5 ms·

Many nuclear power-plant projects, conducted by experts, are way late and over-budget. See Olkiluoto, Flamanville. Many potential units are purely and simply

Many nuclear power-plant projects, conducted by experts, are way late and over-budget. See Olkiluoto, Flamanville. Many potential units are purely and simply cancelled because they are too financially risky (notwithstanding other risks) given the falling costs of solar and wind. The hot nuclear waste disposal challenge is not solved, wherever you check (France and the US, experts both are "in the process of solving it"... for the last 50 years!). Check the Yucca Mountain waste repo, a non-solution since 1978. Decommissioning costs are everywhere very probably largely underestimated because they explode as soon as a project begins. Check the UK case: UK discounted provision for decommission costs: £100+ billion in 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/23/britain-nuclear-atomic-clean-up-decommissioning https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/23/britain-... Then £161 billion in 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170516093449/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy https://web.archive.org/web/20170516093449/https://www.gov.u... Then £234 billion in 2018. Costs were so quickly exploding there is a new way to forecast, which dissimulates... err... is more... well... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision... Until now the taxpayer covers it, but our impoverished nations just cannot cope anymore. Moreover a small-scale reactor is difficult to protect (theft, terrorism, nuke (especially dirty weapons) proliferation...) Fukushima politically put the last nail in this coffin.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
The waste disposal problem has been solved at the Onkalo Nuclear Waste Repository in Finland. It's a deep geologic repository without the political fights associated with Yucca. Deep geologic repositories are basically a consensus solution now. Finns chose to solve the nuclear waste issue and did it. Fukushima killed up to 1 person from radiation. Meanwhile fossil is killing 4.3 million people per year via air pollution. If fossil had to pay for that health externality (not to mention climate change), then nuclear economics would look exceedingly more fantastic. Though it's true that nuclear builds need to get their act together to maintain relevance. Small reactors have less radioactive source in them and are proportionally less radiologically impactful than larger higher power reactors in the event of military/terrorist attack. Wind and solar are doing amazing. There is some serious worry that the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) will go below the level needed to sustain industrialized civilization once variable renewables are deployed at significant enough scale to require massive energy investment in "non-productive" equipment like batteries. For example, see this Nov 2019 paper on the topic [1]. EROI on solar PV is like 3-8. With massive storage it can dip below 3. Nuclear is like 50. I think a low-carbon future will have a whole lot of wind/solar and a whole lot of nuclear. Both industries can scale by 10x happily and we still will struggle with our climate issues. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1...
- natmaka 7y ago
  Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: waste is piling up nearby the plants. Deep geological repositories are given as the ultimate solution since the 1970's at least, and there is _NO_ exploited site. Cigéo/Bure (in France) is only a project. Yucca Mountain never ran and is halted. On a similar vein see the Superphenix financial and industrial disaster. It was a french project, aiming at (there were other objectives) reusing waste and enriched uranium, and the French know about nuclear power. Net result: 60 billion French Francs lost. There is NO currently exploited solution for all the waste. No real breeder, no repository, nothing. This is Huge Establishment mismanagement at its best. > The integral molten salt reactor has these advantages and > should be comercialy available wothin 10 years. Molten-salt reactor R&D started in the 1960's, and stopped 30 years later. AFAIK with some complication and no industrial application(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment... I'm sorry to repeat myself, but there is no present and current solution. Promises are fun, and the nuke sector is prone to them, see the waste management farce resumed above. See also the nuclear fusion joke, periodically presented as the ultimate solution nearly every year... since 1940... and counting (mainly taxpayer's money for costly research). > I don't buy that waste is a serious problem Central administrations (in France, the US...) consider them to be a problem, even if most of them are pro-nuke. There must be something here. A tiny amount of hot waste reaching a phreatic zone, for example, is a very, very serious concern. > If your only point of comparison is 60 year old computers > you might argue that computers will never be economical to use. The quest for perfectly sure nuke plant, and for a sure way to manage waste (especially hot) started at the very least 50 years ago. > The waste disposal problem has been solved at the Onkalo Nuclear Waste Repository in Finland. It is "the first such repository in the world for high level waste, and currently under construction". It may start in 2023. This means that it is the most advanced project (it began in 1983, building began in 2004), but not yet in operation, and already under scientific criticism (copper capsules corrosion). