results in more flooding. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/14/florence-climate-change-triple-threat https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/14/floren... These together make operating nuclear power plants difficult. The last threat is that if we reach the tipping point, we will likely be facing a world where nation states start failing, including our own. Nuclear power plants take decades to decommission and the question is, who will maintain and decommission these things when humanity is faced with much more pressing concerns like maintaining organized human life. The tipping point is a real concern among scientists. The IPCC recommends policy makers take the real possibility of a tipping point into account and I think questions like "How do we deal with nuclear power plants as nation-states fail" should be taken seriously. https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-2-3.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-2... Prominent members in our field like Alan Kay also wrote about tipping points in a report for the NSF Transitions and Tipping Points in Complex Environmental Systems https://www.nsf.gov/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/nsf6895_ere_report_090809.pdf https://www.nsf.gov/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/nsf6895_ere_report_090... I'm not a pessimist but a realist. I think it's utopian to not address the concerns of climate scientists and really smart people in our field when making policy decisions, and this includes nuclear.
- renjimen 8y ago
  Thanks for the thought provoking points! It must be strange to plan for the end of civilisation as we know it when constructing one of the crowning achievements of mankind. Very sobering.
- hansthehorse 8y ago
gonvaled 8y ago
Factor in CO2 costs, indeed. Factor in also nuclear waste disposal costs. It is not fair to leave that to the tax payer. Taking all that into account, nuclear may not be cost effective.
smsm42 8y ago
I think one of major reasons why new nuclear is so hard is NIMBYism and irrational fear of "radiation". People discount known risks and exaggerate new ones, so risks from coal are ignored (even if statistically they are more serious) and risks from very rare nuclear issues may lead whole countries to just ban nuclear energetics altogether. Unfortunately, I don't see a good solution to it - with more environmentally-conscious countries swearing off nuclear, all living nuclear stations remain in less environmentally-conscious ones, which will increase the number of issues, which will reinforce the idea that nuclear energy is too dangerous.
- hwillis 8y ago
  There's almost no reason to think this is accurate. The problem is not that people vote down nuclear proposals or protest them so aggressively that they cause delays. There isn't enough money in it and very few funds are willing to invest in 50 year terms for power plants.
  - jackconnor 8y ago
    This is, in fact, 100% accurate: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/11/nuclear-power-radiation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/11/nuclear-... It's not that radiation can't ever be harmful, it's that the safeguards and regulations, when followed, make it way less harmful to either neighbors or the environment than coal, which is disgusting and incredibly unhealthy.
- jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
  >and irrational fear of "radiation" Radiation is very harmful, and very real. You don't get nuclear power without it. Nothing irrational about the fear of radiation.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    You don't get X-rays without radiation, either. For that matter, you don't get sunshine without radiation. The problem with fear of radiation is that all radiation gets dumped under that label, without any nuance as to the amount or kind. A properly-operating nuclear plant will emit radiation, but in amounts that should be less than the background levels. A failing nuclear plant can emit catastrophic amounts. The two really need to be in two different categories in peoples' minds, because they are not similar at all.
cm2187 8y ago
But as the article points out, a lot of that cost is regulation led, having to comply with ever changing regulations in the middle of a project is what creeps up costs, like changing specs in the middle of a weapon program. Give nuclear energy scale and stability of regulation and it may have a chance to be economical.
DennisP 8y ago
Yes but the point of this law is to support advanced nuclear R&D, and some of the GenIV designs look very economical; in particular, the simpler molten salt designs. They're really a completely different technology than conventional reactors.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
One of the problems is that every time a carbon tax is proposed its a tax on consumers, rather than carbon producers. Any tax should come on those who are pulling the carbon out of the earth and selling it to others, not the end-user. To make matters worse, drillers and other carbon-related corporations are, in many cases, currently receiving tax subsidies (tax holidays on public-land drilling among other things). A good first step would be passing a law that banned subsidies for carbon-producing industries before we propose taxing the end-user, which has a disproportionate impact on those least able to afford it.

akvadrako 8y ago

I suspect much of the high costs are largely due to the policy factor. We should be able to build plants much more cheaply than 50 years ago.

