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> There are so many deep dives into the failures at VC Summer now, and not a single one of them says there's some regulatory switch that could be flipped. Just

> There are so many deep dives into the failures at VC Summer now, and not a single one of them says there's some regulatory switch that could be flipped. Just last week the NRC shot down a VC funded reactor project citing inadequate documentation. I believe it was coverd here on HN. The issue isn't a magic switch, the issue is the whole regimen is impossible even for some of the world's largest companies, foreign or domestic, let alone a well funded startup. If you can't even get the NRC to certify an existing design for construction, how would you ever get a new one off the ground?

epistasis 5y ago
And the consensus among everyone with experience was that the rejection was a just one, they didn't bother documenting basic stuff that had been asked for. > If you can't even get the NRC to certify an existing design for construction, how would you ever get a new one off the ground? Im not sure what you are talking about here. I keep on bringing up the AP1000 design that was certified for construction in Vogtle and VC Summer, using a new certification process specifically requested by industry where they could start building earlier. Nobody is bothering to look at why these reactors failed construction, because it does not validate their pre-conceived notions about regulatory inhibition of nuclear. Fine, eliminate the NRC and all regulation of nuclear. What's going to be built? Nothing, because nobody can figure out how to to do it in the US, and no utility wants to take the financial risk because of our lack of basic construction capacity. Maybe Rosatom could bring in a construction crew, or we could contract with China, and somehow bring their methods to the US. But nobody is even suggesting that route to build new nuclear, they are hung up on false political battles rather than the true technical challenges. And even if we bring in outside design and construction management, how quickly can we scale that process? Not fast enough to even replace our current fleet of reactors before it ages out. The attempted "nuclear renaissance" that was attempted back in the mid-2000s has failed miserably, and people who claim to advocate for nuclear aren't even bothering to examine what went wrong or how to fix it. Which means that attempting nuclear again will have the same problem. SMRs are the next wave from actual nuclear entrepreneurs, but at least one of them has revealed themselves to be a sham, based on their inability to document standard parts of their design that everybody else can. The problem with nuclear is that there are far too many grifters in it. Most (but not all!) smart people have moved on to more promising tech, and the people left have not purged the dead weight, and the dead weight is killing projects, and killing the reputation.
- indymike 5y ago
  > The problem with nuclear is that there are far too many grifters in it. This is true.

epistasis 5y ago

And the consensus among everyone with experience was that the rejection was a just one, they didn't bother documenting basic stuff that had been asked for. > If you can't even get the NRC to certify an existing design for construction, how would you ever get a new one off the ground? Im not sure what you are talking about here. I keep on bringing up the AP1000 design that was certified for construction in Vogtle and VC Summer, using a new certification process specifically requested by industry where they could start building earlier. Nobody is bothering to look at why these reactors failed construction, because it does not validate their pre-conceived notions about regulatory inhibition of nuclear. Fine, eliminate the NRC and all regulation of nuclear. What's going to be built? Nothing, because nobody can figure out how to to do it in the US, and no utility wants to take the financial risk because of our lack of basic construction capacity. Maybe Rosatom could bring in a construction crew, or we could contract with China, and somehow bring their methods to the US. But nobody is even suggesting that route to build new nuclear, they are hung up on false political battles rather than the true technical challenges. And even if we bring in outside design and construction management, how quickly can we scale that process? Not fast enough to even replace our current fleet of reactors before it ages out. The attempted "nuclear renaissance" that was attempted back in the mid-2000s has failed miserably, and people who claim to advocate for nuclear aren't even bothering to examine what went wrong or how to fix it. Which means that attempting nuclear again will have the same problem. SMRs are the next wave from actual nuclear entrepreneurs, but at least one of them has revealed themselves to be a sham, based on their inability to document standard parts of their design that everybody else can. The problem with nuclear is that there are far too many grifters in it. Most (but not all!) smart people have moved on to more promising tech, and the people left have not purged the dead weight, and the dead weight is killing projects, and killing the reputation.

indymike 5y ago
> The problem with nuclear is that there are far too many grifters in it. This is true.