81 ms·
Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
- psadri 4y agoMy theory - technology advances at the rate of half life of each buying cycle. Phones advance quickly because people replace them every 2-3 years. Cars, every 7-10 years. Nuclear reactors every 59 years. Hence the slow rate of advancement.
- Drblessing 4y agoInteresting theory - why is that?
- BenjiWiebe 4y agoWouldn't it be more likely to be the other way around? e.g. the reason people buy new phones so often is that new features come out so often.
- notorandit 4y agoWorld wide ores won't last long = no future.
- 323 4y agoAfter seeing russians fire at nuclear power plants, good look advocating them to the public...
- ldiracdelta 4y agoEdward Teller said the solution to the long term storage problem and the attack problem to build them under ground.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoYeah he liked those. PDF paper from him on the topic here: https://www.nucleonica.com/wiki/Articles/Teller/Teller.pdf https://www.nucleonica.com/wiki/Articles/Teller/Teller.pdf
- formerkrogemp 4y agoIt's too expensive to build anything nuclear. Especially these days. Also NIMBYism and fossil fuel interests and antinuclear activists.
- ncmncm 4y agoBy the time anything could be finished, much cheaper renewables will render any such plant redundant. Spending $billions on a plant that will be cancelled partway is unappealing. None of the money is ever given back.
- evolve2k 4y agoStoring nuclear waste for 10,000+ years is also unpopular and no-one wants it stored in their backyard and further does it add up to put aside proper funds to steward waste for 10,000 years.
- planetsprite 4y agoAll nuclear waste ever produced in the US could be stored in an area the size of a football field
- ben_w 4y agoWhile true, this does not make it popular or lead to NIMBYs changing their mind. How important this is varies by nation, but it’s not nothing in most places.
- planetsprite 4y agoNuclear power is unpopular because of media messaging. Coal releases more radiation into the environment on average, even accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima.
- ben_w 4y agoAlso because of the naturalism fallacy, and because of word association between “nuclear power” and “nuclear weapons”, and because of the zero-risk bias (most people have a preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk).
- 6581 4y agoThat's a rather meaningless assertion without stating how high you'd need to stack it.
- planetsprite 4y ago30 feet
- missedthecue 4y agoProbably for the same reason we don't see massively expanding horse carriage industry. Nuclear is on the way out despite enormous government subsidies. Just fundamentally too burdensome, expensive, and outcompeted by modern tech.
- sto_hristo 4y agoActually that "modern tech" of yours is the subsidized one. President Obama was basically trumpeting how many new and awesome futuristic jobs those solar parks will create when the government unleashes the cash flood. Nothing competes with nuclear. It's just pure physics - atom is the biggest source of energy on this planet according to current physics. Whoever can't agree with that reality fact should see a psychiatrist. Despite all the obstacles, nuclear constantly develops and will continue to do so, because market. Industries can't run on calculator batteries. Sorry.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoI think you would benefit from reading TFA. It looks at the actual operating costs of current designs and the dropping price of renewables and points out that the fundamental economics of the nuclear industry are not great right now. It also points out that most of the high-priced daytime usage is about to be scooped up by renewables. This may or may not be fatal to the nuclear industry, but it points to the need for substantial innovation or subsidies.
- sto_hristo 4y agoSorry. Largest power density is still in the atom. Can't work your magic around this. The only reasonable and sane strategy is to R&D around nuclear. Whoever gets it right will rule, the others will be ruled. Not single bubble kept its integrity; renewables will burst as well.
- ncmncm 4y agoWishing doesn't work.
- version_five 4y agoI don't think it's stagnant. I continue to see stuff like small modular reactors making progress. The obvious reason why it doesn't get more play is because it doesn't serve anybody's political goals. Renewables and carbon taxes or other measures to try and reduce quality of life (or opposition to those) get attention because they have good political value. Actually spending money and generating sustainable power, not much you can do with that, it doesn't match an ideology. Same with carbon capture and storage. There are good technical motivations to climate change, they just don't have a political champion.
- mateo1 4y agoSmall modular reactors are not even small. They're 400MW each and size-wise they conveniently don't include the containment building and all the supporting equipment and machinery. I don't know who came up with that name but it's not very descriptive term.
- imtringued 4y agoA potential SMR power plant from NuScale contains 5 SMR that each can be individually replaced. You forgot to qualify your "each". Each power plant can do 400MW but each individual SMR only does 77MW. Compare that to conventional nuclear reactors where a single reactor does 400MW and the entire plant does 1.6 GW
- Retric 4y agoSmall modular reactors don’t actually solve any significant issues for the nuclear industry. Construction costs are dwarfed by operating costs and the idea that N small reactors with N times as many parts will somehow require less maintenance is wishful thinking. They very well could be slightly cheaper over the first 15 years, but nuclear reactors are designed for ~50 year lifespans and are really expensive to decommission. Look at say Palo Verde it’s close to 4GW with a 82.80% lifetime capacity factor, but needs 2,055 full-time employees and that’s the best case.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
- nimbius 4y agoinvestment cost and payoff. a gas turbine plant can deliver returns in as little as six years and requires minimal oversight. a nuclear plant may take as long as 30 years before it returns a profit, and it lives under a government regulatory and security magnifying glass. personal opinion but the modern american investor has no patience for anything but instant profits. nuclear could be great but the executives you have to convince are all well familiar with and scarred by their 60 year old reactors.