dotancohen 8y ago
Actually plants are much more expensive now. I won't go into the different types of plants that are built today vs. the 1960s, but modern safety features and materials have a price.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  Aren’t modern safety features a policy decision? The old plants were already one of the safest forms of energy available - so by making nuclear safer it’s making us all less safe.
hwillis 8y ago
> We should be able to build plants much more cheaply than 50 years ago. Negatory- access to heavy industry is far more constrained in the US than it used to be. Nuclear plants require huge forges, which are now nearly unavailable in the US. The ones that still exist[1] are used for aircraft and military purposes. In short the increasing size, popularity and profit in large/high performance (fighter jet spars) aircraft has driven the price of the heaviest industry up much higher in the US. It's a double whammy because heavy industry abroad is also kind of meh, and the complications of shipping cause month or year delays in construction that are incredibly expensive. IMO the best way to combat this is with small modular reactors, but advanced nuclear is not that. Still, it is better in a number of ways. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program
- manfredo 8y ago
  How does the Navy acquire nuclear powerplants for their vessels? I assume maritime powerplants are much smaller.
  - supergarfield 8y ago
    Maritime power plants are tiny, but they typically require much more enriched uranium, which is frowned upon for civilian programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Differences_from_land_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Diff...
    - akvadrako 8y ago
      Which is another policy decision - we could allow civilian plants with richer fuel.
      - btilly 8y ago
        The closer civilian fuel is to weapons grade, the easier it is to convert civilian fuel into bombs. I like the current policy.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - mjevans 8y ago
      Why not have a branch of the military / DoE run plants for power production? Or at least provide security at the plants and clearances for working at them?
  - adventured 8y ago
    There's a mash of entities involved, including numerous contractors, the Department of Energy, etc. Bettis Atomic Power Labs for example has been run since 2008 by Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corp., under the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. Westinghouse previously ran it for 50 years until 1998. https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/missions/powering-navy https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/missions/powering-navy

nickik 8y ago

Its not just in China that you can build cost effective nuclear. There are other places as well. South Korea for example has shown itself very effective. The problem in the US is that there is only so few builds, these large projects can only be effective if you 'mass' produce these buildings so people have done it before. Actually it was looking good for building many new plants in 2007 but sadly it all collapsed because of cheap gas and the financial crisis.

dv_dt 8y ago
China has scaled back its plans for nuclear plants, in part perhaps because even in China the cost and risk profile of nuclear vs renewables seems to demand a reexamination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
- nickik 8y ago
  They have scaled it back somewhat but it is still a huge program and they are developing many types of reactors and also buy many types of reactors at the same time. The difference is that china is totally happy with continuing to use massive amount of coal and other things for baseload power. While it is true that they are investing massively in renewables, specially in the places it makes sense, they also are building nuclear plants and coal plants. In the west we aim to reduce the number of coal plants, and that is very much harder with renewables.

dmfdmf 8y ago

> Compared to new gas plants, new nuclear plants are extremely expensive. This was an explicit policy of the enviros to stop nuclear construction back in the 80's and 90's. The NRC had a separate license to build then operate a plant. The enviros could not stop the licensing but tied up the license to operate in endless lawsuits and killed a number of projects. It was the licensing delays, not actual construction costs, that killed nuclear in the USA. Power utility CEOs stopped ordering plants when the path to licensed operation was blocked and could add 100's of millions of unknown costs in delays and lawsuits. I think the NRC later revised the process to stream-line licensing and minimize the risks but no private utility is willing to go first. The enviros have threatened to sue the NRC if they use the new license process and tie that up in court. There had been talk of the TVA or some other govt utility going first but I have not heard of that lately.

davidf18 8y ago
I don't understand why environmentalists would prefer carbon-based fuel greenhouse gas power plants over nuclear. Does that make any sense to anyone? I wish some major journalist would ask this question and get an appropriate response.
skybrian 8y ago
That might make sense as long as "streamlining" doesn't also involve subsidies for things like catastrophe insurance. Would nuclear be cost-effective without subsidies?