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... Concise version: nuke plants are vomiting hot stuff for decades and a potential and very local solution (AFAIK it is not intended to store US, French or other waste) may start in 4 years. Who thinks that this is adequately managed? > Fukushima killed up to 1 person from radiation. This is some official thesis, there huge scandals tied to many official theories about this disaster, and also much more stern counter-theories. AFAIK nobody knows for sure because the amount of dead/sick persons or animals, and various cleanup costs, may only be known when the last contaminated particle which escaped will be inert. No expert judges that we can neglect those particles, therefore they probably aren't innocuous and huge efforts are made trying to clean up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup Many are now in the ocean. Some of it inducing solid cancers, which develops after 10+ years. > Meanwhile fossil is killing 4.3 million people per year via air pollution. Indeed, however tt doesn't imply nuke plants are a necessity, we have ways (solar, wind...), we may save energy, research to be able to obtain better ways to store it... Nuke distracts resources from those less dangerous and more realistic approaches which, moreover, are progressing impressively (efficiency up, total cost down, more and more effective deployments...) > Small reactors have less radioactive source in them and are proportionally less radiologically impactful than larger higher power reactors in the event of military/terrorist attack. Most of the existing ones use highly enriched uranium, and such material falling in the wrong hands will have effects quickly leading you to radically change your mind about this. > Wind and solar are doing amazing. ((...)) require massive energy investment in"non-productive" equipment like batteries Indeed, and this is a reason to invest into R&D on energy-saving, efficiency, energy storage... instead of pouring even more billions into already-explored dead-ends.
andbberger 7y ago
The past is a good predictor of the future... until it isn't. Extremely drastic change is needed to avert climate emergencies. How much of the problems you discuss go away when the red tape has been cut? I don't buy that waste is a serious problem. The US treats all secondary waste as if it's red hot. And as I said above, all extant reactor designs are decades old. If your only point of comparison is 60 year old computers using 10s of kilowatts, you might argue that computers will never be economical to use. Yet smartphone CPUs have a TDP of what, one watt? > Until now the taxpayer covers it, but our impoverished nations just cannot cope anymore. Our nations have plenty of money it's just all concentrated at the very top. We used to fund advanced reactor projects [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
- Krasnol 7y ago
  > Extremely drastic change is needed to avert climate emergencies. Good, than nuclear is nothing we have to think about because it's construction times are ridiculously long while renewable energy is getting better and cheaper rapidly. > Our nations have plenty of money it's just all concentrated at the very top. We used to fund advanced reactor projects [1] We've been throwing ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money on that for decades. Show is over. Time to give the money to technologies of the future not ones of the past. Even France sees this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astrid/france-drops-plans-to-build-sodium-cooled-nuclear-reactor-idUSKCN1VK0MC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astri...
  - natmaka 7y ago
    France, often cited as a sound nuke-advocate (world tally: second nation in raw amount of grid electricity produced by nuclear plants, and first by the part of it) is in fact... ... escaping from it! A law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") states that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it. 2 years later the government (lacking funds and unable to cope) reported it to 2025, then 2 years later to 2035 ("programmation pluriannuelle de l'énergie"). However the political and strategical orientation is perfectly clear, just don't believe France is on the nuke camp.
xorfish 7y ago
A recator that can be passively cooled and operates at atmosphere pressure will not have the problems of these big reactors. A small design that can be produced in a factory will make the cost reasonable and preictable. The integral molten salt reactor has these advantages and should be comercialy available wothin 10 years.
- bildung 7y ago
  These things usually take way longer than 10 years. There are MSR projects (not your proposed small variant) happening since the sixties. China startet multiple new projects about 10 years ago and currently estimating it will take at least another 10 years. The EU suspects it will take 30 years from now. https://www.thmsr.com/en/challenges/ https://www.thmsr.com/en/challenges/
  - xorfish 7y ago
    I don't think it is unreasonable, they already passed some regulatory steps and want to build a fairly simple reactor.
brnt 7y ago
Waste disposal has been solved, which doesn't mean new processes and locations aren't being developes. See Urenco. Finland and the US refuse to recycle, which makes their need for very special storage even greater. But France and most of Europe use Urenco.