- hammock 4y agoThis rings true and I'd like to see a comparison of interest rates or curve steepness vs energy supply/construction
- pfdietz 4y agoIn a time where energy technologies are changing rapidly, patience is not a virtue. Investments had damned well better pay off quickly.
- colinmhayes 4y agoWHy would any executive be interested in an investment that takes a decade to even pay its first dollar when renewable prices are dropping exponentially? For all we know solar, which is already cheaper than nuclear, will be cheap enough by the time a nuclear plant is done to make that plant completely obsolete.
- mjfl 4y agono one ever mentions nuclear proliferation risk associated with the production of plutonium.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoit does get mentioned, and you can have nuclear power without producing plutonium.
- mjfl 4y agobut it's less straighforward and developed. Uranium-based nuclear power produces plutonium. non-uranium based nuclear power is possible but requires technology development that in practice has taken much longer than expected.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoPart of that development delay is the deliberate decision of the US (and other countries) to build the types of reactors that can produce weapons grade plutonium - for the express purpose of using it for nuclear weapons. Nuclear reactors are crazy expensive, so if the money comes from people who want Pu, then that's where the R&D goes.
- liftm 4y agoThe rest of hackernews seems to have decided that plutonium is a step on the way to solve the waste problem. What's your take on that?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoWhich waste problem? And how does Pu solve it?
- liftm 4y agoOpen this thread in full, Ctrl+F, "Plutonium", read each post that hits and the one it answers to. That should answer those two questions.
- PaulHoule 4y agoEnergy crises are caused by cheap energy. When energy is cheap people use a lot and stop investing in new sources. The resulting crisis causes high energy prices which causes people to be more efficient and to invest in new energy sources. It takes 20 or 30 years for this to play out. (mid 1970s, early 2000s, current 2022) Each cycle leaves behind a tranche of books that reprise the last crisis, with the interesting effect that the literature often looks like a stopped clock. One bit of stoppage is that people still compare nuclear to coal, although coal has been uneconomical in North America since the 1980s. One issue is that a coal burning plant (like a current nuclear plant) has a huge steam turbine that's more than 10 times the size of gas turbines used for aircraft engines and for generating power from natural gas. It's no accident therefore that we stopped building coal and nuclear plants at the same time. The Amory Lovins "soft energy path" was not a transition to renewables but rather a transition to methane. There's not just the capital cost of the steam turbine but also the cost of the heat exchangers, if you look here https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/pwrs.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/pwrs.html the image is roughly to scale and you see that there are multiple "steam generators" that individually are as large as the reactor vessel and are every bit as safety critical as the reactor vessel because a breakage could lead to a loss of coolant accident. The cost of the heat handling parts is substantial enough that even if the cost of the core was zero and the heat was free the LWR would still struggle to compete. A reactor that runs at higher temperature using liquid metal, liquid salt, or a gas coolant like helium, could drive a Brayton cycle gas turbine powerset which would fit inside the employee break room of the turbine house of an LWR. Of course it's tricky: we have quite a bit of experience with liquid metal reactors, and a little bit with other types. The closed-cycle gas turbine however is a work in progress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoBecause it hasn't yet heard about Nitinol
- TrispusAttucks 4y agoNuclear is not popular because the fossil fuel industry co-opt the environmentalist to fight on their behalf. We should have better developed nuclear for the last few decades and we would be in a much better energy posture. Especially for an EV future.
- ncmncm 4y agoYou mean environmentalists have been ceded total control over all utility decisions? They can't even stop government sponsored mass wolf kills.
- robonerd 4y agoWhat would environmental organizations coopted by the fossil fuel industry care about wolves? Their ineffectiveness at anything other than stopping nuclear power plant construction is a symptom of what TrispusAttucks said.
- ncmncm 4y agoDoes it worry you at all that what you wrote makes no sense?
- Krasnol 4y agoDo you have any serious sources on this ridiculous conspiracy theory bread in Shellenbergers bubble reactor?
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoThe reason we don't have reactors that recycle nuclear wastes is because ecologists have attacked the next-gen model with a bazooka. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack This is why we can't have nice things, the ecologists have prevented the solutions from the issues that legitimate their political existence. In germany and in the U.S the shutdown of nuclear has been a blatant lobby too.
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoRussophobia aside, the next-gen russian nuclear model (first exporter in the world, of nuclear plants) is built in 3.5 years, which is state of the art. And at the same time has a high throughput (1300MWe) (much higher than the billion dollar mini-reactor fad) and state of the art longevity. It's very difficult for me to find the actual prices, of the different nuclear plants models competitors, but since most of the cost is construction cost and 3.5 year is SOTA, I assume, if Russia price them reasonably that this will shift the balance of nuclear energy competitivity worldwide. (china nuclear is already price competitive however they don't export (yet?)) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#VVER-TOI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#VVER-TOI If anyone has more info on those seemingly disruptive VVER-TOI, please share
- likecarter 4y agoNo EU or CANZAUKUS country would import a Russian design in the current environment or foreseeable future, as the Russians will be the ones to have the expertise to maintain it.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoFinland just pulled the plug on a project to build a new nuclear plant for this reason: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finnish-group-ditches-russian-built-nuclear-plant-plan-2022-05-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finnish-group-ditches-r...
- Iwan-Zotow 4y agoHa-ha-ha-ha, ever heard about Hungary?