mempko 8y ago

Nuclear power is supported by many climate scientists. I think technically it's a fantastic solution. However, I don't think it's a great socio-economic solution and the costs if we fail to deal with climate change may be too high. Let me explain. Earlier this year a nuclear power plant in Finland had to reduce capacity because the sea waters got too warm. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-fortum-oyj/warm-sea-water-in-finland-caused-capacity-reduction-in-loviisa-nuclear-plant-idUSKBN1KF2CO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-fortum-oy... This is one example where climate change may make it difficult to operate nuclear power plants. Another is that the seas are rising and storms are getting slower which results in more flooding. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/14/florence-climate-change-triple-threat https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/14/floren... These together make operating nuclear power plants difficult. The last threat is that if we reach the tipping point, we will likely be facing a world where nation states start failing, including our own. Nuclear power plants take decades to decommission and the question is, who will maintain and decommission these things when humanity is faced with much more pressing concerns like maintaining organized human life. The tipping point is a real concern among scientists. The IPCC recommends policy makers take the real possibility of a tipping point into account and I think questions like "How do we deal with nuclear power plants as nation-states fail" should be taken seriously. https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-2-3.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-2... Prominent members in our field like Alan Kay also wrote about tipping points in a report for the NSF Transitions and Tipping Points in Complex Environmental Systems https://www.nsf.gov/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/nsf6895_ere_report_090809.pdf https://www.nsf.gov/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/nsf6895_ere_report_090... I'm not a pessimist but a realist. I think it's utopian to not address the concerns of climate scientists and really smart people in our field when making policy decisions, and this includes nuclear.

renjimen 8y ago
Thanks for the thought provoking points! It must be strange to plan for the end of civilisation as we know it when constructing one of the crowning achievements of mankind. Very sobering.
hansthehorse 8y ago

gonvaled 8y ago

Factor in CO2 costs, indeed. Factor in also nuclear waste disposal costs. It is not fair to leave that to the tax payer. Taking all that into account, nuclear may not be cost effective.

smsm42 8y ago

I think one of major reasons why new nuclear is so hard is NIMBYism and irrational fear of "radiation". People discount known risks and exaggerate new ones, so risks from coal are ignored (even if statistically they are more serious) and risks from very rare nuclear issues may lead whole countries to just ban nuclear energetics altogether. Unfortunately, I don't see a good solution to it - with more environmentally-conscious countries swearing off nuclear, all living nuclear stations remain in less environmentally-conscious ones, which will increase the number of issues, which will reinforce the idea that nuclear energy is too dangerous.

hwillis 8y ago
There's almost no reason to think this is accurate. The problem is not that people vote down nuclear proposals or protest them so aggressively that they cause delays. There isn't enough money in it and very few funds are willing to invest in 50 year terms for power plants.
- jackconnor 8y ago
  This is, in fact, 100% accurate: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/11/nuclear-power-radiation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/11/nuclear-... It's not that radiation can't ever be harmful, it's that the safeguards and regulations, when followed, make it way less harmful to either neighbors or the environment than coal, which is disgusting and incredibly unhealthy.
jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
>and irrational fear of "radiation" Radiation is very harmful, and very real. You don't get nuclear power without it. Nothing irrational about the fear of radiation.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  You don't get X-rays without radiation, either. For that matter, you don't get sunshine without radiation. The problem with fear of radiation is that all radiation gets dumped under that label, without any nuance as to the amount or kind. A properly-operating nuclear plant will emit radiation, but in amounts that should be less than the background levels. A failing nuclear plant can emit catastrophic amounts. The two really need to be in two different categories in peoples' minds, because they are not similar at all.

cm2187 8y ago

But as the article points out, a lot of that cost is regulation led, having to comply with ever changing regulations in the middle of a project is what creeps up costs, like changing specs in the middle of a weapon program. Give nuclear energy scale and stability of regulation and it may have a chance to be economical.

DennisP 8y ago

Yes but the point of this law is to support advanced nuclear R&D, and some of the GenIV designs look very economical; in particular, the simpler molten salt designs. They're really a completely different technology than conventional reactors.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago

One of the problems is that every time a carbon tax is proposed its a tax on consumers, rather than carbon producers. Any tax should come on those who are pulling the carbon out of the earth and selling it to others, not the end-user. To make matters worse, drillers and other carbon-related corporations are, in many cases, currently receiving tax subsidies (tax holidays on public-land drilling among other things). A good first step would be passing a law that banned subsidies for carbon-producing industries before we propose taxing the end-user, which has a disproportionate impact on those least able to afford it.