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Nuclear hasn't, but WHY is very interesting. And the answer seems to be because there's a DOE regulation that says that the risk of death from nuclear power mus

Nuclear hasn't, but WHY is very interesting. And the answer seems to be because there's a DOE regulation that says that the risk of death from nuclear power must be "As Low As Reasonably Achievable". In practice, this means that if nuclear power is cheaper than the alternatives, then you could be spending more on safety for the same price as its alternatives (never mind that nuclear is already safer than the alternatives), and so the price of nuclear goes up. And since this feedback loop is regulator-powered, there's a chance for them to go too far in the direction of "expensive safety" and make nuclear economically unreasonable and never recover. Which it did. https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop is a pretty interesting article.

pfdietz 5y ago
In fact, the NRC uses a cost/life of $9M when evaluating if new nuclear safety equipment is needed. ALARA includes "R" for "reasonably".
- laverya 5y ago
  > NRC uses a cost/life of $9M when evaluating if new nuclear safety equipment is needed. How much cost has been added to nuclear projects due to additional safety requirements? I think it's plausible to say "over 9 billion", as an extremely conservative estimate. Would you object to this? (That's the cost overrun for just one reactor, for context) If so, that means that those additional safety regulations have reduced nuclear deaths in the US by at least 1000 deaths. This does not seem plausible to me, as the worst case for a meltdown in the US with 70s-era designs is not "Chernobyl style uncontained accident" but instead something rather close to Fukushima or 3 Mile Island, purely due to containment structures. Given how many people died from radiation in the wake of Fukushima (literally one - and less than 100 estimated in the counterfactual scenario where there was no evacuation) and 3-Mile Island (zero confirmed), I think it's reasonable to say that there is no way for the NRC's regulations to have prevented even 1000 deaths over the past 50 years.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Chernobyl was uncontained, but is also estimated to eventually cause 27,000 cancer deaths. So a contained accident could be much better than that and still cause thousands of deaths. https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgronlund/how-many-cancers-did-chernobyl-really-cause-updated/ https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgronlund/how-many-cancers-did-...
    - laverya 5y ago
      And my point was that Chernobyl was not a reasonable point of comparison as all US power reactors have containment structures to the best of my knowledge.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    No Three-Mile Island effects from massive venting of krypton gas, which runs downstream like fluffy water and shrouds riverside neighborhoods, are included in death estimates.

pfdietz 5y ago

In fact, the NRC uses a cost/life of $9M when evaluating if new nuclear safety equipment is needed. ALARA includes "R" for "reasonably".

laverya 5y ago
> NRC uses a cost/life of $9M when evaluating if new nuclear safety equipment is needed. How much cost has been added to nuclear projects due to additional safety requirements? I think it's plausible to say "over 9 billion", as an extremely conservative estimate. Would you object to this? (That's the cost overrun for just one reactor, for context) If so, that means that those additional safety regulations have reduced nuclear deaths in the US by at least 1000 deaths. This does not seem plausible to me, as the worst case for a meltdown in the US with 70s-era designs is not "Chernobyl style uncontained accident" but instead something rather close to Fukushima or 3 Mile Island, purely due to containment structures. Given how many people died from radiation in the wake of Fukushima (literally one - and less than 100 estimated in the counterfactual scenario where there was no evacuation) and 3-Mile Island (zero confirmed), I think it's reasonable to say that there is no way for the NRC's regulations to have prevented even 1000 deaths over the past 50 years.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Chernobyl was uncontained, but is also estimated to eventually cause 27,000 cancer deaths. So a contained accident could be much better than that and still cause thousands of deaths. https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgronlund/how-many-cancers-did-chernobyl-really-cause-updated/ https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgronlund/how-many-cancers-did-...
  - laverya 5y ago
    And my point was that Chernobyl was not a reasonable point of comparison as all US power reactors have containment structures to the best of my knowledge.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  No Three-Mile Island effects from massive venting of krypton gas, which runs downstream like fluffy water and shrouds riverside neighborhoods, are included in death estimates.