- Krasnol 4y agoDon't need any Russophobia to see that Russia will have troubles to maintain it's fleet pretty soon if those sanctions keep on running. They are already missing significant parts which came from the West for all kinds of manufacturing and it will get worse and worse. While China can provide basic parts at a high price, they can't provide it all. I wonder how long it will take until the nuclear fan club starts recognising the risks which will result from this development. Not only in Russia but also in countries which bought into a nuclear/energy dependency from Russia. Same considerations should go for countries which buy into nuclear dependencies from China.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoNuclear engineer here. If you want a deep dive into US reactor development history, I wrote this up on a vacation. https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html My take on the more modern economics is here https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html And waste here https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoDo you have news on Westinghouse? Is had filled bankruptcy, did they survive? how? Are they in maintenance mode or do they pursue evoltution of their models? China has bought their patent and is in the process of upscaling the original Westinghouse design, is westinghouse still collaborating with china? Have they abandoned their own models? It seems according to their website they are joining the small reactor fad..
- acidburnNSA 4y agoHere's some recent news: China's announced that they're building 4 more Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs. They'll use the Chinese supply chain, but it's still a big win for W. https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-ap1000-reactors-in-china https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-... I really wish we could get a few more orders in the USA so that we could leverage the learning and supply chain being so painfully built in Georgia for the AP1000s there.
- SemanticStrengh 4y agofor 4 AP1000 they are building ~20 CAP1000, westinghouse should never have sold they patents for a penny.. Also they are obscoleting westinghouse with their 4 planned CAP1400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
- systemvoltage 4y agoWe need to build hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants. Electricity should be so cheap, it’s not worth monitoring usage for homes. The fact that this hasn’t happened is a testament and an indictment of dysfunction in our society. I’ll turn into a single issue voter if any candidate for the President is pro-nuclear in a big way.
- sb057 4y agoThe fact that nuclear power regulators are routinely anti-nuclear power probably isn't helping things. https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-to-new-reactors/ https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-... >Dr. Greg Jaczko, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Prof. Wolfgang Renneberg, former Head of the Reactor Safety, Radiation Protection and Nuclear Waste, Federal Environment Ministry, Germany Dr. Bernard Laponche, former Director General, French Agency for Energy Management, former Advisor to French Minister of Environment, Energy and Nuclear Safety
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoIt's a tragedy
- ncmncm 4y agoI.e., the more you know about nukes, the less you like them.
- sb057 4y agoI'm not sure about the other regulators, but Jaczko is hardly liked by his colleagues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Jaczko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Jaczko >A report by Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General Hubert T. Bell accused Jaczko of "strategically" withholding information from his colleagues in an effort to keep plans for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository from advancing. >In October 2011, all the other four NRC commissioners—two Democrats and two Republicans—sent a letter to the White House expressing "grave concern" about Jaczko's actions at the NRC. On December 14, 2011, Commissioner William Ostendorff, a Republican, told a House oversight committee that Jaczko's "bullying and intimidation... should not and cannot be tolerated."
- ncmncm 4y agoThe more you know about nukes, the less you like nukes.
- civilized 4y agoSociety has chosen not to meaningfully incentivize addressing climate change. From that perspective, why not just continue taking the free energy from the ground? (Or use solar and other renewables, but only if cheaper.) Why bother with scary, expensive nuclear?
- jmyeet 4y agoThis is a solid write-up. I particularly like this part: > Most fusion concepts are just a more complicated way to heat water. It's kind of wild that our means of power production do ultimately mostly boil down (pun intended) to turning a turbine with steam and, as the article notes, this is an inherent cost problem whereas solar is a direct form of energy. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but it's true. It's also kind of wild to consider that we want to heat up hydrogen to a 100 million degrees... to boil water and turn a turbine. I'll also highlight this: > As we've seen, traditional LWRs have a cost problem. That is why the PR ignores costs or focuses only on operating costs. My own view: 1. There are several hundred nuclear power plants in the world. Not one of them has been built without government assistance. This goes to the capital cost issue; 2. Nuclear power plants take too long to plan, build and bring online. IIRC it's at least 11 years; 3. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with processing waste at scale; 4. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with fuel waste at scale; and 5. I just don't trust humans, particularly within the corporate structure, to build and operate nuclear power plants safely. The temptation is simply too high to increase profits by cutting costs.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago> Nuclear power plants take too long to plan, build and bring online. IIRC it's at least 11 years It's crazy what people come to believe. To generalize the pathetic bureaucratic failures like the EPR to all model couldn't be farther from reality. Russian commercialized VVER 1200 models take 57 month to build. Their successor, the VVER-TOI take 40 month, so 3.5 year to build. It output 1300MWe Besides the russian competitive advantage, China build plants in 6 years.
- polski-g 4y agoYeah these things don't take 11 years to build. Government makes them take that long.
- nrp 4y agoI would be interested in understanding what drives this. Even in Korea, where large scale infrastructure projects like new subway lines get built very quickly, new nuclear reactors seem to take >10 years (both the ones installed domestically in Korea and the export ones in places like UAE).
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoI am reminded of an amusing incident in the Netherlands: the prime minister talked about new reactors and made the faux pas of mentioning specific locations. Immediately a shit storm brew up and he was forced to publicly apologize. Keep it vague. We all love nuclear now. But not a single spade in the ground by order of NIMBY!
- quickthrower2 4y agoThen… build the reactor in the middle of SF. Write “Move fast and break things (we mean the atoms of course!)” on the side of the building.