acidburnNSA 7y ago

The waste disposal problem has been solved at the Onkalo Nuclear Waste Repository in Finland. It's a deep geologic repository without the political fights associated with Yucca. Deep geologic repositories are basically a consensus solution now. Finns chose to solve the nuclear waste issue and did it. Fukushima killed up to 1 person from radiation. Meanwhile fossil is killing 4.3 million people per year via air pollution. If fossil had to pay for that health externality (not to mention climate change), then nuclear economics would look exceedingly more fantastic. Though it's true that nuclear builds need to get their act together to maintain relevance. Small reactors have less radioactive source in them and are proportionally less radiologically impactful than larger higher power reactors in the event of military/terrorist attack. Wind and solar are doing amazing. There is some serious worry that the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) will go below the level needed to sustain industrialized civilization once variable renewables are deployed at significant enough scale to require massive energy investment in "non-productive" equipment like batteries. For example, see this Nov 2019 paper on the topic [1]. EROI on solar PV is like 3-8. With massive storage it can dip below 3. Nuclear is like 50. I think a low-carbon future will have a whole lot of wind/solar and a whole lot of nuclear. Both industries can scale by 10x happily and we still will struggle with our climate issues. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1...

natmaka 7y ago
Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: waste is piling up nearby the plants. Deep geological repositories are given as the ultimate solution since the 1970's at least, and there is _NO_ exploited site. Cigéo/Bure (in France) is only a project. Yucca Mountain never ran and is halted. On a similar vein see the Superphenix financial and industrial disaster. It was a french project, aiming at (there were other objectives) reusing waste and enriched uranium, and the French know about nuclear power. Net result: 60 billion French Francs lost. There is NO currently exploited solution for all the waste. No real breeder, no repository, nothing. This is Huge Establishment mismanagement at its best. > The integral molten salt reactor has these advantages and > should be comercialy available wothin 10 years. Molten-salt reactor R&D started in the 1960's, and stopped 30 years later. AFAIK with some complication and no industrial application(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment... I'm sorry to repeat myself, but there is no present and current solution. Promises are fun, and the nuke sector is prone to them, see the waste management farce resumed above. See also the nuclear fusion joke, periodically presented as the ultimate solution nearly every year... since 1940... and counting (mainly taxpayer's money for costly research). > I don't buy that waste is a serious problem Central administrations (in France, the US...) consider them to be a problem, even if most of them are pro-nuke. There must be something here. A tiny amount of hot waste reaching a phreatic zone, for example, is a very, very serious concern. > If your only point of comparison is 60 year old computers > you might argue that computers will never be economical to use. The quest for perfectly sure nuke plant, and for a sure way to manage waste (especially hot) started at the very least 50 years ago. > The waste disposal problem has been solved at the Onkalo Nuclear Waste Repository in Finland. It is "the first such repository in the world for high level waste, and currently under construction". It may start in 2023. This means that it is the most advanced project (it began in 1983, building began in 2004), but not yet in operation, and already under scientific criticism (copper capsules corrosion). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... Concise version: nuke plants are vomiting hot stuff for decades and a potential and very local solution (AFAIK it is not intended to store US, French or other waste) may start in 4 years. Who thinks that this is adequately managed? > Fukushima killed up to 1 person from radiation. This is some official thesis, there huge scandals tied to many official theories about this disaster, and also much more stern counter-theories. AFAIK nobody knows for sure because the amount of dead/sick persons or animals, and various cleanup costs, may only be known when the last contaminated particle which escaped will be inert. No expert judges that we can neglect those particles, therefore they probably aren't innocuous and huge efforts are made trying to clean up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup Many are now in the ocean. Some of it inducing solid cancers, which develops after 10+ years. > Meanwhile fossil is killing 4.3 million people per year via air pollution. Indeed, however tt doesn't imply nuke plants are a necessity, we have ways (solar, wind...), we may save energy, research to be able to obtain better ways to store it... Nuke distracts resources from those less dangerous and more realistic approaches which, moreover, are progressing impressively (efficiency up, total cost down, more and more effective deployments...) > Small reactors have less radioactive source in them and are proportionally less radiologically impactful than larger higher power reactors in the event of military/terrorist attack. Most of the existing ones use highly enriched uranium, and such material falling in the wrong hands will have effects quickly leading you to radically change your mind about this. > Wind and solar are doing amazing. ((...)) require massive energy investment in"non-productive" equipment like batteries Indeed, and this is a reason to invest into R&D on energy-saving, efficiency, energy storage... instead of pouring even more billions into already-explored dead-ends.

