5 ms·
why does it take so much capital to build a nuke plant? Sounds like a regulatory problem.
by viggity 15y ago
why does it take so much capital to build a nuke plant? Sounds like a regulatory problem.
- brudgers 15y agoIt's more of a public health issue - analogous to building sewer systems and clean water supplies.
- grammaton 15y agoI really hope this was sarcasm. Plutonium is not cheap. Uranium is not cheap. Redundant safety systems are not cheap. Pressure proof concrete vessels are not cheap. Industrial grade power turbines, also not cheap. The list goes on and on.
- btilly 15y agoA lot of that expense is redundant safety systems, inspections, etc. Which cost is born because of regulation. Whether regulations like that are a problem or a solution is a source of endless debate depending on your political position. But given recent events in Japan, it is clear that we are headed for more regulation, not less.
- mkr-hn 15y agoI would hope they'd do most of that stuff in the absence of regulation.
- shadowfox 15y agoIs there a reason to believe they would?
- JackDanger 15y agoChernobyl proves that that's not a guarantee.
- btilly 15y agoA lot of people would hope that. However all available evidence suggests that people will and do cut corners until they get burned. And companies that refuse to do so will find themselves becoming less profitable than their less scrupulous competitors. The result is public pressure for regulation. Unfortunately economic theory and practice show that once an industry has come under regulation it becomes their priority to get control of that regulation. This process is called "regulatory capture" and inevitably succeeds. Once it has succeeded, the protections erode and the regulatory scheme is used to create barriers to entry for competitors. See the recent financial crisis for an example of this. Depending on your politics you are likely to think that one of these failure modes is a bigger deal than the other.
- mkr-hn 15y agoThe choice is often between a shaky regulatory structure and a melee between profit and common good. I usually prefer to take a chance on regulation unless someone comes up with a better option. Sometimes the third option of going to an industry and asking them to do something does work, but not always. I'd always try it first, but it's not always going to work, and the consequences of inaction can be pretty bad.
- anamax 15y ago> Plutonium is not cheap. Uranium is not cheap. Actually, they are, given the amount of energy that they contain. > Redundant safety systems are not cheap. Pressure proof concrete vessels are not cheap. Industrial grade power turbines, also not cheap. The list goes on and on. This line of "thinking" tells us to buy our dump trunks from Tonka, because Tonka's trucks are far less expensive than Caterpillars. (BTW - those items are a small fraction of the cost of a nuclear power plant. Add in the rest of what it takes to make power, safely control the plant, AND verify that you're doing so, and you're still at a small fraction of the cost of a plant.) One can't make sensible decisions by looking at costs xor benefits in isolation.
- olifante 15y agoah, the joy of libertarian thought. Let a thousand meltdowns bloom.
- pjscott 15y agoI'm not sure why you were downvoted, as your guess was exactly right. The regulatory system for nuclear power (in the US, anyway) is incredibly screwed up, in ways too numerous to list. Just the delays from the bottlenecked building approval process can cause plant construction to run up billions of dollars in loan interest while they're waiting for the red tape to clear. China is currently building CPR1000 plants cheaper than coal plants of the same capacity. These are not meltdown-prone clunkers; they are upgraded versions of French designs with a good safety record. They're also starting a buildup of Westinghouse AP1000 plants, built to the usual western standards of safety and redundancy, and they're doing it a lot cheaper than the US and Europe. We see similar things in South Korea, which gets a large portion of its energy from nuclear plants, and is now beginning to export them. Considering how much safer nuclear power is than coal, paranoid regulations are actually making us quite a bit less safe by crippling our ability to build nuclear plants.