- pg_bot 4y agoI will start this off by saying I am very pro nuclear. However, I think it is likely that the last nuclear power plant to be built in the United States will be built in the next 5-10 years. Looking at the trajectory of renewables and energy storage it seems that every other method of generating power will slowly be priced out of existence. Given the politics (fission) and uncertainty (fusion) of nuclear, I think it is highly unlikely that there is a long term future for the industry (100 years). Even though we will need some level of baseline power for when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing, I think it is likely that geothermal or natural gas plants will fill that role. Nuclear is too bespoke, and you need a massive amount of capital before you generate one watt of power.
- RealityVoid 4y agoI have nothing against solar, except I am not persuaded by its promise. Would like for it to be able to deliver all that it promises. But right now, you have diminishing output as panels age, you don't have a storage solution that works at scale, you will have a large volume of panel waste at the end of panel lifetime. I seriously doubt even the average life time of a solar panel will be enough. I just looked up some numbers and apparently the embodied energy of a kilowatt installed panel is 3700 kw. One kilowatt will, apparently, produce on average 850kw per year (again, looked it up online, if you have better figures, please!). This means you need to run your panel for 4 years, assuming you use all the power produced in a meaningful way, in order to break even with 1 solar panel. I simply don't see how we can decarbonize at this rate. Now with residential panels, that's for sure.
- tralarpa 4y ago> you have diminishing output as panels age The degradation seems to be quite slow in practice. Below 0.5% per year, i.e. less than 15% after 25 years. > on average 850kw per year (again, looked it up online, if you have better figures, please!) I think the number is closer to 900-1000kWh per year for Central Europe and 1200KWh/year for Southern Europe and California, but I don't know whether the higher average temperature at those places increases aging. > This means you need to run your panel for 4 years Sounds good to me?
- uranium 4y ago"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. "The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity importing. One study found that the nuclear phase-out caused $12 billion in social costs per year, primarily due to increases in mortality due to exposure to pollution from fossil fuels." --[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany] California's likely to have serious shortages [again] if they shut off the rest of theirs. Plus: "California's electricity rates are among the highest in the United States as a result of the changing energy mix within the state, including aggressive construction of new natural gas power plants." --[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California] I don't know enough to check the rest of the article, but this certainly gives me some doubts as to its accuracy.
- pstuart 4y agoI can understand reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy. disclaimer: I'm pro nuke if we can do it right, a la LFTR/SMRs etc.
- logifail 4y ago> reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy Is this statement about climate change, or nuclear safety, or a bit of both? At least for those worrying about safety, isn't this simply the wrong way round? New nuclear plants would have to be constructed to the latest safety standards, older ("paid-for") plants are the ones which were built in an era before them and have grandfathered-in approvals which might not be granted today.
- pstuart 4y agoThe reluctance refers to those that are scared of nukes (I am not) or that they've historically been way over budget (understandable). The crazy bit is climate change -- they intentionally moved backwards to more coal.
- camel_gopher 4y agoNuScale power just went public. Their modular 77 megawatt reactor was designed to be easy to operate and have passive failure modes. https://www.nuscalepower.com/ https://www.nuscalepower.com/
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoconstruction cost?
- freemint 4y agoHigher than traditional nuclear per kWh.
- robocat 4y agoThe article doesn’t include the word “baseload”, which is an important consideration. Utilities pay more for peaker capacity. For the same reason, market pricing regulations need to encouraging sources that provide a base amount of power despite weather conditions: network reliability and security of supply are valuable. (Let’s ignore Texas though). In New Zealand, we are dependent on seasonal rain for our hydro-power, and in some years we run dry and the whole economy is affected. In NZ the 1992 power crisis due to a 1:100 year drought required 10%-15% reduction in power usage nationwide, which caused a 0.6% reduction in the NZ GDP: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-we-learned-the-lessons-from-1992/NLFVIOGURGV7GAL3XCHNWBX4ZM/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-we-learned-the-lessons-fro... Even a predicted security of supply risk of 1% has consequences (even thinking we could run dry causes costs). Fantastic article: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/will-nz-run-out-of-electricity-this-winter https://www.newsroom.co.nz/will-nz-run-out-of-electricity-th... NZ is lucky that if we install solar electricity, we can effectively store it in our existing lakes, no batteries needed. We are unlucky that politically our government wastes money[1] on subsidising electric cars, when they could subsidise solar instead (in fact it just needs political will, private investors have $X*100 million plans already designed for solar, but surprisingly held up by lack of interest by government). [1] https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/05/16/29b-climate-change-boost-for-evs-waste-emissions-reduction/ https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/05/16/29b-climate-change-boost-... “A new scrap-and-replace scheme to help low-and-middle income New Zealanders buy EVs and a nationalised curbside waste collection service is part of a significant $2.9 billion investment into tackling climate change and reducing New Zealand's emissions.”
- tuatoru 4y agoWhile the governments' (plural, all the recent ones) car-centrism and lack of action on new energy are disapppointing (so 20th century), I disagree for a couple of reasons. Main reason: end-user subsidies of any kind (whether for cars or for rooftop solar or $asset) are merely a transfer from poor taxpayers to high-income or wealthy people, those who own their homes or can afford to purchase the asset. They entrench inequality. I'd be able to tolerate subsidies if NZ funded them with a smallish fraction of a capital tax/land value tax and/or a capital gains tax. (Such taxes being recommended by the Tax Working Group but rejected by successive governments). The idea of low-income people buying EVs is ludicrous. The typical budget for a "good" car where I work is NZD $2000 - $6000, and it's a very significant purchase. Second reason. NZ doesn't actually have a lot of land suitable for solar that doesn't have higher-value uses, but it does have a lot of wind, and wind power can share land use. Although wind is not as cheap as solar, it's cheaper than everything else (except already-built hydro). Wind farms are being built now in unsubsidised projects with ordinary commercial leases from land owners. Bonus reason: hydro operators don't need subsidies; it's worth them installing some solar on their lakes today. They are merely as anti-entrepreneurial as the governments.
