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France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to export that expertise. Nuclear power plan

France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to export that expertise. Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. The construction and large-engineering industries combined are vastly corrupt in the US (look at the 3 billion dollars planning costs of the unbuilt high speed rail project in California, look at the Big Dig in Boston, etc). In an ideal world, nuclear might be great. In the existing US world, it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Edit: found this text on the problems of standardization of nuclear power in the US. http://www.strategicstandards.com/files/NuclearEnergy.pdf http://www.strategicstandards.com/files/NuclearEnergy.pdf

vimy 5y ago
Not just France. 60 % of Belgian electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the green party has decided to shut them down and replace them with gas plants to “save the climate”. Green stupidity knows no boundaries.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  I don't get this logic. How does 100% reliance on Russian natural gas save anyone from anything? =) The current hike in electricity pricing is pretty much solely based on the fact that way too much of Europe's electricity is produced with Russian natural gas...
Manuel_D 5y ago
Ukraine and Slovakia both generate the majority of their electricity from nuclear [1]. South Korea and China area also building nuclear plants at a decent rate (though the former is adding a lot of fossil fuel capacity too). When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  South Korea had a run in with a ton of faked documentation and is essentially out of the game [1]. China likes to keep a finger in the nuclear jar for diversification but the current investments are minuscule, even though they look large from an outside raw numbers perspective. [2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#H... [2]: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annual-power-capacity-additions-in-china-in-the-announced-pledges-scenario-aps-2020-2060 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annua...
- magicalist 5y ago
  > When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower. As far as I know, there was never a time where US nuclear power plants were built on time and at budget (and that's while building more than France ever did).
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    During the 1970s, plants were built at 1-2 billion per GW of capacity: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301421516300106-gr2.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014215163001...
    - magicalist 5y ago
      They were still over budget and late, but that chart (which was created to try to claim all the overhead can largely be explained by regulatory changes) strongly argues against > When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower.
      - Manuel_D 5y ago
        See this cluster of power plants in the second half of the 1960 [1]? This is when lots of plants were built around the same time, leveraging economies of scale. All of those plants were built at less than $2 billion per gigawatt of capacity, most of them closer to $1B per GW. This is about an order of magnitude less than the one-off construction that's been done since then. 1. https://i.imgur.com/yKqGXyL.png https://i.imgur.com/yKqGXyL.png
panick21_ 5y ago
> Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. Only water cooled reactors really have that problem. Nuclear plants could be much smaller. But innovation has just done very badly. Nuclear scale, regulation is its own worst enemy and the social movements against it didn't help. In the US for a while they did nuclear right as well. Nuclear always does well if you actually build many in a row. Learning effects are massive in large projects. Look at any countries that build many nuclear plants, it always works. We could literally have had 100% green energy 40 years ago no problem. It was cheap coal that prevented that. We would be way better of having built nuclear. And Switzerland, Sweden and others have successful networks with nuclear that are very green. Also parts of Canada.
freeflight 5y ago
> France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. That really depends on your definition of "making it work". France's current nuclear fleet is already underfunded by several tens of billions [0] Now we have Marcon announcing "tens of billions" for new reactors, the first of which is supposed to go online over a decade from now, with presidential election coming up soon. Which begs the question; If France has so many spare tens of billions lying around to invest in nuclear, why don't they use those to cover already underfunded nuclear positions? [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP2KN https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP...
mabbo 5y ago
> France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Hello from Ontario, Canada! Have a look at the 'supply' tab of this page: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data. Most of our energy production is from nuclear. It works well, and is relative inexpensive and consistent (I mean, look at that graph, it's INSANELY consistent).
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
The USA, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and even Russia all had fairly successful nuclear power plant production businesses until they mostly stopped for political reasons -- Areva (France), GE, Mitsubishi, AECL, KEPCO, Westinghouse, etc built reactors are all over the world. China is still doing mostly foreign reactor designs but they have at least two companies that will probably be able to build wholly China-sourced plants in the 2030s. Sadly most of those stopped when the production knowledge and training and organizational maturity was getting much better. Point being that multiple countries and companies had very successful nuclear power programs, and they didn't collapse because of intrinsic failure of the industry but lack of political will. And as you note, overall large-scale construction in the US in general has turned into a dumpster fire regardless of what is being built due to stupid policies and no small amount of graft.
- akamaka 5y ago
  Canada didn’t stop building nuclear reactors because of political reasons. New reactors in Ontario were approved as recently as 2011, but the project was shelved because the costs were excessive.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  The first US nuclear build out stopped for economic reasons. The first wave of reactors had large cost and schedule overruns, the growth in demand for electric power suddenly moderated, and new competitors (non-utility cogeneration allowed by PURPA in 1978) entered the market.
Czarcasm 5y ago
Canada has the largest nuclear power station in the world [1], led the development of one of the most successful reactor designs [2], and continues to be a leader in nuclear fuel, steam generators, and nuclear waste management engineering [3]. Also, most of Ontario's power generation comes from nuclear. You can see the supply breakdown live here: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor [3] https://www.bwxt.com/about/business-units/bwxt-canada https://www.bwxt.com/about/business-units/bwxt-canada
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
Construction isn't corrupt, it's the government. In both those cases as well as the subway project in New York which has the highest cost per mile of any rail anywhere, it's all a slush fund for that political party.

vimy 5y ago

Not just France. 60 % of Belgian electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the green party has decided to shut them down and replace them with gas plants to “save the climate”. Green stupidity knows no boundaries.

theshrike79 5y ago
I don't get this logic. How does 100% reliance on Russian natural gas save anyone from anything? =) The current hike in electricity pricing is pretty much solely based on the fact that way too much of Europe's electricity is produced with Russian natural gas...