andbberger 7y ago

The past is a good predictor of the future... until it isn't. Extremely drastic change is needed to avert climate emergencies. How much of the problems you discuss go away when the red tape has been cut? I don't buy that waste is a serious problem. The US treats all secondary waste as if it's red hot. And as I said above, all extant reactor designs are decades old. If your only point of comparison is 60 year old computers using 10s of kilowatts, you might argue that computers will never be economical to use. Yet smartphone CPUs have a TDP of what, one watt? > Until now the taxpayer covers it, but our impoverished nations just cannot cope anymore. Our nations have plenty of money it's just all concentrated at the very top. We used to fund advanced reactor projects [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment

Krasnol 7y ago
> Extremely drastic change is needed to avert climate emergencies. Good, than nuclear is nothing we have to think about because it's construction times are ridiculously long while renewable energy is getting better and cheaper rapidly. > Our nations have plenty of money it's just all concentrated at the very top. We used to fund advanced reactor projects [1] We've been throwing ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money on that for decades. Show is over. Time to give the money to technologies of the future not ones of the past. Even France sees this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astrid/france-drops-plans-to-build-sodium-cooled-nuclear-reactor-idUSKCN1VK0MC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astri...
- natmaka 7y ago
  France, often cited as a sound nuke-advocate (world tally: second nation in raw amount of grid electricity produced by nuclear plants, and first by the part of it) is in fact... ... escaping from it! A law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") states that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it. 2 years later the government (lacking funds and unable to cope) reported it to 2025, then 2 years later to 2035 ("programmation pluriannuelle de l'énergie"). However the political and strategical orientation is perfectly clear, just don't believe France is on the nuke camp.

xorfish 7y ago

A recator that can be passively cooled and operates at atmosphere pressure will not have the problems of these big reactors. A small design that can be produced in a factory will make the cost reasonable and preictable. The integral molten salt reactor has these advantages and should be comercialy available wothin 10 years.

bildung 7y ago
These things usually take way longer than 10 years. There are MSR projects (not your proposed small variant) happening since the sixties. China startet multiple new projects about 10 years ago and currently estimating it will take at least another 10 years. The EU suspects it will take 30 years from now. https://www.thmsr.com/en/challenges/ https://www.thmsr.com/en/challenges/
- xorfish 7y ago
  I don't think it is unreasonable, they already passed some regulatory steps and want to build a fairly simple reactor.

brnt 7y ago

Waste disposal has been solved, which doesn't mean new processes and locations aren't being developes. See Urenco. Finland and the US refuse to recycle, which makes their need for very special storage even greater. But France and most of Europe use Urenco.