- Ericson2314 4y agoIt's simply not profitable to do the job so well. Abundance (blowing past the demand curve, if you like) just isn't rewarded under ccapitalism. There's plenty of more specific stories worth telling, but for the big picture around much such infrastructure work, this is the elephant in the room.
- JoeyBananas 4y agoIt has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov: Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States: The last construction permit for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1978 for Progress Energy Inc.'s Shearon Harris plant, near Raleigh, North Carolina. The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Unit 1, near Spring City, Tennessee after initial construction began in 1973.
- jhgb 4y ago> because the industry is a regulatory hell That's weird, since many believe that the US nuclear industry is a fine example of regulatory capture.
- fallingknife 4y agoYou know that's the same thing, right?
- jhgb 4y agoI thought it meant the opposite, especially in context. Surely the problem of US nuclear construction doesn't lie in the NRC making concessions.
- fallingknife 4y agoThe point of regulatory capture is that regulatory hell is actually good for the established businesses in an industry. Sure it costs them money to comply, but the regulatory hell keeps new entrants out of the market completely, so the protection from competition is well worth the price.
- jeffbee 4y agoThese statements do not seem factual. Didn't the NRC issue a construction license for Virgil C. Summer units 2 and 3 in 2012? Which subsequently failed to be built despite spending 9 billion dollars, because companies like Westinghouse are structured solely for the purpose of robbing the American public blind.
- TedShiller 4y agoBecause nobody wants it in their backyard
- Drblessing 4y agoSounds pretty cool to me tbh, i'll hookup my hashing machines
- xony 4y ago
- jeffbee 4y agoWhy do these article never lay any blame on the industry itself? From the recent history of nuclear power in America it seems clear that the large-scale civil engineering business is replete with grifters trying to skim a few billion off the top for delivering nothing. PV and wind win against these because they do not need the involvement of the large-scale civil engineering profit complex. Instead of examining these evident facts, the articles always focus on regulatory and political headwinds. I don't understand why the industry itself is ignored.
- sanxiyn 4y agoI live in South Korea. One thing people miss about nuclear power in South Korea is that natural gas is expensive in South Korea, because there is no pipeline connection and it is imported liquified. The article quotes $25/MWh for natural gas in PJM, where comparable number in South Korea is $100/MWh. Truth is, if South Korea had pipeline connection to Siberian natural gas field (not an absurd supposition, there was fairly concrete plan proposed in 2012 which fell through due to politics), nuclear power would be uneconomical in South Korea no matter how it keeps construction cost cheapest in the world. Therefore, economical nuclear power in the United States can never happen by copying South Korea, because natural gas is cheap in the United States.
- qiskit 4y agoIf pipelines between russia and germany ( who had ties stretching centuries and pipelines for decades ) are such an issue for the US, any pipeline between russia and korea or russia and japan are non-starters. After fukushima, we allowed japan to buy lots of gas from russia. There was even talk about Japan and Russia building pipelines. But that got squashed real quick. Instead we forced japan to build LNG terminals for gas shipments by sea. Far costlier, more inefficient and much slower. It's an example of politics trumping economics. Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far. Japan and Korea are relatively wealthy but energy poor nations. A pipeline between Russia and Japan/Korea makes all the economic sense in the world. You'd expect there be a bunch of pipeline already and more scheduled to be built in the future. But no. Not a single pipeline.
- nosianu 4y agoYes, Russia has all those great resources. Unfortunately it also has the paranoid aggressive Russian security apparatus in charge that brought us to where we are, which for some strange reason you entirely omit. Also, we have climate change, remember? We are supposed to not use up all the available fossil carbohydrates! The more we bring up the more even more large-scale issues we will have. Making fossil fuels cheap and easy does not lead us to somewhere good. > It's an example of politics trumping economics. Which is good especially in this case, so I don't understand your point. One thing I don't understand is why nobody in German government (I'm German), not even the Greens, mentions that the kick in the rear that we get from the threat of Russia cutting gas is actually good for us, otherwise we would happily continue to rely on lots and lots of cheap natural gas and climate goals be damned because it's soooo convenient. We would need to make big changes to our (German) economy to use significantly less fossil fuels even if Russia had a nice and peaceful government. > Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far. Which should remain where it is, underground! Or 50 °C will be the new normal in some heavily populated areas of this world, and other very inconvenient changes. The plan for some seems to be to ignore the laws of thermodynamics and spend even more resources and energy on collecting carbon from the atmosphere and returning it underground using technology, instead of just letting it sit where it already has been sitting for several hundreds of millions of years. Funnily enough, this inefficient and leaky and destructive busywork adds much to GDP, compared to doing nothing (leaving the carbohydrates and not raising and using them).
