4 ms·
Though falling prices would be intuitive, with nuclear that's been found to be false, both in the US and in France. Building subsequent versions of the same des
by epistasis 5y ago
Though falling prices would be intuitive, with nuclear that's been found to be false, both in the US and in France. Building subsequent versions of the same design increase in cost, rather than staying the same price or going down.
France: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
US: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
This is truly remarkable phenomenon that occurs with almost no other technology. And this happening in France rules out the possibility that it's merely increasing regulatory burden that causes increasing costs.
Those who want us to build new nuclear need to grapple with the issue of their cost if they want it to happen, yet I have not found a single nuclear advocate on HN that will acknowledge that these issues even exist, much less bother to propose some solution.
At least for the "safety" issues, we can have a discussion about how designs can mitigate that. But there also needs to be discussion on how design, workforce training, logistical management, or something can improve the construction issues.