Manuel_D 5y ago

Ukraine and Slovakia both generate the majority of their electricity from nuclear [1]. South Korea and China area also building nuclear plants at a decent rate (though the former is adding a lot of fossil fuel capacity too). When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

Gwypaas 5y ago
South Korea had a run in with a ton of faked documentation and is essentially out of the game [1]. China likes to keep a finger in the nuclear jar for diversification but the current investments are minuscule, even though they look large from an outside raw numbers perspective. [2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#H... [2]: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annual-power-capacity-additions-in-china-in-the-announced-pledges-scenario-aps-2020-2060 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annua...
magicalist 5y ago
> When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower. As far as I know, there was never a time where US nuclear power plants were built on time and at budget (and that's while building more than France ever did).
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  During the 1970s, plants were built at 1-2 billion per GW of capacity: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301421516300106-gr2.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014215163001...
  - magicalist 5y ago
    They were still over budget and late, but that chart (which was created to try to claim all the overhead can largely be explained by regulatory changes) strongly argues against > When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      See this cluster of power plants in the second half of the 1960 [1]? This is when lots of plants were built around the same time, leveraging economies of scale. All of those plants were built at less than $2 billion per gigawatt of capacity, most of them closer to $1B per GW. This is about an order of magnitude less than the one-off construction that's been done since then. 1. https://i.imgur.com/yKqGXyL.png https://i.imgur.com/yKqGXyL.png

panick21_ 5y ago

> Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. Only water cooled reactors really have that problem. Nuclear plants could be much smaller. But innovation has just done very badly. Nuclear scale, regulation is its own worst enemy and the social movements against it didn't help. In the US for a while they did nuclear right as well. Nuclear always does well if you actually build many in a row. Learning effects are massive in large projects. Look at any countries that build many nuclear plants, it always works. We could literally have had 100% green energy 40 years ago no problem. It was cheap coal that prevented that. We would be way better of having built nuclear. And Switzerland, Sweden and others have successful networks with nuclear that are very green. Also parts of Canada.

freeflight 5y ago

> France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. That really depends on your definition of "making it work". France's current nuclear fleet is already underfunded by several tens of billions [0] Now we have Marcon announcing "tens of billions" for new reactors, the first of which is supposed to go online over a decade from now, with presidential election coming up soon. Which begs the question; If France has so many spare tens of billions lying around to invest in nuclear, why don't they use those to cover already underfunded nuclear positions? [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP2KN https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP...

mabbo 5y ago

> France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Hello from Ontario, Canada! Have a look at the 'supply' tab of this page: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data. Most of our energy production is from nuclear. It works well, and is relative inexpensive and consistent (I mean, look at that graph, it's INSANELY consistent).

reincarnate0x14 5y ago

The USA, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and even Russia all had fairly successful nuclear power plant production businesses until they mostly stopped for political reasons -- Areva (France), GE, Mitsubishi, AECL, KEPCO, Westinghouse, etc built reactors are all over the world. China is still doing mostly foreign reactor designs but they have at least two companies that will probably be able to build wholly China-sourced plants in the 2030s. Sadly most of those stopped when the production knowledge and training and organizational maturity was getting much better. Point being that multiple countries and companies had very successful nuclear power programs, and they didn't collapse because of intrinsic failure of the industry but lack of political will. And as you note, overall large-scale construction in the US in general has turned into a dumpster fire regardless of what is being built due to stupid policies and no small amount of graft.

akamaka 5y ago
Canada didn’t stop building nuclear reactors because of political reasons. New reactors in Ontario were approved as recently as 2011, but the project was shelved because the costs were excessive.
pfdietz 5y ago
The first US nuclear build out stopped for economic reasons. The first wave of reactors had large cost and schedule overruns, the growth in demand for electric power suddenly moderated, and new competitors (non-utility cogeneration allowed by PURPA in 1978) entered the market.

Czarcasm 5y ago

Canada has the largest nuclear power station in the world [1], led the development of one of the most successful reactor designs [2], and continues to be a leader in nuclear fuel, steam generators, and nuclear waste management engineering [3]. Also, most of Ontario's power generation comes from nuclear. You can see the supply breakdown live here: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor [3] https://www.bwxt.com/about/business-units/bwxt-canada https://www.bwxt.com/about/business-units/bwxt-canada

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

Construction isn't corrupt, it's the government. In both those cases as well as the subway project in New York which has the highest cost per mile of any rail anywhere, it's all a slush fund for that political party.