- ineedasername 4y agoNIMBY, overregulation driven by FUD that's often funded by other entrenched energy interests, misguided do gooders that decades ago were worried about global warming (now climate change) who also hated nuclear because it's less environmentally friendly than renewable. That last one is tragic. We could have a massively smaller carbon footprint right now if we'd gone big down that path, presuming we also dumped resources for research into alternative uses for spent fuel & safe long-term storage. Instead of buying an electric cars that right now are powered by fossil fuels producing electricity (potentially even less efficient if the energy still comes from coal) electric might have hit their "killer app" stage a few years ago. (I'll concede that battery tech might not have advanced any faster with cheaper clean electricity and so we might still be just as ICE dependent as we are now) At this point nuclear might be moot. I'm not sure, honestly. But we seem to be approaching a tipping point where off-peak storage mechanisms for renewables are almost maturing enough for national-grid scale build outs. This would make the faster & cheaper build out of renewables (compared long expensive nuclear builds) more viable as replacements for plants that are currently needed for base load capacity, which is where nuclear's economic sweet spot is at. It takes a relatively longer time to ramp up/down the output of nuclear plants compared to others, and they have high overhead to begin with relative to others (natural gas plants that ramp down in off-hours don't have to pay for the gas they don't but) so while more flexible variable output nuclear plant designs are maturing they may be too late in the game. Right now the future for nuclear appears to be more niche applications. Relatively portable rapidly deployable units for instant infrastructure, for example. (I believe this is currently under research by US military) Anyway, that's a bit of a digression. The TLDR is sociopolitical facts killed nuclear (caveat: China is going very big on nuclear, they still see value there) and we've now reach a point where the issue is moot(ish).
- bobsmooth 4y agoIf you weren't aware, General Fusion is currently building their demo plant. They use liquid metal to both contain the fusion reaction and extract the heat from it.
- nimrody 4y agoNot completely stagnant: "Radiant Nuclear" - https://www.radiantnuclear.com/ https://www.radiantnuclear.com/
- anm89 4y agoSimple, because we have a society who's worldview involves believing that quantum energy from crystals heals them and the alignment of the planets determines their fate. And they have decided that nuclear is scary. Honestly we get what we deserve.
- Drblessing 4y agoOkay how many people really believe in that stuff?
- anm89 4y agoIn my totally college graduate circle of ~30 yr old friends, amongst the females, most of whom work white collar jobs, 90%+ Goop is worth billions. People eat this stuff up.
- Drblessing 4y agoThat is depressing. Though I guess from a purely rational point of view religion is no different.
- anm89 4y agoIt really, really is.
- dboreham 4y agoBecause nuclear power plants and the associated fuel cycle industry is incredibly dangerous and the participants have consistently lied about that danger for all of history? Note: not a tree hugger. I believe nuclear power (in conjunction with significant restrictions on consumption) must play a big part in decarbonization. But...so many lies for so long. Put down the Kool-Aid and admit these things are not safe and therefore need to be sited well away from human populations (as they were originally in the 1950s).
- mancerayder 4y agoWhat's unsafe about the later generation plants and technology? It sounds like the fuel utilization is at least 10 times more efficient?
- Drblessing 4y agoQuestion: How many people does coal burning kill a year?
- freemint 4y agoWill putting $10^x in nuclear save more lives then putting $10^x into renewables,grid updates and batteries? You are proposing an intervention so it should be benchmarked against other interventions.
- Drblessing 4y agoHard to estimate that, when putting $10^x into nuclear for serious R&D may yield surprising results. Also, why not benchmark $10^x in nuclear vs. $10^x in coal or fossil fuels?
- freemint 4y ago> Hard to estimate that, when putting $10^x into nuclear for serious R&D may yield surprising results. It might however that money could spend making solar panel factories for enxt gen solar cells which yields real results. > Also, why not benchmark $10^x in nuclear vs. $10^x in coal or fossil fuels? You can do that comparison, however since coal is not competitive in that metric you will not learn anything about how society should allocate money. We are proposing an intervention in the economy. We should try to only do the most efficient allocations.
- imapeopleperson 4y agoSales < Science A real institution doesn’t need a genius at the helm
- sam0x17 4y agoPublic sentiment and big oil lobbying
- bbu 4y agoHas anyone built a facility to store the waste for 1 million years yet? I think Finland is the only country in earth who started for real. It is mind boggling to me that people even consider building more waste before having the slightest idea what to do with nuclear waste. And the talking about how clean it is. Lol.
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- gcanyon 4y agoNon-nuclear power kills far more people each year than nuclear has killed during its entire existence. "...before having the slightest idea what to do with nuclear waste." implies that there is some way to do so that will result in a hundred thousand deaths annually. I don't know of a way to botch the job that badly?
- bbu 4y agoSolid whataboutism.
- gcanyon 4y agoThat’s not how whataboitism works. When you are choosing between two options, you are inherently deciding based on the pros and cons of each. You might claim false dilemma by saying that we don’t need either nuclear or fossil fuels, but it’s perfectly valid to say that if the choice is between “what exists now” and nuclear, fossil fuels kill far more people.
- kesor 4y agohttps://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
- Iwan-Zotow 4y agoNo. China, Russia and India are the only countries who started for real. Thermals reactors waste to fuel fast reactors. France used to be, but dropped out of the race
- thayne 4y agoIt wasn't that long ago that wind and electric weren't economically viable sources of energy. But after putting a lot of effort into making them more efficient they are now somewhat practical. As far as I know, similar levels of research and innovation haven't happened for nuclear fission. At least not yet.
- pojzon 4y agoIts stagnant because public opinion has been scared with stories of Fukushima and Chernobyl. Ppl dont understand that we can build reactors that not only can be powered up bu old nuclear waste but also are physically impossible to explode. But yea.. lets subsidize coal and oil industries more putting one more nail to humanity coffin. Corrupt politicians and stupid ppl voting for them are the issue, like always.
- merb 4y ago> Ppl dont understand that we can build reactors that not only can be powered up bu old nuclear waste but also are physically impossible to explode. we would be able to yes, but we can't. not because it's technically impossible, but because people are stupid. fukushima did not happen because it wasn't safe, fukushima happend because people were stubborn. Tepco knew what will happen and dismissed it because they were greedy (their offical report on that matter was "we did not do it, because it would scare people..."). thats why nuclear will never work, because we humans operate it. if we would build as much plants as we need, it would be 100x the amount we have right now which would also raise the death tool by accidents. and there is also no reason for nuclear, since wind and solar is cheaper and can replace nuclear. I also will never understand why people write about nuclear that often. what nuclear provides is solved with wind and solar. however no matter if we go the nuclear route or the renewables we still need to figure out how to reduce gas and built peaker plants that run on technology that is way more carbon friendly, but nobody ever writes about that.
- pojzon 4y agoEvery grid needs a stable source of electricity. Wind and Solars are not stable sources of electricity. If its not windy -> turbines are useless. If its cloudy -> solars are almost useless. Nuclear Plant on the other hand produces stable amount of electricity everyday. And molten salt reactors are resistant to human stupidity. Its literally impossible to cause a disaster with this type of reactors. Its physically not possible to do anything that will cause the core to meltdown.
- 4y ago
- DeathArrow 4y ago>Why is the Nuclear Power Industry Stagnant? Regulations. Lack of investments. Lack of scale. Scare mongering. Lack of research. After 60' not much money went into research for nuclear power. While solar power, betteries etc. become much cheaper due to a huge stream of money flowing into research for that area. If comparable sums would be used for research into nuclear power, probably the power plants would be cheaper and nuclear energy would be cheaper to produce.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoThe article covers this; in excruciating detail. The regulations add to the cost but even without that it would be costly. And a lot of the regulations have come from actual real life incidents. It's not like nuclear operators would be able to cut lots of corners on safety without regulations. Solar and wind definitely benefited from lots of government support. Just like nuclear did back in the day. Unlike nuclear, wind and solar are now commercially viable even without subsidies.
- Drblessing 4y agoDon't worry - Fusion will be here in 20 years.
- fguerraz 4y agoI can answer this in one word: privatisation. The neo-liberal economy is at total odds with this industry. For a private enterprise to succede at nuclear power, it would take someone crazy and with very deep pockets like Elon Musk, but even then, his model wouldn't work as failure is not an option. You can't fail and iterate. So what we have instead is privately run nuclear power plants, that are entirely publicly funded, with 0 risk taken, in typical neo-liberal fashion: socialisation of the costs and risks, privatisation of the profits.
- cschwarm 4y agoI agree. France was lucky and smart enough to socialize the profits of nuclear, and the public there is still mostly supportive. People may say that they worry about the risks, but that's just a rationalization presented to others.
- lukestateson 4y agoRussian bribes to corrupt European governments?
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThis is a good summary article. It appears many commenters haven't read it so here's the key paragraph: "Even if you think that natural gas should be banned or taxed away, nuclear will still end up uncompetitive. By the time you finish a single LWR, investors will build enough solar and storage to eat high daytime electricity rates. If you assume current nuclear plant operating costs and a very optimistic OCC then only a modest decline in cost makes solar + storage cheaper for 24/7 power. Solar and batteries have declined over 90% in price over the last decade, and the learning curve powering growth looks to continue."
- pfdietz 4y agoI will add that using just batteries for 24/7 solar is also not the cheapest way to get to 100% renewables. Solar + wind + batteries + hydrogen reduces the overall cost of providing "synthetic baseload" (in Germany, modeling using historical weather data, the inclusion of hydrogen there cuts the optimum cost nearly in half.)
- kkfx 4y agoThe "industry" is stagnant because it's private, so NOT to deliver a service but to make profits, it's like nation-wide fiber-optic networks in less dense areas, profit is INCOMPATIBLE with quality of the service for all. Nuclear works only as a way to have a constant (as much as possible) amount of power over time, something for the whole society something that's only viable if done by FULLY public utilities only owned by States who just need to deliver electricity to power anything. My only hope in this regards is that as much as the crisis bite more and more people realize that the neo-feudal society neoliberals have built is against 99% of the people and so react ERASING the private-public sector confining to States-only public show for ALL essential services like: - natural resource management - energy production and supply - water supply - health, pharmaceutical sector included - TLCs - academia (well founded public research, for the public, powerful and strictly not patentable or obtainable in any exclusive way by the private sector) - weapons - basic food production to ensure survival of resident in any area for an undefined period of time - basic nation-wide logistics Like it WAS in the very recent past. Of course such changes accompanied with life sentences for most relevant private-sector and public traitors and criminals against humanity not to punish them, that's simply impossible, but to teach others not to never ever try again their criminal path. Yes, I'm serious, no, I'm not at all "an extremist" from the right or left part of the spectrum.
- k__ 4y agoI was curious about new types of nuclear reactors. But, it turns out they still can't deliver what nuclear proponents claim. Sabine Hossenfelder explains it very well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k
- raverbashing 4y agoThe nuclear energy industry needs to lay down the pipe dreams of long building times and long CAPEX expenses Nobody is paying for this anymore. "Oooh but the efficiency" the efficiency of something that produces 0kWh is 0 Nuclear needs its SpaceX moment where you attack the costs and processes (without compromising safety). As SLS has shown, building on top of old projects is just a money sink.
- Shadonototra 4y agobecause we built a society around money and profit for some countries it is more profitable to keep using gas it is as simple as this, really
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago> Nuclear power plant cost varies dramatically by country and period. Lovering, Yip, and Nordhaus compiled historical OCC data in their 2016 paper.[2] What is the overnight construction cost for China and Russia??
- unknownaccount 4y agoI think it has to do with a declining IQ score among Western nations. There are simply not enough employees with the education and competentency level required to safely operate these plants anymore.
- dsq 4y agoThis is probably a very real problem. Perhaps not biological IQ per se, but culturally Western populations have been dumbed down significantly over the past few decades. This is actually my only objection to nuclear power: it requires a certain level of technical savvy in the populace to supply the engineers and technicians, which sadly our lawyer-ruled society does not appreciate.
- trashtester 4y agoWhen von Neumann divided two numbers of 8 digits each in his head at age 8, biology was probably a factor.
- dsq 4y agoAbsolutely. No amount of lipstick can transform a pig into a prince[ss], but sadly GIGO still holds and the trash in the ether distracts and stupefies. That is, you can make a potentially smart person into a dumb one.
- trashtester 4y ago20 years ago, I was talking with a co-worker, the HR director in the company I used to work in back then. Her background was a PhD in horse breeding. We talked about topics such as this. She said, based on her background with horses and by watching which of her friends had the most kids, she was not very optimistic about future generations. From the stats, it looks like it is only the rich (7 digits) and the very poorest that currently have fertility above the replacement rate: https://twitter.com/CSchmert/status/993934031174725632/photo/1 https://twitter.com/CSchmert/status/993934031174725632/photo... How much that affects the genes, is hard to say, apart from what the horse-breeder's gut feeling was.
- nycdatasci 4y agoThe Lazard report cited is two years old. There’s an updated version here: https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-o... Better visualization of the key chart here: https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/~/media/Images/research/economics/2022/0208/dfe0208c2.png https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/~/media/Im...
- stepanhruda 4y agoSolar/wind will always fluctuate - nuclear can provide a guaranteed output to smoothen the need for massive batteries.
- danhor 4y agoMost nuclear power plants are designed for constant power output, so they still need some other thing (like batteries?). Some are engineered for changing their output power quicker, but that means higher costs (lower usage), more complicated design and for short periods (<30 Minutes) some other energy source/sink while the power is adjusted.
- credit_guy 4y agoBut does this mean nuclear is uneconomical? Nuclear energy costs about $170/MWh, coal about $100 and solar/wind about $50/MWh. For comparison, the average price of electricity in the US in 2021 was $140/MWh. It's almost guaranteed that in 2022 it will be much higher, because the jump in price of both natural gas and coal. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51438 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51438
- morelandjs 4y agoA common theme I see, is tech venture capital types without any physics background complaining about the over regulation of nuclear energy. If there's one technology you'd rather over regulate than risk a catastrophic externality, it's nuclear. I'm just imagining what a shit show it would be if the "move fast and break shit" Silicon Valley mentality was applied to nuclear energy. No thanks. I would strongly prefer a cautious but ambitious government plan spear headed by physicists from the national labs.
- FrozenVoid 4y agoThe fundamental problem as i see it: Nuclear is profitable/possible only at large scale, it cannot 'scale down', unlike e.g. wind/wave turbines you can't buy a mini-reactor because the industry is very regulated(and for a very obvious reasons). the closest scaled-down nuclear has got is RITEG , which was built without these regulations(and would horrify Americans as much recreational nukes). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
- atlas_shrugged 4y agoHow can i invest in nuclear innovation? Most investment options seem to be either quasi government nuclear utilities or uranium commodity investments. Also a few of the fusion startups are only VC/acceedited investor options
- teslaberri 4y agoHaving Studied this for decades, It is on purpose and through sheer incompetence. 1) the 'greens' in the 60's were authentic but then they were co-opted by fossil fuel and military industrial complex that didn't WANT competitive nuclear power construction industry. 2) corruption and incompetence: unions killing big construction in general. when is the last major water project...dam or otherwise (alaskan water pipeline project planned since 1950's) that the u.s. was able to pull off. ? 3) conspiracy: the only thing really stopping nuclear power being built all over the west , and being built properly in the east ( there is a construction explosion in india/china) ---is proper spent fuel reprocessing. nuclear spent fuel is the biggest impediment to building plants. and despite how seemingly simply the problem would be to solve if you threw enough money and regulatory power at it----it is still 'unsolved'. this is ridiculous. and the solution is not 'thorium' or other as of yet unproven technologies. it's just 'processing' the waste in any number of existing processes--that are feasible if the engineering is built out. but it's not. the opposite. yucca mountain used the idea of 'burying the fuel' to steal money for skunkworks in a tunnel, or just for more tunnels.
- FunnyBadger 4y agoIt's not stagnant in China or India. That's where the innovation is happening. Here in the US it's been shackled and shamed out of existence but it's also had all innovation and improvement barred as well. Look to buying nuclear technology at a premium from India or China in the future just to catch up with where we should have been.
- heurisko 4y ago> Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear. Nuclear is still part of the UK's strategy and new nuclear is still being built. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_powe...